TULKAREM – Israeli forces on Tuesday raided al-Khadouri University in the northern occupied West Bank district of Tulkarem for the second consecutive day, the university’s administration said in a statement.
The administration said Israeli forces raided the university on Monday, forcing staff to open the main doors of the university’s engineering department. During the raid forces reportedly ransacked the building and seized posters and brochures from the campus.
Eighteen hours later, on Tuesday, the administration said Israeli forces returned, and ransacked more of the campus.
The university administration condemned the “Israeli violations against the university.”
The administration urged that international organizations take action against Israel’s disregard for education facilities.
Israeli forces have regularly stormed university campuses across the occupied Palestinian territory in recent months.
Since a wave of unrest swept the occupied Palestinian territory in October, Abu Dis’ Al-Quds University in particular has found itself a focal point of violent clashes between Palestinian students and Israeli soldiers.
On January 29, Hundreds of Israeli soldiers stormed Abu Dis’ al-Quds Open University and confiscated equipment and documents belonging to its student union.
Earlier in January, Birzeit University in Ramallah condemned an Israeli army raid into its campus, during which Israeli forces confiscated and damaged university equipment.
“Birzeit University condemns this attack and the direct violation of the sanctity of the university campus,” the university said. “This is a belligerent military attack on the university and our right to education and all the principles involved in the freedom of education.”
Demonstrating once again the sniveling and shameless fealty to the wealthy that she and her husband have elevated to a high art over the last 30 years, Hillary Clinton wrote a letter to Israeli-American billionaire Haim Saban last July 6th in which she said that:
I know you agree that we need to make countering BDS a priority. I am seeking your advice on how we can work together across party lines and with a diverse array of voices to reverse this trend with information and advocacy, and fight back against further attempts to isolate and delegitimize Israel.
One of the key reasons for the extraordinary success of the Zionist lobby in America over the last six decades or so has been its ability to generate and repeat sound bites whose discursive purpose is not to enrich the breadth and texture of a debate on the Middle East, but rather to impoverish and attenuate it.
Long before GOP operative Frank Luntz began trawling focus groups for emotionally-charged terms capable of crippling the public’s rational faculties during political campaigns, the people at AIPAC and the many pundits in the mainstream media who faithfully carry their water (e.g. ex-AIPAC employee Wolf Blitzer) were already experts at this game.
Perhaps the most well-known of the tropes employed by Israel’s more fervent advocates is to challenge someone who is criticizing its policies if they support that state’s “right to exist”.
The beauty of the query, at least from the point of view of those that deploy it, is its seeming innocuousness. We all, especially Americans, have an instinctively positive relationship to the idea of “rights”.
And who would want to go on record as being against the idea of some one’s or some country’s “existence”?
So, when our interlocutor says, “Don’t you support Israel’s right to exist,?” most of us freeze and then retreat.
And that is exactly the effect desired by those posing the question.
But of course criticizing someone’s or some thing’s comportment is not the same as seeking their death and destruction. To portray these two activities as being one in the same is nothing short of absurd.
It is similarly absurd to speak—here again I am referring to the above-mentioned question/rejoinder—of a “right” existing in isolation from other values and concerns.
Every social or political “right” is necessarily constructed upon a matrix of tradeoffs. My “right to live” and my “right to pursue happiness” are necessarily and without exception mediated by a need to be cognizant of, and responsive to, the rights and needs of others around me.
So the real question when it comes to Israel (and every other national polity for that matter) is under what specific legal and moral conditions— both in relation to its geographical neighbors and all those subject to its forms of organized power—can and should be permitted and/or encouraged perpetuate its present modes of existence?
And this, of course, is the very this conversation that the ridiculously unspecific and often smugly issued challenge regarding Israel’s “right to exist” is specifically designed to head off.
Those issuing it understand all too well that, should such a detailed discussion ensue, Israel, with its ongoing record of ethnic-cleansing and deeply institutionalized racism, would not fare very well among most fair-minded people.
We are now witnessing the widespread and seemingly concerted re-deployment of yet another trope: one that holds that the central goal of the BDS movement is to cruelly effect the “delegitimization” of the state of Israel.
According to the Collins on-line dictionary, to delegitimize means “to make invalid, illegal, or unacceptable”.
On one level, then, the use of the term by Israel’s defenders is fairly accurate. Those in favor of BDS do indeed seek to invalidate and eventually render illegal and unacceptable the racist and expansionist practices of the Israeli government.
On another level, however, they are clearly exaggerating when, as they often do, they simplistically equate drive to dismantle odious racist practices with the destruction of the state itself (What does it say about a society when the abolishment of blood-based schemes of citizenship and legalized ethnic supremacy are widely viewed by its members as tantamount to annihilation?), something that all BDS statements of purpose explicitly disavow.
For anyone who has followed the Israel lobby’s actions over the years, such exaggerations and cynically purposeful conflations are, of course old—very old—hat.
What is much more interesting to me is the righteous indignation that almost inevitably accompanies Zionists’ mention of the carefully circumscribed “delegitimizing” efforts of the BDS movement.
After all, it is not as if delegitmization as a tactic is new to Zionism.
Indeed, a strong case could be made that it has been perhaps the single most ubiquitous and effective tool of the movement in the US and elsewhere over much of the last century.
And, generally speaking, its use in Zionist circles has not been marked with any of the thoughtful circumscription employed by the BDS movement in its campaign to modify Israeli behavior toward the captive Palestinians under its control.
Rather, it has usually conformed to the behavior implicit in a second, much more harsh, definition of the term found on Wikipedia which speaks of delegitimization as the process of classifying “groups into extreme social categories which are ultimately excluded from society” and an activity that provides “the moral and the discursive basis to harm the delegitimized group, even in the most inhumane ways”.
What am I talking about?
For example, how, back in the first decade of the 20th century, the influential British Zionist Israel Zangwill famously wrote “Palestine is a country without a people; the Jews are a people without a country”.
Could there be any more direct and forceful delegitmization of a people than to have them ontologically disappeared by another group covetous of their land?
When, after the fledgling Israeli government engaged (despite all you might have read or been told about spontaneously fleeing Arabs) in a well-orchestrated plan to terrorize Palestinians into leaving their houses and lands in the new state in 1948, a number of the same refugees came back and sought to reclaim their properties, the Ben-Gurion government quickly labeled these people as “infiltrators”.
Could there be any more eloquent case of delegitimization than describing people returning to their lawfully titled homes after being driven out of them at the point of gun and/or the demonstrable threat of summary assassination as “infiltrators”?
When, after capturing the so-called West Bank thanks to a war in 1967 that—again, despite all you might have read or been told—Israel clearly initiated, some of the occupied Palestinians, seeing absolutely no attempts on the part of the Israeli government to begin the process of territorial devolution, or to abide by international conventions governing the behavior occupying armies, began to pursue their UN-sanctioned right to engage in armed resistance to that occupation, they were quickly and universally tarred by Israel as “terrorists”, a term designed to morally delegitimize them and their struggle in the eyes of the world.
When a non-Jew criticizes Israeli political and military behavior in exactly the same manner and tone that he or she might use to criticize analogous Russian, Spanish, French or American comportments, many Zionists have little or no compunction about quickly labeling such a person an Anti-Semite, which is to say a person possessed by a malign moral sickness, rooted in a wholly irrational hatred, for which there is therefore no cure.
The goal in quickly slapping this toxic label on a person is to effectively remove him or her from the field of “respectable” debate, that is, to delegitimize them and the set of often quite valid and universally-grounded critiques they might be trying to bring to the public square.
Similarly, when a Jew decides (judging from the cases I have known, almost always after a period of gruelingly careful consideration), to reject the political ideology of Zionism, many of those still working within the fold of this school of thought will show little hesitancy in delegitimizing this person, and with it, his or her freely-arrived-at moral choice, by labeling them with the implicitly pathological label of “self-hating Jew”.
Even former US Presidents are not immune from organized Zionist campaigns of delegitimization.
In 2006, former President and Nobel Peace Prize winner Jimmy Carter published a book in which he described the obvious: that in the Occupied Territories of Palestine, Israel runs a confiscatory colonial enterprise wherein Jews and non-Jews enjoy vastly disparate privileges and legal protections.
What did Carter get for this simple and irrefutable statement fact?
An organized Zionist campaign of delegitimization that culminated in his being, at least to my knowledge, the first living ex-president to be forcibly barred from speaking to the assembled delegates of his own party’s presidential nominating convention.
In October of 1988 the comic actor and writer John Cleese donated $140,000 to the University of Sussex in England to finance a study on psychological projection and denial, describing those phenomena to be “frightfully important” to understanding many life conflicts, especially those that play out in realm of politics.
Looking at irony-free use of delegitimization in certain Zionist reactions to BDS, it seems safe to say that the famous jester’s intuitions about the importance of these phenomena in public life were spot on.
While coverage of Justin Trudeau’s recent visit to Washington was embarrassingly banal in its emphasis on “bromance” between Obama and the Canadian PM, at least it was accurate (in the limited sense valued by the dominant media), except for the 60 Minutes feature that comically confused a photo of Sex and the City star Kim Cattrall for Margaret Trudeau. However, one aspect of the reporting did stand out as both a lie and dangerous nationalist mythology.
A number of media outlets discussed Lester Pearson visiting Lyndon Johnson the day after he reportedly gave a “scathing speech on American involvement in Vietnam.” The Canadian Press described the former prime minister’s speech and meeting with the US president this way: “Pearson never visited again, after a famous 1965 dust-up. He’d spoken out against the Vietnam War, and Johnson grabbed him by the lapels and snarled: ‘Don’t you come into my living room and piss on my rug.’”
Pearson’s speech at Temple University in Philadelphia the night before he met Johnson is probably the most cited example of a Canadian leader (supposedly) opposing US militarism. Even generally sensible authors such as Linda McQuaig point to it as having “contributed to ending the U.S. war effort in Vietnam.”
But here’s what Pearson really said in Philadelphia:
The government and great majority of people of my country have supported wholeheartedly the US peacekeeping and peacemaking policies in Vietnam.
In QuietComplicity: Canadian involvement in the Vietnam War, Victor Levant puts Pearson’s talk in proper context:
In his Temple speech, the Prime Minister did accept all the premises and almost all the conclusions of US policy. The chief cause of the escalation of the war in Vietnam, in Pearson’s view, was North Vietnamese aggression. ‘This situation cannot be expected to improve,’ he said, ‘until North Vietnam becomes convinced that aggression, in whatever guise, for whatever reason, is inadmissible and will not succeed.’ This had wider implications, since ‘no nation… could ever feel secure if capitulation in Vietnam led to the sanctification of aggression through subversion and spurious wars of national liberation.’ If peace was to be achieved, the first condition was a cease-fire, and this could happen only if Hanoi recognizes the error of its ways: ‘aggressive action by North Vietnam to bring about a Communist liberation (which means Communist rule) of the South must end. Only then can there be negotiations.’ Since US military action was aimed at resisting Hanoi’s aggression, the measures taken so far, including the bombing of the North, were entirely justified: ‘the retaliatory strikes against North Vietnamese military targets, for which there has been great provocation, aim at making it clear that the maintenance of aggressive policies toward the south will become increasingly costly to the northern regime. After about two months of airstrikes, the message should now have been received loud and clear.
Levant continues:
On the other hand, Pearson argued that continued bombing, instead of weakening Hanoi’s will to resist, might have the effect of driving it into an even more intransigent position. He therefore suggested, as a tactical move, that the United States consider a carefully timed ‘pause’ in the bombing: ‘there are many factors which I am not in a position to weigh. But there does appear to be at least a possibility that a suspension of such airstrikes against North Vietnam, at the right time, might provide the Hanoi authorities with an opportunity, if they wish to take it, to inject some flexibility into their policy without appearing to do so as the direct result of military pressure. If such a suspension took place for a limited time, then the rate of incidents in South Vietnam would provide a fairly accurate way of measuring its usefulness and the desirability of continuing. I am not, of course, proposing any compromise on points of principle, nor any weakening of resistance to aggression in South Vietnam. Indeed, resistance may require increased military strength to be used against the armed and attacking Communists. I merely suggest that a measured and announced pause in one field of military action at the right time might facilitate the development of diplomatic resources which cannot easily be applied to the problem under the existing circumstances. It could, at the least, expose the intransigence of the North Vietnam government.
Let’s further dissect Pearson’s “anti-war” position. Approximately three million Vietnamese died during the US war in Indochina, with about 100,000 killed during the US bombing of the North. To put Pearson’s Temple speech in the crassest terms possible, opposing the bombing of the North was a call to end 3.3% of the death toll.
When Pearson met Johnson the next day the president was mad because senior US foreign-policy planners were debating a pause in the bombing of North Vietnam (which would take place months later and when Washington restarted their bombing campaign Pearson publicly justified it). By speaking out Pearson effectively sided with Johnson’s opponents in the US administration after he enabled the bombing campaign. According to the leaked internal government documents known as the Pentagon Papers, in May 1964 Pearson agreed to Johnson’s request to have the Canadian Commissioner on the International Control Commission, which was supposed to enforce the implementation of the Geneva Accords and the peaceful reunification of Vietnam, deliver US bombing threats to the North Vietnamese leadership. In so doing Canada’s Nobel peace laureate actually enabled a serious war crime.
The story about Johnson challenging Pearson the next day only came to light a decade later, once US actions in Vietnam were widely discredited. In 1974 former Canadian Ambassador in Washington Charles Ritchie wrote: “The President strode up to him and seized him by the lapel of his coat, at the same time as raising his other arm to the heavens.” Ritchie reported Johnson saying, “you don’t come here and piss on my rug.”
While the ambassador’s description is almost certainly an exaggeration, subsequent commentators have further embellished Richie’s account. In one telling Johnson “grabbed Pearson by the lapels of his coat and violently shook him.”
An entertaining story perhaps, but simply not true, just as saying Lester Pearson opposed the war against Vietnam is a lie.
While logic and facts are irrelevant to nationalist myth-makers, it is critical that we understand the reality of our past if we wish to build a better future.
But a closer read of the FBI’s summary of Tsarnaev’s statements to his interrogators raises questions about key details of the bombing and its execution.
First off, it is important to note that the interview notes are heavily redacted and therefore incomplete. But some of the things the FBI says Dzhokhar told his interrogators indicate a level of confusion or ignorance, or both, about important facts. They also raise questions about why the FBI has been selectively vague about key details of the case.
Black/Brown/White Backpack?
According to the interrogation notes, “Jahar carried a brown backpack [emphasis added] while his brother’s backpack was black. After parking, they walked…”
Now the backpack is brown?
The indictment, which was written a month and a half after the bombing, states that both bombs were concealed in black backpacks.
In a photograph of the shredded backpack lying in Boylston Street released by the FBI, it does indeed look black.
Boston Bombing black shredded backpack – Photo credit: FBI
However, many observers have pointed out that, in surveillance photos, the backpack Dzhokhar can be seen carrying does not look black — or brown for that matter — but mostly white or light gray.
Photo credit: FBI
Why the discrepancy? Did the interviewing agent challenge him on this detail? Why is there so much ambiguity around such an important detail?
And there’s another problem: The “smoking gun” video that supposedly proves Tsarnaev placed an explosive laden backpack on Boylston Street. It actually shows very little. His actions are obscured by the crowd of people.
Shouldn’t the government be obliged to prove unequivocally that the exploded backpack found at the scene was at least the same color as the one Dzhokhar was carrying that day?
Strange Redaction Regarding Explosive Powder
Also according to the FBI agent’s notes, Tsarnaev ”stated that he and his brother Tamerlan built two explosive devices in his brother’s home at 410 Norfolk…”
This implies that Dzhokhar took a more active role in constructing the bombs than has been previously described.
But, Dzhokhar’s lawyers showed at trial that none of his fingerprints were found on any of the bomb or bomb-making materials. Tamerlan’s fingerprints were, however.
Dzhokhar also told agents, apparently, that the powder came from $200 worth of fireworks that he and Tamerlan had purchased in New Hampshire about a year prior. But that’s when Tamerlan was in Russia — January to July 2012. Considering Tsarnaev was being interrogated April 21 and 22 , 2013, the time-line can’t be accurate.
Fireworks found in Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s dormitory room – Photo credit: FBI
At which store, or exactly when these particular fireworks were purchased, is not clear. But since the bombing, law-enforcement and media reports have consistently referenced a $200 purchase made by Tamerlan at Phantom Fireworks in Seabrook, New Hampshire two months before the bombing. Nothing about Dzhokhar buying fireworks was ever made public.
Most notably, that particular purchase would only constitute a small fraction of the amount of explosive powder needed to produce all the bombs the Tsarnaevs are accused of making and detonating.
According to the owner of Phantom Fireworks, the brothers would have been able to harvest, at most, 1.5 pounds of explosive powder from the $200 purchase.
On the other hand, each pressure cooker bomb that exploded on Boylston Street probably contained anywhere from 8 to 16 pounds of explosive powder, according to testimony from Special Agent Edward Knapp.
The pressure cooker that exploded in Watertown probably contained another 4 to 8 pounds. And in Watertown, three more pounds of powder were found in a Tupperware container, along with a number of pipe bombs each containing yet more powder. That means the Tsarnaevs would have had to collect between 23 and 43 pounds of explosive powder — or more.
Either they made numerous purchases of fireworks or they got explosive powder from another source.
At the very least, Tsarnaev’s statement that they got the explosive powder from $200 worth of fireworks shows his ignorance regarding what it actually took to make them. Either that or he did discuss the provenance of the rest of the explosive powder with his interrogators — was that information in a redacted part?
Why does the FBI continue to withhold information on where the explosives came from?
All of this reveals either a marked level of ignorance or confusion by Dzhokhar Tsarnaev about details of the bombs’ construction — even the color of the backpack. Or, it reveals that the government is still withholding key details about how the bombs came to be. Why is anyone’s guess.
But why do any of these small details matter? Because, as we all know, the devil can be found in the details. And the outcome of a life-and-death prosecution can sometimes hinge almost entirely on such seemingly small details.
Painting Dzhokhar Tsarnaev as an equal partner in the planning, preparation and execution of the violence that erupted in Boston was critical to the government’s goal of winning the death penalty against the sole surviving brother.
But when close scrutiny has been applied to the government’s case, we continually find troubling inconsistencies that hint at a prosecution hell-bent on winning the case — damn the specifics of who did exactly what and when.
Why Details Matter: See for Yourself with One Click
For instance: in our past reporting we showed how the government claimed Tamerlan drove as Dzhokhar was sitting menacingly behind Dun Meng, the carjacking victim, as they circled around greater Boston in Meng’s stolen Mercedes SUV. But when we see the Mercedes pull up to the gas pump where Meng ultimately gets away, Dzhokhar appears to get out of the front seat — not the back.
As we reported previously:
Officially, by the time the Mercedes SUV can be seen pulling into the Shell station on the video in question, Tamerlan was driving, Danny was in the passenger seat, and Dzhokhar was sitting in the backseat.
In the video, we see the SUV pull up to one of the gas pumps and stop. Strangely, we see Dzhokhar emerge from behind the gas pump, obscuring the front passenger door before he makes his way into the store.
Strange because we were told he was sitting in the backseat. Yet we don’t see Dzhokhar get out of the rear door. Neither do we see him walk from the other side of the SUV.
Did they edit that out? Why?
Was the “escape” story embellished? After all, what cold-blooded criminals would allow a carjacking victim to sit in the back seat to make an easy escape? Or did they let him go? In fact, the carjacking victim’s account changed significantly early on until it finally solidified into what sounded most damning.
Other Little “Details”
And the government’s glossing over of its pre-bombing relationship with the Tsarnaevs, who hail from a geopolitical hotspot on Russia’s southern flank, strongly hints that Tamerlan in particular may have been a pawn in some tangled international intrigue with Russia.
We still don’t know why the family was granted asylum and yet freely returned to the Caucasus region — a reality that has experts scratching their heads.
Instead, what we witnessed was a theatrical effort on the part of the government to portray Dzhokhar Tsarnaev as a cartoonish fanatical monster — the enemy of you and me and our way of life. Whipped up into a vengeful frenzy, the public is far less likely to ask questions.
Notably, the caricature of Dzhokhar as a crazed Jihadi fell apart under a mild cross-examination of his twitter feed. The government’s examples of Islamic religious fanaticism turned out to be run-of-the-mill song lyrics that any 19-year-old would be familiar with.
The no-holds-barred prosecution of Tsarnaev looked more like an effort to disguise the backstory of how and why this happened, than an effort to find the truth.
For an intriguing, sinister, and even likely explanation for what that backstory was really about — please go here.
Very few US official figures are known for their sense of irony, least of all the Defence Secretary Ashton Carter, and it is unfortunate that he and others lacking appreciation of unintentional absurdity would be unable to find dark amusement in the contrast between two recent parallel events.
On February 25 the Defence Secretary and his uniformed glove puppet, Air Force General Breedlove, appeared in front of the House Appropriations Committee to provide justification for spending as much on military affairs as the next eight nations in the world. It is likely he chose Breedlove to accompany him rather than the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the highest ranking Pentagon officer, because Breedlove is the Supreme Allied Commander Europe – the man responsible for carrying out the policy of confrontation with Russia.
Carter is the man who declared last year that «the US military has helped to maintain peace and stability in [Asia] for 70 years», having had a slight lapse of memory about the US war in Vietnam from 1955 to 1973 in which 58,220 members of its military forces lost their lives while hundreds of thousands of innocent people in Vietnam and its unfortunate neighbours died in merciless US bombing onslaughts. Countless thousands of children were sentenced to infirmity and grotesque deformity by Washington’s use of hideous poisons intended to destroy trees other vegetation.
As for the glove puppet, Germany’s Der Spiegelrecorded a year ago that «General Philip Breedlove, the top NATO commander in Europe, stepped before the press in Washington [and said] that Putin had once again ‘upped the ante’ in eastern Ukraine – with ‘well over a thousand combat vehicles, Russian combat forces, some of their most sophisticated air defence, battalions of artillery’ having been sent to Donbass. ‘What is clear,’ Breedlove said, ‘is that right now, it is not getting better. It is getting worse every day.’ German leaders in Berlin were stunned. They didn’t understand what Breedlove was talking about. And it wasn’t the first time. Once again, the German government, supported by intelligence gathered by the BND, Germany’s foreign intelligence agency, did not share the view of NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander…»
This was not surprising – because there was not a word of truth in any of his wild assertions.
At the very time Carter and Breedlove were speaking to the ever-receptive «support our troops» Congressional Committee («under your leadership, the men and women who serve in the US military answer the call time and again to leave their loved ones, put themselves in harm’s way, and execute challenging missions abroad») the count-down to test-firing a US Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) was under way.
The defence secretary told the American public that«It’s a competitive world out there. We compete with China, we compete with Russia, we compete with terrorists. And we have to win».
Minuteman missiles have nuclear warheads and are manufactured by the Boeing Company which is proud that«the Minuteman program established Boeing as a leader in large-scale system integration. Today, the combined heritage of the Minuteman programs of Boeing and Autonetics continues as Boeing Strategic Missile Systems (SMS), supporting the Air Force with system evaluation, testing, training and modernization».
The US arsenal of deployed nuclear weapons includes 450 Boeing ICBMs, each having an explosive power of 475 kilotons (Kt). The US bombs that totally destroyed the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were about 20 Kt.
On February 25 Boeing’s shares opened at 116.35 and went to a high of 117.60. Next day they reached 119.45. In early March they had increased to 123.49. It seems they’re taking off with comparable velocity to their Minuteman missiles, boosted by statements on the part of the military and their legions of supportive politicians that China and Russia are threatening the United States.
Washington fails to realise – simply refuses to understand – that the only thing wanted by Russia and China is that the United States should mind its own business and stay out of other nations’ affairs that do not concern it. Secretary Carter states that militarily «We compete with China, we compete with Russia» – but Russia and China don’t want to compete with the United States. They just want to progress and develop economically and socially and stay in their own backyards, with secure borders, while trading with as many countries as possible.
Neither Russia nor China has 700 military bases in over 40 countries round the world. Neither Russia not China attempts to vastly expand military alliances specifically designed to threaten the United States. Neither Russia nor China possess nuclear-armed Carrier Strike Groups or Amphibious Ready Groups of the type and strength that the US deploys threateningly around the coasts of sovereign nations who prefer to mind their own business.
The latest US move to threaten China is deployment to the South China Sea of the nuclear-armed aircraft carrier USS John C Stennis along with the guided-missile cruiser USS Mobile Bay and the guided missile destroyers USS Stockdale and USS Chung-Hoon. They and their many escort vessels arrived off China on 4 March to join the guided missile cruiser USS Antietam and its fleet of ancillary ships.
In another wonderfully ironic episode, just as this mighty US attack fleet was arriving to menace China, Defence Secretary Carter announced to the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco that «China must not pursue militarization in the South China Sea». Mystically, he observed that «Specific actions will have specific consequences» and when asked what these might be, he «told reporters the US military was already increasing deployments to the Asia-Pacific region and would spend $425 million through 2020 to pay for more exercises and training with countries in the region that were affected by China’s actions».
With good historical justification, China maintains that most of the islet chains and groups in the South China Sea are its sovereign territory, although some areas are claimed by Brunei, Vietnam, Malaysia and the Philippines. The United States has got nothing to do with these disputes. Washington has no treaties with any of these nations that would require military intervention in the event of one of them having a disagreement with another country.
The United States has no territory of its own closer than the Pacific island of Guam, where, according to the US Congressional Research Service, «Since 2000, the US military has been building up forward-deployed forces… to increase US operational presence, deterrence, and power projection». In other words, the US build-up is intended to confront China, which is now, understandably, being forced to increase its own military forces to be prepared for what might happen as a result of US «power projection».
Complementing the US muscle-flexing in the South China Sea, the indefatigable Breedlove explained why Washington is indulging in similar antics in Europe. Ignoring the fact that the insurgency against Syria’s government was energetically supported by the US, in training and equipping what it absurdly called «moderate rebel forces», thus contributing to massive destruction and creating a dire refugee problem, Breedlove told the Senate Armed Services Committee that the refugee crisis in Europe is all the fault of Russia. «Together», he declared, «Russia and the Assad regime are deliberately weaponizing migration… to break European resolve».
In a fit of fantasy Breedlove announced that Russia has «chosen to be an adversary and poses a long-term existential threat» to the United States and its allies, and emphasised that the Supreme Allied Command Europe, «is deterring Russia now and preparing to fight and win if necessary».
The US is deliberately and most aggressively threatening China and Russia. Its military representatives are making belligerent statements that are intended to implant fear in Moscow and Beijing.
But the immature bluster and bravado of such as Breedlove and Carter do not create fear in those they seek to intimidate. They create determination in such countries – the resolve to stand up to the menace presented by the incessant deployment of military force against them.
This is exactly what is happening at the moment, and the US may be in for some nasty surprises.
Now you see it, now you don’t. One minute Eagles of Death Metal frontman Jesse Hughes is speaking directly, clearly, honestly and spontaneously about what he organically saw with his own eyes, what he was feeling and thinking as suspicious security personnel behaved oddly the night before the Paris shooting. The next minute Hughes is pulling a “Michael Hess” post-9/11 style 180-degree artificial retraction on his testimony.
Of course the controllers realize that the first organic version of the story confirms foreknowledge on the part of security. That foreknowledge would fit perfectly with the lack of clear evidence of the official story version of the story. The retracted artificial NEW narrative attempts to conveniently remove this foreknowledge and suspicious behavior. But in the end notice that the actual odd behavior and the security personnel who were mysteriously not working that day is still factual, only now we’re asked to chalk it up to coincidence. Now where have we heard this before?
We’ve seen these classic about-faces in many false flag shootings in the past including assassinations of JFK and RFK and almost all false flag events including 9/11 where WTC 7 firsthand “explosions” eyewitness Michael Hess spilled the beans only to later then pull a 180 and completely changed his story. In the aftermath of the RFK assassination we have live recordings of detectives literally forcing a key witness to change her story in what is said to be part of MKUltra mind control experiments conducted on witnesses who told stories damning to the official version.
In every case we see people telling a genuine story from the bottom of their heart, and after apparently being intimidated or mind controlled (as with RFK witnesses) by the controllers to redact their testimony, all of a sudden put out comments that are completely and directly opposite of what they had previously stated.
No one should be fooled by these sudden retractions that realign the story back to the original fake reality we call the “official story”. Sorry mainstream media, but I wholeheartedly believe Mr Hughes’ ORIGINAL testimony. He said it when he was expressing his organic reality, free of coercion. Now it is crystal clear to see that he is under outside pressure and control to say otherwise. No one speaks their heart honestly and then without any coercion whatsoever suddenly changes their story. That is about as unnatural a behavior as you can get. We ONLY see this behavior in movies; usually it’s the part where the mafia-government agent threatens the witness. This behavior would never happen otherwise.
This is a perfect example of what we mean by distinguishing the full-dimensional, real, full and organic reality versus the 2-dimensional artificial world the control system needs you to believe. This thing is real and anyone who threatens the artificial reality they have worked so hard to create and maintain will be threatened or intimidated in some way as I’m sure Hughes now understands very clearly.
Hughes is no different than any other musician, actor or celebrity who all came under attack in Operation Chaos of the 1960s. Everyone should research Operation Chaos, a CIA counterculture operation where “anti-government” celebrities with powerful influence were systematically drugged, blackmailed, threatened, intimidated, silenced and murdered if they did not cooperate the same way that Eagles of Death Metal frontman Jesse Hughes is doing now.
So we can rest assured that Hughes had a talk with someone who told him that for his own safety, perhaps for the sake of the future of his band he better change his story. And clearly whatever he was told worked. His “story” now fits in comfortably with the official story just a couple of days later, mind you. He is no longer a threat to their narrative and their agenda, and for him all is well again. The threat of exposure of the globalist agenda, as far as the controllers are concerned, is now over – order, they hope, can now be restored.
Hughes told the Fox Business Network last week that six guards at the Bataclan venue never came to work the night of the attack, and “it seems rather obvious that they had a reason not to show up.”
On Friday, Hughes apologized: “I humbly beg forgiveness from the people of France, the staff and security of the Bataclan, my fans, family, friends and anyone else hurt or offended by the absurd accusations I made.”
“My suggestions that anyone affiliated with the Bataclan played a role in the events of November 13 are unfounded and baseless — and I take full responsibility for them,” he said in a statement.
Disturbingly, the 180-degree retraction sparks memories of MKUltra experiments and how a key Robert F Kennedy assassination witness was coerced and intimidated. As we saw with the RFK witness intimidation, Hughes later goes on to blame HIMSELF suggesting he was possibly delusional about his original beliefs:
Hughes blamed the lingering effect of the attack for his accusations that the security team may have been in on the attack.
“I’ve been dealing with non-stop nightmares and struggling through therapy to make sense of this tragedy and insanity. I haven’t been myself since Nov. 13,” he wrote. “I realize there’s no excuse for my words, but for what it’s worth: I am sincerely sorry for having hurt, disrespected or accused anyone.”
This apparently is the telltale sign of someone who is completely under their control. Blame yourself and talk about yourself like you are mentally struggling, thus wiping away any possible self-credibility you thought you had. Nobody in their right mind tells a clear story then blames themselves for being mentally unclear and in need of “therapy” for saying what they said.
Was Hughes under mind control when he put out this statement? Did someone write this retraction out for him and force him to put his name behind it? The possibilities are endless, but the important thing is to realize what is happening here.
Stories like these serve as indicators of who is under the control of the control system and who is not. The system will harass and destroy anyone who does not cooperate – plain and simple. For this reason it is important to remember that celebrities are nothing more than puppets for the ruling elite or they wouldn’t be celebrities to begin with.
The lesson to learn here is that if you are going to come against the system don’t expect the system to work for you. You must choose who your master will be and you cannot serve two masters. Either you stand for truth at any cost and that which is real, organic and genuine; or you stand with the deceivers who control the media, Hollywood, all the politicians and all the celebrities. Do not mistake that which is real and that which is artificial.
Idaho’s public school students may soon have an additional reference text in science class — the Bible.
Senate Bill 1342, which will be heard this week by the House Education Committee, would authorize the use of the Bible “for reference purposes” in any class where “an understanding of the Bible may be useful or relevant.” Of course, our courts have repeatedly made clear that instruction in the Bible and creationism is neither useful nor relevant nor constitutional in science class. But that didn’t stop the bill’s drafters from explicitly listing astronomy, biology, and geology among the courses into which teachers may incorporate the Bible.
The ACLU of Idaho opposed the bill in the Senate, pointing out that religious texts and beliefs about the origin of life have no place in science class. So, what was the “fix” offered by the Senate Education Committee? They deleted the bill’s references to astronomy, biology, and geology. They also amended the bill to provide that other religious texts could be used as well.
Neither of these cosmetic changes, however, fixes anything; they merely attempt to better mask the measure’s serious flaws. As amended, the bill still allows for teachers to use the Bible in “any topics of study” where a teacher personally believes it is “useful or relevant,” including science classes. And based on the bill’s original text and the current title of the relevant subsection, which remains — “USE OF THE BIBLE IN PUBLIC SCHOOLS” — we know that’s exactly what was intended all along.
Authorizing and encouraging teachers to incorporate the Bible into science classes not only shortchanges Idaho’s students, who deserve a sound science education that will prepare them for college, but it is also a violation of the separation of church and state.
Indeed, even in non-science classes, allowing teachers to incorporate the Bible or other religious texts into class on a whim — regardless of state educational standards and approved curricula — raises serious constitutional concerns. Without in-depth training from a non-religious source and appropriate teaching materials, such as those available for a comparative religion course, it is very likely that teachers will inject their personal beliefs into these lessons, resulting in the violation of students’ First Amendment rights and a real risk of costly litigation for schools.
Unfortunately, the Idaho Senate has already passed the amended bill. But hopefully, as members of the House Education Committee consider the bill this week, they will take a much closer look and conclude, as we have, that Senate Bill 1342 is no gem.
Home Secretary Theresa May’s Investigatory Powers Bill, dubbed the snoopers’ charter, breaches international surveillance standards and is “unfit for purpose,” more than 200 senior lawyers have warned.
In a letter to the Guardian, the lawyers, including numerous Queen’s Council representatives and academics, said the bill will destroy privacy.
MPs are due to vote on the bill for the first time on Tuesday afternoon, and it is expected they will pass the motion. The bill itself sets out a series of legal frameworks for the government’s interception of data by GCHQ and establishes the breadth of government surveillance operations.
Chair of the Bar Human Rights Committee Kirsty Brimelow QC has signed the letter, as well as academics from 40 British law schools.
“A law that gives public authorities generalized access to electronic communications contents compromises the essence of the fundamental right to privacy and may be illegal,” the letter reads.
“The investigatory powers bill does this with its ‘bulk interception warrants’ and ‘bulk equipment interference warrants.’”
A well as bulk interception, the letter warns against “targeted interception warrants” which could be taken out on groups, organizations, or premises. The letter also warns that there need only be “reasonable suspicion” to intercept data, not demonstrable proof of threat.
“These are international standards found in the recent opinion of the UN special rapporteur for the right to privacy, and in judgments of the EU court of justice and the European court of human rights,” it continues.
“At present, the bill fails to meet these standards – the law is unfit for purpose.”
The aim of the bill is to establish a legal framework for interception, but critics of the bill say any bulk interception is a breach of privacy. The bill will also make it obligatory for internet companies to keep track of sites accessed by users for one year.
Other critics say the new bill will also criminalize IT staff who fail to destroy security services on its customers’ software on demand, or fail to hack into its customers’ systems upon a Home Office request.
GCHQ says it only targets an individual’s data in the context of a threat to national security, and would only pursue terrorist or criminal activity. It also argues that bulk interception is a necessary step to monitor criminal activity and the majority of intercepted material is never read.
However, the United Nations special rapporteur on privacy, Joseph Cannataci, also warned that the IP bill would legitimize mass surveillance.
A police investigation has been launched after a video posted online appears to show an officer macing a group of bikers on a highway in Texas.
The video was posted Monday, a day after the incident took place on the US Highway 297 in Fort Worth.
The episode began when a police officer pulled over a red pickup truck which was traveling with the bikers and issued citations to the driver for not having a license, and to two others for standing in the bed of the truck.
As the bikers approach, the video shows the officer get out of his vehicle and spray them with what seems to be pepper spray.
During the big ride today we had a law enforcement officer, that looked as if he was pulling over a truck, stepped out…
In a statement, Fort Worth officials named the policeman involved as Officer Figueroa, a “six-year veteran” who has been “removed from uniformed patrol duties and placed in an administrative capacity pending the investigation”.
Police say they had received a number of calls reporting reckless driving relating to the motorcyclists. However, the biker who shot the video disputes this claim.
Biker Jack Kinney said he did not see any reckless driving and accused the department of running a “propaganda campaign to try to mitigate the damage”, The Star Telegram reports.
“What’s in the video? The people at that time, they weren’t committing any crime,” Kinney told the local paper. “They were driving slower than the speed limit and they got pepper sprayed for it.”
Another biker called Chase Stone said the police action could have resulted in serious injury or death.
“If one or two or three of those riders had their face masks up and that would have hit them in the eyes, it would have more than likely sent them down,” Stone said.
To the Honourable Kent Hehr, Minister of Veterans Affairs c/oBen Charland Executive Assistant
Dear Minister Hehr;
I want to add my voice to that of my friend and associate John Duddy. Right now Canadian public policy on the issue of terrorism draws on the substance of the US 9/11 Commission Report, a notorious document outlining conclusions based on evidence obtained illegally through torture.
The Canadian government should not be formulating Canadian public policy on outrageously flawed foreign sources, especially those obtained through the infliction of torture. Right now this uncritical acceptance of the contents of the 9/11 Commission Report makes many of our federal public officials inside and outside Parliament complicit in illegal torture. This state of affairs is unacceptable. You should do what is necessary to veer away from this travesty that is presently making you and your fellow Liberal parliamentarians complicit in torture.
The whole Global War on Terror is known by millions of citizens worldwide to be based on an elaborate psychological operation whose objectives include the incitement of Islamophobia by the dissemination of false interpretations not only of 9/11, but also of other false flag terror events including the Ottawa shooter episode of Oct. 2014. This shooter episode, used as justification for the divisive and unacceptable Bill C-51, has never been properly investigated by a genuinely neutral third-party arbiter. Eye witnesses to the shooter event have given evidence to the CBC that does not conform to the RCMP version of events. Canadian citizens have no reason to trust the RCMP version of events.
To its credit the Liberal Party ran its most recent federal election campaign on a platform opposing the incitement and political exploitation of Islamophobia by Stephen Harper and his party. Mr. Harper rode to power riding the energy of a specious, hate-mongering campaign of disinformation on 9/11.
The Liberal government can rightfully be accused of carrying on Islamophobia in public policy as well as long as it continues to avert reckoning with the lies and crimes of 9/11. Canadians need a proper federal investigation of what is true and what is fraud when it comes to the originating and justifying event for the Global War on Terror in all its incarnations and iterations, including numerous subsequent false flag terror events right up to the present day.
Yours Sincerely,
Anthony Hall
Professor of Globalization Studies
University of Lethbridge
Editor In Chief, American Herald Tribune
Co_Host, False Flag Weekly News
Tunisia strongly opposes any military intervention in Libya outside the framework of international law, Tunisian Foreign Minister Khemaies Jhinaoui told Sputnik.
In January, media reported that US President Barack Obama was making plans to open a third front against Daesh in Libya, following military operations in Syria and Iraq started by a US-led coalition in 2014.
“The impact of any foreign involvement or military strikes in Libya will be significant to our security. We are saying to our partners, who are willing to hit the strongholds of terrorists, that they have to inform us about their plans and, of course, we are against any strikes without legal ground. We think that any strike should be made [according to] the international legal framework and UN,” the minister said.
He added that the international community should shift its focus and help Libyans strengthen bonds and resolve their differences.
“We would like to see a new national accord government in Libya assume power and taking care of the terrorism issue. It is a task for the Libyans, not for foreigners to fight terrorism in Libya,” Jhinaoui pointed out.
Libya has been engulfed in conflict since the 2011 overthrow of long-term leader Muammar Gaddafi and the subsequent civil war. There are currently two governments in Libya: the internationally-recognized Council of Deputies based in Tobruk and the Tripoli-based General National Congress. The two sides came to an agreement on December 17, paving the way to the formation of the Government of National Accord.
On Monday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said that any military operations against terrorists in Libya should only be possible if the UN Security Council agrees to them.
Syria is teetering on the brink and it will be difficult to rebuild it as a united country, Israeli President Reuven Rivlin told Sputnik in an interview.
“Syria tinkers on the brink. I do not know if or how it will be possible to rebuild Syria as a united country. For Israel, we are greatly concerned by the threat of Hezbollah, and importantly it is clear that there is a need to prevent Iran from promoting instability in the region, else no solution to the problems has a real chance to hold,” Rivlin said in regard to resolving the political crisis in Syria.
On Monday, Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon said that Syria had been effectively partitioned and is unlikely to be reunified into the state it had been in the recent past.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has previously endorsed the creation of an independent Kurdish state, arguing it would be a bulwark of stability in the region.
Syria has been mired in civil war since 2011, with government forces fighting numerous opposition factions and radical Islamists. The Swiss city of Geneva currently hosts the UN-backed proximity talks between the Syrian opposition and the government’s delegation to put an end to the deadly conflict.
Discussion of Syria’s federalization during the ongoing peace talks has been supported by opposition factions represented in Geneva, as well Syrian Kurds. Meanwhile, Syria’s Foreign Minister Walid Muallem has rejected both federalization and the partition of the country.
By Jonas E. Alexis | Veterans Today | October 16, 2107
In 1973 Irving Kristol, the godfather of the Neoconservative movement, made a stunning statement which is still relevant to understanding the Israeli influence in US foreign policy. Kristol said:
“Senator McGovern is very sincere when he says that he will try to cut the military budget by 30%. And this is to drive a knife in the heart of Israel… Jews don’t like big military budgets. But it is now an interest of the Jews to have a large and powerful military establishment in the United States…
“American Jews who care about the survival of the state of Israel have to say, no, we don’t want to cut the military budget, it is important to keep that military budget big, so that we can defend Israel.”
Read the statement again very carefully. A big military budget, said Kristol, is only good for Israel, not America or much of the Western World. In other words, precious American soldiers who go to the Middle East to fight so-called terrorism are just working for Israel, not for America.
So, whenever the Neocons use words such as “democracy” or “freedom,” they are essentially conning decent Americans to support Israel’s perpetual wars. … continue
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