2017 December 11 « Aletho News

Russia-gate’s Litany of Corrections

By Robert Parry | Consortium News | December 11, 2017

The U.S. mainstream media’s year-long hysteria over Russia’s alleged role in the election of Donald Trump has obliterated normal reporting standards leading to a rash of journalistic embarrassments that have both disgraced the profession and energized Trump’s backers over new grievances about the MSM’s “fake news.”

Misguided groupthink is always a danger when key elements of the Washington establishment and the major news media share the same belief – whether that is Iraq’s supposed possession of WMD or the need to bring down some foreign or domestic leader unpopular with the elites.

Yet, we have rarely witnessed such a cascading collapse of journalistic principles as has occurred around the Russia-gate “scandal.” It is hard to keep track of all the corrections or to take note of all the dead ends that the investigation keeps finding.

But anyone who dares note the errors, the inconsistencies or the illogical claims is either dismissed as a “Kremlin stooge” or a “Trump enabler.” The national Democrats and the mainstream media seem determined to keep hurtling down the Russia-gate roadway assuming that the evidentiary barriers ahead will magically disappear at some point and the path to Trump’s impeachment will be clear.

On Friday, the rush to finally prove the Russia-gate narrative led CNN — and then CBS News and MSNBC — to trumpet an email supposedly sent from someone named Michael J. Erickson on Sept. 4, 2016, to Donald Trump Jr. that involved WikiLeaks offering the Trump campaign pre-publication access to purloined Democratic National Committee emails that WikiLeaks published on Sept. 13, nine days later.

With CNN finally tying together the CIA’s unproven claim that WikiLeaks collaborates with Russia and the equally unproven claim that Russian intelligence “hacked” the Democratic emails, CNN drew the noose more tightly around the Trump campaign for “colluding” with Russia.

After having congressional reporter Manu Raju lay out the supposed facts of the scoop, CNN turned to a panel of legal experts to pontificate about the crimes that the Trump campaign may have committed now that the “evidence” proving Russia-gate was finally coming together.

Not surprisingly the arrival of this long-awaited “proof” of Russian “collusion” exploded across social media. As The Intercept’s Glenn Greenwald noted in an article critical of the media’s performance, some Russia-gate enthusiasts heralded the CNN revelation with graphics of cannons booming and nukes exploding.

The problem, however, was that CNN and other news outlets that jumped on the story misreported the date of the email; it was Sept. 14, 2016, i.e., the day after WikiLeaks released the batch of DNC emails, not Sept. 4. In other words, it appeared that “Erickson” – whoever he was – was simply alerting the Trump campaign to the WikiLeaks disclosure.

CNN later issued a quiet correction to its inflammatory report – and not surprisingly people close to Trump cited the false claim as yet another example of “fake news” being spread by the mainstream media, which has put itself at the forefront of the anti-Trump Resistance over the past year.

But this sloppy journalism – compounded by CNN’s rush to put the “Sept. 4 email” in some criminal context and with CBS and MSNBC panting close behind – was not a stand-alone screw-up. A week earlier, ABC News made a similar mistake in claiming that candidate Donald Trump instructed Michael Flynn to contact Russian officials during the campaign, when Trump actually made the request after the election when Flynn was national security adviser-designate, a thoroughly normal move for a President-elect to make. That botched story led ABC News to suspend veteran investigative reporter Brian Ross.

Another inaccurate report from Bloomberg News, The Wall Street Journal and other news outlets – that Russia-gate special prosecutor Robert Mueller had subpoenaed Deutsche Bank records of President Trump and his family – was denied by Trump’s lawyer and later led to more corrections. The error apparently was that the bank records were not those of Trump and his family but possibly other associates.

A Pattern of Bias

But it wasn’t just a bad week for American mainstream journalism. The string of errors followed a pattern of earlier false and misleading reporting and other violations of journalistic standards, a sorry record that has been the hallmark of the Russia-gate “scandal.” Many stories have stirred national outrage toward nuclear-armed Russia before petering out as either false or wildly exaggerated. [See, for instance, Consortiumnews.com’s “Russia-gate Jumps the Shark.”]

As Greenwald noted, “So numerous are the false stories about Russia and Trump over the last year that I literally cannot list them all.”

The phenomenon began in the weeks after Trump’s shocking victory over Hillary Clinton as Democrats and the mainstream media looked for people to blame for the defeat of their much-preferred candidate.

So, on Thanksgiving Day, just weeks after the election, The Washington Post published a front-page story based on an anonymous group called PropOrNot accusing 200 Web sites of acting as propaganda agents for Russia. The list included some of the Internet’s leading independent news sources, including Consortiumnews, but the Post did not bother to contact the slandered Web sites nor to dissect the dubious methodology of the unnamed accusers.

Apparently, the “crime” of the Web sites was to show skepticism toward the State Department’s claims about Syria and Ukraine. In conflating a few isolated cases of “fake news” in which people fabricated stories for political or profitable ends with serious dissent regarding the demonizing of Russia and its allies, the Post was laying down a marker that failure to get in line behind the U.S. government’s propaganda on these and other topics would get you labeled a “Kremlin tool.”

As the Russia-gate hysteria built in the run-up to Trump’s inauguration during the final weeks of the Obama administration, the Post also jumped on a claim from the Department of Homeland Security that Russian hackers had penetrated into the nation’s electrical grid through Vermont’s Burlington Electric.

As journalist Gareth Porter noted, “The Post failed to follow the most basic rule of journalism, relying on its DHS source instead of checking with the Burlington Electric Department first. The result was the Post’s sensational Dec. 30 story under the headline ‘Russian hackers penetrated U.S. electricity grid through a utility in Vermont, U.S. officials say.’ …

“The electric company quickly issued a firm denial that the computer in question was connected to the power grid. The Post was forced to retract, in effect, its claim that the electricity grid had been hacked by the Russians. But it stuck by its story that the utility had been the victim of a Russian hack for another three days before admitting that no such evidence of a hack existed.”

The Original Sin

In other cases, major news outlets, such as The New York Times, reported dubious Russia-gate claims from U.S. intelligence agencies as flat fact, rather than unproven allegations that remain in serious dispute. The Times and others reported Russian “hacking” of Democratic emails as true even though WikiLeaks denied getting the material from the Russians and the Russians denied providing it.

For months into 2017, in dismissing or ignoring those denials, the U.S. mainstream media reported routinely that all 17 U.S. intelligence agencies concurred in the conclusion that Russia was behind the disclosure of Democratic emails as part of a plot initiated by Russian President Vladimir Putin to help elect Trump. Anyone who dared question this supposed collective judgment of all the U.S. intelligence agencies risked being called a “conspiracy theorist” or worse.

But the “consensus” claim was never true. Such a consensus judgment would have called for a comprehensive National Intelligence Estimate, which was never commissioned on the Russian “hacking” issue. Instead there was something called an “Intelligence Community Assessment” on Jan. 6 that – according to testimony by President Obama’s Director of National Intelligence James Clapper in May 2017 – was put together by “hand-picked” analysts from only three agencies: the CIA, FBI and National Security Agency.

Even after Clapper’s testimony, the “consensus” canard continued to circulate. For instance, in The New York Times’ White House Memo of June 25, correspondent Maggie Haberman mocked Trump for “still refus[ing] to acknowledge a basic fact agreed upon by 17 American intelligence agencies that he now oversees: Russia orchestrated the attacks, and did it to help get him elected.”

Finally, the Times ran a correction appended to that article. The Associated Press ran a similar “clarification” applied to some of its fallacious reporting which used the “17-intelligence-agencies” meme.

After the correction, however, the Times simply shifted to other deceptive wording to continue suggesting that U.S. intelligence agencies were in accord on Russian “hacking.” Other times, the Times just asserted the claim of Russian email hacking as flat fact. All of this was quite unprofessional, since the Jan. 6 “assessment” itself stated that it was not asserting Russian “hacking” as fact, explaining: “Judgments are not intended to imply that we have proof that shows something to be a fact.”

Even worse than the Times, the “fact-checking” site Politifact, which is part of Google’s First Draft Coalition for deciding what the search engine’s algorithms will promote as true and what information will be disappeared as false, simply decided to tough it out and continued insisting that the false “consensus” claim was true.

When actual experts, such as former National Security Agency technical director William Binney, sought to apply scientific analysis to the core claim about Russian “hacking,” they reached the unpopular conclusion that the one known download speed of a supposed “hack” was not possible over the Internet but closely matched what would occur via a USB download, i.e., from someone with direct access to the Democratic National Committee’s computers using a thumb drive. In other words, the emails more likely came from a DNC insider, not an external “hack” from the Russians or anyone else.

You might have thought that the U.S. news media would have welcomed Binney’s discovery. However, instead he was either ignored or mocked as a “conspiracy theorist.” The near-religious belief in the certainty of the Russian “hack” was not to be mocked or doubted.

‘Hand-picked’ Trouble

In recent days, former DNI Clapper’s reference to “hand-picked” analysts for the Jan. 6 report has also taken on a more troubling odor, since questions have been raised about the objectivity of the Russia-gate investigators and — as any intelligence expert will tell you — if you “hand-pick” analysts known for their personal biases, you are hand-picking the conclusion, a process that became known during the Reagan administration as “politicizing intelligence.”

Though little is known about exactly who was “hand-picked” by President Obama’s intelligence chiefs to assess the Russian “hacking” suspicions, Russia-gate special prosecutor Robert Mueller has been forced to reassign Peter Strzok, one of the top FBI investigators who worked on both the Hillary Clinton email-server case and the Trump-Russia inquiry, after it was discovered that he exchanged anti-Trump and pro-Clinton text messages with a lawyer who also works at the FBI.

Last week, Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee sought answers from new FBI Director Christopher Wren about Strzok’s role in clearing Hillary Clinton of criminal wrongdoing in her use of a private unsecured email server to handle official State Department communications while Secretary of State. They also wanted to know what role in the Russia-gate probe was played by a Democratic-funded “opposition research” report from ex-British intelligence officer Christopher Steele, which included unverified hearsay claims by unnamed Russians about Trump.

Wren avoided direct answers by citing an ongoing Inspector General’s review and Mueller’s criminal investigation, but Republicans expressed displeasure at this evasiveness.

The Republican questions prompted E.J. Dionne Jr., a liberal columnist at The Washington Post, to publish a spirited attack on the GOP committee members, accusing them of McCarthyistic tactics in questioning the FBI’s integrity.

Dionne’s straw man was to postulate that Republicans – because of this discovery of anti-Trump bias – would discount evidence that proves Trump’s collusion with Russia: “if Strzok played some role in developing [the] material. … Trump’s allies want us to say: Too bad the president lied or broke the law or that Russia tried to tilt our election. This FBI guy sending anti-Trump texts is far more important, so let’s just forget the whole thing. Really?”

But the point is that no such evidence of Russian collusion has been presented and to speculate how people might react if such evidence is discovered is itself McCarthyistic, suggesting guilt based on hypotheticals, not proof. Whatever one thinks of Trump, it is troubling for Dionne or anyone to imply treasonous activities based on speculation. That is the sort of journalistic malfeasance that has contributed to the string of professional abuses that pervades Russia-gate.

What we are witnessing is such an intense desire by mainstream journalists to get credit for helping oust Trump from office that they have forgotten that journalism’s deal with the public should be to treat everyone fairly, even if you personally disdain the subject of your reporting.

Journalists are always going to get criticized when they dig up information that puts some politician or public figure in a negative light, but that’s why it’s especially important for journalists to strive for genuine fairness and not act as if journalism is just another cover for partisan hatchetmen.

The loss of faith among large swaths of Americans in the professionalism of journalists will ultimately do severe harm to the democratic process by transforming information into just one more ideological weapon. Some would say that the damage has already been done.

It was, if you recall, the U.S. mainstream media that started the controversy over “fake news,” expanding the concept from the few low-lifes who make up stories for fun and profit into a smear against anyone who expressed skepticism toward State Department narratives on foreign conflicts. That was the point of The Washington Post’s PropOrNot story.

But now many of these same mainstream outlets are livid when Trump and his backers throw the same “fake news” epithet back at the major media. The sad truth is that The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN, MSNBC and other leading news organizations that have let their hatred of Trump blind them from their professional responsibilities have made Trump’s job easy.

Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s.

December 11, 2017 Posted by aletho | Deception, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Russophobia, Timeless or most popular | CNN, New York Times, United States, Washington Post | Leave a comment

The Deep State’s Christmas Present to America: Surveillance That Never Ends

By John W. Whitehead | The Rutherford Institute | December 11, 2017

“He sees you when you’re sleeping
He knows when you’re awake
He knows when you’ve been bad or good
So be good for goodness sake!”
—“Santa Claus Is Coming to Town”

Just in time for Christmas, the Deep State wants to give America the gift that keeps on giving: never-ending mass surveillance.

I’m not referring to the kind of surveillance carried out by that all-knowing and all-seeing Jolly Old St. Nick and his informant the Elf on the Shelf (although, to be fair, they have helped to acclimate us to a world in which we’re always being watched and judged by higher authorities).

No, this particular bit of Yuletide gift-giving comes courtesy of the Deep State (a.k.a. the Surveillance State, Police State, Shadow Government and black-ops spy agencies).

If this power-hungry cabal gets its way, the government’s power to spy on its citizens will soon be all-encompassing and permanent.

As it now stands, Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act—the legal basis for two of the National Security Agency’s largest mass surveillance programs, “PRISM” and “Upstream”—is set to expire at the end of 2017.

“PRISM” lets the NSA access emails, video chats, instant messages, and other content sent via Facebook, Google, Apple and others. “Upstream” lets the NSA worm its way into the internet backbone—the cables and switches owned by private corporations like AT&T that make the internet into a global network—and scan traffic for the communications of tens of thousands of individuals labeled “targets.”

Just as the USA Patriot Act was perverted from its original intent to fight terrorism abroad and was used instead to covertly crack down on the American people (allowing government agencies to secretly track Americans’ financial activities, monitor their communications, and carry out wide-ranging surveillance on them), Section 702 has been used as an end-run around the Constitution to allow the government to collect the actual content of Americans’ emails, phone calls, text messages and other electronic communication without a warrant.

Under Section 702, the government collects and analyzes over 250 million internet communications every year. There are estimates that at least half of these contain information about U.S. residents, many of whom have done nothing wrong. This information is then shared with law enforcement and “routinely used for purposes unrelated to national security.”

Mind you, this is about far more than the metadata collection that Edward Snowden warned us about, which was bad enough. Section 702 gives the government access to the very content of your conversations (phone calls, text messages, video chats), your photographs, your emails. As Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., warned, “This is not just who you send it to, but what’s in it.”

Unfortunately, Big Brother doesn’t relinquish power easily.

The Police State doesn’t like restrictions.

And the Surveillance State certainly doesn’t look favorably on anything that might weaken its control. Even after Congress limited the NSA’s ability to collect bulk phone records, the agency continued to do so, vacuuming up more than 151 million records of Americans’ phone calls last year alone.

A government that doesn’t heed its constituents, doesn’t abide by the law, and kowtows to its police and military forces? That’s a dictatorship anywhere else.

Here in America, you can call it “technotyranny,” a term coined by investigative journalist James Bamford to refer to an age of technological tyranny made possible by government secrets, government lies, government spies and their corporate ties.

Beware of what you say, what you read, what you write, where you go, and with whom you communicate, because it will all be recorded, stored and used against you eventually, at a time and place of the government’s choosing. Privacy, as we have known it, is dead.

For all intents and purposes, we now have a fourth branch of government.

This fourth branch came into being without any electoral mandate or constitutional referendum, and yet it possesses superpowers, above and beyond those of any other government agency save the military. It is all-knowing, all-seeing and all-powerful. It operates beyond the reach of the president, Congress and the courts, and it marches in lockstep with the corporate elite who really call the shots in Washington, DC.

The government’s “technotyranny” surveillance apparatus has become so entrenched and entangled with its police state apparatus that it’s hard to know anymore where law enforcement ends and surveillance begins.

The short answer: they have become one and the same entity.

The police state has passed the baton to the surveillance state.

Having already transformed local police into extensions of the military, the Department of Homeland Security, the Justice Department and the FBI are preparing to turn the nation’s soldier cops into techno-warriors, complete with iris scanners, body scanners, thermal imaging Doppler radar devices, facial recognition programs, license plate readers, cell phone Stingray devices and so much more.

This is the new face of policing in America.

Enter big data policing which gives the nation’s 17,000 police agencies access to a growing “investigative” database that maps criminal associates and gangs, as well as their social and familial connections.

As Slate reports, “These social network systems, which target ‘chronic offenders,’ also include information about innocent associates, family members, and friends, creating extensive human maps of connections and patterns of contacts.” Those individuals then get assigned a threat score to determine their risk of being a perpetrator or victim of a future crime.

In Chicago, for example, “individuals with the highest scores on the Chicago Police Department ‘heat list’ get extra attention in the form of home visits or increased community surveillance.”

In Baltimore, police are using Cessna planes equipped with surveillance systems to film entire segments of the city, then combining that footage with police reports in order to “map the comings and goings of everyone—criminals and innocents alike.”

In this way, big data policing not only expands Big Brother’s reach down to the local level, but it also provides local police—most of whom know little about the Constitution and even less about the Fourth Amendment—with a new technological weapon to deploy against an unsuspecting public.

The end result is pre-crime, packaged in the guise of national security but no less sinister.

All of those individuals who claim to be unconcerned about government surveillance because they have nothing to hide, take note: pre-crime policing—given a futuristic treatment in Steven Spielberg’s Minority Report—aims to treat you like a criminal before you’ve ever even committed a crime.

This hasn’t fazed President Trump who, much like his predecessors, has thus far marched in lockstep with the dictates of the police state.

For months, the Trump Administration has been actively lobbying Congress to reauthorize Section 702 in its entirety. Now, according to The Intercept, Trump is actively considering a proposal to establish his own global, private spy network that would circumvent official U.S. intelligence agencies and answer directly to the White House.

If approved, this would be yet another secret government agency carrying out secret surveillance and counterintelligence, funded by a secret black ops budget that by its very nature does away with transparency, bypasses accountability and completely eludes any form of constitutionality.

According to The Washington Post, there are more than a dozen “black budget” national intelligence agencies already receiving more than $52.6 billion in secret government funding. Among the top five black ops agencies currently are the CIA, the NSA, the National Reconnaissance Office, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Program, and the General Defense Intelligence Program.

A significant chunk of that black ops money has been flowing to Silicon Valley since before there was an internet, itself a creation of the military/security industrial complex.

Earlier this year, Amazon announced that it would be storing classified information for U.S. spy agencies in its digital cloud, part of a $600 million contract with the nation’s intelligence agencies.

Two decades earlier, America’s spy agencies tapped Silicon Valley to spearhead research into ways of tracking individuals and groups online. That research, as documented by Jeff Nesbit, the former director of legislative and public affairs at the National Science Foundation, culminated in the creation of a massive public-private surveillance state that hinged on a partnership between the NSA, the CIA and Google.

“The research arms of the CIA and NSA hoped that the best computer-science minds in academia could identify what they called ‘birds of a feather,’” writes Nesbit. He continues:

Their research aim was to track digital fingerprints inside the rapidly expanding global information network, which was then known as the World Wide Web… By working with emerging commercial-data companies, their intent was to track like-minded groups of people across the internet and identify them from the digital fingerprints they left behind, much like forensic scientists use fingerprint smudges to identify criminals. Just as “birds of a feather flock together,” they predicted that potential terrorists would communicate with each other in this new global, connected world—and they could find them by identifying patterns in this massive amount of new information. Once these groups were identified, they could then follow their digital trails everywhere.

The problem, of course, is that the government always sets its sights higher.

It wasn’t long before the government’s search for criminal “birds of a feather”—made much easier with the passage of the USA Patriot Act—lumped everyone together and treated all of the birds (i.e., the public) as criminals to be identified, tracked, monitored and subjected to warrantless, suspicionless surveillance.

Fast forward to the present moment when, on any given day, the average American is now monitored, surveilled, spied on and tracked in more than 20 different ways by both government and corporate eyes and ears.

Every second of every day, the American people are being spied on by the U.S. government’s vast network of digital Peeping Toms, electronic eavesdroppers and robotic snoops.

Whether you’re walking through a store, driving your car, checking email, or talking to friends and family on the phone, you can be sure that some government agency is listening in and tracking you. This doesn’t even begin to touch on the complicity of the corporate sector, which buys and sells us from cradle to grave, until we have no more data left to mine. These corporate trackers monitor your purchases, web browsing, Facebook posts and other activities taking place in the cyber sphere and share the data with the government.

Just about every branch of the government—from the Postal Service to the Treasury Department and every agency in between—now has its own surveillance sector, authorized to collect data and spy on the American people. Then there are the fusion and counterterrorism centers that gather all of the data from the smaller government spies—the police, public health officials, transportation, etc.—and make it accessible for all those in power.

These government snoops are constantly combing through and harvesting vast quantities of our communications, then storing it in massive databases for years. Once this information—collected illegally and without any probable cause—is ingested into NSA servers, other government agencies can often search through the databases to make criminal cases against Americans that have nothing to do with terrorism or anything national security-related. One Justice Department lawyer called the database the “FBI’s ‘Google.’”

In other words, the NSA, an unaccountable institution filled with unelected bureaucrats, operates a massive database that contains the intimate and personal communications of countless Americans and makes it available to other unelected bureaucrats.

Talk about a system rife for abuse.

Ask the government why it’s carrying out this warrantless surveillance on American citizens, and you’ll get the same Orwellian answer the government has been trotting out since 9/11 to justify its assaults on our civil liberties: to keep America safe.

Yet warrantless mass surveillance by the government and its corporate cohorts hasn’t made America any safer. And it certainly isn’t helping to preserve our freedoms. Frankly, America will never be safe as long as the U.S. government is allowed to shred the Constitution.

Now the government wants us to believe that we have nothing to fear from its mass spying program because they’re only looking to get the “bad” guys who are overseas.

Don’t believe it.

The government’s definition of a “bad” guy is extraordinarily broad, and it results in the warrantless surveillance of innocent, law-abiding Americans on a staggering scale. They are conducting this mass surveillance without a warrant, thus violating the core principles of the Fourth Amendment which protects the privacy of all Americans.

Warrantless mass surveillance of American citizens is wrong, un-American, and unconstitutional.

Clearly, the outlook for reforming the government’s unconstitutional surveillance programs does not look good.

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, whenever the rights of the American people are pitted against the interests of the military/corporate/security complex, “we the people” lose. Unless Congress develops a conscience—or suddenly remembers that they owe their allegiance to the citizenry and not the corporate state—we’re about to lose big.

It’s time to let Section 702 expire or reform the law to ensure that millions and millions of Americans are not being victimized by a government that no longer respects its constitutional limits.

Mark my words: if Congress votes to make the NSA’s vast spying powers permanent, it will be yet another brick in the wall imprisoning us within an electronic concentration camp from which there is no escape.

ABOUT JOHN W. WHITEHEAD

Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead is founder and president of The Rutherford Institute. His new book Battlefield America: The War on the American People (SelectBooks, 2015) is available online at http://www.amazon.com. Whitehead can be contacted at johnw@rutherford.org.

December 11, 2017 Posted by aletho | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Timeless or most popular | Human rights, NSA, United States | 1 Comment

Today They Took My Son

By Rebecca Stead | MEMO | December 11, 2017

The heart wrenching story of a mother’s loss is laid bare in “Today They Took My Son”. Released online yesterday to coincide with International Human Rights Day, Farah Nabulsi’s short film beams the pain and suffering of Palestinians in the occupied West Bank into the home of every viewer.

The story begins with Khalid, “the hero”, riding his bike through the narrow streets of a nameless town, his father’s voice narrating his adventure from somewhere in the background. Reminiscent of many a home video the world over, any sense of familiarity is quickly jolted away as the film cuts to documentary footage of a house demolition, of men in army uniforms surrounding an unknown figure, of the agony of an old, bearded man as he sits among the rubble of his home.

This juxtaposition of home video-style footage, of birthday cakes and makeshift football matches, and of raw, distressing scenes of Khalid’s arrest is an ongoing theme throughout the film. Narrated by his mother, her eyes dark and harrowed, she asks how “they who have taken everything else” could take her son away. “The body refuses to hear what it has always feared,” she says, as she runs in vain through the streets to the spot where Khalid was taken.

Yet these scenes are simultaneously all too recognisable. In fact, “Today They Took My Son” narrates a situation that has become daily reality for many Palestinians living in the West Bank, as the film points out, “every 12 hours, a Palestinian child is detained, interrogated, prosecuted and/or imprisoned”, according to a 2013 UNICEF report. Others have confirmed such figures, with Israeli human rights organisation B’Tselem estimating that as of August 2017 “331 Palestinian minors were held in Israeli prisons”.

The words of Khalid’s mother: “I know the earth will keep spinning around my pain, ignorant of all that has now changed in my world”, strike at the heart of the matter, that such accounts of suffering so often fall on deaf ears among the international community. For Farah Nabulsi, herself a Palestinian living in diaspora in London, “Today They Took My Son” is a vehicle for allowing others to see and feel what Palestinians in the Occupied Territories experience on a regular basis.

Nabulsi explains that although she “always thought she understood the injustices suffered by her people”, it wasn’t until she visited the territories and witnessed the treatment of children that she began to ask “what if that was my child?” As a mother of five, Nabulsi told the Institute for Middle East Understanding in an interview back in May that

There is nothing more excruciating in this life than not being able to help your child.

“These are people whose land was taken, whose homes were taken, whose dignity was taken, whose freedom has been taken, but to also have your children taken?”

What we are seeing is a systematised process of breaking a society through their children.

In the belief that “the arts play a crucial role in changing the world”, Nabulsi hopes that, by documenting the suffering of Palestinians through accessible art forms, awareness and empathy can be brought about. By “giving voice to the silenced”, what the late Edward Said once termed “permission to narrate”, Nabulsi seeks to “rehumanise” the Palestinian situation and provide a counter narrative to that espoused by the powerful lobbyists and international players who seek to deny the Palestinian situation.

“Today They Took My Son” challenges any viewer, irrespective of their geography, family situation or political affiliation, to watch a mother’s heartbreak and not be moved. Her final line “When will he come back? Will he come back? What shall we tell him of the world when he does?” asks us all to consider our silence.

December 11, 2017 Posted by aletho | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture, Timeless or most popular, Video | Human rights, Israel, Palestine, West Bank, Zionism | 1 Comment

Tunisians declare boycott of U.S. ships after Trump’s Jerusalem move

Palestine Information Center – December 11, 2017

TUNIS – A Tunisian labor union on Sunday evening announced its decision to boycott U.S. ships docking at a seaport in the country’s southern region of Sfax following Trump’s recognition, on Wednesday, of Occupied Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.

Spokesman of the Popular Conference for the Palestinians Abroad, Ziad al-Aloul, said on Facebook that the regional executive office of Tunisia’s Trade Unions decided to boycott all American ships docking at Sfax commercial harbor.

As part of the boycott move, workers at the seaport will not empty the shipments onboard boats tied up at Sfax seaport after they had set sail from the U.S.

Prior to the boycott, mass rallies had swept Tunisia with thousands of protesters holding up Palestinian flags and banners. Protesters also burned the U.S. flag and others stepped on images of Israeli flags.

December 11, 2017 Posted by aletho | Economics, Illegal Occupation, Solidarity and Activism | Jerusalem, Tunisia, Zionism | 1 Comment

Khader Adnan seized by Israeli occupation forces, launches immediate hunger strike

Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network- December 11, 2017

Prominent Palestinian leader, organizer and former prisoner and hunger-striker Khader Adnan was seized on Monday morning, 11 December, by Israeli occupation forces at his home in Arraba, Jenin. He immediately launched an open hunger strike to demand his release.

Randa Moussa, his wife, told Palestine Today that he had announced an immediate strike on food, drink and speech after his arrest. She said that four patrols, an armored troop carrier and a jeep surrounded their home at 2:30 am and invaded the home violently, trying to break down the door of the home, and that they hit Adnan on the back and hand, throwing him on the ground before handcuffing him. He was then interrogated in a closed room of the house before being taken away to an undisclosed location.

Adnan, prominent political activist from the town of Arraba near Jenin, has been arrested 10 times and spent six years in Israeli prison, all in administrative detention – imprisonment without charge or trial. In 2012 and 2015, he carried out 66-day and 56-day hunger strikes, respectively, winning his liberation from arbitrary Israeli imprisonment.

The Islamic Jihad movement said in a statement that “the arrest of leaders and popular and national symbols will not weaken our people or break their will…. this is a desperate attempt to suppress the uprising of Jerusalem,” as Palestinians inside and outside Palestine have risen up against US President Donald Trump’s declaration that Jerusalem is the “capital of Israel” in the eyes of the US.

Khader Adnan is a Palestinian and international symbol of steadfastness within the prisons who has inspired widespread international solidarity. Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network demands the immediate release of Khader Adnan and will announce further actions as we receive more news and information from Palestine on Adnan’s detention. The struggle for the freedom of Palestinian political prisoners is at the forefront of the struggle to defend Jerusalem and liberate Palestine.

December 11, 2017 Posted by aletho | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture | Human rights, Israel, Palestine, Zionism | Leave a comment

How Jerusalem issue plays into Iranian, Turkish (and Russian) hands

By M.K. Bhadrakumar | Asia Times | December 11, 2017

Iran has, predictably enough, taken a hard line on the US decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. There were public demonstrations in several Iranian cities following Friday prayers and statements by President Hassan Rouhani and other senior politicians. Notably, the commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, Gen. Mohammad Ali Jafari, warned: “Al-Quds (Jerusalem) will be the place where the Zionist regime will be buried.”

It was Turkey’s reaction that set the mind thinking that the ground beneath our feet is shifting, however. President Recep Erdogan used exceptional language in his response, calling Israel a “terrorist” state. His stance is important for a variety of reasons. Turkey is currently chairing the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) and has called for an emergency summit in Istanbul on Wednesday. This puts Erdogan in the driving seat.

The OIC has traditionally kowtowed to Saudi Arabia. But the Saudi regime finds itself on the defensive at the moment. The unsavory talk in the bazaar is that King Salman and the Crown Prince have played footsie with Trump and Jared Kushner. Erdogan hears bazaar gossip, for sure. Will the OIC recognize Jerusalem as the capital of the state of Palestine? This is a possibility.

Both Iran and Turkey repudiate the notion of Jerusalem being Israel’s capital. Iran has brought into play the politics of “resistance,” whereas Erdogan stresses “We will continue our struggle decisively within the law and democracy.” The distinction must be noted – but then, so must the degree of convergence.

Iran and Turkey have both long wished for an end to Saudi Arabia calling the shots in the Muslim Middle East. Now that the issue of Jerusalem has come to the fore, the Saudi regime must be wary of being seen to coordinate with Israel, or dancing to Trump’s tune.

The Saudi regime is also grappling with the quagmire in Yemen, where it is shedding “Muslim blood.” Pressure will now increase to end the war in there. Rouhani put forth on Sunday two preconditions to normalize ties with Saudi Arabia – stop “bowing” to Israel and, secondly, end the war in Yemen.

December 11, 2017 Posted by aletho | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | Iran, Israel, Jerusalem, Organization of Islamic Cooperation, Palestine, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, United States, Zionism | Leave a comment

The Delusions of Washington-Riyadh Ruling Elite and the Journalists Who Feed Them

By Richard Silverstein | Tikun Olam | Dember 9, 2017

NYT’ pro-Israel talking heads: David Makovsky and Aaron David Miller

In the aftermath of Trump’s disastrous recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, the spin from Washington and Riyadh–and the journalists and think tank analysts only too eager be spun–has been outrageous. The level of sheer delusion is stupendous. This post will offer an anatomy of delusion and why it means only more suffering and bloodshed for both Arabs and Israelis.

The Times Shills for the Two-State Delusion

The NY Times, ever the newspaper of record for the élite and their paid emissaries, purports to debate whether the two-state solution remains viable in light of Trump’s seeming endorsement of Israeli sovereignty over Jerusalem. Who does Mark Landler quote as sources? Why, think tank talking heads who earn their keep from the Israel Lobby and its donors. Landler quotes no less than four sources affiliated with Lobby, all of whom endorse a two-state solution. And none of whom have ever offered any serious analysis or balanced discussion of the one-state solution: Martin Indyk, David Makovsky, Scott Anderson, and Daniel Levy.

How many Palestinian or Arab sources does he quote? One, Saeb Erekat. And he doesn’t quote anything original from Erekat. He merely quotes statements the Palestinian made to other media outlets. He begins with Erekat saying:

… Erekat… a steadfast advocate for a Palestinian state, said in an interview on Thursday that Mr. Trump and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel “have managed to destroy that hope.” He embraced a radical shift in the P.L.O.’s goals — to a single state, but with Palestinians enjoying the same civil rights as Israelis, including the vote.

“They’ve left us with no option,” he said. “This is the reality. We live here. Our struggle should focus on one thing: equal rights.”

Once Landler lays this out, he must debunk it immediately. And he does:

Mr. Erekat’s change of heart is unlikely to change Palestinian policy. The dream of a Palestinian state is too deeply ingrained in a generation of its leaders for the Palestinian Authority to abandon it now. Israel would be unlikely to accede to equal rights, because granting a vote to millions of Palestinians would eventually lead to the end of Israel as a Jewish state.

Who is a NY Times reporter who knows little about what Palestinians believe, to say that a two-state solution is “too deeply ingrained” to be abandoned? And note who he points to as the arbiters of what Palestinians accept or believe? “Leaders,” by whom he means the doddering old kleptocratic octogenarians who have sold out the Palestinian cause for decades. Landler makes no attempt to reach out to Palestinian activists or academics or indigenous NGOs who know much better what the Palestinian street is thinking. Does Landler think that only leaders matter? Does he think leaders this corrupt and out of touch can merely wave a magic wand and four million Palestinians will follow them like the Pied Piper of Hamelin?

Further, why would Israel’s objections to “equal rights” and a one-state solution be a reason this doesn’t become the eventual resolution of the issue? Why do we assume that Israel will always be calling the shots? Did Serbia call the shots regarding Kosovo or Bosnia after NATO intervened? Why does the resistance of a nation which threatens to take the entire region to the brink of Armageddon become an immovable obstacle? The sheer chutzpah of such an assumption is enormous.

Later, the article offers the administration’s rebuttal of the Palestinian perspective on Trump’s proclamation:

Administration officials strenuously reject the argument that Mr. Trump has foreclosed a two-state solution… He studiously avoided taking a position on the eventual borders or sovereignty of Jerusalem.

That is either an ignorant or disingenuous statement. When you recognize Israeli sovereignty over Jerusalem (not over “west Jerusalem,” as Trump could have said) and you omit any reference to Palestinian sovereignty over East Jerusalem, then you’ve taken a crystal clear position on borders and sovereignty. You’ve said Israel has sovereignty and the Palestinians don’t. If you believe otherwise, you’re a fool or a villain (or both).

Then Landler chimes in with an affirmation of Trump’s claims of even-handedness:

Beyond the president’s words, there were other signs he is serious about his intentions. On the same day that he signed his name with a John Hancock-like flourish to a proclamation recognizing Jerusalem as the capital, he quietly signed another document that will delay the move of the American Embassy to the city for at least six months — and probably much longer.

How does Trump’s recognition that he can’t immediately move the embassy for a thousand logistical reasons equate to Trump being “serious in his intentions” to be fair and balanced in weighing the claims of Palestinians? Should Palestinians view the delay in moving the embassy as a gift to them? Something that has any real benefit or meaning to them?

At this point, Landler gives voice to his first pro-Israel talking head, Martin Indyk, who makes this blindingly astute observation:

“Avoiding a move of the embassy is a way of avoiding geographic definition,” said Martin S. Indyk, a former American ambassador to Israel. “Avoiding any geographic definition of their recognition of Jerusalem looks like their effort to keep the peace process alive.”

It’s hardly much of an affirmation by Indyk of Trump’s peace process. But he does seem to believe that by not moving the embassy, the U.S. believes it’s offered the Palestinians something. When of course, it’s nothing and will have no value to any Palestinian.

Landler’s coup de grâce in terms of marshalling pro-Israel analysts is David Makovsky. And his comments have to be read to be believed:

… Some longtime Middle East observers said Mr. Erekat’s talk of a one-state solution reflected anger rather than a watershed change in the Palestinian position. Given Israel’s probable rejection of equal rights, American and Israeli supporters of a two-state solution said that option, for all intents and purposes, remained the only game in town.

“I don’t want to minimize the hurt the Palestinians feel,” said David Makovsky, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. “But there was a duality to Trump’s message that has gotten lost.”

Mr. Trump, he said, was not closing the door to negotiations on borders and sovereignty. “Both parts should be heard,” he said. While he questioned the timing of the move, he said the Palestinians could return to the table when tempers cool.

“Right now their anger is such that they probably can’t hear this,” Mr. Makovsky said. “But if he presents a plan in the first quarter, are you not going to want to hear what it is? The Palestinians still think Trump’s enough of a bulldozer that if he gave something to the Israelis on a Wednesday, he’s capable of giving something to the Palestinians on a Thursday.”

It’s quite amazing that a pro-Israel shill like Makovsky who knows the two-state solution is dead and knows that no one in power in Israel or the U.S. believes in it, can still sell a journalist like Landler a bill of goods. And note that Landler only quotes analysts who support a two-state solution and a PLO official who also has supported it till now. There are no sources here offering an alternative point of view. None. Which means this article is journalism in bad faith, whether the reporters who compiled it were aware of this bias or not.

Note that the strongest adjective Makovsky can muster to describe Palestinians emotions is “hurt.” No, hurt is when you skin your knee or sprain your pinkie. What Trump did to Palestinians is more like a shot to the gut; a paralyzing blow that deprives them of any hope and drives them into the arms of radical extremists.

I also like Makovsky’s assurance that Palestinians will return to talks once their hot-headed tempers cool down. Those pesky Palestinians always let their tribal emotions get the better of them. If they could only realize they have no choice. That what Trump offers is as good as they’re going to get. Then they’d get down to business.

The sheer ignorance of Makovsky assuming that the Palestinians will have natural curiosity about Trump’s offer and want to come back to the table to hear it is amazing. Why would Palestinians care what Trump offered them? Why would they attribute any value to it given his current and past statements? And just what does Makovsky believe Trump is going to give the Palestinians on that proverbial Thursday?

Finally, Landler ends his piece quoting the “liberal” pundit of the bunch, the guy the reporter probably feels covers his bases on the left, Daniel Levy. The only problem is that Levy isn’t “on the left.” He’s a liberal Zionist, neither progressive or leftist. And Levy too supports a two state solution. So where is the diversity of opinion this subject demands?

“It’s hard to see how you can go down that route without at some stage divesting yourself of a semblance of a self-governing authority,” said Daniel Levy, the London-based president of the U.S./Middle East Project. “You’ve got to call time on the Palestinian Authority, which never became a state.”

Instead, Mr. Levy said he believed that the peace process, and the Palestinians, were in a “transitional period,” in which the two-state solution had failed for now. But he added, “what people have done can be undone.”

Got that? Two states are dead “for now.” But not forever. That should give Palestinians hope that at some point in the vague future we men of good faith can revive it; or rather pull it out of the dustheap of failed Middle East plans, dust it off, and pretend it’s as good as new.

And what does Levy mean “what’s done can be undone?” How do you undo the death of thousands? How do you undo fierce rage against a sociopathic American president and his narcissistic Saudi and Israeli buddies who believe they can put the Palestinians on ice and ignore their legitimate claims to land, rights and nation?

The Saudi Delusion

Speaking of the Saudis, this Reuters story conveys the views of the ruling Crown Prince on these matters. If anything, they’re even more delusional than Trump or Netanyahu’s views. Before I offer a sampling, it’s worth hearing about the plan Trump is offering (and which the Saudis are endorsing):

As told to Abbas, the proposal included establishing “a Palestinian entity” in Gaza as well as the West Bank administrative areas A and B and 10 percent of area C, which contains Jewish settlements, a third Palestinian official said.

Jewish settlements in the West Bank would stay, there would be no right of return, and Israel would remain responsible for the borders, he said.

The proposal appears to differ little from existing arrangements in the West Bank, widening Palestinian control but falling far short of their minimum national demands.

A Palestinian entity. Not even a state. And even if someone wanted to call it a state, it wouldn’t be. It would be a bantustan of Palestinian villages surrounded by massive Israeli settlements. If the proposal essentially ratifies a rotten status quo, why would any Palestinian be willing to accept it?

Here is the real zinger, displaying the absolute cluelessness of the Saudis involved with this charade:

A Saudi source said he believed an understanding on Israeli-Palestinian peace would nonetheless begin to emerge in the coming weeks.

“Do not underestimate the businessman in (Trump). He has always called it the ultimate deal,” the source said, declining to be named because of the sensitivity of the subject.

“I don’t think our government is going to accept that unless it has something sweetened in the pipeline which (King Salman and the crown prince) could sell to the Arab world – that the Palestinians would have their own state.”

In other words, because Trump offers some blather about an ultimate deal, but refuses to offer the Palestinians any details other than assure them it would be “something they would like,” then we’re to assume that it would be “sweet” enough for MbS to sell (the Saudi’s apt words, not mine) to the Palestinians. I don’t know who’s worse, Trump or MbS. It’s worse than the blind leading the blind. It’s the deaf, dumb, and blind leading the deaf, dumb and blind.

The Reuters article too suffers from a surfeit of sources who cynically ratify the status quo and the consensus as defined by the Middle East and Beltway elites:

Most Arab states are unlikely to object to Trump’s announcement because they find themselves more aligned with Israel than ever, particularly on countering Iran, said Shadi Hamid, senior fellow at Brookings Institution in Washington,

“If Saudi officials, including the crown prince himself, were particularly concerned with Jerusalem’s status, they would presumably have used their privileged status as a top Trump ally and lobbied the administration to hold off on such a needlessly toxic move,” he wrote in an article published in The Atlantic.

“It’s unlikely Trump would have followed through if the Saudis had drawn something resembling a red line.”

Even if this is true (and it very possibly is), why doesn’t anyone bother to say the obvious: that if the Saudis wish to betray the Palestinians and abandon their role as guardians of the region’s Muslim holy places (including Jerusalem), they themselves will be abandoned by the Arab and Muslim world. Why do the eminences grise think that the Saudis can act in any way they choose without paying any consequences in terms of regional influence?

In truth, the Saudis will make themselves irrelevant if they force this deal down the Palestinians throat. They will force those Palestinians who reject it to turn to Iran and its Shiite allies like Hezbollah. They will turn Hamas into leaders of the Palestinian resistance after the PA has abandoned its responsibility to defend Palestinian rights. Even those Sunni states like Jordan or Egypt who might feel compelled to go along with the Saudi plan, will do so with tepid enthusiasm. And at the first sign of failure, they will bolt from the stables like horses staring at a forest fire. Leaving MbS alone with his buddies, Trump and Netanyahu (who by then may be long gone as prime minister–perhaps even behind bars).

December 11, 2017 Posted by aletho | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Timeless or most popular | Israel, Jerusalem, New York Times, Palestine, Saudi Arabia, United States, Zionism | Leave a comment

USA-DPRK: Torpedoing the Outcome of the 2005 Joint Statement

By Konstantin Asmolov – New Eastern Outlook – 11.12.2017

To resolve the nuclear crisis in 2003, six-party talks were established, on which three main groups were formed. The first camp was North Korea, the second – the United States, joined by Japan. The third, the most important and the most numerous, was made up of Russia, China and the “Roh Moo – hyun’s ROK”, a camp of pragmatists who made every effort to ensure that the talks were negotiations, not a series of mutual demarches.

North Koreans immediately filed four demands, under which Pyongyang is prepared not to use nuclear weapons – the signing of the US non-aggression package; establishment of diplomatic relations with the DPRK; ensuring economic cooperation with Japan and South Korea; providing North Korea with light water reactors for energy.

Apparently, these requirements were not very different from what was stipulated in the Framework Agreement, but the American delegation, led by the same Kelly, took a very tough stance. However, the US immediately rose to a “non-negotiable” position from the category “All or nothing,” a complete, confirmed and unconditional liquidation of the nuclear program. In translation from “diplomatic speech” it meant: the DPRK freezes the ENTIRE nuclear program and liquidates the nuclear infrastructure created in the DPRK, and then the United States will check whether the program is really frozen and decide what to give Pyongyang in return. At the same time, the dismantling of the facilities was set at 3 months, which was certainly not feasible, and the idea of the need to prove complete liquidation immediately reminded everyone of the Iraqi experience – but stating problem made it possible to remove the issue of the Americans’ failure to comply with their agreed part of the Agreement Framework. It is clear that in such a situation negotiations were difficult, and the academic circles regarded as a success the fact that the negotiating parties did not quarrel immediately after the first round.

The result of the second round was also the agreement to continue negotiations. However, this stage ended Pyongyang’s attempt at the very last moment to make changes in the joint communiqué on the results of the talks, because of which the closing ceremony was postponed for several hours. The final document was not adopted again.

According to unofficial sources, the United States considered the talks an opportunity to create a united ‘coalition of pressure’ against North Korea and declared in an ultimatum to the DPRK that it should freeze its nuclear program and return to the treaty, or else ….

The northerners responded to “or not” with their ‘bold proposal’ (according to some reports, it sounded something like this: “And what will you do if we hold a nuclear detonation?”). After that, the negotiations were stopped, and the DPRK’s position was presented as extremism and nuclear blackmail, although the demands of the North were to sign a nonaggression pact, diplomatic recognition of the DPRK and to give it more opportunities to participate in international trade. For blackmail, this seems even less than the previous demands of the DPRK, which sought financial assistance in exchange for abandoning the nuclear program.

China’s perseverance had borne fruit, as the Americans came with a specific proposal on the third round of talks on June 23-24, 2004, according to which North Korea could be provided with economic favors in exchange for freezing the nuclear program and transferring North Korea’s nuclear facilities to be under temporary international management of a commission of five powers or the IAEA.

This was a departure from the original American position, but by the end of the three-day talks the situation returned to “No deal”. Nevertheless, North Korea has expressed its readiness to freeze and even liquidate its nuclear facilities on the terms of lifting sanctions and providing energy assistance (2 million kW per year), but in general there was consensus that the freeze of nuclear development would be the first step in the transformation of the peninsula into a nuclear-free zone.

The fourth round of talks was scheduled for September 2004, but was only held in September 2005. This was partly due to the re-election of George W. Bush, after which it became clear that the balance of power in the negotiations will not change much. Partly with the fact that some USA State Department officials made a number of statements that even in the case of nuclear disarmament of the DPRK, the “Korean problem” will remain a problem due to the lack of democracy and respect for human rights.

On February 10, 2005, North Korea withdrew from the six-party talks and for the first time recognized the creation of its own nuclear weapons. “Our nuclear weapons are completely defensive, and they will remain as a force of nuclear deterrence,” said a spokesman for the DPRK Foreign Ministry. And on March, 3rd, 2005, the DPRK declared, that it no longer considers itself bound by the 1999 moratorium on the testing of medium-range ballistic missiles: “Dialogue with the USA ceased in 2001 with the coming to power of the Bush administration, which means that we have the right to resume the tests.”

An important detail of the fourth round of talks, which took place in two stages: July 26 – August 7 and September 13-19, 2005, was the replacement of the head of the American delegation (former Ambassador to the ROK Christopher Hill) and an abundance of bilateral consultations, including North Korean and American. This fact of the changing of the negotiating structure spoke about the greater flexibility of the participants in principle and about the desire of the two main parties to start direct communication. Actually, this is exactly what Pyongyang had been longing for: its main demand at this stage was that the US “recognize North Korea as a partner and treat it with respect.”

The fourth round ended with a very important document the Joint Statement, which fixed the principles for solving the nuclear problem on the Korean Peninsula: the sides agreed on coordinated steps for the practical implementation of the agreements reached on a phased basis: “The North Korean side declares its right to peaceful use of atomic energy. Other negotiators expressed their recognition of this right and agreed to discuss the issue of granting the DPRK light water reactors at the right time.” In addition, the DPRK reaffirmed its “commitment to abandon all nuclear weapons and ongoing nuclear programs, return as soon as possible to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, as well as under IAEA inspections.” China, the ROK, the USA, Japan and Russia, in turn, announced their intention to provide Pyongyang with energy assistance.

The fifth round of talks began on 9-11 November 2005 in an optimistic atmosphere (Pyongyang promised to postpone tests of nuclear weapons), but the DPRK was interrupted after Washington actually torpedoed the decisions of the joint statement by conducting a whole package of ‘hostile actions’: a special Congressional decision to allocate money for subversive activities within North Korea, the appointment of a special representative on the issue of human rights in the DPRK and sanctions against eight North Korean companies unfoundedly accused of money laundering, drug trafficking and other criminal activities. According to US officials, the funds received from the activities of these companies were used to finance the DPRK’s nuclear programs.

In addition, the US froze North Korean accounts at Delta Asia Bank (Macao) for $ 25 million. The seizure of North Korean money was perceived as evidence of their criminal origin, but there is one important nuance. This action was carried out in accordance with the Patriot Act, adopted in the USA on the wave of the fight against terrorism after September 11, 2001, to facilitate the conduction of investigative procedures. In particular, with regard to money that could have been used by terrorists, the act presupposed the possibility of anticipating the seizure of funds in order to make them inaccessible if they were really criminal. In other words, first to seize accounts that seemed suspicious, and then deal with them. However, in the eyes of the world community, which is accustomed to the fact that accounts are seized only when their criminal origin is confirmed, this fact has become “evidence of the criminal nature of the North Korean regime.”

North Korea took this seizure as an attempt to cut it off from the world financial system and give a signal to banks conducting business with the DPRK not to do it anymore because of possible problems with the US, especially because subsequent developments have led to a fear of such consequences, Asian banks have virtually ceased to cooperate with the DPRK.

It is difficult to say whether this was a deliberate attempt to torpedo the success of the Joint Statement, but North Korea’s reaction was predictable and it once again ‘slammed the door’, saying that until the sanctions are lifted, there will be no negotiations, especially since there was no serious evidence that North Korean money was ‘dirty’.

After that, there was a long pause at the talks, as the results of their fourth round were in fact disavowed. On December 20, 2005, the Central Telegraph Agency of Korea reported that “When the Bush administration shut down supplying light water reactors, we will actively develop an independent nuclear power industry based on graphite reactors with a capacity of 50 and 200 megawatts.” Thus, the DPRK denounced its previous promises to abandon all nuclear programs in exchange for security guarantees and economic assistance, and unlike similar actions by the US, this statement is constantly used as an example of Pyongyang’s treachery and unpredictability.

Visibly, the first stage of the six-party talks does not fit into the pattern “The United States is making concessions, and the DPRK is breaking promises over and over again.” Rather – on the contrary. Moreover, the attempt to cut off the DPRK from the world financial system, in the author’s view, buried not only the outcome of the agreement reached in the framework of the 2005 Joint Statement, but also the possibility of voluntary denuclearization after such actions by Washington towards the DPRK, apparently, concluded and more serious compromises were not reached.

Konstantin Asmolov, Ph.D. (Hist.) is a leading researcher at the Center for Korean Studies of the Institute of the Far East of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

December 11, 2017 Posted by aletho | Militarism, Timeless or most popular | North Korea, United States | Leave a comment

US ‘Sanctions Ahead of Talks’ Diplomacy: Cunning Plan to Kill INF Treaty

By Alex GORKA | Strategic Culture Foundation | 11.12.2017

The Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty – one of the most significant arms-reduction accomplishments of the Cold War – marked its thirtieth anniversary on December 8. It was signed by Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev in 1987 to ban US and Soviet ground-launched ballistic and cruise missiles with ranges between 500 and 5,500 kilometers (300 and 3,300 miles). Some 2,700 missiles and their launchers have been destroyed. The landmark treaty has served well to prevent a nuclear arms race but today it is the weakest link in the system of nuclear arms control and its future is uncertain.

The United States is set to impose new sanctions against Russia over Moscow’s alleged violation of the INF Treaty. The US Commerce Department will introduce punitive measure against Russian companies that have provided technology to help develop a new weapon. The December 8 announcement made by the State Department was the first of its sort by President Donald Trump’s administration.

The decision is taken after a lengthy review undertaken by the National Security Council and made public ahead of a meeting of the Special Verification Commission (SVC), the implementing body for the treaty, to bring together US and Russian officials and experts. Past meetings to discuss controversial issues have failed to accomplish results. The missile in question is the so-called Novator 9M729 (SSC-8). Washington alleges the missile has already been deployed in at least two Russian regions.

In addition to the new sanctions, the Defense Department will begin research and development on a new nuclear cruise missile. The fiscal 2018 defense policy bill is authorizing $58 million to develop a new INF-busting road-mobile cruise missile capable of carrying conventional or nuclear warheads. It should be noted that it would cost billions of dollars and take years to field. One can hardly imagine a US ally in Europe or Asia, agreeing to deploy such a weapon on its territory.

Even more provocatively, in the same budget, Congress has directed the Defense Department to report on the cost to convert existing missile systems, such as the missile-defense interceptor SM-3 currently deployed in Romania, into medium-range nuclear systems. This is a validation of Russia’s concern that the ground-based missile defense systems being deployed in Europe can be used for intermediate range offensive missiles. The bill is also calling on the president to submit to Congress a plan to impose US sanctions on Russians responsible for “ordering or facilitating non-compliance” with the treaty.

The United States first formally accused Russia of developing a missile in violation of the INF back in 2014, and has repeated the accusations several times since then. Earlier this year, Washington said the missile was operational and had been deployed.

Moscow has denied the accusations as groundless and insisted it is committed to the INF pact. Russia said on Dec. 9 it was fully committed to a Cold War-era agreement.

Moscow has its own list of complaints over the US non-compliance. The list includes the drones that can deliver ordnance at ranges between 500 and 5,500 km, and target missiles used for ballistic missile defense (BMD) tests, which have a range exceeding the limits imposed by the treaty and can be potentially weaponized. US drones are cruise missiles because they fall inside the definition of cruise missiles in treaty Article II, paragraph 2: “an unmanned, self-propelled vehicle that sustains flight through the use of aerodynamic lift over most of its flight path.”

Russia’s special concern is the use of Mk-41 VLS launcher as an element of the AEGIS Ashore missile defense system operational in Romania and to be deployed in Poland next year. A ship-borne version is designed to fire both Tomahawk cruise missiles and SM-3 interceptors. It gives the US the ability to launch intermediate-range cruise missiles from land. The treaty bans the deployment in Europe of the ground-based intermediate range capable launchers.

It’s worth noting that some elected officials in the United States are setting the stage for withdrawal from the treaty. In July, Senator Tom Cotton, who is a member of the Armed Services Committee, said the US should sidestep the accord. In his speech at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C., the senator urged the administration to transfer American missile technologies to allies, particularly Poland, to help develop their own mid-range missiles, despite the fact that only the US and Russia are signatories to the INF Treaty. “The time is coming to consider whether the US should stay in the INF treaty, even if Russia came back into compliance,” he said at the time. Earlier in 2017, the US government offered to help its South Korean counterparts develop new longer-range ballistic missiles that American forces would themselves be unable to employ.

Much has been said about the problems related to the INF Treaty. True, there are problems that should be addressed and the SVC is the right forum to do so. With the treaty torn up, the prospects for a strategic offensive arms treaty after the New START expires in 2021 become blurred. The INF and the New START are the only arms control treaties remaining in force to limit US and Russia’s nuclear forces. Without them, an arms race becomes inevitable. Instead of engaging in futile exchanges of accusations, the parties should jointly work out additional verification measures to eliminate mutual suspicions. That’s what should be done. The US states its goal is to have the treaty in force but it looks like it wants it on its own terms, giving it an exclusive right to define what meets the treaty’s provisions and what does not. Otherwise, how can one explain the fact that the statement about imposing the INF-related sanctions on Russia came before the SVC talks started?

This is an act of intimidation and outright pressure unacceptable for Moscow and the State Department is aware of it. The Russia’s reaction is quite predictable. At the October 2017 Valdai Club meeting Russian President Vladimir Putin said: “If someone… wishes to withdraw from the treaty, for example, our American partners, our response would be… immediate and reciprocal.” The use of ultimatums is a wrong language to speak with Moscow and Washington knows it well.

Then the imposition of sanctions is nothing but a provocative act, pursuing the goal of shifting the blame on Russia for something the US wants to be done – dumping the treaty. A unilateral withdrawal would not be supported internationally and Washington will face problems with allies. But if the US succeeded in creating the image of a victim, which has to do something about the Russia’s “nefarious” plans, it would eat the cake and have it. This is “a pot calling the kettle black” policy. Otherwise, the announcement of sanctions would not precede the talks.

December 11, 2017 Posted by aletho | Deception, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Militarism, Russophobia, Timeless or most popular | INF treaty, Russia, United States | Leave a comment

IsraelGate: The Arrogance of Jewish Power in the United States

By Philip Giraldi | American Herald Tribune | December 11, 2017

The revelation that the Trump transition team colluded with Israel to sabotage a foreign policy initiative by the Obama White House made the news, sort of, when the story broke at the end of November. But it has since died, pushed down by the relentless pressure in the media to “disappear” all things critical of Israel or its behavior.

Thanks to the ongoing investigation of Russiagate by Special Counsel Robert Mueller, we Americans have learned that prior to President Donald Trump’s inauguration, some of his closest advisers responded to Israeli solicitation to derail a United Nations vote on illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories. The effort to help Israel was implemented behind the scenes and in opposition to the official U.S. foreign policy.

Possible collusion with a foreign state has produced an avalanche of negative press coverage and congressional baying for blood related to Moscow and its President Vladimir Putin but similar action on the part of Israel has produced little to nothing in terms of a response from the Fourth Estate and political class.

Perhaps not too surprising, the story has actually taken a different turn, producing some opinion pieces, mostly from American Jews, insisting that Jared Kushner, the presidential son-in-law who was behind the effort, did the right thing because it was done “for Israel.” It is a sure sign of the invulnerability of those exercising Jewish power in the United States that something very close to treason involving a foreign country can be applauded with impunity. This is in spite of the fact that successful attempts to bury the story and even to justify what was done inevitably raises the issue of “dual loyalty” on the part of some American Jews who clearly see Israel as something that has to be protected and cherished even when it means doing serious damage to the American people and U.S. national interests.

One of the most illustrative opinion pieces written by an “Israel firster” appeared recently in Forward, America’s leading Jewish news and information website. It was entitled “Jared Kushner Was Right To ‘Collude’ with Russia – because he did it for Israel” before it was changed in the online edition to “Was Kushner doing the right thing?” The author, Daniel Kohn, lives in San Diego California. The article is particularly interesting as it makes a grotesque convoluted effort to not only justify what took place but also to sing the praises of Israel and all its works.

The extent to which the op-ed is characteristic of American-Jewish thinking regarding Israel is, of course, difficult to estimate but I would suspect that most Jews in the U.S., who are generally self-described progressives, would find much of it rather dubious, though many would be reluctant to openly criticize or counter the arguments being made for fear of ostracism by their community.

Kohn constructs a straw man around the fact that previous incoming presidential administrations have communicated with foreign governments during their transition periods. This is certainly true and even sensible. But, at the same time, meeting representatives of other countries cannot be allowed to undercut the policies being pursued by the White House team that is actually still in power. In this case, President Barack Obama had made clear that his opposition to the Israeli settlement expansion would be expressed through U.S. abstention on a United Nations Security Council vote condemning such activity.

In response, the government of Israel asked Jared Kushner to use Trump’s potential leverage to bring about a veto or delay in the resolution. Kushner clearly approached his task with some zeal, instructing incoming National Security Adviser Mike Flynn to contact the U.N. delegations of the countries on the Security Council to do just that, undercutting what Obama was doing. That is how the phone call from Flynn to Russian Ambassador Sergei Kislyak came about.

Kohn also critiques the applicability of the Logan Act, which blocks American citizens from negotiating with foreign governments on behalf of the United States by claiming that it “would likely not be a successful litigation path.” He argues that Kushner was “already acting in an official capacity,” which is flat out untrue as he had no official status. If Kushner had in fact been an honest broker he would have gone through the State Department, but he was instead working covertly to subvert a policy being pursued by the legally-in-power President of the United States. There is no other way to look at it.

Finally, Kohn argues that the U.N. Resolution 2334 that was approved in spite of Flynn’s call, gives the Palestinians both “more leverage” and “moral authority” in any future negotiations with the Israelis. He sees this as a bad thing, that Kushner was therefore rightly “pursuing a moral agenda that would help Israel’s security.” This is really the crux of the matter as Kohn sees the Middle East in very simple terms: Israeli dominance is a good thing, enabling Netanyahu to dictate both the pace and consequences arising from the endless peace talks that only continue to sustain land thefts and human rights violations by powerful Jews in dealing with virtually powerless Arabs. That is just the way Kohn and the Israelis want things to be, and, unfortunately President Donald Trump has now made clear that he endorses “that reality.”

There are altogether too many American Jews like Daniel Kohn who reflexively think as he does. Israelis are cheering in Jerusalem over Donald Trump’s surrender to them over the location of their capital, but real Americans should be mourning. The arrogance of Jewish power in the United States, exemplified by Kushner in regards to the United Nations and more recently concerning Jerusalem, means that U.S. citizens will be less secure when they travel, American businesses will have to think twice when seeking overseas markets, and diplomats and soldiers working in foreign Embassies and military bases will become targets. If there is an actual positive American interest concealed somewhere in the packages of concessions to Israel, I certainly cannot find it.

*(Benjamin Netanyahu, Jared Kushner and U.S. President Donald Trump are seen during their meeting at the King David hotel in Jerusalem. Monday, May 22, 2017. Image credit: Kobi Gideon / GPO/ Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs/ flickr)

December 11, 2017 Posted by aletho | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Russophobia, Timeless or most popular | Daniel Kohn, Israel, IsraelGate, Middle East, Palestine, United States, Zionism | Leave a comment

CNN pundit David Frum on fake news: Trust blunder-prone media as they expose Trump

RT | December 11, 2017

Factually inaccurate reports are a natural by-product of fighting Donald Trump’s “system of lies”, CNN pundit David Frum has reassured the public. The Atlantic senior editor’s comments were made in the wake of false reporting by ABC and CNN.

“The mistakes are precisely the reason people should trust the media,” Frum told Brian Stelter, on CNN’s ‘Reliable Sources’ program.

He insisted that “the worst mistakes that press organizations have made in their coverage of [US President Donald] Trump has precisely occurred in their overzealous effort to be fair to the president.”

Frum’s comments come after two major news networks, CNN and ABC, each had to correct “bombshell” reports that showed Trump and his administration in a poor light.

Frum, who is The Atlantic’s editor and was a speech-writer for President George W. Bush, argued that Trump and his supporters are “not well-placed to complain” about the false media reports, because they themselves are engaged in a “system of lies.”

“Mistakes occur in the process of exposing the lies,” Frum claimed. “The liars then complain about the mistakes that are investigating them.”

Likening CNN reporters to astronomers committed to the “discovery of truth,” Frum urged news consumers to trust the press, but also to consult a variety of sources, in order to avoid close-minded thinking. However, Frum warned CNN’s viewers against watching Fox News, which he said did not have “an interest in finding truth.”

Several American news networks have been on the defensive after back-to-back “bombshell” stories about Trump and his associates were quickly revealed as ‘nothing burgers’.

Brian Ross, chief investigative correspondent for ABC News, erroneously reported on December 1 that Michael Flynn, the former national security adviser, would testify that Trump had directed him to make contact with Russian officials while Trump was still only a candidate for the presidency.

The story was considered so damaging to US political and economic stability that the stock market took a hit after it was published. In fact, Flynn had been asked to contact Russian diplomats only after Trump won the election.

Ross received a four-week suspension from ABC after the widely-publicized story, which had been hailed as conclusive proof of Trump’s so-called collusion with Russia. Such contact is nothing more than routine procedure by an incoming administration.

CNN painted itself into a similar, factually dubious corner when it reported that congressional investigators had been provided an email that suggested Trump had been offered early access to leaked Democratic National Committee emails.

The story, which was heralded by CNN as evidence of a nefarious Trump-Wikileaks-Russia trifecta, fell apart within hours, after it was revealed that the news network had misreported the date of the email, which had been sent by a random Trump supporter forwarding publicly available information.

Although it corrected its story, CNN has since avoided explaining how it got the facts so wrong. Its initial report cited “multiple” anonymous sources. However, during his Sunday program, Stelter did acknowledge that the report was “a black eye for CNN.”

December 11, 2017 Posted by aletho | Deception, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Russophobia | ABC, CNN, David Frum, United States | Leave a comment

CNN refuses to reveal names of “multiple sources” who spread Wikileaks-Trump fake news story

By Alex Christoforou | The Duran | December 11, 2107

Last week was a very bad week for fake news CNN.

CNN was embarrassed (to say the least) after completely screwing up what it dubbed a “bombshell” Trump collusion story, by misreading email dates, and confusing a “4” with a “14”.

CNN had claimed that an email sent to the Trump campaign, containing hacked documents and encryption key, was dated September 4th, days before being released to the public.

This was the smoking gun proving Trump-Wikileaks collusion and by extension Trump-Russia collusion. Only problem was that the real date of the email was ten days after Wikileaks publicly released its leaked documents. Zerohedge noted at the time…

As it turns out, the email was dated Sept. 14. The documents had actually been made publicly available earlier that day. Wikileaks was merely trying to draw the Trump campaign’s attention to the documents.

So, two of CNN’s ace political reporters managed to write a “bombshell” story, which presumably made it through at least one round of edits, and was also probably reviewed by the network’s legal department, without anybody double-checking the date of the email – the crux of the entire. For what it’s worth, CNN said it based its story on the accounts of two sources who had seen the email. But this just highlights the dangers of relying on second-hand information, and should make readers question the next anonymously sourced story they see.

CNN corrected its story after the Washington Post, which managed to obtain a copy of the email, pointed out the error, which transformed the CNN story from a “bombshell” into essentially a nonstory.

Progressive media commentator, Jimmy Dore tore apart CNN, and its fake news cohorts MSNBC, CBS and ABC for not only spreading the fake news, but not having the integrity to issue a proper retraction… at the very least CNN should, as The Intercept’s Glenn Greenwald points out, expose who the “multiple sources” for the story were, and how such multiple sources all misread the date.

It is, of course, completely plausible that one source might innocently misread a date on a document. But how is it remotely plausible that multiple sources could all innocently and in good faith misread the date in exactly the same way, all to cause to be disseminated a blockbuster revelation about Trump/Russia/WikiLeaks collusion? This is the critical question that CNN simply refuses to answer. In other words, CNN refuses to provide the most minimal transparency to enable the public to understand what happened here.

*****

Think about what this means. It means that at least two – and possibly more – sources, which these media outlets all assessed as credible in terms of having access to sensitive information, all fed the same false information to multiple news outlets at the same time. For multiple reasons, the probability is very high that these sources were Democratic members of the House Intelligence Committee (or their high-level staff members), which is the committee that obtained access to Trump Jr.’s emails, although it’s certainly possible that it’s someone else. We won’t know until these news outlets deign to report this crucial information to the public: which “multiple sources” acted jointly to disseminate incredibly inflammatory, false information to the nation’s largest news outlets?

December 11, 2017 Posted by aletho | Deception, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Russophobia | ABC, CBS, CNN, MSNBC | 1 Comment

Ron Unz: JFK Assassination, Iranian Channel Four TV

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Jack Ruby: Israel’s Smoking Gun

BY LAURENT GUYÉNOT • UNZ REVIEW • NOVEMBER 13, 2021

By a strange paradox, most Kennedy researchers who believe that Oswald was “just a patsy” spend an awful lot of time exploring his biography. This is about as useful as investigating Osama bin Laden for solving 9/11. Any serious quest for the real assassins of JFK should start by investigating the man who shot Oswald at pointblank in the stomach at 11:21 a.m. on September 24, 1963 in the Dallas Police station, thereby sealing the possibility that a judicial inquiry would draw attention to the inconsistencies of the charge against him, and perhaps expose the real perpetrators. One would normally expect the Dallas strip-club owner Jack Ruby to be the most investigated character by Kennedy truthers. But that is not the case.

Of course, it is perfectly normal that Chief Justice Earl Warren, when Ruby told him on June 7, 1964, “I have been used for a purpose,” failed to ask him who had used him and for what purpose.[1] But what about independent investigators? Are only readers of the Forward (“News That Matters To American Jews”) worthy of being informed that “Lee Harvey Oswald’s Killer ‘Jack Ruby’ Came From Strong Jewish Background,” and that he told his rabbi Hillel Silverman that he “did it for the Jewish people”? … continue

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