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Out for Blood? Zionists Continue Their Attacks on Rep. Hank Johnson

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By Richard Edmondson | Fig Trees and Vineyards | August 4, 2016

Rep. Hank Johnson of Georgia has repeatedly apologized for his remarks on Israeli settlements, remarks in which he likened settlements popping up all over the West Bank to a termite infestation.

Yet even so, the Zionists are still piling on him.

“The ripple effect continues for U.S. Rep. Hank Johnson a week after the Lithonia Democrat was quoted comparing Jewish settlement policy in the disputed West Bank to termites,” reports the Atlanta Journal Constitution in an article published August 3.

This of course is what passes for US mainstream media coverage of the Palestine-Israel conflict. Tamar Hallerman, the author of the piece, demonstrates what would seem to be a rather pronounced lack of journalistic integrity in her reference to the West Bank as “disputed,” rather than occupied. The word “disputed” has for years been a hasbara talking point. The West Bank is viewed by virtually the entire world as rightfully belonging to the Palestinians and regarded as a vital ingredient to implementation of the so-called two-state solution.

And as such, the settlements are regarded as illegal under international law–something which Hallerman also fails to mention in her report. Virtually no one, other than Zionists and media flunkies like Hallerman, refer to the West Bank as “disputed.” The proper term is “occupied.”

At any rate, the main focus of her article is an editorial “blasting” Johnson which appeared at the Atlanta Jewish Times on Monday and which is quoted extensively.

“The editorial argues that if Johnson wants to receive votes from the pro-Israel community in the future, he’ll need to answer questions about what he was doing speaking at an event sponsored by a pro-Israeli-boycott group in the first place,” Hallerman reports.

“Meanwhile, Johnson’s apology tour continues. He met with the Atlanta chapter of the advocacy group the American Jewish Committee on Tuesday,” she adds.

Don’t you just love the term “apology tour”? It kind of falls into the same category as Philip Weiss’ comment about Jews dominating the American media–“and so what if we do?” It is of course imperative for Jews to try and downplay their political power, yet as we see every so often one or another will succumb to the temptation to boast about it.

So yes, Johnson is on a “tour” visiting various Jews and Jewish organizations, apologizing for his remarks. Here he is in an August 2 meeting with members of the American Jewish Committee, whose website urges visitors to “stop BDS in its tracks” by signing onto a form letter to Congress members:

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The letter, by the way, describes BDS as a “virulent movement,” and following his meeting with the group, Johnson tweeted amicably, “Appreciate meeting w/ @AJCGlobal today to open important dialogue — especially w/ #ATL director @DovWilker. Thanks!”

Johnson’s initial remarks about termites were made at an event in Philadelphia on July 25. If you have not read my article, Termites and Israeli Settlers: A US Congressman’s Analogy, you might consider doing so. As I noted, the congressman’s critics seem to have little to say about racist rabbis in Israel who have articulated things far worse and who have even called for the murder of Palestinians.

The editorial at the Atlanta Jewish Times, cited by Hallerman, makes mention of the fact that Johnson holds the same congressional seat once held by Cynthia McKinney, and while the opinion piece seems to give him credit for being less of an “anti-Semite” than his predecessor, it doesn’t seem to cut him much else in the way of slack.

Unlike McKinney, the woman he defeated 10 years ago to win his seat in Congress, Johnson doesn’t hate Jews, many of whom have been crucial supporters, and he doesn’t spout conspiracy theories accusing Jews or Israelis of carrying out false-flag terrorist attacks.

But his attitude toward Israel and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has changed in recent years, and he spoke July 25 as someone who has earned a reputation as a leading congressional critic of Israel.

That day he criticized Israel and the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu while lamenting the condition of the Palestinians. He portrayed Israelis as the villains and Palestinians as the victims, ignoring Palestinian terrorism against Israeli civilians, incitement by Palestinian leaders and rocket fire from Gaza.

The editorial doesn’t divulge that Jewish donors hostile to McKinney funded Johnson’s campaign in a deliberate effort to unseat her. This, however, is indeed what took place. So of course the “many Jews” the editorial does allude to, i.e. those who have been Johnson’s “crucial supporters” in the past, obviously have plenty of reason to be irked!


Israeli Apartheid Explained with Humor

“He (Rep. Hank Johnson) portrayed Israelis as the villains and Palestinians as the victims, ignoring Palestinian terrorism against Israeli civilians, incitement by Palestinian leaders and rocket fire from Gaza.” – Atlanta Jewish Times


Moreover, the specter of McKinney apparently looms rather sinisterly in the anonymous editorial writer’s imagination. “Short of going full Cynthia McKinney, Congressman Hank Johnson couldn’t have done much more to anger the Jewish community than unleash a comparison between termites and Israelis living on the West Bank,” the person writes in what is essentially an unintended tribute to the former Georgia congresswoman.

Thankfully Johnson doesn’t “spout conspiracy theories accusing Jews or Israelis of carrying out false-flag terrorist attacks.” That would certainly be to his detriment and lead to an extended, much-prolonged apology tour–and of course as we all know, Jews don’t celebrate in parking lots while “documenting the event,” take out insurance policies on asbestos-filled buildings, or get themselves appointed to oversee commissions investigating what happened on a day that “changed the world” and that led to a series of wars against Israel’s enemies and a flood of refugees pouring into Europe. Jews don’t do any of these things! So repeat after me: It’s all just a coincidence… just a coincidence… just a coincidence…

The editorial also invokes the Nazis (you wouldn’t expect otherwise), calls Johnson’s termite comment “a particularly vile association,” and quotes one of his more contrite apologies:

“The language I used was not only unacceptable but it was hurtful,” he wrote in a message to constituents. “I deeply regret using this terrible metaphor. It was not only nonconstructive, it was wrong.”

I’m just guessing here, but I suspect a lot of people in Johnson’s congressional district are supporters of the Black Lives Matters movement, and of course a good many activists in that movement have openly expressed solidarity with Palestinians. Could that have anything to do with why Johnson accepted the invitation to speak at the event in Philadelphia?

A number of Johnson’s critics have attacked him not only for his comments about termites, but also for speaking at what they view as an anti-Semitic event. The event at which he spoke was not anti-Semitic, but it has been portrayed as such. “Progressive for Palestine: Is the US Ready to Rethink Policy on Israel?”–this was the title of the program. It was sponsored jointly by the American Friends Service Committee and the US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation. The latter group should change its name to the “US Campaign to End the Israeli Disputation” or else prepare to go on being accused of anti-Semitism. At any rate, the main point I’m making is that not only were Johnson’s words criticized, but the program itself.

“Why was Johnson speaking to such an anti-Israel gathering at all?” asks the Atlanta Jewish Times editorial, in what is perhaps typical of some of the jabs. “That’s the question he must answer if wants to receive any more votes from the pro-Israel community.”

“Any more votes” from a group that makes up roughly two percent of the population is of course of scant consideration. The real question is whether Johnson will undergo savage media attacks in conjunction with buckets of money funneled to the campaign of some possible future opponent. Clearly the congressman has been warned.

UPDATE:

For those who think it worth the effort, an online petition has been started to urge Johnson to “please keep speaking out about West Bank settlements.”

August 4, 2016 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular, Video | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Still No End in Sight of the Murder and Mayhem Wrought by the 9/11 Culprits

By Prof. Tony Hall | American Herald Tribune | July 17, 2016

The Kevin Barrett-Chomsky Dispute in Historical Perspective – Fourth part of the series titled “9/11 and the Zionist Question” Read the third part here.

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Back in 2006 all but a prescient few, such as Christopher Bollyn, perceived it as premature to try to identify and bring to justice the actual perpetrators of the 9/11 crimes. There was still some residue of confidence that responsible officials in government, law enforcement, media and the universities could and would respond in good faith to multiple revelations that great frauds had occurred in interpreting 9/11 for the public.

Accordingly, the main methodology of public intellectuals like Dr. Kevin Barrett or, for instance, Professors David Ray Griffin, Steven E. Jones, Peter Dale Scott, Graeme MacQueen, John McMurtry, Michael Keefer, Richard B. Lee, A.K. Dewdney, Nafeez Mossadeq Ahmed, and Michel Chossudovsky, was to marshal evidence demonstrating that the official narrative of 9/11 could not be true.

The marshaling of evidence was spurred on by observations coming from government insiders like Eckehardt Wertherbach, a former head of Germany’s intelligence service. In a meeting in Germany with Christopher Bollyn and Dr. Andreas von Bülow, Wertherbach pointed out that, “an attack of this magnitude and precision would have required years of planning. Such a sophisticated operation would require the fixed frame of a state intelligence organization, something not found in a loose group like the one led by the student Mohammed Atta in Hamburg.”

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Andreas von Bülow was a German parliamentarian and Defense Ministry official. He confirmed this assessment in his book on the CIA and 9/11. In the text von Bülow remarked that the execution of the 9/11 plan “would have been unthinkable without backing from secret apparatuses of state and industry.” The author spoke of the “invented story of 19 Muslims working with Osama bin Laden in order the hide the truth” of the real perpetrators’ identity.

Christopher Bollyn, Solving 9/11:The Deception That Changed the World, 2012, p.15

In the early years the pioneer researchers and organizers of the 9/11 Truth Movement began the process of marshaling evidence that demonstrated beyond any shadow of doubt that the original narrative of the 9/11 crimes could not be true. From this it followed that the public was entitled to a credible and true explanation, from the responsible authorities, about what really transpired on 9/11. To arrive at this outcome the Bush administration’s now-thoroughly-discredited 9/11 Commission Report, sometimes also known as the Kean-Hamilton report, would have to be put aside.

Released in 2004, the 9/11 Commission Report was drafted primarily by the Commission’s executive director, Philip Zelikow. Zelikow is a history professor who was a well-known political operative active in the Bush White House. Zelikow was a prominent member of the Israeli First network in and around the war cabinet and staff of US President George W. Bush. Zelikow is recognized for his professional expertise in studying, creating and deploying public mythology as a tool for the shaping of public attitudes and behavior.

The chairs of the 9/11 Commission failed to stop Zelikow from drawing on counterfeit evidence obtained illegally through torture. Zelikow deployed this tainted testimony to embed, in the conscious and subconscious minds of the trusting public, the religious fable of 9/11. The 9/11 Commission Report entrenched in public mythology the imagery of demonic Islamic extremists motivated exclusively by their theocratic zealotry.

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The new investigation called for by many prominent members of the 9/11 Truth Movement would have to transcend the realm of partisan politics; it would have had to be staffed by neutral parties of high esteem capable of rendering genuine third-party adjudication that goes to the very roots and origins of the 9/11 crime. To this day no such honest investigation has taken place. Meanwhile the citizens’ investigation of 9/11 has continued to bring forward more and more evidence that proves conclusively that from September 11, 2001 until this day, authorities are lying to the public about 9/11 and many related topics. Thus the lies of 9/11 continue to form the basis of public policy, the basis of decisions made everyday about who lives and who dies.

The scope and depth of the citizens’ investigation on 9/11 is hard to fathom in terms of the number of researchers involved, the diversity of specific topics covered, and the array of various types of expert knowledge brought to the project of separating fact from fiction. As one observer has noted, “In the annals of history, no event has ever been so thoroughly dissected by as many disparate humans as the 9/11/01 Massacre.”

Of course the quality of the work being developed in the field of 9/11 studies spans the spectrum from excellent to poor. This variation has resulted in the evolution of improvised versions of peer review that developed among experts both inside and outside the halls of academia. Some, like Noam Chomsky, choose to mock and demean these people’s process of distinguishing empirically demonstrable truth from the lies of corrupt officialdom. Why would Chomsky show such contempt and to what end?

What must always be born in mind is that the citizens’ investigation into 9/11 is first and foremost a public service done because the responsible authorities have failed to do their jobs. The authorities have acted criminally at worst, contrary to the public interest at best. Our compromised and discredited officials have failed almost uniformly to provide citizens with a credible explanation for a major event that has significantly transformed all our lives decidedly for the worse. So far the negative fallout has rained down with particular severity on Muslims. Millions of them have been killed, maimed, poisoned, displaced, and tortured in a series of wars all originating in a specious interpretation of what transpired on 9/11.

There is still no end in sight to the murder and mayhem. The failure to address the crimes of 9/11 with truth rather than with the constant resort to the 9/11 fable has become a major factor in the delegitimization of government. Never has public confidence been lower in our most basic institutions of governance, finance, policing, education, and media of mass communications.

In the decade since 2006 the realization has grown that there is little chance that those in charge of our core institutions would dare press for a genuine investigation to identify the real nature and perpetrators of the 9/11 crimes. The elaborate 9/11 operation itself and the subsequent cover up implicate too many powerful agencies, groups and individuals.

Understanding the deep corruption permeating the system over which the 9/11 culprits still rule, is changing the attitudes of many of those who have taken the time to study 9/11 for themselves. Given the unwillingness of officialdom to protect the public interest, those leading the citizens’ investigation into 9/11 are increasingly inclined to name and shame the most credibly accused suspects who so far have been able to evade accountability by framing, blaming, manipulating and smearing Muslims.

A recent illustration of the depth of this scam is exposed in the machinations of the kangaroo court at the US concentration camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Along with four supporting actors, the supposed “mastermind of 9/11,” the oft tortured Khalid Sheik Mohammed, is subject to the travesty of a psychological operation going forward under the guise of a legal proceeding.

The Guantanamo Military Commission has been ordered to direct ultimate blame for the 9/11 debacle on a manipulated cast of patsies performing parodies of Islamic extremism. This farce of litigation, this betrayal of due process, forms a telling illustration of the degradation of our criminal justice systems. Like many other institutions essential to the survival of free and democratic societies, our criminal justice systems are being trashed to protect the real culprits responsible for the lies and crimes of 9/11.

The evidence available concerning what really transpired on 9/11 points with overwhelming insistence at individuals that include a disproportionate number of Israeli-American dual citizens.

Prominent among those that should be put on trial, including for the 9/11 cover up, are Michael Chertoff, Larry Silverstein, Dov Zakheim, Richard Perle, Benjamin Netanyahu, Paul Wolfowitz, Elliot Abrams, Douglas Feith, Shalom Yoran, Arnon Milchan, Jules Kroll, Philip Zelikow, Ash Carter, Robert Gates, Ronald Lauder, William Kristol, Judge Alvin Hellerstein, Judge Michael Mukasey, Jonathan Kay, Michael Shermer, David Frum, Karl Rove, General Richard Myers, David Aaronovitch, Rupert Murdoch, Rita Katz, Daniel Pipes, David Horowitz, Pam Geller, Robert Spencer, Paul Godfrey, and, as we shall see, Noam Chomsky.

As years pass, the 9/11 cover up is becoming the central element of the 9/11 crime. The logistics of the cover up involve the manipulation of the mainstream media and other strategic institutions including our courts, schools and universities. As Howard Baker observed when reflecting on the abbreviated presidency of Richard Nixon, “it is almost always the cover up rather than the event that causes trouble.” It is difficult to fathom the enormity of the enterprise of keeping alive the absurd Islamophobia-inducing fable of 9/11, let alone the smaller scale sequels of false flag terror events required to keep large portions of the public in constant states of fear, confusion, uncertainty, disorientation and angst.

You will read “A Classic Hoax of Homeric Proportions” in the next part.

August 4, 2016 Posted by | Deception, False Flag Terrorism, Timeless or most popular, Video | , , | 1 Comment

US Activists Handcuffed, Threatened and Deported by Israel

teleSUR | August 3, 2016

Five U.S. citizens were denied entry to Israel after 18 hours of being detained and interrogated by Israeli border police regarding their backgrounds, political tendencies and personal relationships, the U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation said this week.

The incident, which occurred July 17 but was not publicly revealed until Tuesday, is the latest case of U.S. citizens being profiled and denied entry to Israel based on the color of their skin and their background in pro-Palestine activism.

“After repeatedly asking why I was being yelled at, handcuffed, and threatened with force, I was never given any explanation for the treatment I received,” a 26-year old U.S. citizen of South Asian descent, who asked not to be named, said in a press release.

“In fact, I was told that they did not owe me an explanation, and that any rights I had as a U.S. citizen were invalid under Israeli law. The only thing made clear during the 18-hour ordeal was that their dehumanization of me was based on a ‘hunch’ rooted in nothing more than my name and ethnic background.”

The young U.S. activists were attempting to enter Israel and go to Palestine to observe the conflict on the ground and gain a better understanding of the conditions Palestinians live under amid the Israeli occupation.

“One of the delegates, Bina Ahmad, a New York City public defender and former vice president of the National Lawyers Guild, was denied entry to the country and given no reason why, then transferred to a filthy cell without knowing how long she would be held,” the statement added.

Commenting on the incident, Ahmad said she was “outraged” at what Israel did to her and her colleagues, noting such actions were unlawful.

“The deportation of a majority Muslim and people of color group is an example of how Israel engages in Islamophobia and racism, and silences debate by preventing the world from hearing the testimony of those who bear witness to the plight of Palestinians,” she said in the press release.

Describing their experience at the Israeli airport as “terrifying,” the statement added that female delegates who were detained were “asked irrelevant and intrusive questions about their personal relationships, and were held for as long as 18 hours.”

After long hours in filthy cells and interrogations for merely attempting to enter a country with which the United States has a visa waiver program, all five delegates were put on flights back to the U.S. Some were also slapped with travel bans that bar them from entering Israel or the occupied Palestinian territories for the next 10 years.

The delegates’ own government was also of no help, as calls to the U.S. Consulate’s Citizen Services resulted in no assistance. “Some officials made comments indicating they had no power over the treatment of U.S. citizens held at the airport despite visa agreements between Israel and the United States,” the statement said.

The repeated abuse of U.S. citizens of Palestinian or Middle Eastern origins has prompted the U.S. State Department to issue a travel warning for Israel that reads: “Some U.S. citizens of Arab or Muslim heritage not on the Palestinian Population Registry or otherwise prohibited from entering Israel have experienced significant difficulties and unequal and hostile treatment at Israel’s borders and checkpoints.”

August 4, 2016 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Islamophobia, Solidarity and Activism | , , , , | 2 Comments

US Billionaires line up behind Clinton

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Press TV – August 4, 2016

US Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton is enjoying financial support from a growing list of American billionaires who oppose Republican nominee Donald Trump.

According to a recent report by Fox News, the former secretary of state’s presidential campaign has so far received more than $42.5 million in donations from a total of 24 billionaires.

So far, movie producers Steven Spielberg and Jeffrey Katzenberg, financiers Warren Buffett and George Soros, and Walmart heiress Alice Walton have all made contributions to the former first lady’s campaign.

Media mogul Oprah Winfrey has also thrown her weight behind Clinton. Haim Saban is another media magnate that will support Clinton in the battle against Trump.

Billionaire environmentalist Thomas Steyer joined the list and endorsed Clinton in early June.

Some of the multimillionaires have donated millions to a top Clinton superPAC named Priorities USA Action.

Saban ($10 million), Soros ($7 million), hedge fund billionaire James Simons ($7 million), Hyatt Hotel heir J.B. Pritzker and his wife Mary Kathryn Pritzker ($6.5 million), Slim-Fast founder S. Daniel Abraham ($3 million), Hedge fund billionaire David Shaw ($2.25 million), investors Jon and Pat Stryker ($1.5 million each), Spielberg ($1 million), Legendary Entertainment founder and CEO Thomas Tull ($1 million), and the list goes on.

Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff and Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg are some of the other major figures who are siding with Clinton.

In addition to the pro-Clinton billionaires, some of the Republican-leaning tycoons have announced that that they will not support Trump as the party nominee.

Hewlett Packard Enterprise CEO Meg Whitman, for instance, has joined industrial power-brokers Charles and David Koch in withdrawing support from fellow GOP billionaire Trump.

Whitman has pushed the envelope even further by stating that she will endorse and help fund Clinton.

In addition to Priorities USA Action, million have been paid to other Clinton funds Hillary for America and Hillary Victory Fun. Pro-Clinton such as PACs American Bridge 21st Century, Priorities USA Action 2016 and Correct the Record have also received huge donations.

Photo credit – Linh Dinh

August 4, 2016 Posted by | Corruption, Wars for Israel | , , | 2 Comments

400 commodities still banned from Gaza

MEMO | August 4, 2016

palestinians-buying-food-during-ceasfireIsraeli occupation authorities continue to prevent the entry of 400 commodities into the Gaza Strip, a senior Palestinian official said yesterday.

Maher Al-Tabbaa, is a senior official in Gaza’s Chamber of Industry and Commerce, said Israeli occupation authorities had tightened measures against Palestinian traders, companies and businessmen.

These remarks came a day after occupation authorities said they had facilitated the movement of goods and commodities into the Gaza Strip.

Speaking to QudsNet, Al-Tabbaa said: “Israel bans all chemical raw materials needed for the industrial sector, cleaning materials, sponges, paints, welding skewers and other materials needed for making furniture.”

He noted that Israel had tightened its restrictions by withdrawing more than 1,500 travel permits from traders and businessmen.

It is still controlling the entry of cement and construction materials, he explained, paralysing the construction industry.

August 4, 2016 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture, War Crimes | , , , | 2 Comments

New US Nuclear Weapon Cleared for Production Engineering

By Andrei AKULOV | Strategic Culture Foundation | 04.08.2016

The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) has authorized the B61-12 warhead life-extension program (LEP) to enter the production-engineering phase – the final one prior to actual production.

Established by Congress in 2000, the NNSA is a semi-autonomous agency within the Department of Energy. While the Defense Department manages the delivery systems of the nuclear force, the agency has oversight over the development, maintenance and disposal of nuclear warheads.

The first production unit of the weapon is planned for fiscal year 2020. The LEP – a joint NNSA and United States Air Force (USAF) program – will add at least an additional 20 years to the life of the system.

The decision is part of the plan to modernize the US nuclear forces, which could cost $350-$450 billion over the next decade.

The $8 billion B61-12 LEP is probably the most expensive nuclear bomb program in US history.

On July 29, the Air Force released requests for proposals for the Ground Based Strategic Deterrent (GBSD), which replaces the 1960s-era Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missiles, and the Long Range Standoff (LRSO) weapon, which will replace the AGM-86B Air Launched Cruise Missile.

It comes at a time when members of Congress have begun to question the modernization plan, in particular over the LRSO.

Both programs have come under fire from lawmakers and analysts who assert that the weapons are too costly, duplicative and could add to global instability.

The B61-12 LEP refurbishes both nuclear and non-nuclear components to extend the bomb’s service life while significantly improving the weapon’s characteristics. The modernization includes a new tail fin assembly for greater accuracy and would allow a lower nuclear yield in attacking targets. The B61-12 will have both air- and ground-burst capability. The capability to penetrate below the surface has significant implications for the types of targets that can be held at risk with the bomb.

A nuclear weapon that detonates after penetrating the earth more efficiently transmits its explosive energy to the ground, thus is more effective at destroying deeply buried targets for a given nuclear yield. The B61-12 is designed to have four selectable explosive yields: 0.3 kilotons (kt), 1.5 kt, 10 kt and 50 kt. According to the US National Academies’ study, the maximum destructive potential of the B61-12 against underground targets is equivalent to the capability of a surface-burst weapon with a yield of 750 kt to 1,250 kt.

The yield can be lowered as needed for any particular mission. In fact, the bomb’s explosive force can be reduced electronically through a dial-a-yield system accessed by a hatch on the bomb’s body.

Even at the lowest selective yield setting of only 0.3 kt, the ground-shock coupling of a B61-12 exploding a few meters underground would be equivalent to a surface-burst weapon with a yield of 4.5 kt to 7.5 kt.

Existing US nuclear bombs have circular error probabilities (CEP) of between 110-170 meters. The B61-12’s CEP is just 30 meters.

A combination of its accuracy and low-yield makes the B61-12 the most dangerous nuclear warhead in America’s arsenal.

The smaller yields and better targeting can make the arms more tempting to use – even to use first, rather than in retaliation, knowing the radioactive fallout and collateral damage would be limited.

The B61-12 will initially be integrated with B-2, F-15E, F-16, and Tornado aircraft. From the 2020s, the weapon will also be integrated with, first, the F-35A bomber-fighter F-35, built on the technology of «stealth» (replacing the F-16) and later the LRS-B next-generation long-range bomber. The combination of a guided standoff nuclear bomb and a fifth-generation stealthy fighter-bomber will significantly enhance the military capability of NATO’s nuclear posture in Europe. The B61-12 will replace the existing B61-3, -4, -7, and -10 bomb designs. It is thought that approximately 480 B61-12s will be produced through the mid-2020s.

The implementation of the program runs contrary to President Obama’s stated pledge not to create any new nuclear weapons or ones with new military capabilities.

«The United States will not develop new nuclear warheads or pursue new military mission or new capabilities for nuclear weapons», he said on the release of Nuclear Posture Review, which, in turn, reads, «The United States will not develop new nuclear warheads. Life Extension Programs (LEPs) will use only nuclear components based on previously tested designs, and will not support new military missions or provide for new military capabilities».

American leading experts believe it to be nothing else but a new weapon.

Currently around 200 B61 bombs are deployed in underground vaults inside around 90 protective aircraft shelters at six bases in five NATO countries (Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and Turkey). About half of the munitions are earmarked for delivery by national aircraft of these non-nuclear states, although they all are parties to the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) of 1968.

Article I of the treaty prohibits the transfer of nuclear weapons from nuclear-weapons states to other countries. Its Article II requires non-nuclear weapons states not to receive nuclear weapons.

Engaged in this nuclear sharing activity which completely destroyed the spirit of the treaty, the US and its NATO allies have no moral authority to convince other countries not to proliferate.

The shared deployment of these weapons is in large part designed to lock NATO allies into a nuclear weapon posture and weakens the credibility of their claims in international disarmament negotiations to be working towards disarmament.

The modernization of the US nuclear tactical weapons competes with resources needed for more important conventional forces and operations. Conventional forces are much more credible than tactical nuclear weapons in the fight against terrorists.

Deployment of B61-12 in Europe is comparable to a time bomb which may one day explode. The decision will inevitably spike tensions in the already strained relationship between NATO and Russia.

Moscow has already called the B61 program «irresponsible» and «openly provocative».

Russia considers US forward-based tactical nuclear weapons deployed in Europe to be an addition to the US strategic arsenal that is capable of striking deep into its territory. It will greatly complicate further arms control efforts with New Start Treaty expiring in 2021. The withdrawal of these weapons is a prerequisite for starting talks on reduction of tactical nuclear weapons. The US decision to implement the LEP makes such prospects dim at least.

NATO members to host the new weapon on their soil should realize that the move will automatically make them targets for possible pre-emptive or retaliatory attack. Countries that host foreign nuclear weapons don’t enhance their security. Withdrawing nuclear munitions would be a serious contribution to strategic stability and security in Europe.

August 4, 2016 Posted by | Militarism, Progressive Hypocrite, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

The Propaganda War With Putin

By Renee Parsons | CounterPunch | August 4, 2016

If it had not already been apparent, the net effect of the DNC email hack has been to kick open the door to a deep American antagonism towards Russian President Vladimir Putin.

In what has become an old fashioned American pile-on, President Barack Obama, Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, the Democratic Party and what seems the entire political establishment as well as the MSM, have united to undermine Putin as if to prime the American public for war with Russia.

War is, after all, more successful when the people have been thoroughly programmed. For instance, for a war-weary American public ‘we are bombing civilians out of a humanitarian necessity’ may work well. If necessary, a little hysteria wouldn’t hurt but most of all, a necessary requirement is to efficiently tutor the public consciousness to despise the adversary. In this case, Clinton has identified Putin as the adversary and that he is one evil reincarnation of Adolf Hitler.

Among media outlets, Politico, once considered a ‘liberal’ magazine ran “Inside’s Putin’s Information War” whose author has found a lucrative book deal on the subject and yes, this is the same Politico that requested DNC permission to publish re the Sanders/Clinton primary. The Times of London joined the effort to demonize Putin with several anti Russian articles over the weekend including “Putin’s Information War” which ran on July 30th followed by “Inside Putin’s Info War on America” in the Wall Street Journal on July 31st. Keep your eyes peeled as the “Putin Info War” concept is sure to catch on.

As part of the effort to synchronize public antipathy to an appropriately belligerent level, the Associated Press recently published an article for wide distribution entitled “Clinton v. Putin: Russian television shows what Kremlin thinks of her.” Perhaps the AP presumed to rouse the American public in defense of Hillary Clinton.

The first paragraph began with the admission that Clinton’s entire acceptance speech had been broadcast live on nationwide television in Russia. If anyone yearns for the day when a Putin speech will be broadcast across American television, forgetaboutit. A good guess is that the intellectually-lazy American public including many liberals who have forgotten how to think, would not make the effort to inform themselves of world events.

Thereafter, the AP article followed with a series of assertions that dazzled the reader with its irony such as:

“Viewers were told that Clinton sees Russia as an enemy and cannot be trusted” and “the Democratic convention was portrayed as proof that American democracy is a sham.” The story added that Channel One introduced Clinton “as a politician who puts herself above the law, who is ready to win at any cost and who is ready to change her principles depending on the political situation.”

If the AP reporter wrote with the intention that the American public would rise up en masse and demand satisfaction; how unfair of those Russkies to write like that about our Gal Hill – that reporter was dead wrong.

What the reporter did not mention was that a significant number of Americans, including some of those who plan to hold their collective noses while voting for Clinton in sheer terror of Trump, agree with those quotes. What the reporter did not mention was that the Sanders and Trump campaigns have been largely based on those sentiments giving Clinton an unexpected run for the money which explains why she has had to pull out all the stops to beat Trump, a candidate who, by any standard, should have been a piece of cake.

Giving a wink and a nod to the MSM, Clinton formalized her accusations on Sunday Fox News that “Russian intelligence” was responsible for the DNC hacking and linked her opponent Donald Trump to Vladimir Putin.

Using the DNC hack issue as an opportunity to further hammer on Putin, Clinton asserted during the Fox interview that “we KNOW that Russian intelligence services hacked into the DNC and we KNOW that they arranged for a lot of those emails to be released and we KNOW that Donald Trump has shown a very troubling willingness to back up Putin, to support Putin.”

A good follow up by an engaged journalist might have been what does Clinton know, how does she know it and when did she know it? If the proof exists, why the reluctance to provide specifics to the American public – but that might require initiative, transparency and some candor? While challenging Trump on his commitment to the Constitution (who clearly could use an Intro 101 class), wasn’t Clinton trained, as an attorney, to understand that evidence comes before the accusation?

This is not the first time that Clinton has personally attacked Putin. In March, 2014 before a University of California audience, she said he was “thin-skinned,” was trying to “re-sovietize Europe while threatening instability and the peace of Europe.” In citing “Russian aggression,” she is smart enough to know the difference between protecting ethnic Russians who have centuries of deep cultural roots in Ukraine and Crimea as compared to Hitler’s invasions of eastern Europe.

An impartial observer can only assume Clinton has knowingly skewed the chronology of events in the Ukraine which began with the US-initiated overthrow of a democratically elected President on February 22, 2014; followed by an overwhelming vote on March 16th by Crimean citizens to reunite with Russia which was then followed by the legal annexation of the Crimean peninsula to Russia on March 18th. What is so difficult to understand?

Thanks to Clinton’s repetitive disinformation campaign, accusations of ‘Russian aggression’ are now widespread; repeated without regard to the evidence throughout the mainstream media and by Members of Congress, many of whom choose to remain uninformed.

Back to the Fox interview, she could not resist adding, with mock indignation, that “I think laying out the facts raises serious issues about Russian interference in our elections, in our democracy.” And as if the rest of us were asleep at the wheel and could not distinguish fact from fiction, she further added that “For Trump to both encourage that and to praise Putin despite what appears to be a deliberate effort to try to affect the election I think raises national security issues.”

Does she not see that ‘interference in our elections, in our democracy’ is exactly what the DNC did to the Bernie Sanders campaign?

And has no bright eyed, eager beaver staff person yet pointed out to Clinton that if Russia and Putin had been intent on disrupting the American presidential election, why wouldn’t they have gone after Clinton’s ‘classified’ State Department emails on her personal server that were subject to an FBI investigation and with the potential of criminal charges? Then again, an educated assumption might be that Russian intelligence does have those emails in their possession. Now there’s a real national security issue.

In her eagerness to further aggravate US – Russian relations, apparently Clinton is not only unfamiliar with the State Department’s Foreign Service Protocol for the Modern Diplomat guidelines for rules and process of diplomatic protocol (or perhaps it does not apply to her), but it appears she did not receive the memo from the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) James Clapper.

Responding to the DNC-Russian furor in a more blasé and introspective manner than might be expected, Clapper stepped in as a calm voice of reason stating that he was “somewhat taken aback by the hyperventilation on this” and that the US was in “reactionary mode” regarding cyber-attacks. Clapper further indicated he was ‘not ready’ to identify Russia as the hacker “I don’t think we are quite ready yet to make a call on attribution.”

Interestingly, Clapper commented that “cyber warfare is not terribly different than what went on during the Cold War” suggesting that it is “just a different modality.” He further suggested that the American people ‘need to accept’ and ‘become more resilient’ since cyber threats are a major long term challenge. Americans should “not be quite so excitable when we have yet another instance.”  Hmm… wonder to whom he was referring.

In other words, we spy on them, they spy on us – all’s fair in love and war and that there is a certain level of honor among (cyber) thieves.

August 4, 2016 Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , | 2 Comments

New York Times Relentlessly Biased Against Trump

By John V. Walsh | Dissident Voice | August 3, 2016

An astonishing piece appeared in the New York Times (NYT) recently. It reported a fierce bias in the Times’s coverage of politics and current affairs, most notably when it comes to Donald Trump. The bias turns up not just in the opinion pages but in the News, reports Liz Spayd, the new “public editor,” a position once called the ombudsman.

But the surprise does not end there. Spayd’s report is based on letters from liberal readers, which are filling her inbox to overflowing. Here are some examples that she cites:

“You’ve lost a subscriber because of your relentless bias against Trump — and I’m not even a Republican,” writes an Arizonan.

“I never thought I’d see the day when I, as a liberal, would start getting so frustrated with the one-sided reporting that I would start hopping over to the Fox News webpage to read an article and get the rest of the story that the NYT refused to publish,” writes a woman from California.

“The NY Times is alienating its independent and open-minded readers, and in doing so, limiting the reach of their message and its possible influence,” writes a Manhattanite.

Since these examples are all letters from liberals, the public editor comments:

“You can imagine what the letters from actual conservatives sound like….

“Emails like these stream into this office every day. A perception that The Times is biased prompts some of the most frequent complaints from readers. Only they arrive so frequently, and have for so long, that the objections no longer land with much heft.”

Of course, this is nothing new for the Times.  The bias in favor of the latest project of the American Imperium has been true for my entire lifetime. But it used to be subtler, and it used to include some real information, albeit buried away somewhere deep within an article. Noam Chomsky was once fond of reminding us that it was better to read the Times articles backwards, because some truth was buried in the last couple paragraphs.

But in the last few decades since the end of the Cold War and the rise of NATO Expansion and American Exceptionalism in the Clinton “co-presidency,” the situation has grown much worse. The age of American Triumphalism has caused more rot in the mainstream media. Not only with the Times but with other major outlets like the Washington Post, the Wall St. Journal and National Public Radio.

A striking example occurred when the Times lent its front page to a fabricated and now thoroughly discredited story by Judith Miller and Michael Gordon in September, 2002 claiming that Iraq had WMD.

That was just weeks before Congress took a vote to “authorize” George W. Bush to launch an invasion of Iraq. I still recall the day I looked at that article and thought it was fact free and source free and that any decent editor would turn it back.  It was clear at that moment that the fix was in and that we were on our way to a war which our Elite had decided upon. (Judith Miller eventually was the sacrificial lamb when that story and its origins in Dick Cheney’s office became known. But the co-author, Michael R. Gordon, continues as the “chief military correspondent” for the Times, and the editors in charge have never been punished.)

It seems that the situation has got worse with the rise of Trump who endangers the Imperium’s quest for world domination by seeking to “get along” with Russia and China. Once Trump took that stance, the vitriol and vituperation became a daily feature in the Times. Indeed their columnist Timothy Egan seems to write about little else these days. Only Maureen Dowd provides occasional timid relief, daring to point out that Trump “talks to the press,” a dig at Hillary who does not.  (Clinton has not had so much as a single press conference in almost a year.)

I know that many Times readers now seek out Fox, just like the letter writer quoted above. And many also turn to Breitbart and the Drudge Report as well as RT and China Daily. Even when the Times reports some actual facts, it reports only selected ones (A half truth is a full lie.) or buries them in a narrative that neutralizes them.

More Times readers should recognize that they are being taken for a ride. And they should stop being so damned cocksure and snooty about their “knowledge.”  They often look more foolish than they might think.


John V. Walsh can be reached at john.endwar@gmail.com.

August 4, 2016 Posted by | Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Militarism, Timeless or most popular | , | 2 Comments

Truth Telling, Whistle Blowing and the American Way

By Prof. Tony Hall | American Herald Tribune | July 15, 2016

The Kevin Barrett-Chomsky Dispute in Historical Perspective – Third part of the series titled “9/11 and the Zionist Question” Read the second part here.

Chomsky disinfo agent da931

Over decades Chomsky has moved towards the center of formidable networks of academic associations, publishing enterprises, activist groups, speakers forums and New Media operations. The fact that the senior professor is so well wired into such an effective communication grid of activist interaction has hugely amplified his voice and his influence.

Chomsky’s ideas have been broadcast to the far corners of the world in every conceivable format. His work is translated into many languages as the MIT professor goes from honor to honor, distinction to distinction, all the while seeming to combat the expansionary impulses emanating from some of the world’s leading centers of power including those in Israel. The phenomenal success of Chomsky’s career would seem to prove and illustrate that there is still some substance in the conception of America as the land of the free, home of the brave.

Dr. Barrett’s career path presents a very different picture of the role of the academy in US society. Barrett is the child of a strong Wisconsin family that also embodied many classic elements in the American Dream. Kevin Barrett’s father, Peter, was a lawyer, engineer, finance professor and successful businessman. He also became an Olympic Gold Medalist in sailing in 1968.

peter barrett 7ef9e

In 1964 Barrett’s father would have won a gold medal at the Tokyo Olympics if he had not disqualified himself at the end of a sailing competition by confessing that (not noticed by anyone else) he had lightly brushed against another boat early in the race.

In 2006 Kevin Barrett is reported to have referred to this episode during the ordeal of his trial by media. This public inquisition came about as a result of Kevin Barrett’s incorporation of views skeptical of the dominant 9/11 narrative into his pedagogy at the University of Wisconsin. Drawing implicit connections between his father’s decision in Tokyo and his own insistence on integrating the quest for 9/11 truth into the broader panorama of his academic work, the young academic commented, “Cheating for strategic advantage is never right. It’s important to follow the truth no matter what.”

Much is revealed by the contrasting treatment delivered on the dissident academic Kevin Barrett and on Leftist superstar Noam Chomsky. Dr. Barrett’s career so far runs against the Hollywood version of how the heroic deeds and revelations of whistle blowers are received. In the Hollywood version of redemption through unrelenting truth telling, the solitary hero often ends up overcoming the deceit of corrupt and ruthless opponents. The honesty of the solitary hero is made to triumph, thereby saving civilization along with innocent civilians from horrific cataclysms.

In real life America, however, this scenario of redemption through truth telling is more the aberration than the rule. Most whistle blowers are met with silence, avoidance and denigration of the type that Noam Chomsky has heaped on Kevin Barrett. The more common scenario of whistle blowing in America is for the truth teller to be sidelined and crushed in a harsh system of institutionalized cover-up hugely biased towards the rule of money and political expediency.

From Operation Gladio to the False Flag Terror Events

Animating the “Global War on Terror”

Dr. Barrett’s talk at the Left Forum in May of 2016 helped break an ideological prohibition at a venue that had previously blocked presentations by investigators that share some of his views. For fourteen years, any and all thinkers that rejected the official narrative of 9/11 were excluded, including those situated intellectually along the left-oriented spectrum of political identification.

The Left Form is an outgrowth of the annual Socialist Scholars’ Conference at City University of New York. In Barrett’s view Chomsky became the virtual Pope of the Left Forum Vatican, a venue peopled by admirers prone to revere their secular Pontiff as sacrosanct and infallible. In helping to break the hold of such an unseemly intellectual exclusion of 9/11 skeptics, Barrett brought to the proceedings his own unique style of Truth jihad. With his struggle to bring truth into the light of public awareness, the Muslim American scholar helped liberate free speech in a forum that during the Cold War was itself infested with the depredations of anti-communist witch hunts.

Kevin Barrett dd126

A convert to Islam since 1992, Dr. Barrett learned Arabic on the way to his writing his Ph.D. thesis on Sufi literature. In 2006 he was ousted from his position as a Lecturer at the University of Wisconsin where he had taught since 1996. Barrett’s alleged crime was to have assigned skeptical as well as orthodox readings on 9/11 in one of his seventeen weeks of classes in an introductory course entitled Islam: Religion and Culture.

In retrospect, Dr. Barrett was adapting his curriculum to a subject with huge ramifications for Muslims in all walks of life the world over. The real academic crime in this situation would have been for an instructor of a survey course on Muslim thought, devotion and experience to have ignored this reality; to have evaded some sort of reckoning with the immense implications of 9/11 for the Islamic world.

Dr. Barrett’s reasonable pedagogical response to major changes in global geopolitics became fraught with controversy of great strategic significance for the future of our academic institutions. The Rupert Murdoch media in the United States, but especially Fox News, became an especially forceful engine of the bandwagon on which many ambitious publicity-seeking politicians jumped. For a time the University of Wisconsin held the sacred ground of academic freedom. Its academic leaders found in an internal investigation that Dr. Kevin Barrett had been conscientious presenting a wide array of competing perspectives on 9/11.

The fact that Dr. Barrett is a Muslim himself formed a significant part of the circumstances that caused him to be singled out. His inquisitors in the media chose to transform him into a symbol of those said to be attacking the American way through the subversion of American youth.

Much evidence supports the view that the most important motivating factor in the planning, implementation and cover up of the ongoing 9/11 operation has been to inject fear of Islamic religion and Muslim people into the minds of non-Muslim populations. The aim of this purposeful contamination of the mental environment is to transform Israel’s regional enemies, but especially the Palestinians, into one part of a larger transnational Muslim enemy said to be hostile to all Western freedoms. As Barrett asserted at the Left Forum in New York, the 9/11 Black Op was to create the basis for a “100 year war on Muslims for Israel.”

The 9/11 culprits delivered the fabricated imagery of global Islamic terror to the proprietors and beneficiaries of America’s permanent war economy. Especially since 9/11, the strategy has been to create patsies and to sponsor covertly the recruiting, organizing, arming, and violent incursions of mercenary soldiers. Whether pictured under the flags of al-Qaeda, al-Nusra or the so-called “Islamic State”, these mercenary forces are paid handsomely to perform the role of vicious Muslim terrorists acting out of no other motivation than their own blood-thirsty religious extremism.

In this fashion the new enemy has been shaped, inflated and deployed as needed in order to justify all sorts of interventions, including aggressive warfare anywhere in the world. Under Israeli direction the core of the US political economy was thus revivified in the name of anti-terrorism. After the demise of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s the military-industrial complex needed a new enemy. Neoconservative activists supplied “the West” with a concocted enemy. They also helped ramp up the activities of the war machine with the necessary political bribes, media propaganda and military directives aimed at transforming the US Armed Forces into an edified instrument for the expansion and further empowerment of Greater Israel.

The alignment of opposing forces in Syria well illustrates the way the core countries and satellites of the Israeli-American juggernaut have integrated mercenary forces fighting under Islamic flags into the machinery of aggressive and psychological warfare. NATO’s program of false flag terrorism in Europe was one of the models for this new round of false flag terrorism aimed at demonizing Muslims. Where the operatives of Operation Gladio engineered violent acts in the 1970s and 80s to blame and thereby demonize both communists and left-leaning progressives, the current round of serial false flag terror events is aimed at inciting Islamophobia. The manufacturing of hatred towards Muslims is a necessary psychological pillar of Likudnik Israel’s agenda of violent expansion.

A key facet of this strategy of tension is the increasingly transnationalized and privatized police state that has become deeply intertwined with a massively augmented surveillance state. Since 9/11 the apparatus of law enforcement has been thoroughly politicized and turned against the human rights, civil liberties and public interests of citizens. Without a doubt the quality of life has declined significantly, as the instruments of Cold War anti-communism have been transformed into agencies supposedly devoted to anti-terrorism. This concocted series of post-9/11 conflicts, starting with the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, are presented in ways calculated to confuse, deceive, disorient and mislead an anxiety-ridden public. Police and military coercion to hold and expand empire are misrepresented as simple fights for and against “terror.”

This phony war on terror originates in the 9/11 deceptions. This phony war draws on a long heritage of duplicity in international banking, where the same financiers loan money to both sides in conflicts. In many core episodes in the so-called Global War on Terror, both sides are subject to the control of the same paymasters, the same high-finance power brokers. In this heavily engineered series of manufactured conflicts, citizens expected to pay the enormous cost of these military operations are plunged into a fog of war. Whole populations are deceived, distracted and mercilessly exploited. We are presented with a barrage of alarming media images constantly signaling to us that our most menacing enemy on earth is the scourge of Islamic terrorism.

One of many intended consequences is to divert our attention away from our growing subjugation to the bondage of compounded debt enslavement. This theft is imposed through the machinations of the world’s centralized private banks. These kleptocratic institutions exploit the indebtedness of nations to privatize the ownership of commonly-held infrastructures and resources, all the while forcing governments to cut back resources for public services like health care, education and social security.

You will read “Still No End in Sight of the Murder and Mayhem Wrought by the 9/11 Culprits” in the next part.

August 3, 2016 Posted by | Deception, False Flag Terrorism, Militarism, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | , , | 1 Comment

How the West Extends its Control Over Journalism Worldwide

The New Atlas | July 30, 2016

Political developments are often emotionally charged, and even journalists who are expected to maintain an objective approach to reporting can find themselves swept away by sensational headlines and the temptation to wade into controversy without fully analysing background information that might significantly alter established narratives.

Because of this, some journalists find themselves playing the role of commentator rather than investigator, often leaving out critical information in a rush to contribute to one of two sides amid a political divide. In some cases, journalists may appear to be doing their job by “investigating” deeper into news stories, but do so in a transparently one-sided manner, thus negating their role as an objective observer.

In Thailand, this can be clearly seen in English-language coverage, particularly from The Nation and the Bangkok Post. In the rare instance that journalists from either paper “investigates” independently into any given headline, it is generally one-sided and transparently politically-motivated.

And more often than not, these papers appear to be taking their lead from foreign news sources, particularly those in Europe and North America. One would expect newspapers from region to region to develop their own unique angles and perspectives regarding the news, but upon following the money, we will soon see why this more often than not doesn’t happen.

The Industrialised Journalist Mill

Pravit Rojanaphruk, currently a commentator at Thailand’s Khoasod English, is perhaps one of the most transparent examples of just what is wrong with newspapers across Asia. He proudly boasts of his various Western media affiliations and fellowships with his Twitter profile reading as follows:

MSc (Oxon), British Chevening Scholar 2001-2002, Reuter Fellow 97-98, Katherine Fanning Fellow 2009, Salzburg Sem. Fellow.

If these scholarships and fellowships actually cultivated real principles of journalism within recipients, they might actually be noteworthy milestones in a journalist’s career.

However, what they instead represent, is a concerted attempt by the Western media to extend its influence further abroad, and to help align global news coverage uniformly to their perspective and to serve their interests.

Journalists like Pravit, then, serve as an extension of Western media coverage rather than a representation of Thai journalism. Journalism by definition is the reporting of news, and news is by definition noteworthy information.

What Pravit and others like him are prone to do, however, is interweave opinion and commentary into what is often strained, spun or even fabricated information. And this is done to align Thai news with those expectations and norms taught to them during their fellowships abroad in Europe and North America.

The Reuters Journalism Fellowship Programme alone has processed hundreds of journalists around the world, putting them through between 1-3 terms at the University of Oxford to undergo a program of stringent indoctrination into the ways of Western journalism. It is virtually impossible for a fellow to undergo this process and leave as an independent journalist.

Activities, according to the Reuters Institute’s own website include:

  • Attend seminars given by a diverse and high-level range of guest speakers who will share their insights into key industry trends and developments
  • Work with an experienced supervisor, usually an Oxford academic, to produce a research paper of publishable quality
  • Visit world-class news organisations and gain insights into how they are approaching industry challenges. Previous visits have included trips to Thomson Reuters, The Financial Times, The BBC, The Economist and The Guardian
  • Join trips to key UK cultural and political organisations and institutions. Previous destinations have included Oxfam, the House of Commons and Stratford-upon-Avon, home of Shakespeare
  • Exchange ideas and experiences with a diverse and international peer group. Around 25 Fellows a year join us from high-level media organisations all over the world. Strengthen your network, develop a global set of contacts and gain insights into international trends and developments
  • Benefit from the extensive learning facilities offered by the University of Oxford, including the world-famous Bodleian Library and access to various seminars and lectures across the university. You are also encouraged to engage with the university’s cutting edge specialist research facilities, including centres for African, Middle Eastern, South Asian, Eastern and Western European, Japanese and Chinese studies
  • Be given visiting scholar status of Green Templeton College

For inexperienced young men and women who aspire to be journalists, to be afforded this opportunity would be both immensely flattering and emotionally as well as professionally transformative. For a young journalist in Thailand to be afforded the opportunity to travel to the UK, to attend one or more terms at the world renowned University of Oxford and to be given an opportunity to see the inner workings of news organisations like the BBC, Thompson Reuters, The Economist and The Guardian would be an overwhelming experience. And it is meant to be.

If Only Real Journalism Was Being Promoted… 

The journalists who complete such fellowships and return to their home countries, are forever linked to the institutions and individuals they met and worked with during their time abroad. They take back with them to their home countries not the tools of an objective journalist, but the indoctrination, culture, interests and angles of a Western-centric worldview. To those who have completed the fellowship, they often confuse this Western-centric worldview with being “objective,” but it is most certainly not.

We can look at the Reuters fellowship program and see news organisations like Thompson Reuters, the BBC, The Economist and The Guardian held up as examples of journalism. This is despite their active manipulation of information toward particular political objectives rather than accurately informing the public.

In particular, these news services played crucial roles in promoting wars like the US-UK led invasion of Iraq in 2003, intentionally obfuscating critical information the public and policymakers required to make an honest assessment of the decision to go to war.

The BBC in particular has been embroiled in impropriety ranging from deceptive news coverage to paid-for documentaries and even criminal conduct committed by individuals, and covered up institutionally.

But news organisations serving special interests is nothing new. One must expect this realistically, to a certain degree, regarding any news organisation operating around the world. It is not a matter of whether or not they are serving special interests, it is a matter of whose interests they are serving.

While Thai-based news organisations would be expected to serve special interests in Thailand, they do not, specifically because of the Wests industrialised ‘journalist mills.’ These fellowship programs, training seminars and campaigns are undertaken to ensure the widest possible consensus globally to Western special interests, regardless of what nation journalists may be from or what nations they are currently operating in.

That is why The Nation and the Bangkok Post feature editorial slants nearly indistinguishable from those of Western news agencies. While Pravit is very open and proud of his indoctrination into this system of mass-produced consensus, others employed across the Thai media are not. Some digging, however, into the backgrounds of journalists who repeatedly and suspiciously repeat talking-points originating from abroad usually reveals a similar and extensive “resume” of foreign fellowships, education and indoctrination.

History is Repeating Itself   

Understandably, for people hearing this for the first time, it sounds like an incredible conspiracy theory. However, upon thoughtful examination, it is merely the predictable repetition of history unfolding.

Ancient Roman historian Tacitus (c. AD 56 – after 117) would adeptly describe the systematic manner in which Rome pacified foreign peoples and the manner in which it would extend its sociocultural and institutional influence over conquered lands.

In chapter 21 of his book Agricola, named so after his father-in-law whose methods of conquest were the subject of the text, Tacitus would explain:

His object was to accustom them to a life of peace and quiet by the provision of amenities. He therefore gave official assistance to the building of temples, public squares and good houses. He educated the sons of the chiefs in the liberal arts, and expressed a preference for British ability as compared to the trained skills of the Gauls. The result was that instead of loathing the Latin language they became eager to speak it effectively. In the same way, our national dress came into favour and the toga was everywhere to be seen. And so the population was gradually led into the demoralizing temptation of arcades, baths and sumptuous banquets. The unsuspecting Britons spoke of such novelties as ‘civilization’, when in fact they were only a feature of their enslavement.

We can easily see how fellowships fill a similar role today, with the West, openly aspiring to construct an international order, “educating” potentially influential foreigners in both English and “the liberal arts,” encouraging a preference for Western culture and perspectives and convincing them that such indoctrination is a novelty of ‘civilisation’ rather than a feature of control and a vector for Western influence into any particular country.

Under the British Empire, similar education and missionary programs were created to replace independent and unique local perspectives and culture with the uniform perspective and culture of Britain, serving British aspirations of global hegemony.

Cambridge University Press’ Missionary Writing and Empire, 1800–1860 would note in a chapter extract that (our emphasis):

Christian missionary activity was central to the work of European colonialism, providing British missionaries and their supporters with a sense of justice and moral authority. Throughout the history of imperial expansion, missionary proselytising offered the British public a model of ‘civilised’ expansionism and colonial community management, transforming [imperial] projects into moral allegories. Missionary activity was, however, unavoidably implicated in either covert or explicit cultural change. It sought to transform indigenous communities into imperial archetypes of civility and modernity by remodelling the individual, the community, and the state through western, Christian philosophies. In the British Empire, and particularly in what is historically known as the ‘second’ era of British imperialism (approximately 1784–1867), missionary activity was frequently involved with the initial steps of imperial expansion.

It is a bit ironic then that Britain, against which cultural colonialism was first used by the Romans, became a centre of power used then to disseminate cultural colonialism in service of naked imperialism under the British Empire, is now being used to disseminate a “softer” version of it under the guise of journalism and academia.

Like the sons of chiefs in Britannia, foreign journalists like Thailand’s Pravit Rojanaphruk probably have honestly convinced themselves that these features of control and manipulation are instead the “novelties of civilisation.”

What Nations Can Do. 

It is important for policymakers and the public alike to understand this aspect of modern journalism to both be aware of how it impacts news coverage, and of what possible measures can be taken to combat modern day cultural colonialism.

One possible measure could be national programs that attempt to recruit and build up a corps of local journalists who represent their nation’s best interests, culture and perspectives. These journalists can then fill the ranks of local newspapers and TV stations, as well as influence news conferences and seminars both local and international from their own nation’s perspective, rather than merely amplifying those of nations running international “fellowship” programmes.

For Thailand who has large government-funded news organisations like Thai PBS, universities and trusted news professionals, untainted by foreign indoctrination, can develop a truly Thai brand of journalism that is taught to political science and journalist students in school, and reinforced through the same sort of activities conducted by foreign fellowships overseas.

In essence, instead of depending on foreign fellowships and joint news organisation-university programs abroad, Thailand should develop is own domestically, as well as well-funded news organisations for Thai journalists to work at safely, securely and far from the ego-ensnaring temptations extended by foreign interests.

August 3, 2016 Posted by | Corruption, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Timeless or most popular | | Leave a comment

US Foreign Policy Comes Full Circle As Qaeda Downs Russian Helicopters

By Ulson Gunnar | New Eastern Outlook | 03.08.2016

The recent downing of a Russian Mi-8 helicopter and the death of all 5 on board over Al Qaeda-held Idlib province in Syria, represents the unenviable full circle US rhetoric has made surrounding both the Syrian conflict, and the wider “War on Terror.”

It was the United States who first created and used Al Qaeda in Afghanistan in the 1980s to down Russian aircraft and to fight Russian troops. After successfully pushing Russia out of Afghanistan and plunging it into a sociopolitical dark age, the US went on to claiming to be victimized by the monster they themselves created, perhaps most spectacularly on September 11, 2001. Today, the US finds itself back to now fully using Al Qaeda to fight a proxy war against Russia, this time in Syria.

Russian Helicopter Was on Humanitarian Mission Over Al Qaeda Territory 

The Russian Mi-8 helicopter was conducting humanitarian operations. This is not according to only Russian or Syrian sources, but even opposition sources including UK-based anti-Syrian government proponent Rami Abdulrahman who refers to himself as the “Syrian Observatory for Human Rights” (SOHR).

The New York Times in its article, “Russian Military Helicopter Is Shot Down in Syria, Killing 5,” would report that:

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which opposes the Syrian government and tracks the conflict from Britain through contacts in Syria, said the helicopter had crashed near the village of Saraqib in Idlib Province.

The aircraft had recently delivered aid to two Shiite villages nearby that have long been surrounded by Sunni rebels, the group said.

Qatari-state media Al Jazeera, also an admittedly pro-militant voice amid the conflict, would admit that Idlib province, Syria, is held by Al Qaeda.

In its article, “Syria’s civil war: Russian chopper shot down in Idlib,” Al Jazeera would admit:

Idlib is held almost entirely by a powerful coalition of hardline rebel groups, including the former al-Nusra Front, now known as the Fateh al-Sham group after renouncing its status as al-Qaeda’s Syrian affiliate.

Despite Al Jazeera’s attempts to qualify Nusra Front as having “renounced” its Al Qaeda affiliations, it is still recognized by the US, Russia and Syria as a terrorist organization.

Justifying & Celebrating Al Qaeda’s Atrocity

In the immediate aftermath of the helicopter’s downing and now ongoing since, pro-militant pundits from both the public and Western policy centers, celebrated the incident.

Former director of the Brookings Institution’s Doha Center, Salman Shaikh, repeatedly retweeted accusations that Russia’s Mi-8 was not in fact on a humanitarian mission, simply because empty rocket pods were found among the wreckage.

With SOHR insisting indeed the Russian helicopter was on a humanitarian mission, the empty rocket pods were most likely empty upon take off. So far, “experts,” including Atlantic Council’s “Digital Forensic Research Lab Senior Non-Resident Fellow” Eliot Higgins, previously an unemployed British social worker and blogger, have insinuated the Mi-8 was on a military mission, but have yet to provide any evidence.

This attempt to leverage supposed “experts” to justify the downing of a helicopter (and subsequent celebrations) engaged in humanitarian operations even in contradiction to media reports coming from both sides of the conflict, indicates just how far departed Western rhetoric has become from the principles it claims to uphold, particularly in regards to its involvement in the Syrian conflict and its backing of militant groups operating in Al Qaeda-held Idlib province.

US Aspired to Down Russian Aircraft in Syria 

The downing of Russia’s Mi-8 over Idlib is not the first. Another Russian helicopter was shot down near Palmyra in early July.

Japan Times in its article, “U.S. missile brought down Russian helicopter in Syria: report,” would report:

Two Russian airmen killed in Syria on Friday were shot down with American weaponry, the Interfax news agency said Sunday, quoting a Russian military source.

It said insurgents from the Islamic State group hit the airmen’s Mi-25 assault helicopter with a U.S.-made TOW heavy anti-tank missile, a weapon that uses guidance from a ground station.

The possibility of terrorist organizations like the Islamic State (IS) ending up with US missiles should be no surprise. It is a “coincidence” it appears many US policymakers wanted to unfold in Syria, if a no-fly zone implemented over Syria by the US directly was not a possibility.

45645645645645One of those US policymakers is US Senator John McCain (R-AZ) who would say in a 2015 interview on Fox News that:

I might do what we did in Afghanistan many years ago, to give those guys the ability to shoot down those planes. That equipment is available.

He would elaborate further by stating:

The Free Syrian Army, just like the Afghans shot down the Russian…

It should be noted that the “guys” Senator McCain is referring to in Afghanistan were Al Qaeda. With the downing of 2 Russian helicopters at the hands of IS and Al Qaeda respectively, it appears very much like Senator McCain has (one way or another) gotten his wish, with Al Qaeda once again serving as the armed intermediary between the US and Russia.

The end result is US foreign policy coming full circle, having created Al Qaeda to fight Russia in the 1980s, then using the terrorist organization as a pretext to extend military interventionism globally, to now once again cheering them on in Syria as they down Russian aircraft amid a struggle to restore peace and stability to both Syria and the wider region.

One wonders if this irony is lost on the American people, who have been asked to sacrifice so much in the name of fighting “terrorism,” only to have those who have done the asking to ally themselves with the very terrorists in a destructive proxy war in the distant lands of the Levant.

August 3, 2016 Posted by | Deception, Militarism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , , , | Leave a comment

The Diary of Anne Frank 5.0, an update

By Eve Mykytyn | August 3, 2016

According to legend, Otto Frank recovered his daughter’s diary from Miep Gies, the woman who hid the Frank family during World War II. Frank published the diary under Anne’s name in 1947. In response to skeptics, Otto Frank angrily insisted that he had not authored the diary. He claimed that while he may have edited out a few embarrassing details, the diary was ‘penned’ entirely by his daughter.

In 1980, Otto Frank sued Hamburg resident Ernst Roemer for spreading the accusation that Otto Frank had written his dead daughter’s diary. Relying on the testimony of handwriting experts that all of the diary’s pages had been written by one person, the court upheld the authenticity of the diary. An appeal by Roemer was unsuccessful.

Roemer appealed again, and this time the court asked for the technical services of the official German forensic bureau, the Bundes Kriminal Amt (BKA) that performed a careful analysis of the original manuscript of the diary with microscope and ultraviolet illumination in order to confirm its authenticity — in particular, to determine when it was written.

The BKA found that large portions of the alleged “diary” were written in ballpoint pen — of a type that was not manufactured prior to 1951. The German magazine, Der Spiegel, summarized the report as follows: some editing postdated 1951; Experts had held that all the writing in the journal was by the same hand; and thus – the entire diary was a postwar fake.

In April 2000, a Dutch court held that while the authenticity of “The Diary of Anne Frank” may be questioned, any such questions must properly respect victims of the Holocaust. In doing so, the court affirmed  Siegfried Verbeke’s conviction for publishing Robert Faurisson’s 1978 work questioning the authenticity of the Diary. The court stated that, “By raising doubts as to the authenticity of the diary within the context of REVISIONISM … the brochure far exceeds the limits of what is acceptable within the framework of freedom of expression.”

So, despite proof from Germany that the Diary was written after the war, the state of the law in Holland is that one may not improperly question the veracity of Anne Frank’s Diary, the iconic tome of an innocent victim of World War II.

And then, in November 2015, the Anne Frank Foundation almost lost the European portion of its copyright of the Diary. Most European copyright protections extend for 70 years after the author’s death. Anne Frank famously died in 1945. Otto Frank lived until 1980, and the copyright for his work could continue until 2050.

On its website the foundation claims that Anne had originally written two diaries, one personal and one intended for publication. According to the Foundation, Otto combined the diaries and had done so much work on the most widely published version that he had “earned his own copyright.” The foundation claimed to be protecting “Anne Frank’s original writings, as well as the original in-print versions [that] will remain protected for many decades”.

In the New York Times, French attorney Agnes Tricoire disputes their claim on rationale if not on facts stating: “If you follow their arguments, it means that they have lied for years about the fact that it was only written by Anne Frank.”

Also ignoring the authenticity of the diary, Isabelle Attard, a French MP  worries that the foundation’s claim will dilute the impact of the diaries. “Many revisionists, people who want to deny the extermination camps existed, have tried to attack the diary for years. Saying now the book wasn’t written by Anne alone is weakening the weight it has had for decades.”

The Foundation won its copyright claim, but it lost the war and the diary is now widely available online.

My question is, why, after the book has been shown to be a likely forgery is ‘The Diary of Anne Frank’ still relevant? In a survey conducted in 1996 at the University of Michigan, The Diary was named as the predominant source of Holocaust education: the text was required reading in high school for over half the students surveyed.

In an interesting piece on The Atlantic, Eleanor Barkhorn argues that the Diary is one of several widely assigned books that are not difficult enough to meet the new common core requirements. There is no shortage of alternative books relating the plight of civilians in World War II. I hope that we can allow Anne Frank to rest in peace and provide our schoolchildren with the best history as we now understand it.

August 3, 2016 Posted by | Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Timeless or most popular | | 2 Comments