AL-DIABIYA About half of the residents of the Syrian city of Al-Diabiya in Damascus province have returned to their homes after the city was freed from the militants, the local administration said on Monday.
“Before the war, there were 70,000 people living in Al-Diabiya. Now 35,000 have already returned,” Abdullah Ahmad, the head of the city administration, said.
The official added that the authorities were restoring the infrastructure in order to facilitate the residents’ return.
“Our task is to restore everything for the normal life and to improve living conditions here as soon as possible. People should understand that they are not asked to return to the debris. Electricity is already supplied and we are also working on distributing food,” Ahmad said.
Syria has been devastated by years of violent civil war which had prompted millions of people to flee hostilities from the areas where they lived to other locations in Syria and outside the country. The United Nations estimates, there are over 5.6 million Syrian refugees abroad and about 6.6 million displaced across the crisis-torn country.
August 27, 2018
Posted by aletho |
Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | Middle East, Syria |
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The secretary general of the Lebanese Hezbollah resistance movement says the Israeli military cannot escape defeat despite its apparent capabilities, stressing that thousands of Israeli troops are now seeking mental health treatment.
Addressing his supporters via a televised speech broadcast from the Lebanese capital city of Beirut on Sunday evening, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah stated that even though Israel has greatly developed its arsenal and acquired state-of-the-art missiles and military hardware, it cannot yet escape defeat in any possible military confrontation.
“The Israeli army is incapable of recruiting a new generation of soldiers as the draftees lack any sense of motivation to fight. According to Israeli media reports, 44,000 Israeli soldiers sought help from psychiatrists last year. Israel cannot change the spirit of the defeat that is with its military personnel,” he pointed out.
Nasrallah then praised Lebanese youths for the outstanding courage they demonstrated in battles to purge the country’s border regions of Daesh Takfiri terrorists.
“Foreign media outlets are seeking to intimidate our nation by over-counting the number of our martyrs. Those who think they can overawe our people are delusional. We achieved full liberation of our border lands through sustained efforts made by Lebanese army soldiers and resistance fighters,” the Hezbollah chief commented.
Nasrallah underlined that the United States has always offered financial support and funneled weapons to Daesh militants, saying, “US forces intervened to stop Lebanese army from launching a military operation against Daesh in Joroud al-Jarajeer area (in western Qalamoun region). On one occasion, US military helicopters even airlifted Daesh commanders from an area in Syria, when the terrorists had been besieged.”
The Hezbollah secretary general noted that the US does not care at all about the interests of regional states in the Middle East, emphasizing that Washington never stands by its allies and simply views them as tools in order to attain its own goals.
Nasrallah also warned against a false flag chemical attack in Syria’s northern province of Idlib as a pretext for airstrikes against the Damascus government.
“While the West is looking for an excuse to launch a military aggression on Syria, it is turning a blind eye to the crimes being committed against Yemeni children. Nobody knows into what abyss [Saudi Crown Prince] Mohammed bin Salman is plunging Saudi Arabia and its nation,” he pointed out.
Turning to Lebanon’s internal affairs, Nasrallah stated that the inflammatory rhetoric against Hezbollah has intensified ever since parliamentary elections were held in Lebanon on May 6.
“The goal of the plot against Lebanon is to hold it responsible at all levels for the deteriorating situation in the country. We are modestly the largest party in Lebanon, but we have the least representation in the political arena. We bet on intra-Lebanese dialogue for the formation of the new government as the time is ticking away,” he concluded.
August 26, 2018
Posted by aletho |
Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | Hezbollah, Israel, Lebanon, Middle East, Syria, United States, Zionism |
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After more than seven years of war with the goal of changing the Syrian regime, the target has now become Hezbollah. But the question remains: after the failure of the 2006 war, what can the enemies of this organization do to achieve their goal?
Hezbollah’s Secretary General Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah said in his most recent speech that “Hezbollah is stronger than the Israeli army”. Israel responded by showing a drill of the Golani brigade and the 7th Armoured Brigade, in the presence of Chief of Staff Gadi Eisenkot, simulating war against Hezbollah. This drill took place after routine ground forces exercises of the 36th Division to “improve coordination and readiness in case of war”.
In a message indicating that it will not distinguish civilians from militants, Israel has constructed a new training base in the occupied Golan Heights, the Snir facility, to simulate Lebanese villages. These mock Hezbollah villages are meant to be of the type Israeli soldiers might face in combat situations if an invasion of Lebanon is ordered.
Likewise, Hezbollah has constructed mock Israeli villages on the Lebanese-Syrian borders for combat training to prepare for war. Sayyed Nasrallah has promised to move the battle beyond the Lebanese borders and has asked his men to prepare to fight on “enemy ground” if war is imposed on Hezbollah.
Israel’s ongoing repetitive threats against Lebanon and Hezbollah are nothing new to Sayyed Nasrallah, who doesn’t give undue weight to these continuous menaces. In fact, he keeps himself informed about all news related to Israel, the Middle East and the world events of interest to him. A special team made of tens of translators and media expert collect daily all the news from open sources and keep the Hezbollah leader informed, as do his intelligence services, represented in various countries, and his own private contacts with allies he regularly meets.
He is not unfamiliar with reservist Major General Yitzhak Brik, the Israeli Army commissioner for the rights of soldiers, who talks of a serious crisis in an army that has become a “mediocre organization suffering from overburdening and exhaustion”.
Brik said top officials sell a false image (of the Army) that does not correspond to reality. “We have become a group of cowards. There is a serious crisis of motivation among young officers”.
The former head of the Israeli special service Nativ, Yaakov Kedmi, said that “the motivation to serve in the military has been reduced. Israeli society is no longer willing to grant privileges to the army”.
Sayyed Nasrallah did not mean that his organization has an air force (it has none, of course) stronger than that of Israel. Nor does Hezbollah receive financial support from Iran equivalent to that provided by the US to Israel, including “US forces ready to die for Israel”. Sayyed Nasrallah counts on a group of experienced young men, with strong ideology and a high level of training, not looking for death but also not afraid of it. Hezbollah’s goal is to stand against Israel and its allies who aim to eradicate the group: it is a matter of survival.
Hezbollah has proven its combat capability against the ISIS (Daesh) organization in Lebanon and Syria, as well as against al-Qaeda and other jihadist Takfiri groups. The Lebanese group lost only one battle over the last six years of war, a battle on the hill of el-Eiss in April 2016. This defeat resulted from a lack of coordination between allied forces. That day the military plan was for allied forces to occupy the el-Eiss hill surrounding the city of el-Eiss; the city itself was to be liberated by Hezbollah. The allies withdrew from the hill without informing the forces in the city. This lack of communication caused the death of 28 Hezbollah members whose bodies are still unrecovered and buried on the battlefield.
But this military setback did not affect the performance of the party, which was able to conduct both guerrilla battles on its own against different groups, and other battles alongside classical armies (Syrian and Russian). Together with its allies and the Syrian Army, Hezbollah managed to liberate territories at least 14 times bigger than Lebanon (the size of Syria is around 180,000 sqkm, while Lebanon is 10,453 sqkm).
Hezbollah has proven its fidelity to Syria, whose President Bashar al-Assad rejected a recent offer from Saudi Arabia to rebuild everything the seven years of war has destroyed and to remain as president – with US backing – on the condition that he give up on Palestine and Hezbollah. Assad rejected the “generous” but poisoned offer – as he has described it in private.
The years of war taught Assad to distinguish between allies and countries such as Saudi Arabia who invested much to remove him from power at the cost of destroying the country: “An ideological ally (Hezbollah) is better than the richest of all countries because this real ally did not and would never abandon him, and has no ambitions in Syria but to see stability in the Levant and to prevent Takfiri Jihadists – supported by Arab and western countries – from creating a failed state”, Assad repeats often to his visitors.
Indeed, Hezbollah has given orders to evacuate its military units from all Syrian cities and villages, without exception: no Hezbollah military forces are to remain in urban areas. They (military) will be present only on the borders between the two countries.
Hezbollah is now on focusing its military attention on the border with Israel, preparing for a war that may happen tomorrow, or that may never happen.
A writer affiliated with a western think tank recently asked the West to “wake up“, claiming that Hezbollah is expanding into Europe and trading drugs to secure resources because Western pressure on Tehran threatens its sources of funding. Many other writers call for the elimination of Hezbollah as a threat to Lebanon. These articles reflect western ignorance about Hezbollah’s thinking, its work, power, funding and goals.
Hezbollah is stronger than the Lebanese army and all the Lebanese security forces combined. Nevertheless, it would never consider capturing, dominating or otherwise controlling Lebanon for many reasons unrelated to its superior combat capability.
The party is aware that Lebanon is a multi-ethnic country (with 18 sects and religions) and that an “Islamic republic” is unattainable because its conditions are currently unfavorable. Hezbollah does not want to and indeed cannot meet the demands of a state and the well-being of its entire population because it does not have the resources of a state. The group is not in a position to manage a country with little resources, a country receiving and dependent on foreign (Arab and western) aid and wealth, a country that cannot permit itself to be isolated from the world as it would be if ruled by Hezbollah.
Moreover, Hezbollah has agreed on an interior minister (Sunni), a political foe and friend of its greatest political enemy (Saudi Arabia), because it does not want to be responsible for the internal security of the country. Nor does the organization want to be accused of sectarianism, corruption or bribery, or of arresting Sunni jihadists on a sectarian basis.
Hezbollah believes it can continue to exist indefinitely only if the local population, and especially the Shiites in Lebanon, embrace the group and offer a safe environment for its operation. This is the key: Hezbollah’s militants, families, and supporters make up around 25% (Shia are estimated above 30% of the total sects and religion in Lebanon) of the Lebanese population.
Since 1945 the Lebanese state neglected the Shiite community, who lived for decades in worse conditions than residents of Palestinian refugee camps spread out all over Lebanon. When the opportunity arose for them to bear arms and build an identity, the community did not hesitate to take it.
Israel strengthened its raison d’être with its 1982 invasion of Lebanon. Hezbollah arose first to fight Israel, and then to liberate Lebanese territory in a second phase. It then moved on to supporting the “axis of resistance” in Iraq, Syria, and Yemen. Today, the Shiites of Lebanon are no longer in need of the Taqiya (concealing or disguising one’s beliefs, convictions, ideas, feelings, opinions, and/or strategies at a time of imminent danger) and shall not give up their arms in the face of any danger to their existence, domestic or international. No matter how seriously Israel and the US may threaten Shiite areas in Lebanon, they will not surrender the power, dignity, and status they have achieved in Lebanon.
Hezbollah today employs tens of thousands of Shiites – in the military and social activities – who positively contribute to the shaky Lebanese economy. These tens of thousands working in the ranks of “Hezbollah” did not come to Lebanon from another planet, country, or continent. They are the people of the Lebanon, the people of the southern suburbs, Beirut, Jubail, Saida,Tyre, Bekaa, Baalbek, Hermel, and all parts of Lebanon. Thus, those who demand the abolition of Hezbollah are in effect calling for the destruction of an intrinsic and significant part of the population of Lebanon.
The US has invested hundreds of millions of dollars to counter Hezbollah in Lebanon and distort its image to no avail. Al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri asked in a letter to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi (intercepted by US forces in Iraq on the 9th of July 2005), when he was targeting Shi’ites instead of the occupier during the first years of the US occupation of Iraq: has any Islamic State in history ever been successful in eliminating the Shiites?
August 26, 2018
Posted by aletho |
Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular | Hezbollah, Israel, Lebanon, Middle East, Palestine, Zionism |
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For over a decade now, activists and truth-seekers have been watching the growing influence of the internet on society and politics, pointing out that when millions of people become informed to truth, it would drastically change the political landscape in America and around the world.
And it has.
At the same time, we’ve been warned that when mass, virtually free information sharing by the general public became a genuine threat to the establishment and status quo, that an ‘internet kill switch’ was ready behind the scenes to shut it all down.
And it is.
But while ten years ago, this prospect conjured up images of an actual switch in a DARPA facility somewhere in the Rocky Mountains that would literally power down the infrastructure and back bone of the world-wide web, we are seeing today what the ‘kill switch’ really looks like. It really is more a corporate/government affair that targets unwanted information.
This is the true form of the internet kill switch as it appears in 2018.
1.) “Violation of Community Guidelines” (The Outright Ban) – First and foremost is the now ubiquitous, blanket statement that users of corporate media platforms get when their pages, channels, accounts are shut down. It never points to anything specific, or offers an opportunity to right the transgression. It is legalese for ‘f$#k off, you’re not wanted around here.”
2.) Shadow Banning – This is the act of allowing a persona non grata to continue to use a corporate media platform, but not allowing their posts or content to actually be seen by anyone.
3.) Throttling of Reach – Businesses and media organizations across the board have been seeing a steady and dramatic decline in their ability to reach their audience. The number of page likes really means absolutely nothing, and while these people have signed up to receive content from you, the social media platforms make sure that only a tiny fraction of your audience actually gets what they signed up.
4.) Blacklisting Domains – Platforms like Facebook have demonstrated the ability to prevent a specific domain from getting any reach.
5.) Deleting Posts and Content – If a particular post or piece of content is unwanted on a platform, for whatever reason, it can be deleted.
6.) Flagging Content as ‘Fake News’ – This one is particularly insidious because social media platforms are using corporate news organizations like ABC and discredited private companies like Snopes to supposedly fact check independent content. These labels are often erroneous and can sometimes be appealed, but the flag itself damages the content providers reputation and reach.
7.) Downranking and Search Indexing – Google is using their algorithms to target and hide information from search results.
8.) Time Outs for ‘Bad Behavior’ – Twitter, Facebook and others will often time out a page or page admin for violating some hidden policy. Admins will be locked out of their pages for set periods or have their functionality reduced, thereby preventing them from posting content and reaching or communicating with their audiences.
9.) Shutting Down Websites and Confiscation of Content – WordPress.com is now shutting down sites hosted with its hosting services, again for the ambiguous ‘violation of community guidelines.’ Page owners are locked out without warning and are prohibited from accessing their content or backups of their sites, effectively stealing intellectual property from people.
10.) Shutting Down Business Services – Services such as Mailchimp, Spotify, Disqus and a variety of ad networks are now demonstrating the willingness to cease doing business with organizations for political reasons. This one is the most insidious ones, because it goes beyond content censorship and aims to shut people out of their legal right to conduct business.
Final Thoughts
The crisis of internet censorship in the West is unfolding now and just now coming into view. It appears that government agencies are heavily influencing these policies, along with monolithic tech companies who are now demonstrating the willingness to allow the political beliefs of executives to influence the business services they provide. Given that these are businesses, it stands to reason that it won’t be long before these companies suffer substantial backlash for crossing the line into censorship and thought control.
August 26, 2018
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Timeless or most popular | Human rights, United States |
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According to the Metropolitan Police investigation into the poisoning of Sergei and Yulia Skripal, the official timeline of their movements on the weekend of the incident is as follows:
Saturday 3rd March
14.40hrs on Saturday 3 March: Yulia arrives at Heathrow Airport on a flight from Russia.
Sunday 4th March
09.15hrs on Sunday, 4 March: Sergei’s car is seen in the area of London Road, Churchill Way North and Wilton Road.
13.30hrs: Sergei’s car is seen being driven down Devizes Road, towards the town centre.
13:40hrs: Sergei and Yulia arrive in Sainsbury’s upper level car park at the Maltings. At some time after this, they go to the Bishops Mill Pub in the town centre.
14.20hrs: They dine at Zizzi Restaurant.
15:35hrs: They leave Zizzi Restaurant.
16.15hrs: Emergency services receive a report from a member of the public and police arrive at the scene within minutes, where they find Sergei and Yulia extremely ill on a park bench near the restaurant.
Whilst fully realising that such a timeline does not necessarily need to include every detail, such as the time that Yulia arrived in Salisbury on the Saturday afternoon, nevertheless, there are some serious problems with this account, which are broadly as follows:
- Firstly, it omits crucial information from the morning of 4th March.
- Secondly, it ignores a very important incident on the afternoon of 4th March.
- Thirdly, it is, I believe, incorrect in the sequence of events it presents.
In this piece, I want to concentrate on the first one of these — the morning — and then cover the second and third in subsequent pieces.
When the timeline above was released by the Metropolitan Police on 17th March, the whereabouts of the Skripals on the morning of 4th March was unknown. At the press conference in which the timeline was released, Deputy Assistant Commissioner, Neil Basu, who is in charge of the investigation, appealed for information about their movements on the morning of 4th March:
“We believe that at around 9.15am on Sunday 4 March, Sergei’s car may have been in the areas of London Road, Churchill Way North and Wilton Road. Then at around 1.30pm it was seen being driven down Devizes Road, towards the town centre.
We need to establish Sergei and Yulia’s movements during the morning, before they headed to the town centre. Did you see this car, or what you believe was this car, on the day of the incident? We are particularly keen to hear from you if you saw the car before 1.30pm. If you have information, please call the police on 101″ [my emphasis].
Although the Skripals’ movements were unknown, it had been thought that they visited the cemetery on London Road, since there were apparently fresh flowers on the grave of Mr Skripals wife, Liudmila. But there was one very important piece of information that was known, which was extremely interesting. According to The Times:
“The Russian spy and his daughter poisoned by nerve agent turned off the GPS tracking on their mobile telephones for four hours on the day they were attacked, it was reported yesterday.”
That piece of information alone is enough to make those missing four hours in the morning vital to any investigation. There must have been a reason for the Skripals to make their phones untraceable during that time and – with apologies for stating the blindingly obvious – it was clearly because they did not want their movements at that time to be known. The most plausible explanation for this would seem to be that they had some kind of meeting that morning, a meeting which was important and secret enough for them not to want certain other people knowing where they were and what they were doing.
It is entirely understandable that the Metropolitan Police did not include details of the Skripals’ movements on the morning of 4th March in the timeline they released on 17th March, since they did not know them at that time. And given that the Skripals had made their phones untraceable, it is also entirely understandable why the Metropolitan Police desperately wanted people to come forward with information about the four hour time period.
But here’s the thing: More than five months later, and this timeline has not been updated. Not only this, but the Metropolitan Police have gone mysteriously quiet about this part of the timeline. Why mysterious? Simply because Sergei and Yulia Skripal have been awake and talking for months, and unless they have steadfastly refused to tell investigators what they were doing on that morning – which is frankly inconceivable – then the Metropolitan Police must know where they were and what they were doing on that morning. And yet they’ve stopped talking about it and have not updated their timeline since 17th March.
Which raises the following questions:
- Where were Sergei and Yulia Skripal on the morning of 4th March?
- What were they doing?
- Why did they feel the need to turn off the GPS tracking on their phones?
- Were they meeting someone, and if so who?
- Why has the Metropolitan Police not updated its timeline to include the Skripals’ whereabouts that morning, since it must by now be well aware of them?
The 10 Main Holes in the Official Narrative on the Salisbury Poisonings: #1 – The Motive
The 10 Main Holes in the Official Narrative on the Salisbury Poisonings: #2 – The Intent
The 10 Main Holes in the Official Narrative on the Salisbury Poisonings: #3 – The Capability
The 10 Main Holes in the Official Narrative on the Salisbury Poisonings: #4 – The Missing Four Hours
The 10 Main Holes in the Official Narrative on the Salisbury Poisonings: #5 – The Feeding of the Ducks
The 10 Main Holes in the Official Narrative on the Salisbury Poisonings: #6 – The Meal and The Drink
August 26, 2018
Posted by aletho |
Deception, False Flag Terrorism, Russophobia | UK |
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On August 13, 2018 Amazon banned Judaism’s Strange Gods: Revised and Expanded, which was published in 2011 and sold by Amazon for the past seven years. Along with the much larger study, Judaism Discovered, (sold by Amazon since 2008), it has had an international impact both as a softcover volume as well as a digital book circulating on the Amazon Kindle.
Sales to India, Japan and the Middle East were rapidly growing. The digital Kindle format is particularly important for the free circulation of books because it bypasses borders and customs and hurdles over the prohibitive cost of shipping which the US Postal Service imposed on mail to overseas destinations several years ago (eliminating economical surface mail).
Amazon has also banned The Great Holocaust Trial: The Landmark Battle for the Right to Doubt the West’s Most Sacred Relic (sold by Amazon since 2010).
These volumes maintain a high standard of scholarly excellence, had a majority of favorable reviews by Amazon customers, are free of hatred and bigotry and have sold thousands of copies on Amazon. Out of the blue we were told that suddenly “Amazon KDP” discovered that the books are in violation of Amazon’s “content guidelines.” Asking for documentation of the charge results in no response. It is enough that the accusation has been tendered. The accused are guilty until proved innocent, although how proof of innocence is presented is anyone’s guess. There is no appeals process. This is what is known as “Tech Tyranny.”
There is a nationwide purge underway that amounts to a new McCarthyism — blacklisting and banning politically incorrect speech and history books under the rubric of “hate speech” accusations, initiated in part by two Zionist thought police organizations, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) and the Anti-Defamation League (ADL). It’s a flimsy pretext for censoring controversial scholarly books that can’t be refuted.
In addition to our books being hate-free, we note that there are hundreds of hate-filled Zionist and rabbinic books brimming with ferocious bigotry for Palestinians, Germans and goyim in general, which are sold by Amazon.
In 1997, Daniel Jonah Goldhagen wrote Hitler’s Willing Executioners, one of the most racist books of the modern age. In it he purported to demonstrate that the Nazi “holocaust” stemmed from an ingrained German predisposition to murder Jews. His book promulgating a theory of a genetic homicidal trait infecting an entire nation of people is proudly sold by Amazon and, if the current zeitgeist persists, it will never be banned by Amazon. The target of Mr. Goldhagen’s hatred are Germans. Consequently, his is the right kind of hate— the approved hate that does not offend the Southern Poverty Law Center.
Many dozens of books containing savage attacks on Christianity are sold by Amazon. These volumes are immune from removal and suppression.
Meanwhile, the censors demand for their own media (Jeff Bezos, the owner of Amazon, owns the Washington Post newspaper) freedom of expression for the writers they employ and the speech of which they approve. In this two tiered ethical system we observe the familiar hallmark of revolutionary tyranny: the insiders demand and grant to themselves and their comrades the freedom they deny to outsiders, using the “hate” imputation as their excuse.
Our critique of Orthodox Judaism in our books constitutes a radical reassessment founded upon the depth of the documents and arguments we marshal in the course of advancing our thesis. Our powerful and original scholarship employed in our study of Orthodox Judaism is never “anti-Semitic” and never hateful. This would be easy to prove if there were an Amazon “tribunal” fair enough to consider a little something known as evidence.
Inside both Judaism Discovered (on p. 39) and Judaism’s Strange Gods: Revised and Expanded (on p. 25) there are statements addressed “to the Judaic reader,” explaining our love and concern for their welfare and liberation. No book of “anti-Semitic hate” would ever print any such charitable and compassionate statements!
To create a special category of informed theological criticism that is banned from the Amazon Kindle is a grave disservice to the advancement of learning. To make an exception for Orthodox Judaism forbidding the sale of the best scholarship critical of it, does no favors to Judaic people. Many Judaic persons don’t approve of this type of suppression and censorship of books and desire access to our information.
Our information is persuasive. It has the potential to liberate Judaic people from the bondage of the Talmudic micromanagement of their lives, and all people from the hatred and racism toward the goyim which problematic sacred rabbinic texts have fomented. If we are wrong, show us where we are wrong, don’t signal through censorship that our facts are too explosive to be handled by inquiring minds; that type of suppression will only blowback on the censors.
It’s time that someone, including multi-billionaire Bezos, had the fortitude to stand-up to the virulent book banning lobby that continues to engage in one of the lowest forms of ignorance and superstition known to history: silencing a writer who can’t be refuted by free and fair debate.
Amazon’s monopoly over the sale of books is so extensive that to be banned by Amazon is, in many cases, tantamount to a death sentence for a book. The public ought to know of the shameful tactics of the hypocrites who are so fearful of the radical scholarship for which they have no credible answer, that they must ban the books that contain irrefutable challenges to their sacred dogmas.
August 25, 2018
Posted by aletho |
Book Review, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance | ADL, Amazon, Human rights, SPLC, United States, Zionism |
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Former Brazilian President and current presidential candidate Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva. | Photo: Prensa Latina
Sarah Cleveland, vice-president of the UN Human Rights Commission, has condemned statements made by Brazilian officials following the UN’s determination that the state should “take all necessary measures” to allow Brazilian presidential candidate Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva to “exercise his political rights” as a candidate in the October presidential elections.
Speaking in an interview with swissinfo.ch Cleveland said the measures put forward by the Committee are “legally binding.”
“The precautionary measures issued are not recommendations, they are legally binding and impose an international legal obligation on Brazil to fulfill them,” she said.
Cleveland went on to say that the Geneva-based commission “has no interest in the results of the elections, only in the right of everyone to participate.”
But warned that “failure to comply with the precautionary measures would mean that Brazil would be violating” international treaties to which it is a signatory.
The UN Human Rights Commission issued the decision on August 17, even though Lula remains in prison on alleged corruption charges, events that many legal experts and observers attribute to lawfare and a salacious mainstream media campaign.
The ruling includes recommendations on the former head of state’s right to participate in media events and debates, as well as convene with members of his Workers’ Party. The committee also said Lula should not be prevented from participating in the elections until all of his legal appeals have been exhausted, per Brazil’s Constitution.
Brazil’s Workers’ Party (PT) hailed the decision made by the UN.
“It’s impossible to hide the violations practiced in Brazil by sectors of the judicial system, in cooperation with Globo (Brazil’s largest media conglomerate), the mainstream media and the coup government from the rest of the world. Either comply with the United Nations decision or put Brazil on the list of lawless, undemocratic nations,” PT president, Gleisi Hoffmann, said in a public statement.
Brazil’s most extensive public survey and research organization, Datafolha, has revealed that Lula’s lead in the presidential race has jumped to 39 percent of likely voters, 20 points ahead of his closest rival, Rio de Janeiro congressman Jair Bolsonaro.
Lula has topped every 2018 electoral poll conducted by Vox Populi, Ibope, Datafolha, Data Poder 360, Instituto Parana, the National Confederation of Transportation/MDA and Ipsos. His two terms in office were marked by a slew of social programs, lifting millions of Brazilians out of poverty and removing the country from the United Nations World Hunger Map. He left office with a record approval rating of 83 percent in 2011, according to Datafolha.
August 25, 2018
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties | Brazil, Lula da Silva |
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The Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union was ostensibly a conflict between two ideologies, two socio-economic systems.
All that seems to be over. The day of a new socialism may dawn unexpectedly, but today capitalism rules the world. Now the United States and Russia are engaged in a no-holds-barred fight between capitalists. At first glance, it may seem to be a classic clash between rival capitalists. And yet, once again an ideological conflict is emerging, one which divides capitalists themselves, even in Russia and in the United States itself. It is the conflict between globalists and sovereignists, between a unipolar and a multipolar world. The conflict will not be confined to the two main nuclear powers.
The defeat of communism was brutally announced in a certain “capitalist manifesto” dating from the early 1990s that proclaimed: “Our guiding light is Profit, acquired in a strictly legal way. Our Lord is His Majesty, Money, for it is only He who can lead us to wealth as the norm in life.”
The authors of this bold tract were Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who went on to become the richest man in Russia, before spending ten years in a Russian jail, and his business partner at the time, Leonid Nevzlin, who has since retired comfortably to Israel.
Loans For Shares
Those were the good old days in the 1990s when the Clinton administration was propping up Yeltsin as he let Russia be ripped off by the joint efforts of such ambitious well-placed Russians and their Western sponsors, notably using the “loans for shares” trick.
In a 2012 Vanity Fair article on her hero, Khodorkovsky, the vehemently anti-Putin journalist Masha Gessen frankly summed up how this worked:
The new oligarchs—a dozen men who had begun to exercise the power that money brought—concocted a scheme. They would lend the government money, which it badly needed, and in return the government would put up as collateral blocks of stock amounting to a controlling interest in the major state-owned companies. When the government defaulted, as both the oligarchs and the government knew it would, the oligarchs would take them over. By this maneuver the Yeltsin administration privatized oil, gas, minerals, and other enterprises without parliamentary approval.
This worked so well that from his position in the Communist youth organization, Khodorkovsky used his connections to get control of Russia’s petroleum company Yukos and become the richest oligarch in Russia, worth some $15 billion, of which he still controls a chunk despite his years in jail (2003-2013). His arrest made him a hero of democracy in the United States, where he had many friends, especially those business partners who were helping him sell pieces of Yukos to Chevron and Exxon. Khodorkovsky, a charming and generous young man, easily convinced his American partners that he was Russia’s number one champion of democracy and the rule of law, especially of those laws which allow domestic capital to flee to foreign banks and foreign capital to take control of Russian resources.
Vladimir Putin didn’t see it that way. Without restoring socialism, he dispossessed Khodorkovsky of Yukos and essentially transformed the oil and gas industry from the “open society” model tolerated by Yeltsin to a national capitalist industry. Khodorkovsky and his partner Platon Lebedev were accused of having stolen all the oil that Yukos had produced in the years 1998 to 2003, tried, convicted and sentenced to 14 years of prison each. This shift ruined US plans, already underway, to “balkanize” Russia between its many provinces, thereby allowing Western capital to pursue its capture of the Russian economy.
The dispossession of Khodorkovsky was certainly a major milestone in the conflict between President Putin and Washington. On November 18, 2005, the Senate unanimously adopted resolution 322 introduced by Joe Biden denouncing the treatment of the Khodorkovsky and Lebedev as politically motivated.
Who Influences Whom?
Now let’s take a look at the history of Russian influence in the United States. It is obvious that a Russian who can get the Senate to adopt a resolution in his favor has a certain influence. But when the “deep state” growls about Russian influence, it isn’t talking about Khodorkovsky. It’s talking about a joking response Trump made to a reporter’s snide question during the presidential campaign. In a variation of the classic “when did you stop beating your wife?” the reporter asked if he would call on Russian President Vladimir Putin to “stay out” of the election.
Since a stupid question does not deserve a serious answer, Trump said he had “nothing to do with Putin” before adding, “Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 e-mails that are missing. I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press.”
Aha! Went the Trump haters. This proves it! Irony is almost as unwelcome in American politics as honesty.
When President Trump revoked his security clearance earlier this month, former CIA chef John Brennan got his chance to spew out his hatred in the complacent pages of the New York Times.
Someone supposed to be smart enough to head an intelligence agency actually took Trump’s joking invitation as a genuine request. “By issuing such a statement,” Brennan wrote, “Mr. Trump was not only encouraging a foreign nation to collect intelligence against a United States citizen, but also openly authorizing his followers to work with our primary global adversary against his political opponent.”
The Russians, Brennan declared, “troll political, business, and cultural waters in search of gullible or unprincipled individuals who become pliant in the hands of their Russian puppet masters.”
Which Russians do that? And who are those “individuals”?
‘The Fixer in Chief’
To understand the way Washington works, nothing is more instructive than to examine the career of lawyer Jonathan M. Winer, who proudly repeats that in early 2017, the head of the Carnegie Endowment Bill Burns introduced him as “the Fixer in Chief”. Winer has long been unknown to the general public, but this may soon change.
Let’s see what the fixer has fixed.
Under the presidency of fellow Yalie Bill Clinton, Winer served as the State Department’s first Deputy Assistant Secretary for International Law Enforcement, from 1994-1999. One may question the selectivity of Bill Clinton’s concern for international law enforcement, which certainly did not cover violating international law by bombing defenseless countries. In any case, in 1999, Winer was awarded for “virtually unprecedented achievements”. Later we shall examine one of those important achievements.
At the end of the Clinton administration, from 2008 to 2013, the Fixer in Chief worked as high up consultant at one of the world’s most powerful PR and lobbying firms, APCO Worldwide. This is how the Washington revolving door functions: after a few years in government finding out how things work, one then goes into highly paid “consultancy” to sell this insider information and influential contacts to private clients.
APCO got off to a big start some thirty years ago lobbying for Philip Morris and the tobacco industry in general.
In 2002, APCO launched something called the “Friends of Science” to promote skepticism concerning the harmful effects of smoking. In 1993, the campaign described its goals and objectives “encouraging the public to question – from the grassroots up – the validity of scientific studies.”
While Winer was at APCO, one of its major activities was hyping the Clinton Global Initiative, an international networking platform promoting the Clinton Foundation. APCO president and CEO Margery Kraus explained that the consultancy was there to “help other CGI members garner interest for the causes they are addressing, demonstrate their success and highlight the wide-ranging achievements of CGI as a whole.” Considering that only five percent of Clinton Foundation turnover went to donations, they needed all the PR they could get.
Significantly, donations to the Clinton Global Initiative have dried up since Hillary lost the presidential election. According to the Observer : “Foreign governments began pulling out of annual donations, signaling the organization’s clout was predicated on donor access to the Clintons, rather than its philanthropic work.”
This helps explain Hillary Clinton’s panic when she lost in 2016. How in the world can she ever reward her multi-million-dollar donors with the favors they expected?
As well as the tobacco industry and the Clinton Foundation, APCO also works for Khodorkovsky. To be precise, according to public listings, the fourth biggest of APCO’s many clients is the Corbiere Trust, owned by Khodorkovsky and registered in Guernsey. The trust tends and distributes some of the billions that the oligarch got out of Russia before he was jailed. Corbiere money was spent to lobby both for Resolution 322 (supporting Khodorkovky after his arrest in Russia) and for the Magnitsky Act (more later). Margery Kraus, APCO’s president and CEO, is a member of Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s son Pavel’s Institute of Modern Russia, devoted to “promoting democratic values” – in other words, to building political opposition to Vladimir Putin.
In 2009 Jonathan Winer went back to the State Department where he was given a distinguished service award for having somehow rescued thousands of stranded members of the Muhahedin-e Khalq from their bases in Iraq they were trying to overthrow the Iranian government. The MeK, once officially recognized as a terrorist organization by the State Department, has become a pet instrument in US and Israeli regime change operations directed at Iran.
However, it was Winer’s extracurricular activities at State that finally brought him into the public spotlight early this year – or rather, the spotlight of the House Intelligence Committee, whose chairman Devin Nunes (R-Cal) named him as one of a network promoting the notorious “Steele Dossier” which accused Trump of illicit financial dealing and compromising sexual activities in Russia. By Winer’s own account, he had been friends with former British intelligence agent Christopher Steele since his days at APCO. Back at State, he regularly channeled Steele reports, ostensibly drawn from contacts with friendly Russian intelligence agents, to Victoria Nuland, in charge of Russian affairs, and top Russian experts. These included the infamous “Steele dossier”. In September 2016, Winer’s old friend Sidney Blumenthal – a particularly close advisor to Hillary Clinton – gave him notes written by a more mysterious Clinton insider named Cody Shearer, repeating the salacious attacks.
All this dirt was spread through government agencies and mainstream media before being revealed publicly just before Trump’s inauguration, used to stimulate the “Russiagate” investigation by Robert Mueller. The dossier has been discredited but the investigation goes on and on.
So, it is all right to take seriously information allegedly obtained from “Russian agents” and spread it around, so long as it can damage Trump. As with so much else in Washington, double standards are the rule.
Jonathan Winer and the Magnitsky Act
Jonathan Winer played a major role in Congressional adoption of the “Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law Accountability Act of 2012” (the Magnitsky Act), a measure that effectively ended post-Cold War hopes for normal relations between Washington and Moscow. This act was based on a highly contentious version of the November 16, 2009 death in prison of accountant Sergei Leonidovich Magnitsky, as told to Congress by hedge fund manager Bill Browder (grandson of Earl Browder, head of the Communist Party USA 1934-1945). According to Browder, Magnitsky was a lawyer beaten to death in prison as a result of his crusade for human rights.
However, as convincingly established by dissident Russian film-maker Andrei Nekrasov’s (banned) investigative documentary, the unfortunate Magnitsky was neither a human rights crusader, nor a lawyer, nor beaten to death. He was an accountant jailed for his role in Browder’s business dealings, who died of natural causes as a result of inadequate medical treatment. The case was hyped up as a major human rights drama by Browder in order to discredit Russian charges against himself.
In any case, by adopting a law punishing Magnitsky’s alleged persecutors, the US Congress acted as a supreme court judging internal Russian legal issues.
The Magnitsky Act also condemns legal prosecution of Mikhail Khodorkovsky. Browder, on a much smaller scale, also made a fortune ripping off Russians during the Yeltsin years, and later got into trouble with Russian tax collectors. Since Browder had given up his US citizenship in order to avoid paying US taxes, he had reason to fear Russian efforts to extradite him for tax evasion and other financial misdeeds.
It was Jonathan Winer who found a solution to Browder’s predicament.
As Winer tells it:
When Browder consulted me, […] I suggested creating a new law to impose economic and travel sanctions on human-rights violators involved in grand corruption. Browder decided this could secure a measure of justice for Magnitsky. He initiated a campaign that led to the enactment of the Magnitsky Act. Soon other countries enacted their own Magnitsky Acts, including Canada, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and most recently, the United Kingdom.
Russian authorities are still trying to pursue their case against Browder. In his press conference following the Helsinki meeting with Trump, Vladimir Putin suggested allowing US authorities to question the Russians named in the Mueller indictment in exchange for allowing Russian officials to question individuals involved in the Browder case, including Winer and former US ambassador to Moscow Michael McFaul. Putin observed that such an exchange was possible under the Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty signed between the two countries in 1999, back in the Yeltsin days when America was posing as Russia’s best friend.
But the naïve Russians did not measure the craftiness of American lawyers.
As Winer wrote:
“Under that treaty, Russia’s procurator general can ask the US attorney general … to arrange for Americans to be ordered to testify to assist in a criminal case. But there is a fundamental exception: The attorney general can provide no such assistance in a politically motivated case.” (My emphasis.)
“I know this”, he wrote, “because I was among those who helped put it there. Back in 1999, when we were negotiating the agreement with Russia, I was the senior State Department official managing US-Russia law-enforcement relations.”
So, the Fixer in Chief could have said to the worried Browder, “No problem. All that we need to do is make your case a politically motivated case. Then they can’t touch you.”
Winer’s clever treaty is a perfect Catch-22. The treaty doesn’t apply to a case if it is politically motivated, and if it is Russian, it must be politically motivated.
In a July 15, 2016, complaint to the Justice Department, Browder’s Heritage Capital Management accused both American and Russian opponents of the Magnitsky Act of violating the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA; adopted in 1938 with Nazis in mind). Among the “lobbyists” cited was the late Ron Dellums (falsely identified in the complaint as a “former Republican congressman”).
The Heritage Capital Management brief declared that: “While lawyers representing foreign principals are exempt from filing under FARA, this is only true if the attorney does not try to influence policy at the behest of his client.” However, by disseminating anti-Magnitsky material to Congress, any Russian lawyer was “clearly trying to influence policy” was therefore in violation of FARA filing requirements.”
Catch-22 all over again.
Needless to say, Khodorkovsky’s Corbiere Trust lobbied heavily to get Congress to pass the Magnitsky Act, which also repeated its defense of Khodorkovsky himself. This type of “Russian interference intended to influence policy” is not even noticed, while US authorities scour cyberspace for evidence of trolls.
Conclusion
The basic ideological conflict here is between Unipolar America and Multipolar Russia. Russia’s position, as Vladimir Putin made clear in his historic speech at the 2007 Munich security conference, is to allow countries to enjoy national sovereignty and develop in their own way. The current Russian government is against interference in other countries’ politics on principle. It would naturally prefer an American government willing to allow this.
The United States, in contrast, is in favor of interference in other countries on principle: because it seeks a Unipolar world, with a single “democratic” system, and considers itself the final authority as to which regime a country should have and how it should run its affairs.
So, if Russians were trying to interfere in US domestic politics, they would not be trying to change the US system but to prevent it from trying to change their own. Russian leaders clearly are sufficiently cultivated to realize that historic processes do not depend on some childish trick played on somebody’s computer.
US policy-makers practice interference every day. And they are perfectly willing to allow Russians to interfere in American politics – so long as those Russians are “unipolar” like themselves, like Khodorkovsky, who aspire to precisely the same unipolar world sought by the State Department and George Soros. Indeed, the American empire depends on such interference from Iraqis, Libyans, Iranians, Russians, Cubans – all those who come to Washington to try to get US power to settle old scores or overthrow the government in the country they came from. All those are perfectly welcome to lobby for a world ruled by America.
Russian interference in American politics is totally welcome so long as it helps turn public opinion against “multipolar” Putin, glorifies American democracy, serves US interests including the military-industrial complex, helps break down national borders (except those of the United States and Israel) and puts money in appropriate pockets in the halls of Congress.
August 25, 2018
Posted by aletho |
Corruption, Deception, Russophobia, Timeless or most popular | Hillary Clinton, Israel, Russia, United States |
2 Comments
Palestinian rights groups and local governments have challenged an Israeli law that seeks to the annex of parts of the West Bank. The Israeli government responded to the petition, stating that “the Knesset [is permitted] to legislate laws everywhere in the world” and that it is authorized “to violate the sovereignty of foreign countries via legislation that would be applied to events occurring in their territories.”
The Judea and Samaria Settlement Regulation Law, sometimes called the Regularization Law, is an Israeli law that aims to retroactively legalize Israeli settlements in the West Bank Area C. It is meant to “regulate” the status of about 2,000 to 4,000 residences in 16 settlements which were built on Palestinian-owned lands. The Knesset passed the legislation 60 to 52, on February 6, 2017.
According to the law, the land on which the residences are built will remain that of the legal owners, but their usage will be expropriated by the State. In exchange, the Palestinian owners will be compensated at a rate of 125%, or receive alternate lands (whenever possible).
The Settlement Regularization Law aims to “legalize,” under Israeli law, illegal Israeli settlement outposts, which have been built on private Palestinian land.
The law sets out a new process to legalize about half of Israel’s settlement outposts, as well as about 3,000 additional homes built illegally in settlements, which Israel recognizes as legal. Essentially, this law authorizes a further massive land theft of private Palestinian land by Israel. The European Union and the United Nations strongly condemned the law.
Attorney General of Israel Avichai Mandelblit has announced that he will not be defending the law on behalf of the government at the Supreme Court because he deems it unconstitutional, and it may lead to a suit against Israel at the International Criminal Court. Israeli Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked, whose party The Jewish Home was behind the legislation, responded by saying that the State plans to hire a private lawyer to represent it.
The Israeli occupation of the West Bank is considered a breach of international law by all countries of the world, though Israel disputes this.
Challenged
2 days after the law was passed, on February 8 2017, a petition was brought before the Supreme Court of Israel by 17 Palestinian local governments and three human rights organizations, to cancel the controversial Settlement Regularization Law under the pretext that it violates international humanitarian law and is unconstitutional.
The petitioners said “the law not only harms the private property of Palestinians, but is also intended to impinge upon their right to dignity by clarifying – without hesitation – that the interests of the settlements and the Israeli Jewish settlers in the West Bank take priority over the rights of Palestinians and therefore is permitted to dispossess Palestinians from their property.”
Responses
In a written statement in response to the petition, the Israeli government declared on August 9 that “the Knesset [is permitted] to legislate laws everywhere in the world” and that it is authorized “to violate the sovereignty of foreign countries via legislation that would be applied to events occurring in their territories,” in legal materials it recently submitted to the Israeli Supreme Court.
The petitioners insist that the Knesset is not permitted to enact and impose laws on territory occupied by the State of Israel. Thus, the Knesset cannot enact laws that annex the West Bank or that violate the rights of Palestinian residents of the West Bank.
Attorney Arnon Harel, a private lawyer representing the Israeli government, also wrote in the new materials submitted to the Supreme Court that “the Knesset [is permitted] to impose the powers of the military commander of the [West Bank] region as it sees fit”; “the Knesset [is permitted] to define the authorities of the military commander as it sees fit”; “[the authority] of the Government of Israel to annex any territory or to enter into international conventions derives from its authority as determined by the Knesset”; and that [the Knesset] is allowed to ignore the directives of international law in any field it desires.”
Adalah Attorneys Suhad Bishara and Myssana Morany, who filed the petition against the Settlement Regularization Law, said in response: “The Israeli government’s extremist response has no parallel anywhere in the world. It stands in gross violation of international law and of the United Nations Charter which obligates member states to refrain from threatening or using force against the territorial integrity of other states – including occupied territories. The Israeli government’s extremist position is, in fact, a declaration of its intention to proceed with its annexation of the West Bank.”
August 25, 2018
Posted by aletho |
Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | Human rights, Israel, Palestine, Zionism |
3 Comments
French-Palestinian activist Salah Hamouri [salah_hamouri/Twitter]
The Ministry of Europe and Foreign Affairs in Paris has pointed out that a year has elapsed since the arrest of French citizen Salah Hamouri by Israel. France is still concerned about his administrative detention, which has been extended until 30 September, said a spokeswoman.
Speaking during a press conference, she revealed that President Emmanuel Macron has discussed this issue with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on several occasions and called for an end to Hamouri’s detention. He is held with neither charge nor trial, and administrative detention also denies him the right to know the charges brought against him, does not respect his normal legal rights and does not allow his family to visit him, not even his wife and son. The French official noted that these demands have always been discussed with the Israeli authorities in order to have them met.
“Hamouri will continue to enjoy the consular protection granted by the Vienna Convention,” she explained. “This has allowed French officials to visit him regularly since his arrest, which will also continue until he is released.” The unnamed spokeswoman stressed France’s demand for Israel to respect all of its citizen’s rights.
August 25, 2018
Posted by aletho |
Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture | France, Human rights, Israel, Palestine |
1 Comment
Every day, a few hours before dawn, the British Jewish leadership unleashes its daily smear against the Labour Party and its leader. Although this relentless operation tells us little about Corbyn and the Labour Party it is very revealing of the Jewish leadership and the Israeli propaganda project.
Jewish Labour MP Luciana Berger declared yesterday that she feels “unwelcome” in her party after a video emerged of Jeremy Corbyn remarking that British Zionists have, “no sense of English irony.” In the clip, Mr Corbyn says, “British Zionists clearly have two problems. One is they don’t want to study history, and secondly, having lived in this country for a very long time, probably all their lives, they don’t understand English irony either.”
On Twitter, MP Berger responded: “The video released today of the leader of @UKLabour making inexcusable comments – defended by a party spokesman – makes me as a proud British Jew feel unwelcome in my own party. I’ve lived in Britain all my life and I don’t need any lessons in history/irony.”
Either knowingly or not, Mrs. Berger managed to validate Chaim Weizmann’s* essential observation: ‘there are no English, French, German or American Jews, but only Jews living in England, France, Germany or America.”** In Weizmann’s view, it doesn’t matter where Jews dwell, because wherever they are they remain primarily Jewish, and it is Jewishness that determines who they are: their politics, culture and national aspiration. If MP Berger knew something about irony she wouldn’t have fallen so easily into this trap. She would have noticed that while Corbyn is pointing at “Zionists” in a polite sarcastic manner, she takes offense as a “British Jew.”
But surely, this is a welcome development. It shows once again that the good old ‘dichotomy’ between Jews and Zionists may not hold water. Like Weizmann, in Berger’s eyes, so it seems, Jews and Zionists are somehow the same. You may hold it against me, but I tend to believe that both Berger and Weizmann have a point. It is pretty much impossible to determine where exactly Zionism ends and ‘the Jew’ starts. Impossible because such a demarcation line doesn’t exist. As we know, even the Jewish so-called ‘anti’ Zionists follow Weizmann’s mantra, they operate in racially exclusive Jewish political cells that are even more segregated than the Jewish state. Rather than acting as Palestinian supporters who happen to be of Jewish origin, members of JVP prefer to see themselves as Jewish voice for peace. And rather than being Labour Party members who happen to be of Jewish descent, members of the JVL adhere to Weizmann’s philosophy, they choose to operate within a Jews only political group.
The Jewish emancipation that began after the French Revolution promised to make Jews equal to their neighbours. With this, the emancipation had limited success. In France, America, Britain and other countries, Jewish political bodies act in defiance of the emancipation and its promise, they operate in the interests of the few and not the many. In Britain, the Jewish leadership is openly acting against a national party and its leader. It pushes its definition of racism that applies to just one people instead of fighting racism (universally) against any people. It promotes the interests of a foreign criminal state with an horrendous record of war crimes and human rights abuses.
Weizmann was a visionary character. Zionism, as he painted it, has, over time, won the minds and the hearts of the Jews. Luciana Berger confirmed this when she expressed her offense as a “British Jew” to a mild critique of ‘Zionists’ lack of irony’. The JVL website confirms Weizmann’s observation that they see themselves as Jews before anything else.
While many British Jews may be happy with their community leaders, some Jews might find these developments concerning, and for a good reason. Some Jews see themselves as British first. These Jews will never have a voice ‘as Jews’ because they grasp that it is this attitude that makes Jews into Weizmann’s Zionists. Their only option is to sneak out of the ghetto, alone. and in the wee small hours. They will have to depart from the tribe and the sooner the better.
Donate to support Gilad’s legal costs.
August 25, 2018
Posted by aletho |
Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | Israel, Palestine, UK, Zionism |
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Congress is currently considering legislation to give Israel a total of $38 billion over 10 years, the largest such aid package in U.S. history. Yet, U.S. media are not telling Americans about the legislation, which is before Congress right now…
Legislation to give Israel $38 billion over the next ten years is currently working its way through Congress. This is the largest military aid package in U.S. history.
Yet, while Israeli media are covering the legislation, virtually no U.S. news reports have informed American taxpayers about this proposed disbursement of their tax money.
The proposed military aid amounts to $23,000 per every Jewish Israeli family of four. (Aid to Israel has been on average about 7,000 times greater per capita than U.S. aid to others around the world.)
The proposed aid is divided between two bills. One has already passed, but the main bill is still before Congress.
1. The 2019 military spending bill contains a provision giving Israel 550 million dollars (i.e. $5.5 billion over 10 years). This has already passed both houses of Congress and was signed into law on August 16.
2. A second bill, “United States-Israel Security Assistance Authorization Act of 2018,” is slated to give rest of the package, approximately $33 billion, to Israel. The number is H.R.5141.
This bill has already passed the Senate, and is now being considered in two House committees: Armed Services and Science, Space, and Technology.[1] (Click on each committee to see its members.)
The reason that the bill was referred to the committee on space is because the bill mandates that NASA work with the Israel Space Agency, despite accusations of Israeli espionage against the U.S.
In 2015 a Caltech scientist revealed that the Chair of Israel’s National Committee for Space Research had illegally acquired classified U.S. information. The alleged espionage and theft largely took place at Caltech’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a top NASA research and development center.
The $38 billion package was originally negotiated by the Obama administration in 2014,[2] but must now be codified into law.
While U.S. media are inexplicably ignoring this massive aid legislation, Israeli media are covering it regularly, and Israel lobbying organizations are calling on their members to support it. (AIPAC, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, reportedly pioneered the legislation.)
For example, while U.S. media covered the military spending bill, none of the reports seem to have mentioned the millions of dollars to Israel. This is exemplified by an in depth PBS examination of the bill, which discussed aid to Ukraine – which gets a fraction of the amount promised to Israel – but failed to mention the far larger money to Israel.
We could not find any news reports that tell about the current aid to Israel bill.
In other words, Israelis know about the proposed $38 billion legislation, Israeli partisans in the U.S. know about it and are pressuring Congress to pass it, but the large majority of American taxpayers have no idea the legislation is before Congress.
Indications are that U.S. media are not going to report on these bills unless Americans demand that they do so.
Any Americans who believe the media should report on how American tax money is spent, will need to contact the media, both national and local, and tell them that.
The House will be back in session on September 4th. It’s probable that the bill will move forward quickly at that point. It’s unlikely that the process will involve any public debate whatsoever, unless voters contact their Congressional representatives and demand this.[3]
1. A third House committee, the committee on Foreign Affairs, passed the bill on May 9 and recommended that the full House now consider it “Under Suspension of the Rules, by Unanimous Consent.” (“The purpose of considering bills under suspension is to dispose of non-controversial measures expeditiously.” )
2. The Obama administration’s Memorandum of Understanding gave Israel even more money than it seems to have expected. The Forward reported at the time: “When Yaakov Nagel, Israel’s acting national security adviser, was tasked with heading the team negotiating a new 10-year military aid package with the United States, Prime Minister Netanyahu set forth the guidelines: ‘If you reach $3.5 billion a year, you’ll get a gold medal,’ Nagel recalled Wednesday, hours before signing the agreement in Washington. ‘If you get $3.3 billion you’ll get a silver medal; and if you get $3.1 billion you’ll get the bronze.’” Israel got an MOU for $3.8 billion per year, the largest pledge of military assistance in U.S. history.
A memorandum of understanding (MOU) is a non-binding agreement between two or more parties outlining the terms and details of an understanding. The legislation currently before Congress seeks to make the Obama administration’s 2014 MOU into law.
3. The disbursement is problematic on at least three grounds: (1) the majority of Americans feel we already give Israel too much money, (2) the aid would violate U.S. laws – see below, and (3) it would fund Israeli violations of international law and human rights abuses, causing tragedy in the region and hostility to the U.S. This has been documented in reports by the Red Cross, Human Rights Watch, Defense for Children, Christian Aid, Amnesty International, Israeli human rights organizations, etc, but these numerous reports, like the current $38 billion legislation, are largely ignored by U.S. media, which consistently provide Israel-centric reporting and fail to give Americans the full picture.
For a timeline of Israelis and Palestinians of all ages killed since 2000 go here.
The aid would violate several U.S. laws:
• It would violate two amendments to the 1961 Foreign Assistance Act, known as the the Symington and Glenn Amendments, that ban support for countries engaged in clandestine nuclear programs. (More information here.)
• It would violate the Leahy Law, which prohibits aid to countries guilty of human rights violations (more info here).
In the past Israel has used U.S. aid in ways that violated the Arms Export Control Act (AECA), which prohibits re-export of U.S.-origin defense and dual-use technology, which Israel has repeatedly done. Israel has also been charged with using U.S. weaponry illegally.
August 25, 2018
Posted by aletho |
Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | Israel, Palestine, United States, Zionism |
1 Comment
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