Aletho News

ΑΛΗΘΩΣ

Douma: Part 1 – Deception In Plain Sight

Media Lens | April 25, 2018

UK corporate media are under a curious kind of military occupation. Almost all print and broadcast media now employ a number of reporters and commentators who are relentless and determined warmongers. Despite the long, unarguable history of US-UK lying on war, and the catastrophic results, these journalists instantly confirm the veracity of atrocity claims made against Official Enemies, while having little or nothing to say about the proven crimes of the US, UK, Israel and their allies. They shriek with a level of moral outrage from which their own government is forever spared. They laud even the most obviously biased, tinpot sources blaming the ‘Enemy’, while dismissing out of hand the best scientific researchers, investigative journalists and academic sceptics who disagree.

Anyone who challenges this strange bias is branded a ‘denier’, ‘pro-Saddam’, ‘pro-Gaddafi, ‘pro-Assad’. Above all, one robotically repeated word is generated again and again: ‘Apologist… Apologist… Apologist’.

Claims of a chemical weapons attack on Douma, Syria on April 7, offered yet another textbook example of this reflexive warmongering. Remarkably, the alleged attack came just days after US president Donald Trump had declared of Syria:

I want to get out. I want to bring our troops back home. I want to start rebuilding our nation.

The ‘mainstream’ responded as one, with instant certainty, exactly as they had in response to atrocity and other casus belli claims in Houla, Ghouta, Khan Sheikhoun and many other cases in Iraq (1990), Iraq (1998), Iraq (2002-2003), Libya and Kosovo.

Once again, the Guardian editors were sure: there was no question of a repetition of the fake justifications for war to secure non-existent Iraqi WMDs, or to prevent a fictional Libyan massacre in Benghazi. Instead, this was ‘a chemical gas attack, orchestrated by Bashar al-Assad, that left dead children foaming at the mouth’.

Simon Tisdall, the Guardian’s assistant editor, had clearly decided that enough was enough:

It’s time for Britain and its allies to take concerted, sustained military action to curb Bashar al-Assad’s ability to murder Syria’s citizens at will.

This sounded like more than another cruise missile strike. But presumably Tisdall meant something cautious and restrained to avoid the terrifying risk of nuclear confrontation with Russia:

It means destroying Assad’s combat planes, bombers, helicopters and ground facilities from the air. It means challenging Assad’s and Russia’s control of Syrian airspace. It means taking out Iranian military bases and batteries in Syria if they are used to prosecute the war.

But surely after Iraq – when UN weapons inspectors under Hans Blix were prevented from completing the work that would have shown that Saddam Hussein possessed no WMD – ‘we’ should wait for the intergovernmental Organisation for Prohibition of Chemical Weapons inspectors to investigate. After all, as journalist Peter Oborne noted of Trump’s air raids:

When the bombing started the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) was actually in Damascus and preparing to travel to the area where the alleged chemical attacks took place.

Oborne added:

Had we wanted independent verification on this occasion in Syria surely we ourselves would have demanded the OPCW send a mission to Douma. Yet we conspicuously omitted to ask for it.

Tisdall was having none of it:

Calls to wait for yet another UN investigation amount to irresponsible obfuscation. Only the Syrian regime and its Russian backers have the assets and the motivation to launch such merciless attacks on civilian targets. Or did all those writhing children imagine the gas?

The idea that only Assad and the Russians had ‘the motivation’ to launch a gas attack simply defied all common sense. And, as we will see, it was not certain that children had been filmed ‘writhing’ under gas attack. Tisdall’s pro-war position was supported by just 22% of British people.

Equally gung-ho, the oligarch-owned Evening Standard, edited by veteran newspaperman and politically impartial former Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne, headlined this plea on the front page:

HIT SYRIA WITHOUT A VOTE, MAY URGED

Guardian columnist Jonathan Freedland, formerly the paper’s comment editor, also poured scorn on the need for further evidence:

Besides, how much evidence do we need?… To all but the most committed denialists and conspiracists, Assad’s guilt is clear.

Freedland could argue that the case for blaming Assad was clear, if he liked, but he absolutely could not argue that disagreeing was a sign of denialist delusion.

Time and again, we encounter these jaw-dropping efforts to browbeat the reader with fake certainty and selective moral outrage. In his piece, Freedland linked to the widely broadcast social media video footage from a hospital in Douma, which showed that Assad was guilty of ‘inflicting a death so painful the footage is unbearable to watch’. But when we actually click Freedland’s link and watch the video, we do not see anyone dying, let alone in agony, and the video is not, in fact, unbearable to watch. Like Tisdall’s claim on motivation, Freedland was simply declaring that black is white.

But many people are so intimidated by this cocktail of certainty and indignation – by the fear that they will be shamed as ‘denialists’ and ‘apologists’ – that they doubt the evidence of their own eyes. In ‘mainstream’ journalism, expressions of moral outrage are offered as evidence of a fiery conviction burning within. In reality, the shrieks are mostly hot air.

In the Observer, Andrew Rawnsley also deceived in plain sight by blaming the Syrian catastrophe on Western inaction:

Syria has paid a terrible price for the west’s disastrous policy of doing nothing.

However terrible media reporting on the 2003 Iraq war, commentators did at least recognise that the US and Britain were involved. We wrote to Rawnsley, asking how he could possibly not know about the CIA’s billion dollar per annum campaign to train and arm fighters, or about the 15,000 high-tech, US anti-tank missiles sent to Syrian ‘rebels’ via Saudi Arabia.

Rawnsley ignored us, as ever.

Just three days after the alleged attack, the Guardian’s George Monbiot was asked about Douma:

Don’t you smell a set up here though? Craig Murray doesn’t think Assad did it.

Monbiot replied:

Then he’s a fool.

Craig Murray responded rather more graciously:

I continue to attract attacks from the “respectable” corporate and state media. I shared a platform with Monbiot once, and liked him. They plainly find the spirit of intellectual inquiry to be a personal affront.

Monbiot tweeted back:

I’m sorry Craig but, while you have done excellent work on some issues, your efforts to exonerate Russia and Syria of a long list of crimes, despite the weight of evidence, are foolish in the extreme.

The idea that Murray’s effort has been ‘to exonerate Russia and Syria of a long list of crimes’ is again so completely false, so obviously not what Murray has been doing. But it fits perfectly with the corporate media theme of Cold War-style browbeating: anyone challenging the case for US-UK policy on Syria is an ‘apologist’ for ‘the enemy’.

If Britain was facing imminent invasion across the channel from some malignant superpower, or was on the brink of nuclear annihilation, the term ‘apologist’ might have some merit as an emotive term attacking free speech – understandable in the circumstances. But Syria is not at war with Britain; it offers no threat whatsoever. If challenging evidence of Assad’s responsibility is ‘apologism’, then why can we not describe people accepting that evidence as ‘Trump apologists’, or ‘May apologists’, or ‘Jaysh al-Islam apologists’? The term really means little more than, ‘I disagree with you’ – a much more reasonable formulation.

As Jonathan Cook has previously commented:

Monbiot has repeatedly denied that he wants a military attack on Syria. But if he then weakly accepts whatever narratives are crafted by those who do – and refuses to subject them to any meaningful scrutiny – he is decisively helping to promote such an attack.

Why Are These Academics Allowed?

The cynical, apologetic absurdity of questioning the official narrative has been a theme across the corporate media. In a Sky News discussion, Piers Robinson of Sheffield University urged caution in blaming the Syrian government in the absence of verifiable evidence. In a remarkable response, Alan Mendoza, Executive Director of the Henry Jackson Society, screeched at him:

Who do you think did it? Was it your mother who did it?

Again, exact truth reversal – given the lack of credible, verified evidence, it was absurd to declare Robinson’s scepticism absurd.
Mendoza later linked to an article attacking Robinson, and asked:

Why are UK universities allowing such “academics” – and I use the term advisedly because they are not adhering to any recognised standard when promoting material with no credible sourcing, and often with no citation at all – to work in their institutions?

In 2011, Mendoza wrote in The Times of Nato’s ‘intervention’ in Libya:

The action in Libya is a sign that the world has overcome the false lessons [sic] of Iraq or of “realism” in foreign policy.

The UN had ‘endorsed military action to prevent a humanitarian catastrophe unfolding’.

In fact, the unfolding ‘humanitarian catastrophe’ was fake news; Mendoza’s mother needed no alibi. A September 9, 2016 report on the war from the Foreign Affairs Committee of the House of Commons commented:

Despite his rhetoric, the proposition that Muammar Gaddafi would have ordered the massacre of civilians in Benghazi was not supported by the available evidence….

The Times launched a shameful, front-page attack on Robinson and other academics who are not willing to accept US-UK government claims on trust. The Times cited Professor Scott Lucas of Birmingham University:

Clearly we can all disagree about the war in Syria, but to deny an event like a chemical attack even occurred, by claiming they were “staged”, is to fall into an Orwellian world.

In similar vein, in a second Guardian comment piece on Douma, Jonathan Freedland lamented: ‘we are now in an era when the argument is no longer over our response to events, but the very existence of those events’. Echoing Soviet propaganda under Stalin, Freedland warned that this was indicative of an intellectual and moral sickness:

These are symptoms of a post-truth disease that’s come to be known as “tribal epistemology”, in which the truth or falsity of a statement depends on whether the person making it is deemed one of us or one of them.

And this was, once again, truth reversal – given recent history in Iraq and Libya, it was Lucas and Freedland who were falling into an Orwellian fantasy world. Mail on Sunday columnist Peter Hitchens made the obvious point:

Given the folly of the British government over Iraq and Libya, and its undoubted misleading of the public over Iraq, it is perfectly reasonable to suspect it of doing the same thing again. Some of us also do not forget the blatant lying over Suez, and indeed the Gulf of Tonkin.

Hitchens clearly shares our concern at media performance, particularly that of the Guardian, commenting:

Has Invasion of the Bodysnatchers been re-enacted at Guardian HQ? Whatever the dear old thing’s faults it was never a Pentagon patsy until recently. Rumours of relaunch as The Warmonger’s Gazette, free toy soldier with every issue.

Hitchens questioned Guardian certainty on Douma:

But if facts are sacred, how can the Guardian be so sure, given that it is relying on a report from one correspondent 70 miles away, and another one 900 miles away.. and some anonymous quotes from people whose stories it has no way of checking?

He added:

The behaviour of The Guardian is very strange & illustrates just what a deep, poorly-understood change in our politics took place during the Blair years. We now have the curious spectacle of the liberal warmonger, banging his or her jingo fist on the table, demanding airstrikes.

Indeed, in discussing the prospects for ‘intervention’ in the Guardian, Gaby Hinsliff, former political editor of the Observer, described the 2013 vote that prevented Britain from bombing Syria in August 2013 as ‘that shameful night in 2013’. Shameful? After previous ‘interventions’ had completely wrecked Iraq and Libya on false pretexts, and after the US regime had been told the evidence was no ‘slam dunk’ by military advisers?

In the New Statesman, Paul Mason offered a typically nonsensical argument, linking to the anti-Assad website, Bellingcat:

Despite the availability of public sources showing it is likely that a regime Mi-8 helicopter dropped a gas container onto a specific building, there are well-meaning people prepared to share the opinion that this was a “false flag”, staged by jihadis, to pull the West into the war. The fact that so many people are prepared to clutch at false flag theories is, for Western democracies, a sign of how effective Vladimir Putin’s global strategy has been.

Thus, echoing Freedland’s reference to ‘denialists and conspiracists’, sceptics can only be idiot victims of Putin’s propaganda. US media analyst Adam Johnson of FAIR accurately described Mason’s piece as a ‘mess’, adding:

I love this thing where nominal leftists run the propaganda ball for bombing a country 99 yards then stop at the one yard and insist they don’t support scoring goals, that they in fact oppose war.

Surprisingly, the Bellingcat website, which publishes the findings of ‘citizen journalist’ investigations, appears to be taken seriously by some very high-profile progressives.

In the Independent, Green Party leader Caroline Lucas also mentioned the Syrian army ‘Mi-8’ helicopters. Why? Because she had read the same Bellingcat blog as Mason, to which she linked:

From the evidence we’ve seen so far it appears that the latest chemical attack was likely by Mi-8 helicopters, probably from the forces of Syria’s murderous President Assad.

On Democracy Now!, journalist Glenn Greenwald said of Douma:

I think that it’s—the evidence is quite overwhelming that the perpetrators of this chemical weapons attack, as well as previous ones, is the Assad government…

This was an astonishing comment. After receiving fierce challenges (not from us), Greenwald partially retracted, tweeting:

It’s live TV. Something [sic – sometimes] you say things less than ideally. I think the most likely perpetrator of this attack is Syrian Govt.

We wrote to Greenwald asking what had persuaded him of Assad’s ‘likely’ responsibility for Douma. (Twitter, April 10, direct message)

The first piece of evidence he sent us (April 12) was the Bellingcat blog mentioning Syrian government helicopters cited by Mason and Lucas. Greenwald also sent us a report from Reuters, as well as a piece from 2017, obviously prior to the alleged Douma event.

This was thin evidence indeed for the claim made. In our discussion with him, Greenwald then completely retracted his claim (Twitter, April 12, direct message) that there was evidence of Syrian government involvement in the alleged attack. Yes, it’s true that people ‘say things less than ideally’ on TV, but to move from ‘quite overwhelming’ to ‘likely’, to declaring mistaken the claim that there is evidence of Assad involvement, was bizarre.

Political analyst Ben Norton noted on Twitter:

Reminder that Bellingcat is funded by the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), which is funded by the US government and is a notorious vehicle for US soft power.

Norton added:

It acts like an unofficial NATO propagandist, obsessively focusing on Western enemies.

And:

Bellingcat founder Eliot Higgins is a fellow at the Atlantic Council, which is funded by NATO, US, Saudi, UAE, etc.

And:

According to Meedan, which helps fund Bellingcat — along with the US government-funded NED — Bellingcat also works with the group Syrian Archive, which is funded by the German government, to jointly produce pro-opposition “research”.

And:

The board of the directors for Meedan, which funds Bellingcat, includes Muna AbuSulayman—who led the Saudi oligarch’s Alwaleed Bin Talal Foundation—and Wael Fakharany—who was the regional director of Google in Egypt & North Africa (US gov. contractor Google also funds Bellingcat)

And:

Bellingcat—which gets money from the US gov-funded NED and fixates obsessively on Western enemies—claims to be nonpartisan and impartial, committed to exposing all sides, but a website search shows it hasn’t published anything on Yemen since February 2017.

Although Bellingcat is widely referenced by corporate journalists, we are unaware of any ‘mainstream’ outlet that has seriously investigated the significance of these issues for the organisation’s credibility as a source of impartial information. As we will see in Part 2, corporate journalism is very much more interested in challenging the credibility of journalists and academics holding power to account.

April 25, 2018 Posted by | Deception, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , , , | Leave a comment

Detainee sat in human waste for 18 days in private prison transport van – report

RT | April 25, 2018

A detainee was forced to endure an almost three-week journey between Virginia and Texas in a privately-owned prisoner transport van. A lawsuit alleges he was denied medication, inadequately fed, and forced to sit in human waste.

Edward Kovari was arrested in Winchester, Virginia, in 2016 on suspicion of stealing a car in Houston. While his charges were later dropped, a lawsuit filed in Virginia alleges that Kovari suffered inhumane conditions while en route to Houston, a violation of his 14th Amendment rights, reported the Washington Post.

The van, operated by Prisoner Transportation Services, stopped several times in seven states to pick up more prisoners. The normally 20-hour journey took 18 days.

Kovari was shackled tightly in chains, and denied his prescription medication for hypertension. When the van arrived in Houston, Kovari was unable to walk and his blood pressure was above 200, the lawsuit alleges.

Throughout the journey, cramped conditions meant that Kovari could not sleep for days on end. Water was rationed and detainees were occasionally fed fast food. In lieu of bathroom breaks, the prisoners were instructed to urinate in bottles or defecate in their clothes.

Kovari’s calls for medical attention were ignored, and he was threatened with tasing for causing a disturbance, the suit alleges.

Prisoner Transportation Services is America’s largest for-profit extradition company. Picking up as many prisoners in the same journey allows companies like this to maximize profits. Tens of thousands of prisoners are packed into vans every year, and multiple deaths and injuries have occurred in these “mobile jails.”

April 25, 2018 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Subjugation - Torture | , | 2 Comments

Illegal foreign presence in Syria serves to revive terrorism front: Iranian official

Press TV – April 25, 2018

Iran’s top security official says the illegitimate military presence of certain countries in Syria is meant to put the Takfiri terrorists, who have suffered defeat in the region, back on their feet.

Secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council Ali Shamkhani made the remarks on Tuesday during a meeting with his Russian counterpart, Nikolay Patrushev, in Sochi, where he is to attend a security conference of senior officials from more than 100 countries.

“Through their illegitimate military presence in Syria, some countries have only further complicated the circumstances on the ground there, and are practically taking steps towards the reinforcement of the defeated front of Takfiri terrorism,” he said.

The two officials discussed a wide range of issues, including bilateral anti-terror cooperation, insecurity in Afghanistan, and the threat facing the region from the relocation of terrorists to the Central Asian country following their defeat in Syria and Iraq.

Shamkhani also spoke in condemnation of an April 9 Israeli strike against the T-4 airbase in central Syria, which killed more than a dozen people, including seven Iranian military advisors.

He said the attack on the people, who are in Syria for anti-terrorism military advisory assistance at the request of the legal government, “exposed the identity of the real supporters of terrorists.”

The official also condemned a recent coordinated attack by the US, the UK, and France against Syria, saying the strikes showed the West is seeking out excuses to damage the standing mechanisms for finding a political solution to the crisis in the Arab country.

The Russian official, for his part, said the conference in Sochi is meant to explore ways to replace militarism and violence with dialog and understanding.

Some countries, he added, resent successful Iran-Russia cooperation, and have launched “full-scale and suspicious” efforts at hurting their ties.

Patrushev said the US is continuously trying to deliver economic and political blows to Iran and Russia to restrict their joint efforts to restore stability to the region, adding, however, that Washington will fail to achieve its goal.

Iran and Russia have been both assisting Syria in its counter-terrorism offensive and mediating, together with Turkey, a diplomatic process to help restore calm to the Arab country.

On the contrary, the United States and its allies have been launching attacks on Syria since 2014, claiming they seek to root out Daesh without getting the Syrian government’s approval or a UN mandate.

The US and its allies have defied the Damascus government’s call to leave Syrian soil despite the collapse of the Takfiri terror group late last year.

In recent months, Russia has on various occasions reported that the US military is allowing Daesh members to leave its former strongholds in the Middle East to Afghanistan, where the terrorists have carried out bloody acts of violence.

Iran has also censured the US for supporting Daesh, with Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei saying in January that Washington has been transferring Daesh to Afghanistan to rationalize its military presence in the region.

Russia backs Iran deal

Elsewhere in his remarks, the Russian official condemned Washington for failing to stay committed to its obligations under the 2015 nuclear deal.

The Russian Federation decisively backs the preservation and implementation of the deal and believes that Iran should be able to enjoy the benefits of the accord, officially called the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).

April 25, 2018 Posted by | Deception, False Flag Terrorism, Illegal Occupation, War Crimes | , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Certain states play into hands of terrorists by using military force: Russia president

Press TV – April 25, 2018

Russian President Vladimir Putin says certain countries play into the hands of terrorists and endanger regional security by bypassing international law and resorting to military force.

Putin made the remarks in a greeting message to the participants in a security conference in the Black Sea resort city of Sochi on Wednesday.

He stressed that the policy of unilateralism practiced by certain states is hindering efforts to ensure regional and global security.

“Some members of the international community have been increasingly trying to ignore the generally recognized norms and principles of the international law and resort to the use of military force bypassing the UN Security Council and refuse to hold talks as a key tool of resolving international disputes,” he said.

“This, in its turn, generates political and social instability and plays into the hands of terrorism, extremism and transnational crime, leading to the escalation of local conflicts and crises,” he added.

Earlier this month, the US, Britain and France launched a coordinated missile attack against sites and research facilities near Damascus and Homs with the purported goal of paralyzing the Syrian government’s “capability” to produce chemical arms.

The trio blamed the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad for a suspected gas attack in the Damascus suburb town of Douma on April 7.

Moscow said it has “irrefutable” evidence that the Douma incident was a “false flag” operation orchestrated by British spy services.

Elsewhere in his message, Putin expressed Russia’s readiness to engage in close security cooperation with foreign partners in both multilateral and bilateral formats.

The Russian president further noted that the Sochi conference will provide a good opportunity to discuss the options for countering various threats and challenges to international security.

The two-day event has gathered senior officials from more than 100 countries. Secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council Ali Shamkhani is among the participants and is set to address the conference.

April 25, 2018 Posted by | Illegal Occupation, Militarism, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

‘Incitement to crime’: Russian senator blasts Saudi advice to send Qatari troops to Syria

RT | April 25, 2018

A member of the Russian upper house security committee has described a recent Saudi statement urging Qatar to send troops to Syria as blackmail, and warned that any such step would bring only chaos and casualties to the region.

“The statement made by the head of Saudi Arabia’s Foreign Ministry is a very real blackmail. Saudi Arabia is inciting Yemen into knowingly unlawful action,” Senator Frants Klintsevich told reporters on Wednesday.

Klintsevich referred to comments by Saudi Foreign Minister Adel Jubeir, who earlier in the day stated that Qatar must “send its military forces (to Syria), before the US president cancels US protection of Qatar, which consists of the presence of a US military base on its territory.” The minister also hinted that Qatari forces could replace US servicemen in case the latter are ordered to withdraw from the region.

The Russian senator told the press that he personally had great doubts about the US’ intention to leave Syria, despite all contrary statements made by President Donald Trump. “Saudi Arabia must be talking about Qatar’s participation in the Syrian campaign alongside the US forces, not instead of them. This is even stranger as Riyadh cannot fail to understand that this would bring nothing but additional chaos and new senseless casualties,” he said, adding that he suspected Saudi authorities had their own goals in the conflict, which they preferred to keep quiet.

The Al-Udeid airbase located near the Qatari capital Doha is currently the largest US military base in the Middle East, with around 11,000 servicemen stationed there. Qatar’s own army is one of the smallest in the region, with some 12,000 active military personnel.

In January, the Qatari defense minister outlined a far-reaching expansion of US military presence in the country and a potential US Navy deployment after it completes renovations of its naval ports. He also expressed hope that the base will one day become permanent.

April 25, 2018 Posted by | Illegal Occupation, War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

Washington Has Violated Iran Deal ‘Ever Since the Agreement Was Signed’

Sputnik – 25.04.2018

European leaders are clamoring for US President Donald Trump not to rip up the historic 2015 Iran nuclear deal. Whether or not Trump kills the deal, the US hasn’t been living up to its end of the bargain since the agreement was signed, according to Mohammad Marandi, a professor at Iran’s University of Tehran.

​French President Emmanuel Macron is in Washington to convince Trump to go against the suggestions of new neoconservative National Security Adviser John Bolton and keep the 2015 Iran nuclear deal intact.

While anything is possible between now and May 12 — when Trump must renew the the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) — Bolton’s role in the White House has led to increasing conviction among political observers that Trump will pull the US out of the history agreement struck by his predecessor.

“The Iranians have, for a very long time, been sensing that the deal is coming to an end. Ever since the agreement was signed, the United States has been violating it,” Marandi told Sputnik Radio’s Loud & Clear on Tuesday.

“Under [former] President Barack Obama, they passed the nuclear restriction laws. They also passed — again, despite promises to do otherwise — the Iran Sanctions Act. The Treasury Department has constantly added people and institutions to the sanctions list. But also, more importantly, the United States behind the scenes was putting pressure on banks, financial institutions, insurance companies and shipping companies not to work with Iran. That was in direct violation of the agreement, specifically between Articles 26 and 29,” Marandi, a professor of English Literature and Orientalism at the University of Tehran, said.

Earlier in the day, Trump actually hinted that he may have reached an “understanding” with Macron on the Iran deal. “We could have at least an agreement, among ourselves, fairly quickly… I think our meeting, our one-on-one, went very, very well,” Trump said following the meeting in the Oval Office, shortly before the joint news conference.

And during their joint news conference, Macron introduced the idea of building on top of the Iran nuclear arms deal to accomplish mutual goals instead of tearing up the JCPOA.

“We’re going to have a short little meeting and it turned out to be a long meeting, and it could have gone on for another two hours,” Trump said following extended talks with the French president. “We’ve come a long way — just the two of us — as understanding.”

“We talked about Iran. We talked about Syria… I think we really had some substantive talks on Iran, maybe more than anything else. We’re looking forward to doing something, but it has to be done, and it has to be done strongly,” the New York native said Tuesday.

April 25, 2018 Posted by | Deception, Wars for Israel | , , , , | Leave a comment

US building huge drone base in Niger

Press TV – April 24, 2018

The US military has started construction for a huge military base in the African country of Niger, which officials say will be used for airstrikes and intelligence operations by unmanned aircraft in West Africa.

US Air Force personnel have been constructing hangars and runways for drones in central Niger for some time now, The Associated Press reported Monday, stating that the base was being built outside of Agadez upon a request by Niger’s government.

It was not clear how many drones the USAF was going to deploy to the base, which unnamed officials said was going to be the “largest troop labor construction project in US history” with an estimated cost of more than $110 million.

The report did not mention how the base was going to help American military plans in Africa, which for the large part have remained secret.

Niger has been playing a key role in those plans as the Pentagon has doubled the number of its troops in the country to around 800 over the past few years.

Additionally, US Army Green Berets have been training Nigerien military forces near the nascent military base.

“Already the US military presence here is the second largest in Africa, behind the sole permanent US base on the continent, in the tiny nation of Djibouti, on the Horn of Africa,” the AP noted.

More light is expected to be shed on the US military’s missions in Niger once the Pentagon concludes a high-profile investigation into a deadly ambush in October of last year that killed four American soldiers near Niger’s border with Mali.

It was a month after this attack that Nigerien Defense Minister Kalla Mountari said his country was open to allowing US drone strikes against terror outfits such as Daesh.

The growing US presence in Niger has stirred concern among the officials of the poor, former French colony.

“We are afraid of falling back into the same situation as in Afghanistan, with many mistakes made by American soldiers who did not always know the difference between a wedding ceremony and a training of terrorist groups,” Nigerian government official Amadou Roufai told AP.

According to the report, the US will use the base to operate the MQ-9 Reaper drone, arguably the most advanced drone in the Pentagon’s arsenal.

With a range of around 1,150 miles (1850km), the aircraft can provide strike support and intelligence gathering capabilities across West and North Africa.

The aircraft can carry GBU-12 Paveway II bombs and four Hellfire air-to-ground anti-armor and anti-personnel missiles.

Once completed, the base would add to the US military’s inventory of over 800 bases in more than 70 countries.

April 25, 2018 Posted by | Militarism, Subjugation - Torture | , , | Leave a comment

Western Media Shorthand on Venezuela Conveys and Conceals So Much

By Joe Emersberger | FAIR | April 23, 2018

A Reuters article (4/18/18) reports that the European Union “could impose further sanctions on Venezuela if it believes democracy is being undermined there.”

The line nicely illustrates the kind of journalistic shorthand Western media have developed, over years of repetition, for conveying distortions and whitewashing gross imperial hypocrisy about Venezuela.  A passing remark can convey and conceal so much.

The EU’s sincerity in acting on what it “believes” about Venezuelan democracy is unquestioned by the London-based Reuters. Meanwhile Spain, an EU member, is pursuing the democratically elected president of Catalonia, Carles Puigdemont, for the crime of organizing an illegal independence referendum last year. Weeks ago, he was arrested in Germany at Spain’s request, and other elected representatives have been arrested in Catalonia, where Spain’s federal government deposed the elected regional government after the referendum.

In July 2017, a few months before the referendum in Catalonia, Venezuela’s opposition also organized an illegal referendum. One of the questions asked if the military should obey the opposition-controlled National Assembly, which was an extremely provocative question, given the opposition’s various efforts to overthrow the government by force since 2002.  The referendum required an extremely high level of political expression, organization and participation. It allegedly involved 7 million voters. The Venezuelan government disregarded the results—as Spain disregarded the Catalan referendum results—but unlike Spain, did not jail people for organizing it, or send police to brutally repress voters. In fact, two weeks later, Venezuelan voters (overwhelmingly government supporters, since the opposition boycotted and did not field candidates) were violently attacked by opposition militants when they elected a constituent assembly.  The attacks resulted in several deaths.

Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro has hardly failed to call attention to the hypocrisy of both the EU and Spain, but the Reuters article made no mention of it.

Reuters also reported that “the country’s two most popular opposition leaders have been banned from competing” from Venezuela’s presidential election on May 20. Reuters didn’t name the two supposedly “most popular opposition leaders,” but in the past (e.g., 4/12/18, 2/28/18, 2/19/18) the wire service has identified them as Leopoldo Lopez and Henrique Capriles. As it happens, according to the opposition-aligned pollster Datanalisis, whose results have been uncritically reported by Western media like Reuters for years, opposition presidential candidate Henri Falcón has been significantly more popular than Capriles in recent months, and barely less so than Lopez.

Approval Ratings of Main Venezuelan Political Leaders

Mark Weisbrot (in an opinion piece for US News, 3/3/18) broke the news that US government officials had been secretly pressuring Falcón not to run, so that the election could be discredited as including no viable opposition candidate. Two weeks later, Reuters (3/19/18) discreetly reported Weisbrot’s scoop.

However, by far the most important thing Reuters neglects telling readers about the “two most popular opposition leaders” is that had they done in the EU what they’ve done in Venezuela since April 2002, Lopez and Capriles would both be serving long jail terms.

Capriles and Lopez together led the kidnapping of a government minister during a briefly successful US-backed military coup in 2002 that ousted Venezuela’s democratically elected president, the late Hugo Chávez, for two days. Lopez boasted to local TV that the dictator installed by the coup (whom Lopez called “President Carmona”) was “updated” on the kidnapping.

Imagine what Carles Puigdemont’s predicament would be if, rather than organizing a peaceful referendum, he had participated in a foreign-backed, ultimately unsuccessful military coup against the Spanish government. Needless to say, running for public office would not be on the table. That would be the least of his worries.

In Venezuela, Capriles eventually served a few months in prison for participating in the coup, while Lopez avoided doing any time, thanks to a general amnesty granted by Chávez. Lopez was finally arrested in 2014 for leading another violent effort to overthrow the government.

I’ve reviewed before (teleSUR, 1/9/18) violent efforts to overthrow the government that Lopez, Capriles and other prominent opposition leaders have been involved with since the 2002 coup. I also described how Julio Borges and Henry Ramos (two other prominent opposition leaders) have openly sought to starve the Venezuelan government of foreign loans as it struggles with a severe economic crisis.

In August, Trump’s administration imposed sanctions on Venezuela’s entire economy that will cost Maduro’s government billions of dollars this year (FAIR.org, 3/22/18). It has threatened to go even further, brandishing an oil embargo or even a military attack. With sufficiently compliant media (and the collusion of big human rights NGOs like Amnesty International), such depravity becomes possible.

The Reuters article also says that Venezuela’s economic “collapse has driven an estimated 3 million people to flee the country.” No need to tell readers when the economic “collapse” began—2014—much less who made the estimates or if other sources contradict them. In fact, the UN’s 2017 population division numbers estimate Venezuela’s total expat population as of 2017 at about 650,000—only about 300,000 higher than it was when Chávez first took office in 1999. Even a group of fiercely anti-government Venezuelan academics estimated less than 1 million have left since the economic crisis began. (See FAIR.org, 2/18/18.)

Cherry-picked statistics aside, when Western powers want a democratically elected government overthrown, the approach is clear. Complete tolerance for violent foreign-backed subversion—which the powerful states and their allies would never be expected to tolerate—becomes the test for whether or not a state is a democracy. The targeted government fails the test, is depicted as a dictatorship, and all is permitted. Only the tactics required to bring it down need be debated.

Messages to Reuters can be sent here (or via Twitter: @Reuters). Please remember that respectful communication is the most effective.

April 24, 2018 Posted by | Deception, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , , | 1 Comment

US, French presidents call for changes to Iran nuclear deal

Press TV – April 24, 2018

The US and French presidents have called for major changes to Iran’s nuclear deal, despite Tehran’s repeated assertions that the agreement is non-negotiable.

“I can say that we have had very frank discussions on that, just the two of us,” French President Emmanuel Macron told a joint press conference with his US counterpart Donald Trump in Washington on Tuesday.

“We, therefore, wish from now on to work on a new deal with Iran,” he added.

When asked to clarify if he meant a new accord or an add-on agreement, Macron said, “I am not saying that we move from one agreement to another.”

Macron noted that a new deal should incorporate three additional elements, including Iran’s ballistic missile program, the Islamic Republic’s regional influence and what happens after 2025 when Tehran will restart part of its nuclear program under the accord.

The French president described the 2015 nuclear deal, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), only as the “first pillar” of a wider final agreement.

Macron’s statements came despite the initial speculations that his visit to Washington was aimed at convincing Trump not to pull out of the accord.

Trump, who currently faces a May 12 deadline to announce his final position on the Iran deal, said, “I think we will have a great shot at doing a much bigger, maybe, deal,” claiming that any new deal will be based on “solid foundations.”

“This is a deal with decayed foundations. It is a bad deal, it is a bad structure. It is falling down,” he said, noting that he will announce his decision on May 12.

While Iran has repeatedly warned that it will resume its enrichment activities if the US withdraws from the deal, Trump said, “They are not going to be restarting anything. If they restart it, they are going to have big problems, bigger than they ever had before. And you can mark it down.”

On Tuesday, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani once again warned the US against violating the 2015 nuclear deal, saying any failure to respect the multinational agreement would have “grave consequences.”

Iran has stressed that European signatories to the JCPOA should convince Trump not to pull out of the deal, because there is no alternative to the accord.

Trump has repeatedly threatened to pull out of the historical agreement, which was struck between the Islamic Republic and the P5+1 group of countries, including Washington itself.

The deal removed nuclear-related sanctions against Tehran, which, in turn, changed some aspects of its nuclear energy program. All other signatories have warned the US against quitting the deal.

Trump has said unless the European parties “fix the terrible flaws” of the accord by May 12, Washington would withdraw from the deal.

Amid Trump’s threats, other parties have stepped up diplomatic efforts to save the deal.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel will also visit the White House later this week to discuss the issue.

Russia and China have also issued a draft statement, calling on the UN member states to express their “unwavering support” for Iran’s nuclear agreement amid the US efforts to scrap the deal.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Monday he had agreed with his Chinese counterpart that Moscow and Beijing would try to block any US attempt to sabotage the nuclear deal.

April 24, 2018 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes, Wars for Israel | , , , , | 6 Comments

Corbyn set for showdown with Jewish groups that led protests against him

© Stephen Chung / Global Look Press
RT | April 24, 2018

Jeremy Corbyn is set to face-off with Jewish leaders, weeks after they led protests against him, accusing him of failing to act against anti-Semitism and allowing pockets of anti-Semitism in the Labour Party.

The Jewish Leadership Council and Board of Deputies of British Jews, which will meet with Corbyn today, delivered a letter to the Labour leader in late March, condemning his “systematic failure to understand and deal with anti-Semitism.” The groups believe that Corbyn has been slow to act on the recommendations of the 2016 Shami Chakrabarti inquiry into anti-Semitism within the party.

The Jewish groups want disciplinary cases expedited and elected officials thrown out if they share a platform with anti-Semites. Labour has said there must be “zero tolerance” of anti-Semitism within the party.

Last month, Corbyn apologized for “pockets of anti-Semitism” in the party, and stated that he wanted to “rebuild” confidence among Jewish groups. He was also slammed by some in the Jewish community for spending Passover with members of left-wing group Jewdas in his Islington constituency.

He has condemned anti-Semitism on many occasions but his critics, including many of his own MPs, have called on him to back up his words with actions, including by expelling former London mayor Ken Livingstone. The ex-mayor was suspended from the party in 2016 for [correctly] claiming that Hitler supported a Jewish homeland in the 1930s.

Co-chair of Jewish Voice for Labour Jenny Manson said the report should be fully implemented but there should “not be a witch-hunt.” While Manson said it was a “misery and tragedy” that some MPs have “received nasty anti-Semitic comments,” she suspected that the majority of such comments had been made on social media. She told BBC Radio 4’s ‘Today’ program that “it has not been properly worked out” who made the remarks.

Referring to the “Enough is Enough” demonstration organized by their groups, leaders from the Jewish Leadership Council and Board of Deputies of British Jews wrote: “Last month’s protest was a necessary moment of catharsis, as painful for Labour as it was for our community, but we cannot now return to ‘business as usual.’

“We need this to be a genuine turning point and will do everything we can to make it so. We can achieve this together if Mr Corbyn can fulfil his pledge to be our ‘militant ally’ in the fight against anti-Semitism and demonstrate his understanding that what is now needed is firm action and not just words.”

The meeting will also be attended by Labour’s recently appointed General Secretary Jennie Formby.

April 24, 2018 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , | 4 Comments

Palestinian medic in Gaza recounts being shot by Israeli sniper

World Health Organization | April 2018

Imad_photoGaza –Imad is 34 and has been volunteering as a first responder with the Palestinian Red Crescent Society (PRCS) since 2006.  On Monday 9 April 2018, Imad volunteered with PRCS east of al Bureij refugee camp in the Middle Area of the Gaza Strip. Imad was waiting as part of the PRCS team, sitting in the front passenger seat of an ambulance beyond the 300-metre zone.

“Just after 5 o’clock there was suddenly shooting from the barrier and I was hit in my right leg. We got out of the ambulance straight away and went to hide behind it [on the opposite side from the Gaza barrier]. At this point the paramedics who were with me put a bandage on my leg to stem the bleeding and then they got me into the ambulance and moved me to Al Aqsa Hospital in Deir Al-Balah. I was in Al Aqsa Hospital for about 30 minutes to receive first aid and then I was moved to Al-Quds Hospital in Gaza City. From there they transferred me to Shifa Hospital after the doctors diagnosed me with compartment syndrome [bleeding into the calf of the leg that then cuts off the blood supply to the leg]. In Shifa I had surgery. Doctors told me that if I hadn’t been able to have this surgery I would have lost my leg.”

Imad has been volunteering with PRCS for more than 10 years. He reports that the teams he works with are often exposed to tear gas and he himself has previously sustained some minor injuries. However, Imad remains committed to volunteering with the ambulances and first responders.

“We need humanitarian workers in this difficult situation. Gaza has been exposed to three wars in 6 years.  Life here is a constant emergency. Working with PRCS to help the sick and injured, you feel at least that you are able to improve things in some small way.”

Imad graduated in English from Al-Azhar University in Gaza in 2008. He works intermittently as an emergency trainer for the PRCS and other organizations. He is married and has 2 young children.

Now Imad is recovering from this initial operation at Al Quds Hospital in Gaza City. He is due for a second operation to remove the bullet, which is still lodged in his right calf muscle, and to fix a fracture. “After I complete my treatment and get better, I’m aiming to go back to working with the ambulances.  For me, it’s a duty that I feel to our patients and to Gaza.”

April 24, 2018 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Solidarity and Activism, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

« Previous Entries     Next Entries »