Aletho News

ΑΛΗΘΩΣ

20 Freedom Flotilla sailors still held in Israeli jail; Italian artists deported from Palestine

Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network – July 30, 2018

Twenty international solidarity activists on board the Freedom Flotilla to Gaza are being held in Israeli prisons, report the Freedom Flotilla Coalition. The first boat in the flotilla, “Al-Awda,” was hijacked by Israeli occupation forces in international waters on Sunday, 29 July. The next boat in the flotilla, the “Freedom,” is still on the approach to Gaza. The Flotilla aims to break the Israeli naval siege on Gaza, Palestine.

Two activists with Israeli citizenship on the boats, Zohar Chamberlain Regev and Yonatan Shapira, were released on bail and charged with attempting to enter Gaza and conspiracy to commit a crime. The 20 international solidarity activists remain detained in Givon prison and were scheduled to begin meeting with their lawyer on Monday.

The Freedom Flotilla Coalition noted that:

“Although the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) claim that the capture of our vessel happened ‘without exceptional incident’, eye-witness Zohar Chamberlain Regev reports that at the time of boarding: ‘People on board were tasered and hit by masked IOF soldiers. We did not get our passports or belongings before we got off the boat. Do not believe reports of peaceful interception.’ We urgently need to know the details of who was injured and how seriously, and what treatment they are receiving, if any. A military attack on a civilian vessel is a violent act and a violation of international law. Taking 22 people from international waters to a country which is not their destination constitutes an act of kidnapping, which is also unlawful under the international Convention of the Law of Sea.”

Mural on Apartheid Wall by artist Jorit Agoch.

In addition, two Italian artists, including well-known muralist Jorit Agoch, were ordered deported from Palestine on Monday, 30 July after they were seized by Israeli occupation forces for painting a large mural of Ahed Tamimi, 17, on the Apartheid Wall. The 13-foot-high painting was part of the celebration of Ahed’s release from over seven months in Israeli prison on Sunday, 29 July, along with her mother, Nariman.

The portrait was the focus of global media attention before the artists and the Palestinian driver who accompanied them were seized by occupation forces as they completed work on the portrait. The Palestinian man was reportedly released, as were the two artists, after their tourist visas were cancelled and they were ordered to leave the country within 72 hours. They were also banned from entering occupied Palestine for 10 years, much like other activists who have been denied entry to Palestine at Ben-Gurion airport or the Karameh/Allenby crossing.

July 30, 2018 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation | , , , , , | 2 Comments

Hopes and forebodings in India over the rise of Imran Khan

By M.K. Bhadrakumar | Asia Times | July 29, 2018

Circumstantial evidence can be marshaled to establish that a level playing field was not available to Pakistan’s two mainstream political parties – the Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz) and the Pakistan People’s Party – in the parliamentary poll on July 25.

But that alone cannot delegitimize the victory of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party led by Imran Khan.

Khan likely benefited from the denial of a level playing field to Nawaz Sharif. But that is not the whole story. His mandate is authentic and he is no one’s creation. Khan astutely presented himself as the symbol of ‘change’ and his mandate reflects the Pakistani people’s craving for change.

In fact, the expectations of the people are high and Khan will be hard-pressed to fulfill them. The national program he outlined in his victory speech challenges entrenched interest groups, who will no doubt resist. Compromises may become necessary, even inevitable. If not, confrontation may ensue. The robust opposition will make the going very tough for Khan at every stage.

Three things must be said here. First, the rout of the ‘religious parties’ has been absolute. The astonishing part is that Pakistani voters displayed impeccable secular temper to reject any politician who sought to exploit religious sentiment.

Second, India did not figure as a topic during the election campaign. The focus was almost entirely on Pakistan’s political economy. Third, and most importantly, Khan managed to secure a fairly broad-based mandate, although Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa remains his citadel.

Role models

The good part is that Khan has a track record of some two decades in politics. Which is saying a lot because politics in Pakistan is not for the faint-hearted. Interestingly, Khan once mentioned as his four role models Malaysia’s Mahathir Mohamad, Turkey’s Recep Erdogan, Singapore’s late mentor Lee Kuan Yew and Brazil’s Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, popularly known as Lula.

Doesn’t that say something about Khan? He would like to be seen as a forceful and decisive prime minister who is result-oriented – and, while being “populist,” a nation-builder and nationalist, too.

In the foreign policy arena, Khan appears to be more of an ‘Eurasianist’ rather than a ‘Westernist.’ Both China and Russia have shown high regard for him – probably anticipating a regional realignment under his leadership that is conducive to multi-polarity in regional and world politics. Considering that Pakistan is a major Muslim country, its strategic autonomy is of keen interest to China and Russia.

Khan’s ascendance may prove to be hugely consequential for regional security and stability. He has severely questioned the raison d’etre of the Afghan war and has called for an end to the Western military presence in the region. The US State Department statement on the Pakistan election has been noticeably critical, albeit sidestepping Khan himself.

Khan’s rise is a fortuitous happening for Tehran insofar as with Erdogan’s Turkey and Khan’s Pakistan, it gains strategic depth to counter the US’s containment strategy. Again, the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor will be put on fast track. On the whole, the prospects appear good for accelerating Pakistan’s Eurasian integration.

A sense of déjà vu

The big question is about Pakistan’s relations with India. Alas, Indian analysts see Khan’s rise with a sense of déjà vu. Of course, the reality on the ground is that the Pakistani army leadership will remain in the driving seat, and this is worrisome thought for Delhi. However, the flip side is that the army leadership and Khan are on the same page and Delhi at least knows who to dial if the need arises.

Delhi’s initial reaction altogether ignored Khan’s rise. Instead, the foreign ministry spokesman praised the Pakistani people’s “faith” in the democratic process. A sense of unease is palpable. But then, if Khan earned the nickname ‘Taliban Khan,’ it is for good reason. He also has a history of making inflammatory statements about Kashmir.

Khan’s ascendance comes at a time when the situation in the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir remains critical. The probability is high that Khan will not let India off the hook. Pakistan has consistently argued that an enduring settlement in Afghanistan will not be realistic so long as the Kashmir issue remains unresolved.

Fundamentally, the Indian dilemma is that it has nothing to discuss with Pakistan about Kashmir. The Modi government vows to retake the territory under Pakistan’s control. On the other hand, as long as the people’s alienation in Jammu and Kashmir remains so widespread, Pakistan will take advantage of the situation to force India to come to the negotiating table.

Meanwhile, India is also heading for a crucial parliamentary poll early next year. In the backdrop of the Modi government’s waning popularity, the ruling BJP has pinned its hopes on polarizing Hindu votes. So keeping tensions with Pakistan in a state of animated suspension became the default position for the BJP.

How far Khan will acquiesce with this paradigm remains to be seen. The chances are he won’t. A troubled period lies ahead.

The Indian narrative so far has been that the late Benzair Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif, Pakistan’s two charismatic past prime ministers, could not really do much to improve relations with India due to the army’s corporate interest in perpetuating tensions with India.

However, a new predicament now arises for Delhi when the civilian and military leaderships in Pakistan get along well – having to choose between the devil and the deep blue sea.

July 30, 2018 Posted by | Timeless or most popular | , | 1 Comment

How Israel Silences Palestine in EU Circles

By Issam Aruri | IMEMC | July 18, 2018

The Israeli propaganda machine works internationally to undermine the role of Palestinian NGOs which disclose Israeli violations of international law, and maintain the well-being of Palestinian people.

Imagine the following: a toxic op-ed is published that defames your organisation. You contact the website on which it features and are invited to publish a rebuttal.

The next day, you submit your article. As the editors are about to put it online, they are targeted by a sophisticated disinformation campaign.

More than a dozen people call the editors, seemingly on your behalf, and apply heavy pressure to publish the article. One of the callers even tries to bribe them to get it published.

This confuses and intimidates the editors, who have never experienced anything like it.

They fear that publishing under pressure may damage the independence and reputation of their website, which is a news magazine for the European Parliament.

The editors contact you and you clarify right away that none of these calls originated from your organisation. You urge them to publish your article, as they had promised. But despite your repeated requests, they don’t do so. They don’t even respond anymore to your phone calls and emails.

This is what recently happened to the Palestinian NGO network PNGO, which is an umbrella of 134 civil society organisations in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

The op-ed in question was mine, which I had submitted to a Brussels-based website called EP Today.

According to its own information, EP Today is “designed only” for policy opinions by members of the European Parliament. On 26 February, however, it published a slanderous op-ed by NGO Monitor that targeted PNGO.

NGO Monitor is an Israeli right-wing organisation that cooperates with the Israeli government in undermining NGOs that criticise Israel’s violations of human rights and international law.

It constantly attacks Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and dozens of other human rights and civil society organisations, including Israeli NGOs. PNGO is high on its target list.

In its article, NGO Monitor provided false and misleading information about PNGO’s mission and conduct.

While PNGO is a catalyst for a vibrant civil society in Palestine, NGO Monitor framed PNGO as a “ring leader” of a “gang” of NGOs that shrink Palestinian civil space.

Can’t be ignored

For a long time, we ignored organisations like NGO Monitor that provide cover for the Israeli occupation. But this time, we decided to submit a rebuttal to this toxic propaganda.

As mentioned above, EP Today violated its promise and didn’t publish our rebuttal. To make things worse, our article was apparently forwarded to NGO Monitor, which allegedly tried to prevent its publication.

An editor we spoke to implied this, with reference to one member of EP Today’s board of directors, who seems to have ties to NGO Monitor. This would constitute grave professional misconduct, calling into question EP Today’s independence and integrity.

In any case, we won’t be silenced. Our rebuttal of NGO Monitor’s propaganda, titled “What Europe can do to defend civil space: a response by the Palestinian NGO Network”, is now available for everyone, after we published it on our website.

Meanwhile, our real concern is not the article.

What troubles and burdens us is the big picture: the all-out attack that the Israeli government and its affiliated organisations such as NGO Monitor have launched against Palestinian human rights defenders.

Shrinking space for civil society is a global phenomenon. However, the threat it poses in Palestine has an extra dimension: Israel’s strangling military occupation, which began more than 51 years ago.

As a result of the occupation, Palestinians live without a sovereign government, without basic protection and in a fragile economy that heavily relies on international aid.

In this context, PNGO’s member organisations play a crucial and indispensable role in providing services and in preserving social cohesion.

Israel’s attack on us aims to neutralise NGOs that expose its violations of international law and to break the backbone of Palestinian society at large. The attack is meant to sustain and entrench the occupation.

Our reality

The reality in which we live is this: We face draconian digital surveillance and interference by Israel, which violates our fundamental privacy and obstructs our work.

I suspect this triggered the disinformation campaign described above (see AP’s article for more: “Covertly, Israel prepares to fight boycott activists online”).

Like NGO Monitor, the Israeli government engages in smear campaigns against Palestinian NGOs.

For example, on 1 July 2017, Israeli UN Ambassador Danny Danon branded our members Al-Haq and Al-Mezan as “supporters of terror”, based on false allegations that they have ties to Hamas and the PFLP.

Al-Haq and Al-Mezan are internationally renowned human rights organisations.

Most recently, the Israeli Ministry of Strategic Affairs published a slanderous report that contains similar allegations and aggressively accuses the EU of funding Palestinian and European NGOs that sponsor terror and promote Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS – the Palestinian-led global campaign putting pressure on Israel to end its violations of international law).

Indeed, blocking EU funding to Palestinian NGOs is Israel’s declared goal.

In 2015 and 2016, the director and a staff member of Al-Haq received ongoing death threats.

In response to the threats against the staff member, who is based in The Netherlands and Al-Haq’s representative to the International Criminal Court, the Dutch authorities opened a criminal investigation.

While official results are pending, all indications point in Israel’s direction.

PNGO and the Palestinian Human Rights Organisations Council (PHROC) have compiled their concerns about the escalating campaign to silence, delegitimise and defund Palestinian civil society organisations and human rights defenders in a joint position paper, including recommendations to the EU.

For decades, the EU has invested into civil society organisations in Israel and Palestine that promote its core values “on the ground”. The support and protection of human rights defenders is a declared priority of the EU, as also displayed by the guidelines it adopted in 2008 to that end.

On 3 October 2017, in a comprehensive resolution, the European Parliament sounded alarm about the shrinking space for civil society and called “for continued and increased EU support and funding in creating a free and enabling environment for civil society.”

This is the time to act on these commitments.

We rely on the EU to shield us from Israel’s campaign to destroy Palestinian civil society, which has spread to Europe and is reinforced by organisations like NGO Monitor that are designed to shrink our space.

~EU Observer/Days of Palestine

Issam Aruri is the chair of the Palestinian Non-Governmental Organisations Network (PNGO), an umbrella of 134 civil society organisations in the West Bank and Gaza Strip that promote the rights and well-being of the Palestinian people.

July 30, 2018 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , , | Leave a comment

Charlottesville, Act II

By Richard Hugus | July 30, 2018

The anniversary of the August 12, 2017 Charlottesville protest is coming up. It was on this day, so the story goes, that the left confronted the right over the right’s support for a statue of civil war general Robert E. Lee and a woman was killed by a white nationalist driving his car into a crowd of Black Lives Matter, Antifa, and other protestors.

Because applications by “Unite the Right” for a return to Charlottesville were turned down, the protest this year is scheduled for Lafayette Park, across the street from the White House in Washington. The ANSWER coalition, representing the left in the US who are to the left of mainstream Democrats, has called for an all-day “mass action” against Unite the Right, under the slogan, “NO Nazis, NO KKK in D.C.”

Many of the events in our world today are not what they appear to be. “We create our own reality,” said a senior Bush administration official. After September 11, 2001, it’s not clear why anyone would believe the official story about any of the many political atrocities that have taken place in the world. But they do, because 99% of the news they read is controlled, and very little skeptical independent journalism is seen. Though some people may indeed have been beaten and injured in Charlottesville last year, the central action was probably staged.

Evidence of this is that alt right and leftist activists are said to have gotten off the same buses when they arrived in Charlottesville. The police were told to do absolutely nothing to stop Antifa from attacking white nationalists. Two different versions appeared of the Dodge Challenger which allegedly drove into the protest. The driver of the Challenger didn’t look like the same person who was later arrested. There was no blood visible at the site of the alleged homicide, where the alleged victim was supposedly mashed between two cars. One young man shown in the official video being flung up into the air by the speeding Challenger was seen in other footage hanging out comfortably afterward at the sidelines. He appeared to be a stunt man. There were examples overall of poor acting by apparent crisis actors.

Are we really being threatened by the Nazis and KKK or is this a factitious narrative in a greater drama called “Divide and Conquer”? When the KKK actually was active, half their members were FBI infiltrators. If the so-called neo-Nazis didn’t exist, organizations like the Anti Defamation League and Southern Poverty Law Center would have had to invent them. And perhaps they did. How are those in power going to divert us from their massive, worldwide crimes if they don’t have domestic populations occupied with scary villains? Nazis and Klansmen certainly fit the bill.

But there seems to be a lack of people willing to play the villain roles. A case in point was a rally against the right in Boston, also last August, in which an estimated 40,000 people came to shut down a conservative right speaking event at Boston Common which brought in twenty to thirty people, who ended up not even being conservatives. They carried signs saying “Stop Monsanto” and “Black Lives Do Matter” and featured an India-American speaker condemning corporate rule and supporting freedom of speech. Some of the participants were women dressed up in what looked like fairy costumes. Until the event was cut short, a constant roar of denunciation came from the massive surrounding protest. It was probably the most ridiculous demonstration in the history of liberal Boston.

It appears that the left is suffering from the same self-righteousness and delusion exhibited by the Democrats who have been howling about Russia. The Russia-is-our-enemy narrative was made up of whole cloth. It is a staged drama being pieced out to us week after week like episodes of a TV series. It is not based in reality. The Democrats have their Russians, the leftists have their Nazis. The more unlikely the narrative, the more authoritarian the narrator becomes, until he decides for us what speech is acceptable, and what speech should be actively attacked.

“Unite the Right” estimates that their event will bring 400 people to Lafayette Park on August 12. Why does ANSWER feel that this rally, even if it is what it claims to be, is something that calls for “mass action”? What about a mass action to stop to the provably dangerous people known to be active and holding actual power in other places in Washington D.C.? These people are threatening war with Iran, Russia, China, and North Korea all at the same time. They are the people who have been enabling Zionist genocide in Palestine, the people who destroyed Libya, the people who are encouraging Saudi Arabia’s decimation of Yemen, the people who funded ISIS in Syria, the people who invaded and destroyed Iraq, the people who have ravaged Afghanistan for 17 straight years, the people trying to destabilize Nicaragua and Venezuela, the people who let Puerto Rico hang out to dry, the people who organized the racist prison and judicial system.

Why has it fallen to the left to now be opponents of free speech, and to be diverted by a minuscule constituency on the right? If left leaders in groups like ANSWER are not indeed witting participants in a fictional script, this is more than pathetic. ANSWER has had nothing to say about who carried out 9-11. Why? This, the biggest of all the staged events in the century, has led to one war after another in a plan laid out by American neo-conservatives representing Israel. Year after year, the US has been funding and fighting wars against not its own but Israel’s enemies, killing, displacing, and immiserating millions of people. Is this really the time to be chasing FBI agents masquerading as Nazis around Lafayette Park?

Politics today are increasingly based on a fabric of lies which, once accepted, become the basis for further lies, so that we are no longer dealing in reality — we are many steps removed from reality, acting out a play in a theater of the absurd. The sooner we stop our consent for this absurdity, the sooner the monstrous play will end.

July 30, 2018 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Progressive Hypocrite, Timeless or most popular | | 1 Comment

Lavrov: Russia’s Sovereignty to Be Defended Despite US Missile Defense Worldwide

Sputnik – 30.07.2018

Russia is guaranteed to be provided with information on the plans that the US military and other states have in mind for it, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov stated while speaking to participants at the Russian Youth Educational Forum “Territory of Meanings.”

“Whatever happens in the world, our security as a state, the security of our citizens, our sovereignty will be most securely protected. This has been repeatedly confirmed by President Vladimir Putin, and I assure you that this is based on real, material changes that are taking place in our country and in our army, “the minister said.

The US impedes the development of rules of behavior in cyberspace in the UN, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said.

“We have been suggesting to develop rules for responsible behavior in cyberspace at the UN for a long time. There are no rules right now, as you know. The country that impedes it is the United States,” Lavrov pointed out. “This is not surprising, because the United States has a dominant position in general with regard to Internet governance.”

Russia-US relations have been tense amid an ongoing arms race and a ban on military cooperation between US and Russian forces.

In May, the US House of Representatives passed a whopping $717 billion annual defense spending bill for the 2019 fiscal year.

No Doubts Greece Decided to Expel Russian Diplomats Under Severe Pressure

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said that he had no doubts that Greece had taken a decision to expel Russian diplomats under severe pressure.

“We have already commented on [the expulsion of Russian diplomats from] Greece. I can just say once again that we have no reason to doubt that these decisions were made under the severe pressure of those who want to turn any country anti-Russian,” Lavrov said at a youth forum.

Earlier in July, the Greek Kathimerini newspaper reported that Athens had decided to expel two Russian diplomats and ban two more from entering the country over national security concerns. The accusations against the diplomatic workers were strongly refuted by Russian Ambassador to Greece Andrey Maslov, who called them “absurd.”

July 30, 2018 Posted by | Russophobia | , , | Leave a comment

An Iran War Would Destroy the United States

By Philip Giraldi | American Herald Tribune | July 30, 2018

The establishment of a military force to go abroad and overthrow governments does not appear anywhere in the Constitution of the United States, nor does calling for destruction of countries that do not themselves threaten America appear anywhere in Article 2, which describes the responsibilities of the President. Indeed, both Presidents George Washington and John Quincy Adams warned against the danger represented by foreign entanglements, with Adams specifically addressing what we now call democracy promotion, warning that the United States “should not go abroad to slay dragons.”

Since the end of the Second World War, the United States has proven to be particularly prone to attacking other countries that have only limited capability to strike back. North Korea was the exception that proved the rule when the Chinese intervened to support its ally in 1950 to drive back and nearly destroy advancing U.S. forces. Otherwise, it has been a succession of Granada, Panama, Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Serbia, and Libya, none of which had the capability to hit back against the United States and the American people.

Iran just might prove to be a harder nut to crack. There has been a considerable escalation in tension between Washington and Tehran since the White House withdrew from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) in May. The JCPOA was intended to monitor Iran’s nuclear program to ensure that it would not be producing a nuclear weapon. Since that time, the U.S. and Israel have been threatening the Iranians and accusing them of both having a secret nuclear program and engaging in widespread regional aggression. In the latest incident, President Donald Trump tweeted in response to comments made on July 21st by Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, who had told a meeting of Iranian diplomats that war between America and Iran would be a misfortune for everyone, saying “Mr. Trump, don’t play with the lion’s tail, this would only lead to regret. America should know that peace with Iran is the mother of all peace, and war with Iran is the mother of all wars.”

Trump responded in anger all in capital letters, “NEVER, EVER THREATEN THE UNITED STATES AGAIN OR YOU WILL SUFFER CONSEQUENCES THE LIKES OF WHICH FEW THROUGHOUT HISTORY HAVE EVER SUFFERED BEFORE. WE ARE NO LONGER A COUNTRY THAT WILL STAND FOR YOUR DEMENTED WORDS OF VIOLENCE & DEATH. BE CAUTIOUS!”

Interventionist U.S. national security adviser John Bolton added fuel to the fire with a statement on the following day that “President Trump told me that if Iran does anything at all to the negative, they will pay a price like few countries have ever paid before.”

President Trump’s warning that he would annihilate Iran missed the point that Rouhani was offering peace and urging that both sides work to avoid war. The Administration has already announced that it will reinstate existing sanctions on Iran and will likely add some new ones as well. After November 4th, Washington will sanction any country that buys oil from Iran, markedly increasing the misery level for the Iranian people and putting pressure on its government.

Iran, while recognizing the overwhelming imbalance in the forces available to the two sides, has not taken the threats from Washington and Tel Aviv lightly. Its Quds Revolutionary Guards Special Forces chief Major Generral Qassem Soleimani has now warned Trump that “We are near you, where you can’t even imagine … Come. We are ready … If you begin the war, we will end the war. You know that this war will destroy all that you possess.”

Iran’s Guards commanders have in the past threatened to target and destroy U.S. military bases across the Middle East, and also target Israel, within minutes of being attacked. Military targets would be defended by both Israeli and U.S. counter-missile batteries but civilian targets would be vulnerable, particularly if Hezbollah, with an estimated 100,000 rockets of various types, joins in the fighting from Lebanon.

Washington argues that its pressure on Iran is intended to force its government to end its nuclear program as well as its support for militant groups in the Middle East, where Iran, so the claim goes, is engaged in proxy wars in both Yemen and Syria. The arguments are, however, largely fabrications as Iran has no nuclear weapons program and its engagement in Syria is by invitation of the legitimate government in Damascus while aid to Yemen’s Houthi’s is very limited. And there is no Iranian threat to the United States or to legitimate American interests.

Given the size of Iran, its large population, and clear intention to resist any U.S. attack, military action against the country, which many in Washington now see as inevitable, would be by missiles and bombs from the air and sea. But it would not be a cakewalk. In the past year, Iran has deployed the effective Russian made SA-20c SAM mobile air defense units as well as the S-300 VM missile system, which together have a range of more than 100 miles that could cover the entire Persian Gulf. Radar has also been upgraded. They are the centerpieces of an air defense system that could prove formidable against attacking U.S. aircraft and incoming missiles while ballistic missiles in large numbers in the Iranian arsenal could cause major damage to U.S. bases, Israel, the Gulf States and Saudi Arabia.

All of which means that Americans will die in a war with Iran, possibly in substantial numbers, and the threat by Iran to close the strategic Strait of Hormuz is no fantasy. It has threatened to do so if its own oil exports are blocked after November 4th, even if there is no war. And if there were war, even if subjected to sustained attack, Iran would be able to threaten ships trying to use the Strait with its numerous batteries of anti-ship missiles hidden along the country’s rough and mountainous coastline, to include the Russian made SS-N-22 Sunburn, which is the fastest and most effective ship killing missile in anyone’s arsenal. Fired in volleys, it would be able to overwhelm the defenses of U.S. warships, to include aircraft carriers, if they get too close. With the Strait closed in either scenario, oil prices would go up dramatically, damaging the economies of all the major industrialized nations, including the United States. A major war would also add trillions to the national debt.

Iran also has other resources to strike back, including cadres ready and able to carry out terror attacks in the United States and Western Europe. American tourists in Europe will be particularly vulnerable. The reality is that the United States has no motive to go to war with Iran based on its own national interests but seems to be prepared to do so anyway under pressure from Israel and Saudi Arabia. If it does do so, Iran will certainly lose, but the damage to the United States at every level might possibly be very high.

July 30, 2018 Posted by | Militarism, Wars for Israel | , , | 1 Comment

The Germans have a Russian hacking story after all

By Frank Sellers | The Duran | July 30, 2018

Two German broadcasters, ZDF and WDR, are claiming that they have become the victims of a new Russian cyber attack. The attack is being reported as being the work of a Russian hacking group known as ‘Sandworm’. Reports are saying that the attack occurred in June, but has no clue about what the hackers were after, or whether any sensitive information was stolen. Additionally, the ‘Sandworm’ hacking group is also suspected of having ties to the Kremlin, and played a role in the attack on the US DNC servers during the 2016 US Presidential election. Sandworm is also billed as having hacked the Swiss labs which were tasked with analyzing the sample of Novichok that was reportedly used to poison former double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter on March 4th in Salisbury, UK.

Deutsche Welle reports:

Two of Germany’s largest public broadcasters, ZDF and WDR, have been attacked by a Russian hacking group, according to reports. It remains unclear what the group’s intention was or whether any sensitive data was stolen.

A Russian hacking group known as “Sandworm” targeted Germany’s two largest public broadcasters, ZDF and WDR, according to German media reports on Friday.

Security officials told German weekly Der Spiegel that hackers had managed to compromise the broadcasters’ networks in June. Although the cyberattack was detected relatively quickly, it remains unknown what the group was after or whether any sensitive data was compromised.

ZDF confirmed the attack on Friday, adding that only 10 computers on its network were affected. WDR decline to comment for “security reasons.”

Sandworm is a hacking group believed to be run by Russia’s military intelligence service, GRU. According to US federal investigators, the group is suspected of also being behind the attack on the US Democrats’ computer servers during the 2016 presidential election.

The group first appeared in 2013 and, according to German intelligence, has targeted NATO servers, several western telecom companies and Ukrainian energy suppliers.

Earlier this year, the German government admitted that its computer network had been compromised via a piece of malware. The Russian hacking group APT28 is believed to have been behind the attack.

German intelligence warns key institutions

Germany’s intelligence service (BND) had warned two weeks ago of the potential cyber threats facing several key bodies, including the country’s public broadcasters and media companies.

The BND also said that the Spiez Laboratory in Switzerland, which specializes in chemical weapons research, was also among Sandworm’s targets. Its Swiss lab had been tasked with analyzing the Soviet-era nerve agent Novichok that was used to poison former Russian double agent Sergei Skripal in Salisbury.

A spokesperson for Spiez Laboratory said officials had encountered one phishing attack, sent via a document used in a workshop. However, the institute itself had not been affected.

With the claim about Russians hacking the Budestag falling apart, as I reported earlier, the Germans needed a victim story to sell to the public. Germans have been the victims of Russian hackers, and since the last story didn’t pan out, here’s another one! This one even comes with an attack from a suspected hacking group that we are being told has Kremlin ties, and we are also being told that they tried to derail the Skripal investigation. What’s more, it’s some of the same fellows who hacked the DNC servers! So we can see, then, that the Russians are hacking all of kinds of things, trying to cover their tracks, and that includes hacking the Germans. But so far, after a month, there is no intel suggesting that the malicious Russian hackers managed to get their hands on any ‘sensitive data’, which makes us wonder whether they have some state secrets or something on their servers, have they been in cahoots with Julian Assange and Wikileaks, perhaps? Did the Russians manage to get access to it? Should we be worried that the Russians now have information which compromises the security of Germans and the EU in general? So far, we don’t know, but we do know that the German media which claims it was hacked by the Russians is reporting that it has been hacked by the Russians. So far, an independent investigation isn’t being reported to verify the attack or its origin, or the scope thereof.

July 30, 2018 Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Russophobia | | Leave a comment

Has US-Iran conversation begun already?

By M K Bhadrakumar | Indian Punchline | July 29, 2018

About 4 months ago, when Iran’s Foreign Minister Javad Zarif travelled to Muscat to meet his Omani counterpart Yusuf bin Alawi bin Abdullah, I had written that something important might be brewing, since Oman was after all the intermediary that Barack Obama thoughtfully handpicked for opening a line to Tehran.

Oman handled the job with such rare aplomb that a couple of years later, later when US-Iran direct negotiations became public knowledge, the Saudis got furious with Muscat for keeping them in the dark. Oman is actually a very sophisticated practitioner of diplomacy, unlike the pompous petrodollar Gulf states that are so full of themselves, and has an independent foreign policy, although a close ally of the US.)

At any rate, news has just appeared that Alawi has paid a visit to the US where amongst others he met US Defence Secretary James Mattis. To my mind, all this probably began when Mattis visited Oman in March (in the backdrop of President Trump’s impending announcement on the US walkout from the 2015 Iran nuclear deal.)

Thus, while the back-and-forth flow of rhetoric between Washington and Tehran in the recent weeks might have conveyed a sense of imminent confrontation, the reality could be very different. Indeed, when it comes to US-Iran tango, rhetoric can be deceptive – like cats in heat making strange growl.

It couldn’t have been coincidental that over the weekend, following the talks with the visiting Omani minister, Mattis made two very significant remarks regarding Iran during a Pentagon briefing for the media. In the first remark, Mattis said that beyond the stated agenda of curbing Iran’s “threatening behavior” in the Middle East, Washington is not seeking regime change in Tehran. He was specific: “We need them to change their behavior on a number of threats that they can pose with their military, with their secret services, with their surrogates and with their proxies.”

In the second remark, Mattis took on frontally any talk of the US preparing for a military strike against Iran. Pegging his remark on an Australian news report, Mattis said, “I have no idea where the Australian news people got that information. I’m confident that it’s not something that’s being considered right now, and I think it’s a complete, frankly, it’s fiction.”

Taken together, what Mattis said significantly waters down Trump’s recent threatening tweet where he challenged Iranian President Hassan Rouhani by name. Trump tweeted:

  • To Iranian President Rouhani: NEVER, EVER THREATEN THE UNITED STATES AGAIN OR YOU WILL SUFFER CONSEQUENCES THE LIKES OF WHICH FEW THROUGHOUT HISTORY HAVE EVER SUFFERED BEFORE. WE ARE NO LONGER A COUNTRY THAT WILL STAND FOR YOUR DEMENTED WORDS OF VIOLENCE & DEATH. BE CAUTIOUS!

But then, arguably, Rouhani’s earlier remark itself was misunderstood. Rouhani had said, “America should know that peace with Iran is the mother of all peace and war with Iran is the mother of all wars.” To my mind, Rouhani probably made an overture to Washington to the effect that making nice is still viable and a ‘win-win’ proposition.

Of course, Trump himself made amends the very next day, adjusting his rhetoric and suggesting that Washington is ready to go back to the negotiating table with Tehran for a new nuclear deal. Trump told a convention in Kansas City, “I withdrew the United States from the horrible one-sided Iran nuclear deal, and Iran is not the same country anymore. We’re ready to make a deal.”

Much will depend now on whether Allawi carried back from Washington some ‘talking points’ for transmission to Tehran.

July 30, 2018 Posted by | Wars for Israel | , , | Leave a comment

Europe Needs ‘Own Mueller’ to Probe Alleged Russian Meddling: EU Brexit negotiator

Sputnik – 30.07.2018

Europe needs its own special counsel, similar to Robert Mueller in the United States, to look into the alleged Russian disinformation campaign, president of the European parliament’s Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe (ALDE) Guy Verhofstadt said Monday.

On Sunday, the Parliament’s Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) Committee issued a report in which the panel members said they had heard some evidence pointing to a campaign to influence UK election and referenda, allegedly led by Moscow.

“Europe needs it’s own Mueller, to investigate the extent of Russian disinformation campaigns & other attacks on our democracies. In September I will push the Eur Parliament to such measures to clean up our internet & social media. It’s time to fight back!” Verhofstadt, who serves as the main EU negotiator on Brexit, said on Twitter.

Mueller has been looking into the alleged Russian interference in the 2016 US presidential election and the purported collusion between the Russian government and the campaign of US President Donald Trump. The US president has repeatedly described the probe as a witch hunt.

Russian officials have stressed that Moscow does not interfere in the internal affairs of other countries and pointed out that the allegations against Russia had not been substantiated.

July 29, 2018 Posted by | Russophobia | | Leave a comment

Trump threatens Turkey with sanctions. What if he’s serious?

By M K Bhadrakumar | Indian Punchline | July 27, 2018

The frequency with which US President Donald Trump holds out threats to other countries is such that he is no longer being taken seriously. The list of countries threatened by Trump so far includes North Korea, Germany, Canada, China, Venezuela, Pakistan, Syria, Iran and Turkey.

In all fairness, Trump makes no distinction between enemies, adversaries, friends or allies. Turkey, a NATO ally, holds a record of sorts as the country most threatened by the Trump administration. In separate tweets on Thursday, Trump and Vice-President Mike Pence gave an ultimatum to Turkey that unless Andrew Brunson, an American evangelical pastor of a small Protestant church in western Turkey, is released from detention immediately, Ankara should be “prepared to face the consequences” in the form of “significant sanctions.”

For the benefit of the uninitiated, Brunson who has been living in Turkey for 23 years was arrested in the aftermath of the failed 2016 coup attempt to overthrow Erdogan, charged with spying and involvement in the failed coup. The Turkish government had probably hoped for a tradeoff – Brunson in exchange for the Islamist preacher Fetullah Gulen who is living in Pennsylvania whom Ankara regards as having masterminded the 2016 coup attempt to overthrow Erdogan. Ankara has been pressing Gulen’s extradition and Washington has been stonewalling. It’s a complicated case history, since Gulen has had links in the past with the CIA.

Turkey has shrugged off the latest threat from Trump and Pence. However, for Trump, Christian groups form a core constituency politically, and taking a tough stance on the high-profile Brunson case has endeared him to those groups. Dr. Ronnie Floyd, former president of the Southern Baptist Convention, recently made the following remark in praise of the White House effort: “I thank God we have an administration that cherishes the freedom of religion as our founders hoped we would.”

Trump’s latest threat puts Erdogan in a fix because releasing Brunson without a reciprocal move on Gulen’s extradition means a loss of face. Erdogan is acutely conscious of his strongman-image. He must be wondering whether Trump is serious about the ultimatum on Brunson’s release. Brinkmanship comes naturally to Trump. Indeed, with Trump one really doesn’t know what happens next.

But Erdogan can be more than a match for Trump in the ‘art of the deal’. At a meeting today with Russian President Vladimir Putin on the sidelines of the BRICS summit in South Africa, Erdogan added disdainfully that Trump’s real grouse in giving such an ultimatum yesterday could be that Turkey has drawn close to Russia in the recent times. That is a spin, of course. But then, Erdogan is also hoping to extract a big concession from Putin – deferment of the planned military operation to liberate the northwestern Syrian province of Idlib on the Turkish border from Ankara’s proxy groups. Turkey is keen to retain Idlib as its zone of influence.

Does Putin feel impressed that US-Turkish ties are deteriorating? There are no easy answers here. Nonetheless, Erdogan sees no harm in playing Trump against Putin. After all, who knows, Putin may hold back on the assault to liberate Idlib…

Yet, the chances are that this time around, Trump probably intends to carry out his ultimatum to impose sanctions on Turkey. The point is, US patience with Turkey seems to be wearing thin. Turkey is no longer a ‘swing’ state in the US’ Middle East strategies, given the poor state of Turkish-Israeli relations, Erdogan’s ‘pivot to Russia’ and the overall trust deficit in Turkish-American relationship. Erdogan snubbed the US threat of sanctions and upheld his decision to purchase S-400 missile defence system from Russia. Last week, Erdogan bluntly rejected the demarche by Washington that Turkey should cut back its oil imports from Iran.

July 29, 2018 Posted by | Economics, Militarism | , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Western Collapse… Scapegoating Trump & Putin

By Finian CUNNINGHAM | Strategic Culture Foundation | 29.07.2018

Former US President Barack Obama was in South Africa last week for the centennial anniversary marking the birth of the late Nelson Mandela. Obama delivered a speech warning about encroaching authoritarianism among nations and the “rise of strongman politics”.

Coming on the heels of the summit in Helsinki between Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin, media reports assumed that Obama was taking a swipe at these two leaders for supposed growing authoritarianism.

Obama’s casting of the “strongman” as a foreboding enemy to democracy is a variant of the supposed threat of “populism” that Western political establishments also seem concerned about.

Trump, Putin, Turkey’s Erdogan, Italy’s Salvini, Victor Orban in Hungary and Sebastian Kurz in Austria, among many others, are all lumped together as “strongman politics”, “populists” or “authoritarians”.

Here we are not trying to defend the above-mentioned political leaders or to make out that they are all virtuous democrats.

The point rather is to debunk the false narrative that there is some kind of dichotomy in modern politics between those who, on one hand, are supposedly virtuous, liberal, democratic, multilateralists, and on the other hand, the supposedly sinister “strongman”, “authoritarian”, or “populist”.

In Obama’s pompous depiction of world political trends, people like him are supposedly the epitome of a civilized, democratic legacy that is now under threat from Neo-fascists who are darkly rising to destroy an otherwise happy world order. That world order, it is presumed, was up to now guided by the magnificence of American political leadership. In short, the “Pax Americana” that prevailed for nearly seven decades following the Second World War.

Following the Helsinki summit, the Western media went full-tilt in hysterics and hyperbole. Trump was assailed for “embracing a dictator” while repudiating Western democratic allies.

In a Washington Post article, the headline screamed: “Is Trump at war with the West?” It was accompanied by a photograph of Trump and Putin, bearing the caption: “The New Front”.

Meanwhile, a New York Times piece editorialized: “His [Trump’s] embrace of Putin is a victory dance on the Euro-American tomb.”

Another NY Times op-ed writer declared: “Trump and Putin vs. America”.

The Western establishment political and media commentary promulgates the notion that the US-led Western order is breaking down because of “populist”, “strongman” Trump. In this alleged assault on the pillars of democracy and rule of law, Trump is being aided and abetted by supposedly nasty, like-minded authoritarians like Russian leader Vladimir Putin, or other nationalistic European politicians.

The premise of this establishment narrative is that all was seemingly salubrious and convivial in the US-led order until the arrival of various renegade-type politicians, like Trump and Putin.

That premise is an absolute conceit and deception. If we look at Obama’s presidency alone, one can see how the supposed guardians of democracy and international order were the very ones who have actually done the most to decimate that order.

Obama, you will recall, was the US president who notched up seven simultaneous overseas wars conducted by American military, arguably without a shred of international legal mandate. Under international law, Obama and other senior officials in his administration should face prosecution for war crimes. He also greatly expanded the executive use of assassination with aerial drones, reckoned to have killed thousands of innocent civilians in several countries, including Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen and Somalia, merely on the suspicion of being terrorists.

It was Obama who ramped up the covert war policy of his predecessor GW Bush in Syria, arming and directing terrorist proxies in a failed bid to overthrow the elected government of President Assad. That US-backed covert war in Syria, along with Obama’s overt regime-change war in Libya, largely contributed to the refugee crisis that has destabilized the politics of the European Union.

So here we have the supremely bitter irony. Obama now lectures audiences with his pseudo-gravitas about the specter of strongman politics and xenophobic populism, when in fact it was politicians like Obama who created much of the refugee problems that have given rise to anti-immigrant politics in Europe.

It really is a conceited delusion among US and European establishment politicians, pundits and media that somehow a once virtuous, law-abiding US-led Western order is being eroded by rabble rousers like Trump, Salvini, Orban and so on, all being orchestrated by a “strongman dictator” in the Kremlin.

For the record, Putin, the supposed “strongman” in the Kremlin, warned more than a decade ago in a seminal Munich speech that the international order was being eroded by rampant American unilateralism and disregard for law in its pursuit of illegal wars for US hegemony. That was at the height of US wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, which killed more than one million civilians and forced millions more into infernal destitution.

In truth, the Pax Americana that is presumed to have prevailed over the past 70 years was never about order, peace or justice in the world. The notion that the US guided the world with its “moral authority” and maintained stability throughout is one of the most fatuous delusions of modern history.

From the atomic holocaust in Japan and during subsequent decades, the US has waged wars non-stop in almost every year, whether from covert operations in Latin America and Africa, to full-on genocidal wars in Indochina. The past quarter-century has seen an acceleration and expansion of these US wars, sometimes with the assistance of its military axis in NATO, largely because Washington viewed that its license to kill for mass murder was unchecked after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

This is the real dynamic underlying why the Western order is now seen to be collapsing. The US and its minions among European allies have destroyed any foundations of international order from their unabated wars and campaigns of mass murder. Their corporate-capitalist plunder has eviscerated the planet.

The chaos from these wars, including economic impacts of gargantuan costs to Western populations, has created social conditions which engender politics of protest, anti-establishment, anti-austerity, anti-war, anti-immigration, and so on.

If the supposed order is shaking for the establishment political class and its flunkies like Barack Obama it is because of their own criminal depredations – depredations which have been going on for decades under the guise of Pax Americana.

The writers at Monthly Review had it so presciently right years ago, when they analyzed the actual Western order as “Pox Americana” – a diseased affliction.

This is the historical context which accounts for why US and European establishments are decrying “strongmen” and “populists”. They are essentially scapegoating others for the historic failure of institutionalized Western criminality led primarily by “democratic” regimes in Washington.

Russian President Vladimir Putin stands out as the one international leader who put a brake on the US-led criminal assault on global peace. Putin’s stand first emerged with his landmark speech in Munich in 2007, and then came into clear expression when he helped put an end to the US-led covert criminal war on Syria.

That is why Putin is so vilified and demonized by the Western establishment. The poachers have been stopped from raiding the globe, and in their exasperation, they have whipped up all sorts of disparaging epithets like “strongman” and “authoritarian”.

No one has practiced more fascist-style criminality and brutality towards law and peace than the polite-sounding pseudo-democrats who have been in office for the past 70 years in the US and Europe.

The Western political establishment and its elite-driven capitalism is rotten to the core. Always has been. Its own erosion and oozing corruption is the source of the putrid smell that it now wishes to waft away by scapegoating others.

July 29, 2018 Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Russophobia, War Crimes | , , | 3 Comments

Russia swats away Israeli bluster on Syria

By M K Bhadrakumar | Indian Punchline | July 25, 2018

The Russian version of the visit by Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Chief of Staff General Valery Gerasimov to West Jerusalem on July 23 became available, finally, on Wednesday in the nature of a terse TASS report quoting a ‘military-diplomatic’ source in Moscow as saying that the visiting Russian officials “looked into the tasks of completing the anti-terrorist operation in Syria’s South.”

An unnamed Israeli official had earlier floated a story that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu did some tough talking with Lavrov and “rebuffed” a Russian offer to create a 100-kilometre buffer zone adjacent to Golan Heights. Netanyahu reportedly insisted that he won’t be satisfied with anything short of Iran ending its presence in Syria conclusively.

The first indication that the talks didn’t go well came when Israel shot down a Syrian jet on July 24 in Quneitra bordering Golan. It was a calculated act of belligerence by Israel. (The Islamic State fighters who are present in the region have since released the photograph of the wreckage and the mutilated body of the Syrian pilot.)

The TASS report today punctures the Israeli version that the two Russian officials were deputed by President Vladimir Putin specially to discuss with Netanyahu the future of Iranian presence in Syria. (It now transpires that the Russian officials were on a tour of Israel, Germany and France.) The Israeli bravado can only be seen as a desperate ploy to cover up its humiliating defeat in Syria with the terrorist groups that were its proxies surrendering lock, stock and barrel in Daraa and Quneitra to the Syrian-Russian forces – especially the hasty exfiltration of the controversial group known as the White Helmets to Jordan via Golan Heights with the logistical help from the Israeli military.

Quite obviously, Moscow does not want to get entangled in the Israel-Iran tensions. This is also the American assessment of the Russian thinking, as articulated by the Director of the National Intelligence Agency Daniel Coats on Thursday:

“We have assessed that it’s unlikely Russia has the will or the capability to fully implement and counter Iranian decisions and influence (in Syria.) Russia would have to make significantly greater commitments [in Syria] from a military standpoint, from an economic standpoint. We don’t assess that they’re keen to do that.”

Nonetheless, the Israeli propaganda has gone overboard in attempting to create a wedge between Russia and Iran. (Read a fine piece, here, by Moon of Alabama on the Israeli disinformation campaign.) This couldn’t have gone down well in Moscow. At any rate, the Russian Foreign Ministry came out on July 24 with some sharp criticism of the move by the Israeli parliament (six days earlier) to adopt a bill known as Basic Law: Israel as the Nation-State of the Jewish People.

The operation by the Syrian forces (backed by Russian allies) to liberate Quneitra succeeded beyond expectations once Washington signaled that the extremist groups entrenched in the southern provinces bordering Jordan and Israel should not expect any American intervention to bail them out.

Damascus is now turning its attention to the liberation of the northwestern province of Idlib. It will be a major confrontation due to the presence of a large number of foreign terrorists in Northwestern Syria. The Iranian media reported that a Russian flag ship Ro-Ro Sparta was spotted crossing the Bosporus en route to Syria’s Tartus, carrying military cargo mostly ammunition, shells and missiles and that the reinforcements are meant for the Syrian Army’s “upcoming assault” on Idlib province.

July 29, 2018 Posted by | Deception, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Wars for Israel | , , , , , | 3 Comments

« Previous Entries     Next Entries »