The accusation of financing terrorism levelled by some [Persian] Gulf countries against Qatar has “no solid base” , he said in an interview with the Charlie Rose show on PBS.
Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim demanded the countries that cut off relations with Qatar should provide evidence of their allegations.
The former Prime Minister demanded that international law should tackle the violations, including cutting off food supplies, separating families and closing of airspace, made by the countries that have isolated Qatar.
He expressed surprise at the position taken by Saudi Arabia and others soon after the participation of the Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani in the Riyadh Summit.
On Syria, Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim said everybody including the US made mistakes while dealing with the crisis in that country. “As time passed we discovered that some groups have other agendas and we stopped dealing with them one after another.” He stressed that these mistakes were not intentional.
He pointed out that the punitive measures against Qatar were taken without convening the [Persian] Gulf Co-operation Council (GCC).
“If Saudi Arabia disagrees with any country, they will do what they want without referring to the GCC,” he said adding that he respected King Salman and Saudi Arabia, but the new situation has changed many things for the members of the GCC.
On Qatar’s alleged support for Iran, Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim said: “This is a big joke,” stressing that there was not a single incident where Qatar supported Tehran. He added that the Qatar has normal relations with Tehran. He said Qatar is ready to hold an open dialogue if the problem is related to Iran.
On the presence of some members of the Taliban movement in Qatar, he said that there are five Taliban members, who are in Qatar at the request of the US.
There is something strange about the media coverage of the Grenfell tragedy. The BBC is giving over acres of space to the pain and anger of the residents. The Guardian’sfront page currently looks like The Canary, and in its Opinion section Jonathan Freedland, of all people, is saying Grenfell will “forever stand as a rebuke to the Right”.
He’s correct of course, but that’s not the point. The point is Freedland, the BBC and the Guardianare the “Right” now and have been for many years, in so much as they have been, until a week ago, staunch defenders of the rabid, fascistic and despoiling policies that have characterised the “liberal” agenda since Blair. They have approved illegal wars, mass murder, “austerity”, mass surveillance, the despoiling of the NHS, the deprivation of the weak and vulnerable. They believe the suffering of the poor and powerless is merely a necessary adjunct to social “progress.”
So, what is going on here?
Maybe the “liberal” media is seeing the light and realising the years of deprivation have gone too far? Maybe the Guardian suddenly really supports social justice and the welfare state? Maybe Grenfell will be a catalyst for real change, ignite the dormant sense of decency in our champagne “socialists” and left-of-centre opinion-makers.
Well, maybe. But it doesn’t seem like a good bet does it?
Maybe the media are bandwagon-jumping. Following the story, not creating it because the social tide is currently too strong to ignore?
This is a bit more plausible, but the BBC and the rest of the tame media can easily ignore a crowd of ten thousand marching through central London when it wants to. They do similar things all the time. If they didn’t want us to know about this upsurge of anger wouldn’t they simply not talk about it, just as they didn’t talk about the mass anti-war demos and didn’t cover the anti-austerity demos, and (mostly) didn’t cover the huge crowds Corbyn was collecting?
I think when the BBC’s front page looks like this:
when social unrest is televised by state-controlled channels and when line-toeing neoliberals like Jonathan Freedland are rebuking the “Right” we need to be a bit more sceptical than to simply assume the good guys are suddenly in ascendancy and the media has no choice to but to scutter along in their wake.
There are not many examples in history where major news events or catalysing moments just happened through spontaneous popular movements, with the press corps and establishment running to catch up. Mostly even seemingly spontaneous events have been planned and provoked or exploited by vested interests of one sort or another. “News” isn’t an objective entity. It’s created by the act of narration. If you don’t tell the story the story isn’t “news.” The only reason we ever know an event has occurred is because the paid scribes were detailed to tell us it did. The Peasants’ Revolt may have started as a social protest of sorts but it ended up as a PR exercise for the Divine Right of Kings, and the extant narratives make sure Richard II got all the best lines.
This is the reality of what the establishment-serving media is. It doesn’t exist to pass on facts, it exists purely to create narratives. We shouldn’t just forget that when the current narrative appears to serve decent interests or to tell some sort of truth. Because it probably isn’t ultimately doing either.
Does it matter in this case? Isn’t any publicity good publicity if it helps bring justice and help to the victims of the Grenfell tragedy? If May can be arm-twisted into handing over cash, and if the publicity helps make sure such events become less likely in the future, does it matter what agenda the media may be following
To an extent that is obviously true. And let’s hope some good does come from the publicity being given to the anger of the people in the streets. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t question and remain sceptical when the wolf slips on his sheepskin.
GAZA – The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) has mourned the three Palestinian young men who were killed by Israeli soldiers after they carried out a commando operation in Occupied Jerusalem on Friday.
In a statement, the PFLP affirmed that two of those young men were its members, describing them as ex-detainees Baraa Ibrahim Atta, 18, and Osama Ahmed Atta, 19.
The PFLP said the operation was in retaliation to Israel’s crimes and its practices against the Islamic holy sites.
In a related context, senior Hamas official Ezzat al-Resheq categorically denied any ties between the three young men who carried out the Jerusalem operation and the ISIS, affirming that two of them were from the PFLP and one from Hamas.
Resheq accused the Israeli intelligence of being behind the fabricated news saying that the ISIS claimed responsibility for the operation.
He stressed that the Jerusalem operation was one of the individual initiatives made by the Palestinian people in their intifada (uprising) against Israel’s assaults on the holy sites, especially the Aqsa Mosque.
Three Palestinians were shot dead, on Friday evening, after stabbing and opening fire on Israeli soldiers, killing one and mildly wounding another, in Sultan Suleiman Street, near Bab al-Amoud (Damascus Gate), in occupied Jerusalem.
Israeli daily Haaretz said two Palestinians were shot and killed after attacking Police officers with knives and guns, and that a third Palestinian was shot and killed after stabbing an Israeli border policewoman, causing critical wounds that led to her death. Another Israeli officer was wounded in the attack.
The slain Israeli officer has been identified as Hadas Malka, 23; Israeli daily Haaretz said the officer was stabbed while trying to reach for her gun.
The police and the soldiers fired many live rounds, killing the three Palestinians, and wounding two Palestinian bystanders; one suffered a moderate injury, and the other was mildly wounded.
The three slain Palestinians have been identified as Bara’ Ibrahim Saleh, 18, Adel Hasan Ankoush, 18, and Osama Ahmad Ata, 19, all from Deir Abu Mashal village, west of Ramallah, in central West Bank.
Following the incident dozens of Israeli soldiers and officers were deployed in the area, closed all the gates leading to Jerusalem’s Old City, and assaulted many Palestinians, especially in the areas leading to the Al-Aqsa Mosque.
Update: The soldiers also assaulted many Palestinains, and clashed with local youths, wounding many with live fire and rubber-coated steel bullets.
One of the wounded Palestinians was shot with a live round in his spine, and another round in his kidney, while the soldiers chased the ambulance to the Al-Makassed Hospital in Jerusalem, but were unable to invade it, after dozens of Palestinians clashed with them, and prevented them from entering the hospital.
——–
In addition, dozens of soldiers surrounded and completely isolated Deir Abu Mashal village. Local sources said the soldiers imposed a strict siege on the village.
The soldiers warned that they will shoot and kill any Palestinian who is seen walking outside at night, and that the siege will continue until further notice.
Neocon Anne Applebaum has never seen a bed she did not expect to find an evil Russian lurking beneath. More than a quarter of a century after the end of the Cold War, she cannot let go of that hysterical feeling that, “The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming!” In screeching screed after screeching screech, Applebaum is, like most neocons, a one trick pony: the US government needs to spend more money to counter the threat of the month. Usually it’s Russia or Putin. But it can also be China, Iran, Assad, Gaddafi, Saddam, etc.
There is no doubt that Applebaum is a true believer that Putin wants to destroy our democratic institutions, but there is also a more pedestrian way to understand her endless obsession: it pays well to hype up big threats. In fact, according to a mandatory Polish government disclosure (her husband was Polish defense and foreign minister before being forced out in disgrace after an eavesdropping scandal), Applebaum has made out like a bandit for a humble journalist and think-tanker.
As I wrote when her scandal broke:
Interestingly, Applebaum demands transparency for everyone else while rejecting it for herself. A recent mandatory income declaration of her husband to the Polish government shows that her income has skyrocketed from $20,000 in 2011 to more than $800,000 in 2013. No explanation was given for this massive influx of cash, though several ventures in which she has a part are tied to CIA and National Endowment for Democracy-affiliated organizations. Could Applebaum be one of those well-paid propagandists about whom she complains so violently?
Applebaum’s latest Washington Post column is about… you guessed it: the danger of Russian disinformation! Here is a synopsis of Applebaum’s latest Cold War 2.0 propaganda piece from this weekend:
1) The mainstream media has taken a beating. The old business model is no longer working. There are too many new sources of information available, which makes it harder for people to judge the accuracy of what they read.
My comment: Indeed, the US mainstream media no longer controls what we see, read, and think. Applebaum cannot stand that there are websites challenging the central neoconservative foreign policy paradigm. She hates organizations like the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity (she even blocked us on Twitter!).
She longs for the days when you could only pick up a Washington Post or a New York Times and had no chance of discovering opposing opinions.
In other words, Anne Applebaum misses the Soviet-style monochrome media that she pretends to despise so much.
2) As a result of mainstream media outlets like the Washington Post losing their monopoly over shaping foreign policy opinion, as she writes: “authoritarian regimes, led by Russia but closely followed by China, have begun investing heavily in the production of alternatives.”
My comment: Applebaum is saying here that it’s all our fault that the Russians are coming because as soon as the Internet and alternative news and analysis sites offered a point of view different from Applebaum’s neocons, we played into the hands of the Russians by ignoring the Washington Post and turning to alternatives. If we had only kept our faith in the neocon worldview, the Russians would not be set to take us over.
3) This new Cold War is even worse than the old Cold War! Unlike back then, in the new Cold War, as Applebaum writes, “Russia does not seek to promote itself, but rather to undermine the institutions of the West, often using discordant messages.”
My comment: Anne Applebaum offers no evidence or even clues to back her claim. But what she is saying is that by allowing voices to be heard that run counter to the Washington Post and neocon foreign policy paradigm, Russian-funded outlets like RT are seeking to sow “confusion” among Western listeners and viewers. Applebaum does not want us to be “confused” by messages that run counter to the neocon view of a US empire fighting endless wars against manufactured enemies. We would be far less “confused” if we would all just read Anne Applebaum and stop questioning the neocons!
4) Don’t worry, this effort to sow confusion is being countered.
Applebaum writes:
Some countries are waking up to this, especially those that have been hardest hit. The invasion, occupation and dismemberment of Ukraine in 2014 was preceded by a highly effective propaganda blitz that fomented confusion in Russian-speaking areas and blinded both Ukrainians and Westerners to what was really going on. In response, Ukrainian organizations such as StopFake began to expose and ridicule Russian propaganda.
My comment: She does not explain exactly what that “propaganda blitz” looked like. Was it the release of the tape of Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland plotting the overthrow of a democratically elected government in Kiev? Well, according to Applebaum, at least the noble, independent NGOs are spontaneously springing up across Europe to counter this Russian propaganda blitz!
Except for one problem: The “StopFake” organization that she praises is not a grassroots Ukrainian organization as she would have us believe. In fact it’s a George Soros astroturf organization, funded by his International Renaissance Foundation. In other words, “StopFake” is fake.
5) In fact, when it comes to funding, Anne Applebaum knows which side of her bread is buttered. As the Washington Post notes in the article’s byline: “Anne Applebaum, a Post columnist, and Edward Lucas, a senior editor at the Economist, are this week launching a counter-disinformation initiative at the Center for European Policy Analysis, where they are, respectively, senior vice president and senior adjunct fellow.”
My comment: Who funds the (Washington, D.C.-based) Center for European Policy Analysis? The United States Department of Defense and a handful of US defense contractors!
Bell Helicopter
Boeing
Chevron Corporation
FireEye
Lockheed Martin Corporation
New Vista Partners
Raytheon Company
Sikorsky Aircraft
Textron Systems
The East Tennessee Foundation
The Hirsch Family Foundation
The Hungarian Initiatives Foundation
The International Visegrad Fund
The Poses Family Foundation
The Smith Richardson Foundation
U.S. Department of Defense
There are one or two surprises on the above list. The Hungarian government of Viktor Orban has been quite cautious about following the neocon line that any resistance to massive refugee inflows from the Middle East are signs of unforgivable xenophobia and that Russia and Putin must be resisted at all costs. In fact, Orban’s opposition in Hungary is furious that he is not following the Russia-bashing neocon line. So why is the Hungarian government-funded Hungarian Initiatives Foundation backing Anne Applebaum’s neocon initiative to demonize Russia? Good question. Maybe Fidesz supporters will want to ask their government why their tax money is going to such a worthless, anti-Fidesz cause.
6) And again on funding, we come to the crux of Anne Applebaum’s problem: the US government does not spend nearly enough money creating its own propaganda to counter what she claims is Russian propaganda. They are outspending us and outmaneuvering us!
She writes:
There is no modern equivalent to the U.S. Information Agency, an organization dedicated to coping with Soviet propaganda and disinformation during the Cold War. Although there has been some extra funding for U.S.-backed foreign broadcasters such as Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, they cannot provide a complete response.
My comment: But that’s not really true, is it? The idea that the US government is pinching propaganda pennies while the Russians are going in for the whole fake news hog is not backed up by those pernicious little things called facts. In fact, the Russian government spent around $300 million on RT in 2016. Compare that with the US propaganda arm, the Broadcasting Board of Governors, whose 2017 budget runs to $777.8 million dollars, or more than two and a half that of RT. And Congress just gave the green light to another $100 million to “counter Russian influence” in its stop-gap omnibus budget. We are out-spending them three-to-one. So why are we still “losing”?
Anne Applebaum is a bitter neocon. She is furious that people no longer read the Washington Post as the authoritative voice of US foreign policy. She has apparently made a tidy fortune warning us that the Russians are coming, but she wants even more. The Washington Post still views her as an expert, but the American people, as she herself complains, are no longer interested in her worn-out fantasies. She is buried in defense industry funded think tanks and she does the bidding of her masters. Every intelligent American reader should ridicule her as the propagandist she is.
As for Russian “propaganda,” like everything else in that vast cornucopia now thankfully available for our consumption, we should read all we can while keeping our wits about us. There is no one authoritative, unbiased source of information. That we do know. But we also know that we are far more able to think for ourselves now that the neocon gatekeepers like Anne Applebaum have been defeated in the marketplace of ideas.
Last month, United States Attorney General Jeff Sessions sent a letter to congressional leaders urging them to oppose Congress again including in Department of Justice appropriations legislation a provision intended to stop, through a restriction on the use of appropriated money, the US government from arresting and prosecuting people for actions that comply with state medical marijuana laws, even if those actions violate US drug laws. Some people are reacting to Sessions’ letter, which was revealed this week, with condemnation of Sessions and the Trump administration for departing from Obama administration policy that showed increased leniency in regard to marijuana. But this claim appears to misrepresent the Obama administration’s marijuana history.
Tom Angell, who revealed the Sessions letter in a Monday article at MassRoots, suggests that Sessions’ request is consistent with the position under the Obama administration given that President Barack Obama, in his last two budget requests, suggested Congress remove the medical marijuana language. Indeed, Sessions pretty much makes this same observation that he is continuing the prior administration’s policy in the first sentence of his letter to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-NY), House or Representatives Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI), and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA). Sessions starts the letter as follows: “I write to renew the Department of Justice’s opposition to the inclusion of language in any appropriations legislation that would prohibit the use of Department of Justice funds or in any way inhibit its authority to enforce the Controlled Substances Act (CSA).”
Further, Obama administration Justice Department lawyers, after the appropriations provision was in effect, defended in the Ninth US Circuit Court of Appeals case of United States v. McIntosh ignoring, in ten separate drug law cases that had been consolidated for review on appeal, whether defendants complied with state medical marijuana laws. In each case, the individuals were being prosecuted for actions that they argued complied with state medical marijuana laws. The Obama administration lost the argument in the appellate court, with the court deciding in August of 2016 that the appropriations provision “prohibits DOJ from spending funds from relevant appropriations acts for the prosecution of individuals who engage in conduct permitted by the State Medical Marijuana Laws and who fully complied with such laws.” The court decision, in addition, ordered that, if the US government should decide to proceed with prosecution of any appellants, those appellants “are entitled to evidentiary hearings to determine whether their conduct was completely authorized by state law.”
While the Ninth Circuit decision interprets the medical marijuana appropriations provision as providing protection for people complying with state medical marijuana laws, that decision does not help people who live in the states outside that judicial circuit. Also, as I noted in an article shortly after the McIntosh decision was announced, the DOJ argument for a reading of the appropriations language that would mean the provision provides little to no protection from prosecution is rather persuasive and could be accepted by other courts. The appropriations provision also provides no hope for protection for anyone anywhere who is dealing with recreational instead of medical marijuana or for anyone living in one of the states that has not liberalized medical marijuana laws.
Though the Obama administration backed off some in prosecutions of individuals acting in compliance with state laws concerning marijuana that over the past few years have been increasingly liberalized, that did not mean that the Obama administration wanted to subject itself to any additional restraints imposed by the legislative branch. Instead, the Obama administration preferred to design its own restraints via Department of Justice memoranda. These memoranda culminated in the August 29, 2013 Cole memorandum that directs DOJ lawyers to limit their prosecutions of people who are complying with liberalized state medical and recreational marijuana laws. But, the Cole memorandum also provides several exceptions that prosecutors can use to justify cases against individuals who are complying with state laws. In addition, the Cole memorandum and other Justice Department memoranda are just advisory for government employees (unlike a statute that could be enforceable as law to the benefit of defendants) and can be revoked or amended by subsequent DOJ memos.
Sessions has indicated a general support for the Cole memorandum’s policies, stating the following in a March 15 questions and answers with reporters: “The Cole memorandum set up some policies under President Obama’s Department of Justice about how cases should be selected in those states and what would be appropriate for federal prosecution, much of which I think is valid.” Yet, there is no guarantee that the wiggle room the Cole memorandum provides for prosecutions will be used the same in the Trump administration as it was in the Obama administration or that the DOJ will not come out with a new memorandum that keeps much of the Cole memorandum policies while also creating significant changes in DOJ policies related to people complying with state marijuana laws.
If you want to ensure people who grow, sell, use, or otherwise deal with marijuana are not arrested, prosecuted, and imprisoned by the US government, then both the appropriations medical marijuana provision and the Cole memorandum fall far short of accomplishing the goal. What is needed is for Congress to pass legislation ending the war on marijuana. Leave marijuana laws to the states. Just walk away from the war.
States are steadily developing a patchwork quilt of differing marijuana laws, with full prohibition becoming increasingly rare. Meanwhile, the majority of Americans favor legal recreational marijuana, and significantly more favor legal medical marijuana. The US government’s war on marijuana is increasingly becoming the odd man out. Despite the evident lack of will among congressional leaders to challenge the war on marijuana, increasing pressure, contributed to by changes in state and local governments’ law as well as public opinion, may soon succeed in emboldening Congress so it will approve legislation that ends the US government’s war on marijuana.
Last night, Theresa May was in France for a joint press conference with new French President Emmanuel Macron. As far as I could tell, it was only Al Jazeera that broadcast it live in Britain.
The only time it was mentioned during BBC radio 4’s flagship news show, the Today program, was during the five-minute religious slot Thought for the Day. It was not covered in the news section at all.
But this should be major, major news. This was Theresa May’s first policy announcement since last week’s election. And it wasn’t on Brexit, the reason she supposedly called the election. It wasn’t on austerity, which she apparently told her own MPs was over in a private session two days ago. No, her first major public policy announcement was – the end of internet freedom.
Specifically, what was announced was that both countries would be introducing heavy fines for internet companies that failed to remove what they, very loosely, defined as “extremist content.”
Now, taken at face value, this might seem to be referring to ISIS [Islamic State, formerly ISIL] recruitment videos or online suicide bombing training videos, or whatever. But the direct encouragement of violence is already illegal. So, what exactly is being proposed? Who exactly will be targeted?
It was former PM David Cameron who originally came up with the idea that “nonviolent extremism” should be criminalized alongside violent extremism. Intriguingly, as an example of what he meant, he included the idea that the “West is bad,” as well as elsewhere arguing that the promotion of “wild conspiracy theories” would also qualify.
Well, the collusion between, for example, British intelligence and Al-Qaeda might sound like a wild conspiracy theory. But, in the context of Britain and Al-Qaeda’s shared enemies in the form of Gaddafi and Assad, this collusion actually did take place. MI5 was facilitating the passage of fighters between Britain, Syria, and Libya, the SAS were training them, and MI6 was equipping them. Indeed, this collusion is not even secret: as late as 2016 the British government openly pledged to send more British troops to Syria to train rebel groups that even the BBC admitted were likely to be allied with Al-Qaeda.
So, is the publication of this information going to be barred now as extremist? Will YouTube and Facebook and Google and Twitter pull these revelations in fear of getting fined for promoting the “wild conspiracy theories” that, according to Cameron, qualify as extremism?
It is clear why the British state is so keen to clampdown on the internet once this kind of information starts going viral. But the election just gone has raised the stakes even further, demonstrating that, if the government does not reassert its authority over the internet, it may well have lost control of the political narrative for good. Let’s review what’s just happened:
A month ago, almost everybody was predicting a wipeout for the Labour party, a repeat of the disastrous 1983 election in which Margaret Thatcher really did win the landslide Theresa May had been predicting. Oh, how times have changed.
Back in 1983, pretty much everyone got their political information from either the newspapers or the BBC. In other words, between them, the big press barons – about 4 or 5 of them – and the British state had total monopoly control of political information.
This meant that when they portrayed Labour leader Michael Foot as a bumbling Oaf, that became the abiding image of him. A tiny handful of millionaire Tories effectively had total control over the public image of every politician in the land.
This time around, it’s a different story. The newspapers and the TV threw everything they could at Corbyn – ‘he’s a terror-supporting, magic money tree-mongering, Brexit-frustrating Remainiac’ – but people weren’t buying. And why weren’t they buying? Because they’re not reading the newspapers, and they’re not watching terrestrial TV. This time around, people, young people in particular, were increasingly getting their political information from social media – and on social media, the conservatives did not control the narrative.
For example, an RT interview I did about British collusion with terrorism shortly before the election got over one and half million views on Facebook – higher than the daily readership of the Daily Mail. Jonathan Pie’s fantastic piece tearing apart the Tory’s ‘strong and stable’ nonsense, got 11 million views. That is two and half million more than the combined circulation of the Daily Mail, Daily Express, Guardian, Sun, Daily Star, Times, Telegraph, Evening Standard, and the Mirror and Metro – the country’s ten leading newspapers. And hilariously, when I had just watched one of Theresa May’s speeches on YouTube during the campaign, immediately afterwards, YouTube automatically played Liar Liar, the anti-May anthem that reached number four in the UK pop charts last week. And I suspect YouTube auto played that video after anyone watched anything about Theresa May due to the algorithms that they employ.
So, you can see why the Tories are furious about the internet. They, and the British state more generally, have totally lost control of the narrative. And that’s what cost them this election.
So that’s what this new crackdown on the internet is really about; it’s about regaining control of that narrative. It’s about turning the CEOs of YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and Google into the Rupert Murdochs of the 21st century – the political allies and mouthpieces of the British state and the capitalist class, and doing this by forging a new relationship that explicitly punishes them if they refuse to play ball.
Even the government’s own ‘reviewer of terrorism laws’, Max Hill, has come out against the move, explaining that “my view is that… we do have the appropriate laws in place, and that essentially the police and security services, and those whose job it is to keep us safe, do have the powers at their disposal.”
He noted that, in his experience, the police unit responsible for identifying online extremist material receive full co-operation from the tech companies already.
Similarly, The Open Rights Group has warned that “to push on with these extreme proposals for internet clampdowns would appear to be a distraction from the current political situation and from effective measures against terror.”
“The government already has extensive surveillance powers. Conservative proposals for automated censorship of the internet would see decisions about what British citizens can see online being placed in the hands of computer algorithms, with judgments ultimately made by private companies rather than courts. Home Office plans to force companies to weaken the security of their communications products could put all of us at a greater risk of crime.”
Those who are worried about extremism should be calling for an end to the British intelligence services’ collaboration and facilitation of terrorism and the extradition of those who have carried out or facilitated attacks abroad, as well as an international investigation and prosecutions of all those involved.
Theresa May’s new proposals do nothing to end the impunity of her own government in the grooming and facilitation of terrorism. Rather, they serve to extend this impunity. They must be resisted.
Dan Glazebrook is a freelance political writer who has written for RT, Counterpunch, Z magazine, the Morning Star, the Guardian, the New Statesman, the Independent and Middle East Eye, amongst others. His first book “Divide and Ruin: The West’s Imperial Strategy in an Age of Crisis” was published by Liberation Media in October 2013. It featured a collection of articles written from 2009 onwards examining the links between economic collapse, the rise of the BRICS, war on Libya and Syria and ‘austerity’. He is currently researching a book on US-British use of sectarian death squads against independent states and movements from Northern Ireland and Central America in the 1970s and 80s to the Middle East and Africa today.
Reports have surfaced that during his heated exchange with Stephen Colbert, Oliver Stone responded to statements from Colbert repeating the tired narrative about Russia interfering in the US election by bringing up an elephant in the room that many media outlets have totally ignored.
Stone said of alleged and thus far totally unproved Russian interference,
“Israel had far more involvement in the US election than Russia, why don’t you ask me about that?”
Colbert, quick to end that part of the discussion replied,
“I’ll ask you about that when you make a documentary about Israel”
This section of the interview was edited out of the final broadcast, but multiple sources, including many pro-Israel sources testify to the existence of the in-studio exchange.
Few could reasonably deny that the pro-Israel lobby in the US is extremely power, well funded and influential.
Oliver Stone touched on a deeply important issue, one that clearly did not fit the anti-Russia stance of Stephen Colbert and his producers.
Guardian columnist John Harris, like a lot of liberal journalists at the moment, is moving rapidly out of a brief interlude of atonement for so badly misjudging the outcome of the UK’s recent election to a sense of resentment. Those of us who held firm against the media doomsayers over the past two years – rejecting their predictions of a Labour rout under its leader Jeremy Corbyn – are being accused of triumphalism.
Haters, doubters and sceptics have been rounded on. Journalists with any history of disbelief or hostility should apparently resign or be sacked. Labour MPs who once wanted Corbyn to quit should be reciting the socialist equivalent of Hail Marys, and burying any hopes of a return to the shadow cabinet. …
Looking back at the very real woes that preceded the party’s breakthrough, there seems to be some implicit suggestion that a huge crowd of true believers always knew things were on track but could not be heard above the hostile braying. But this, obviously, is not true.
That “obviously” needs examining. The desire to hold journalists to account for their treatment of Corbyn is not about gloating – even if it looks that way to those now facing the backlash. Harris badly misunderstands and trivialises the current mood, just as he misunderstood the mood of the past two years.
There is real frustration and anger, and it is being directed at individual journalists because there is no one else to vent the rage at. Faceless media corporations have no meaningful presence on Twitter or Facebook. We cannot berate them directly. But we can channel our protests at the corporate media’s employees, those who acted as its spokesmen and women.
Our problem is not that individual journalists reached mistaken conclusions about Corbyn. The concern runs much deeper than that. It is that most journalists, even among the most liberal parts of the media, rejected Corbyn and what he stood for from the outset. Even those who had some sympathy for Corbyn’s politics, like Harris, were easily swayed by their colleagues into abandoning him. And therein lies our grievance. It is not a new grievance; Corbyn’s wholesale abuse simply clarified it for us.
The corporate media earnt its name for a reason. Like other corporations, it has a collective agenda. Its bottom line is support for a political, social and economic environment that is good for corporate profits.
That doesn’t make media outlets identical. There are liberal and right wing parts of the media, just as there are branding variations in other markets. Apple wants to persuade you that it is a progressive and socially conscious company, even as underpaid and overworked Chinese workers throw themselves out of the top-floor windows of its factories. The reality is that Apple is no more concerned about workers rights than Microsoft – its packaging is simply better designed to persuade you that it cares, because that is what its users expect from it.
Harris and others at the Guardian did not fail just because they could not foresee how popular Corbyn would prove when put to the electoral test. They failed because it was their role to fail. Whether they understand it or not, they reached their positions of influence in the media either because their imaginative horizons had long ago been so beaten into submission that Corbyn’s success was impossible for them to contemplate or because their defences were so weakened – or maybe their desire to succeed in their organisations so strong – they could not withstand the tide of elite opinion.
Moreover, their failing is not just that they doubted Corbyn; it is that they collectively ridiculed those who thought differently. We were dismissed either as naïve fools or as dangerous subversives. Where were the outraged voices in the Guardian putting that calumny to rest?
Harris is right about one thing. The times are volatile, indeed:
Events of all kinds now seem to move at light speed. And look at how wildly the political pendulum swings: from Obama to Trump; from the SNP triumphant to Nicola Sturgeon in sudden abeyance; from Europe supposedly in hopeless crisis to the twin leadership of Macron and Merkel; and from the Brexit victory to the glorious shocks and surprises of last week.
As the cliche goes, the election proved that no one knows anything any more.
That volatility, however, is not as inexplicable as Harris implies. It has an explanation. It is caused by two factors that are coexisting dangerously together.
The first, much of it generated by social media, is a sense of outrage among large parts of the population. New avenues to information – bypassing the gatekeepers of yore, like the BBC and the Guardian – mean that we have access to more real information and analysis than ever before. Many now understand that our political and media class has been lying to them for a long time and that it no longer feels, or is, accountable.
The second factor is a profound sense of loss, alienation and confusion at the dawning realisation that the corporate media cannot be trusted. Social media have helped prove that the media and political class cannot be trusted, but it has not offered a clear path out of the bewilderment. People know they want change, but they have not yet found a compass they feel confident can guide them to a better place. That is why a Trump can be the beneficiary of the new mood as much as a Corbyn.
What we need now is a revolution in consciousness. We need to understand not only who are our enemies, but who are our friends.
The anger directed at Harris is not interested in simply making him feel bad for a day or two. It wants real change. And that change is being delayed by journalists like Harris, who continue to be incapable of understanding their role in the corporate media world.
Until those inside the corporate media become a voice of dissent from within, joining us in our demands for radical reform that stops the media representing only the interests of billionaires, that ends the influence of corporate advertising, and that ensures true pluralism, then they are the problem. And they will find that their social media accounts continue to bother them.
Yemen’s Houthi Ansarullah movement has held the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) accountable for the consequences of the deadly Saudi aggression, stressing that the nation reserves the right to defend itself.
Mohammed Abdulsalam, the movement’s spokesman, said on Saturday that the UNSC issues statements that encourage the invader to continue its attacks and sieges, increasing the suffering of millions of Yemenis and dashing hope for a political resolution of the conflict, the al-Masirah television network reported.
The Yemeni army and allied popular forces would use all means to respond to Saudi assaults as Yemen, like other nations, reserves the right to defend itself against any invasion, Abdulsalam said.
The UNSC, which is in charge of preserving global peace, should know that the Saudi war supported by the US arms and financial aid, threatens international security, he added.
The Houthi official also stressed that the deterioration of the health situation in Yemen with the outbreak of Cholera is “a source of shame” for the body that claims to be promoting human rights.
He further held Saudi Arabia responsible for the stalemate in talks between Yemen’s warring sides, the siege on Yemen and Sana’a Airport activities.
In a lengthy statement on Thursday, the UNSC called on the Houthis and allies to cease all attacks at Saudi Arabia.
It also urged Yemen’s warring sides to reach a UN brokered deal on management of the strategic port city of Hudaydah at a time that the country slides closer to famine.
Saudi Arabia has been leading a brutal military campaign against Yemen for more than two years to eliminate the Houthi movement and reinstall a Riyadh-friendly former president, Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi.
The military campaign, however, has failed to achieve its goals and left over 12,000 Yemenis dead.
The country is also grappling with a Cholera epidemic.
Earlier this week, Save the Children charity said at least 942 people have been killed since the outbreak began in Yemen in April.
It further warned that the rate of infection is increasing and that one child is contracting the disease every 35 seconds.
“Disease, starvation and war are causing a perfect storm of disaster for Yemen’s people. The region’s poorest country is on the verge of total collapse, and children are dying because they’re not able to access basic healthcare,” said Grant Pritchard, Save the Children’s Yemen director.
Cholera is an acute diarrheal infection that is spread through contaminated food or water. It can be effectively treated with the immediate replacement of lost fluids and salts, but without treatment it can be fatal.
Oliver Stone probably didn’t know that he was attacking the Neoconservative hawks, warmongers, and ethnic cleansers in Washington when he told Stephen Colbert that “Israel had far more involvement in the US election than Russia.”[1]
That statement indeed was a political bomb, and it almost certainly took Colbert by surprise. In response to this claim, the Jewish Press declared:
“Stone was obviously pulling the old anti-Israel, leftist line about how AIPAC is controlling Washington (much the way the ‘Jews’ control Hollywood) – and in his haste to save face apparently forgot the difference between contributing to political campaigns and hacking DNC computers.”[2]
Well, obviously Stone stroke a nerve, for we all know by now that AIPAC has had and continues to have a tremendously powerful influence on U.S. foreign policy. Once again, this is not conspiracy stuff. The scholarly studies on this issue are just an embarrassment to riches:
Paul R. Pillar, Intelligence and U.S. Foreign Policy: Iraq, 9/11, and Misguided Reform (New York: Columbia University Pres, 2011).
Michael MacDonald, Overreach: Delusions of Regime Change in Iraq (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2014).
John M. Schuessler, Deceit on the Road to War: Presidents, Politics, and American Democracy (New York: Cornell University Press, 2015).
John J. Mearsheimer, Why Leaders Lie: The Truth About Lying in International Politics (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011).
Muhammad Idrees Ahmad, The Road to Iraq: The Making of a Neoconservative War (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2014).
Stefan Halper and Jonathan Clarke, America Alone: The Neo-Conservatives and the Global Order (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004).
Murray Friedman, The Neoconservative Revolution: Jewish Intellectuals and the Shaping of Public Policy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005).
John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy (New York: Farrar & Straus, 2007).
Bob Woodward, Plan of Attack: The Definitive Account of the Decision to Invade Iraq (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2004).
Michael Isikoff and David Corn, Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal, and the Selling of the Iraq War (New York: Random House, 2006).
But the simple question is this: do we have enough evidence which points to the idea that Israel has been meddling in U.S. elections and foreign affairs? Yes.
In 1987, Jewish American Jonathan Jay Pollard was sent to prison for life for spying for Israel. In 1995, Israel publicly denied that Pollard was a spy, but recanted that statement three years later. BBC News itself declared,
“Israel has officially acknowledged for the first time that an American Jew, Jonathan Pollard, who was arrested in the United States 13 years ago, was one of its spies. Pollard, a former intelligence analyst for the United States Navy, is serving a life sentence in North Carolina for passing classified military documents to Israel. Until now, the Israeli authorities had always denied that Pollard was working under their direction.”[3]
For years the Israelis “refused to tell the United States what Pollard gave them.”[4] Then in 2010 Netanyahu made it clear that Pollard was an Israeli spy who was working for the Israeli government, “for which Israel took full responsibility.” Yet even after this admission, Ambassador Michael Oren said he hoped for Pollard’s earliest release.[5]
In 2005, Steve J. Rosen and Keith Weissman, who served for twenty-three years as top officials for American Israel Public Affairs (AIPAC), were accused of similar charges. As the trial was nearing, both the Israel Lobby and the defense team “described the proceedings as a frame-up, the result of an intra-bureaucratic struggle within the government, and a plot by anti-Semites in Bush’s Justice Department to carry out a Washington pogrom.”[6]
Neither man was convicted, thanks again to their Jewish friends: “While most of the more cautious elements in the Jewish community are staying well away from this case, the radicals, such as Rabbi Avi Weiss and his AMCHA Coalition for Jewish Concerns, who have previously devoted their efforts to freeing Jonathan Pollard, have now turned their attention to Rosen and Weissman.”[7]
Neoconservative Daniel Pipes declared that “we worried about the ramifications for us [meaning Jews] if [Rosen] were found guilty.”[8] He ended the article by congratulating both Rosen and Weissman. Pulitzer winner Dorothy Rabinowitz also praised them, characterizing their actions as “activities that go on every day in Washington, and that are clearly protected under the First Amendment.”[9]
The implication seems to be that Americans spying for Israel are protected by the First Amendment. In fact, “several prominent Neocons have been investigated on credible charges of spying for Israel: Perle, Wolfowitz, Stephen Bryen, Douglas Feith, and Michael Ledeen.”[10]
“In 1970 Perle was recorded by the FBI discussing classified information with the Israeli embassy. In 1981 he was on the payroll of an Israeli defense contractor shortly before being appointed Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Policy…During his tenure in the Reagan administration, Perle recommended purchase of an artillery shell made by Soltan, an Israeli munitions manufacturer…
“At the present time, Perle is on the board of directors of Onset Technology, a technology company founded by Israelis Gadi Mazor and Ron Maor with research companies and investment funds. He was also a close personal friend of Israel Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.”[11]
Similarly, “Feith has been suspected of spying for Israel. In 1972 Feith was fired from a position with the National Security Council because of an investigation into whether he had provided documents to the Israeli embassy. Nevertheless, Perle, who was Assistant Secretary for International Security Policy, hired him as his ‘special counsel,’ and then as his deputy. Feith worked for Perle until 1986 when he left government service to form a law firm, Feith and Zell, which was originally based in Israel and best known for obtaining a pardon for the notorious Marc Rich during the final days of the Clinton administration.”[12]
In 1997, Army tank engineer David A. Tenenbaum “gave classified military information on Patriot missiles and armored military vehicles to Israeli officials,” which was sent “to every Israeli military liaison official posted to the command over the last 10 years.”[13]
The Israel government, of course, “denied that any inappropriate activity had taken place.”166 David Bar Illan, chief spokesman for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, put out a statement, saying, “There has been no improper contact between Tenenbaum and anybody or institution of the Israeli Government.” According to the affidavit, “Tenenbaum admitted to divulging non-releasable classified information to every Israeli liaison officer.”[14] So Tenenbaum admitted, but Israel denied.
Justin Raimondo writes that if Rabinowitz is right in saying that the actions of Jewish spies are covered by the First Amendment, then “we are all in big trouble,” since it would mean that organized Jewry is betraying the American people. In 2004, the FBI came to the same conclusion.[15] In fact, in 2003 the FBI decided not to hire Jews for Arabic translation jobs, since they tended to present an opposite story of the actual event.
In 2004, a former intelligence official who was familiar with the latest FBI probe and who had recently left government work told the Los Angeles Times, “There is a huge, aggressive, ongoing set of Israeli activities directed against the United States. Anybody who worked in counterintelligence in a professional capacity will tell you the Israelis are among the most aggressive and active countries targeting the United States.”[16]
The shocking fact is that “the FBI has investigated several incidents of suspected intelligence breaches involving Israel since the Pollard case, including a 1997 case in which the National Security Agency bugged two Israeli intelligence officials in Washington discussing efforts to obtain a sensitive U.S. diplomatic document. Israel denied wrongdoing in that case and all others, and no one has been prosecuted.”[17]
Yet World Net Daily, a thoroughly Zionist outlet, accused the FBI of fostering anti-Semitism.[18] Since the Pollard affair, the FBI has suspected Israel of espionage, gathering enough evidence that they had continuing reason for suspicion through to the Clinton administration.[19] Even the Washington Post declares that there were “possible espionage” cases in which Israel was of major concern, especially “among those who translate and oversee some of the FBI’s most sensitive, top-secret wiretaps in counterintelligence and counterterrorist investigations.”[20]
The FBI’s suspicions were firmly based on documentation, considering that they had formerly had historical confrontations with Israel and Jewish spies. Even in December of 2008, Israeli traitor Ben-Ami Kadish, then 85 years old, was arrested and pleaded guilty for passing classified documents to Israel in the 1980s. To Judge William H. Pauley III, this was a disgrace to our security, because Kadish should have been charged years ago for many more charges.[21]
Again, in 2009, scientist Stewart Nozette, who worked for years in NASA, was caught spying for Israel. The New York Times article was titled “The Scientist Who Mistook Himself for a Spy.”[22] These acts of disloyalty are quite embarrassing, yet pointing out serious cases in which the United States is being wounded from within by the Israeli regime is like finding yourself in the middle of World War III.
Even in Britain in 2010, senior officials (particularly a senior Mossad agent) in Israel were accused of forging British passports used in a plot to kill a Hamas leader in the United Arab Emirates. “Police in Dubai have already said they are ‘99% certain’ the Mossad was behind Mabhouh’s killing, and [David] Miliband’s remarks represented the first official endorsement of that view by a western government.”[23] Miliband is British Foreign Secretary.
But involvement in espionage is just the tip of the iceberg. Ludwig Fainberg was a notorious mobster; “according to the FBI, he was the middleman for an international drugs and weapons smuggling conspiracy linking Colombian drug lords with the Russian Mafia in Miami. Fainberg’s claim to fame was that in the mid-1990s, he ventured onto a high-security naval base in the far northern reaches of Russia. His mission was to negotiate the purchase of a Russian Cold War-era diesel submarine—complete with a retired naval captain and a twenty-five-men crew—for the Colombian cartel. The price tag: a cool $5.5 million…From 1990 until he was arrested and charged in Miami in February 1997 for smuggling and racketeering, Fainberg ran an infamous strip club called Spoky’s.”[24]
It has also been documented that the Mossad—the Israeli secret service—was responsible for the murder of Jewish media mogul Robert Maxwell. After Jewish journalist Seymour Hersh wrote The Sampson Option: Israel, America and the Bomb, which shows that Maxwell had secret ties with the Israeli secret service, which then decided to do away with Maxwell to prevent him from ever revealing those ties.[25]
In 2001, the FBI charged Irving D. Rubin, chairman of the Jewish Defense League—an organization “whose aim was to defend Jews with ‘all necessary means,’ including the use of violence”[26]—with conspiracy to bomb private and government property, particularly the King Fahd Mosque in Culver City, California, and the office of U.S. Representative Darrell Issa, an Arab-American.[27]
However, Neocon hawks and warmongers have never touched on these vitally crucial issues. Instead of discussing events like these, Neoconservatives prefer to highlight Islamic suicide bombings, keeping the average American’s focus on hating or fearing the Muslim world and away from their own subversive actions at home.
Michael Hoffman points out that “when a Jewish bus is bombed by a Palestinian, graphic photos of the carnage and interviews with survivors are immediately beamed around the world. But when Palestinians are massacred by the Israeli army, the killings are perpetrated in secret, behind the veil of a ‘closed military zone.’”[28] If the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is to be resolved, we cannot afford double standards.
Pointing out terrorism in other countries is one thing, and acting in the manner of terrorism is another issue altogether. Mearsheimer and Walt write:
“Zionists used terrorism when they were trying to drive the British out of Palestine and establish their own state—for example, by bombing the King David Hotel in Jerusalem in 1946 and assassinating UN mediator Folke Bernadotte in 1948, among other acts—and the United States has backed a number of “terrorist” organizations in the past…American presidents have also welcomed a number of former terrorists to the White House (including PLO chairman Yasser Arafat, and Israeli Prime Ministers Menachem Begin and Yitzhak Shamir, who played key roles in the main Zionist terror organizations), which merely underscores the fact that terrorism is a tactic and not a unified movement.”[29]
This brings us to our conclusion: it is really silly to say that Russia is an enemy of the United States when U.S. officials are still making diabolical pacts with the Israeli regime and even Saudi Arabia. It just doesn’t add up, and it is interesting to see that even a person like Oliver Stone is realizing that the press, the media and other news outlets are essentially shooting themselves in the toes when they are not reporting the real thing.
[1] Quoted in David Israel, “Oliver Stone Tells Colbert Israel Had More Influence than Russia on 2016 Election,” Jewish Press, June 14, 2017.
[2] Ibid.
[3] “Israel Admits It Spied on US,” BBC, May 12, 1998.
[4] “Netanyahu and Foe Tangle over Pollard,” Daily News, January 19, 1999.
[5] “Netanyahu: Pollard was an Israeli Spy,” Haaretz, June 26, 2010.
[6] Justin Raimondo, “AIPAC on Trial,” American Conservative, May 7, 2007.
[7] Ibid.
[8] Daniel Pipes, “Standing with Steven J. Rosen,” DanielPipes.org, May 5, 2009.
[9] Raimondo, “AIPAC on Trial,” American Conservative, May 7, 2007.
[10] MacDonald, Cultural Insurrections, 152.
[11] Ibid., 177.
[12] Ibid., 181.
[13] Keith Bradsher, “Army Engineer Gave Military Data to Israel,” NY Times, Feb. 20, 1997; “Civilian Engineer Gave Military Secrets to Israelis,” Washington Post, Feb. 20, 1997.
[14] Ibid.
[15] “FBI Suspects Israel Has Mole in Pentagon—CBS,” Washington Post, August 27, 2004; Curt Anderson, “Alleged Leak to Israel Probed for a Year,” Washington Post, August 28, 2004.
[16] Bob Drogin and Greg Miller, “Israel Has Long Spied on US, Says Officials,” LA Times, September 3, 2004.
[17] Ibid.
[18] Paul Sperry, “FBI: Jews Need Not Apply for Arabic Linguist Job,” WorldNetDaily.com, October 9, 2003.
[19] J. Michael Waller and Paul M. Rodriguez, “FBI Probes Espionage at Clinton White House,” Insight Magazine, May 6, 2000.
[20] James V. Grimaldi, “Two FBI Whistle-Blowers Allege Lax Security, Possible Espionage,” Washington Post, June 19, 2002.
[21] Benjamin Weiser, “Man, 85, Avoids Jail Time for Giving Military Secret,” NY Times, May 29, 2009.
[22] Robert Mackey, “The Scientist Who Mistook Himself for a Spy,” NY Times, October 21, 2009.
[23] Julian Borger, “Britain Expels Mossad Agent over Forged Passport Plot,” Guardian, March 23, 2010.
[24] See Victor Malarek, The Natashas: Inside the New Global Sex Trade.
[25] See Gordon Thomas and Martin Dillon, Robert Maxwell, Israel’s Superspy.
[26] Murray Friedman, Neoconservative Revolution: Jewish Intellectuals and the Shaping of Public Policy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 102.
[27] Tom Tugen, “JDL Head Arrested,” JewishJournal.com, December 13, 2001.
[28] Hoffman and Lieberman, The Israeli Holocaust Against the Palestinians, 66.
The aging infrastructure at the largest US nuclear waste site at Hanford, Washington is breaking down, making incidents involving the release of radiation more likely, according to the senior Energy Department official at the site.
The Hanford site, located along the Columbia River near Richland, Washington, stores nuclear waste dating back to the early days of the US atomic program. Workers at the site have been repeatedly exposed to toxic fumes and “burps” of radiation, with crumbling structures posing a continued risk of radioactive release.
The official deadline for cleanup at the site is 2060. Doug Shoop, who runs the Energy Department operations office at Hanford, told AP this week that some of the structures at Hanford could collapse before then.
“The infrastructure is not going to last long enough for the cleanup,” Shoop said in an interview. “It will be another 50 years before it is all demolished.”
The site’s annual cleanup budget is $2.3 billion, but Shoop says that fully decontaminating the 580-square mile (1,502 square kilometer) site will cost at least $100 billion. President Donald Trump’s proposed 2018 budget cuts Hanford’s funding by $120 million.
Shoop’s comments come after two incidents, a month apart, that involved collapsing infrastructure at the site. On June 8, demolition work at a 1940s-era plutonium extraction plant caused a release of radiation, but the levels were declared low enough to be safe.
The plant processed 24,000 tons of irradiated uranium fuel rods to remove plutonium for nuclear weapons during the Cold War. It hasn’t been operational since 1967.
Hundreds of workers were evacuated and portions of the site were placed on lockdown after the roof of a 1950s rail tunnel storing radioactive waste and contaminated rail cars collapsed on May 9, opening a 20-foot-wide sinkhole.
The 360-foot (110-meter) long tunnel held eight railroad cars that transported waste in the 1950s, and were buried there until they can be decontaminated. The dirt that fell into the gunnel prevented the release of radiation into the air, officials said. Workers have since filled in the sinkhole and covered the tunnel with tarpaulins.
“There are a whole bunch of things analogous to the tunnels,” Shoop said.
Hanford has 177 underground tanks made of steel, which contain more that 54 million gallons (204 million liters) of radioactive and chemical waste. In April 2016, some 20 workers at the site workers requested medical evaluations on because of potential exposure to chemical vapors and toxic fumes.
“We are sending people into environments no one was expected to go to,” Shoop said. “Is there the potential for more alarms? Absolutely.”
Built during World War II as part of the Manhattan Project to develop the nuclear bomb, Hanford still contains roughly 53 million gallons – over 2,600 rail cars – worth of high-level nuclear waste, left from the production of plutonium for the US nuclear weapons program.
Attempt to distance Russiagate investigation from discredited Trump Dossier fails on Papadopoulos’s inherent unreliability as a witness
By Alexander Mercouris | The Duran | January 1, 2018
As confidence in Robert Mueller’s investigation crumbles there have been the inevitable leaks intended to suggest that the Russiagate investigation is still on track and that despite the increasing appearances to the contrary there is actually some reality to the case it is investigating.
The leaks take the form of claims that Mueller is planning to issue a “supplemental indictment” of Paul Manafort supposedly fleshing out the tax evasion and money laundering claims he has brought against him, and more information about the strange case of George Papadopoulos. … continue
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Three Palestinians were shot dead, on Friday evening, after stabbing and opening fire on Israeli soldiers, killing one and mildly wounding another, in Sultan Suleiman Street, near Bab al-Amoud (Damascus Gate), in occupied Jerusalem.
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