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UAE says no proof Iran hit tankers in clear rebuttal to US-Saudi claims

Press TV – June 26, 2019

The United Arab Emirates says there is no “clear, scientific and convincing” evidence to assign blame for the recent tanker attacks off its coast in the Sea of Oman, splitting with the United States and Saudi Arabia, which hold Iran responsible for the suspicious acts.

UAE Foreign Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan said Wednesday that his country was not able to pin the attacks on any country because an investigation had failed to find enough proof.

“Honestly we can’t point the blame at any country because we don’t have evidence,” bin Zayed said during a joint press conference with his Russian counterpart, Sergey Lavrov, in Moscow.

“If there is a country that has the evidence, then I’m convinced that the international community will listen to it. But we need to make sure the evidence is clear and precise and scientific and convincing for the international community,” he added.

Last month, four tankers were subjected to what Abu Dhabi called “acts of sabotage” outside the tiny Persian Gulf sheikhdom’s territorial waters near the Strait of Hormuz.

A joint investigation by the three countries concluded that a “state actor” was most likely behind the incident in May but stopped short of singling out any country.

Another pair of tankers — one of them Japanese — were attacked in the Sea of Oman earlier this month.

Bin Zayed’s statements indicate the UAE’s break from the official standpoint of the US and Saudi Arabia, both publicly blaming Iran for the two instances of tanker attacks without providing any evidence.

The claims by Riyadh and Washington come amid heightened tensions in the Persian Gulf region as a direct result of America’s interventionist policies.

Tensions have been running high between the two countries since Trump’s decision in May last year to abandon the 2015 Iran nuclear deal and reimpose sanctions on Tehran as part of a “maximum pressure” campaign aimed at forcing it to renegotiate a new deal that addresses its ballistic missile program and regional influence as well.

The US has also sent warships, bombers and additional troops to the region in the wake of the suspicious tanker attacks in the Sea of Oman, which it has similarly blamed on Iran without providing evidence.

Iran, however, has remained steadfast on its position. The Islamic Revolution Guards Corps shot down a US spy drone last week, prompting Trump to consider and quickly back out of retaliatory strikes.

Lavrov said that Moscow would try to persuade the US and Iran to start dialogue. Iran has made it clear that it would not negotiate with the US under pressure.

‘UAE wants tensions to be dialed down’

The Emirati foreign minister said that he discussed the US-Iran tensions with Lavrov to see how the maritime routes can be kept open in the wake of such “subversive operations.”

“Expanding international cooperation to protect ships in waterways was discussed,” the UAE official said.

He asserted that the UAE did not want “more turbulence and … more worries” in the region.

“We are in a region that is tense and important for the world and we don’t want more tension,” said Sheikh Abdullah.

The Emirati top diplomat said his country was still working with the US and other regional countries to build what he said was going to be a global coalition to protect oil shipping lanes in the region.

The remarks came a day after US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo set off on a tour of the Middle East, which included a stop in Abu Dhabi, to form a “global coalition” against Iran.

A senior State Department official said Monday that the US Navy was building a “proactive deterrence” program that would be funded by a coalition of nations that want to protect their oil tankers in the region.

Bin Zayed said the project was going to involve regional and other “(oil) exporting and importing” countries.

June 26, 2019 Posted by | False Flag Terrorism | , | 1 Comment

In daring to assert Russian interference in Brexit is a myth, Nick Clegg is excommunicated

By John Wight | RT | June 26, 2019

We live in a post-truth world, one in which daring to speak truth in defiance of establishment orthodoxies is to be guilty of heresy.

Ask Nick Clegg if you don’t believe me. Britain’s former deputy prime minister, and erstwhile leader of the country’s Liberal Democrats, is now a top executive with Facebook in the US. In this capacity, working within the belly of the beast of the hegemonic social media platform, Clegg is in a position to know if the shrill claims of Russian interference in the EU referendum of 2016, using Facebook to spread disinformation, are borne of any real substance.

Well, guess what: They don’t have any substance to them, nor indeed have they ever. “There’s absolutely no evidence that it [Russian interference] happened in the Brexit referendum,” Clegg said in a recent interview on the flagship BBC Radio 4 ‘Today’ morning show.

His assertion, predictably enough, met not with a mea culpa from the bastions of Western liberalism responsible for peddling the myth of Russian interference, but with a tsunami of outrage and a torrent of invective. In the process of which, Nick Clegg, one time darling of the liberal left, experienced his own figurative excommunication from the high church of liberal centrism. Because in daring to confirm that a key pillar of Western liberal thought in our time is predicated on hot air, he declared himself an apostate.

Consider, for example, the response of Labour MP and arch centrist David Lammy to Clegg’s assertion. Tweeting in response, he proclaimed: “Horse manure. What about the disinformation spread by Russian state media, RT and Sputnik, on Facebook? Hope Zuckerberg paid you a high price for any integrity you had leaving office.”

Aside from the towering example of parliamentary language Mr. Lammy deploys here, it’s impossible to properly fathom the desperation to seek the cause of Brexit anywhere other than where it actually resides – namely within the very liberal centrist ideology which Mr. Lammy and his ilk champion.

In the interests of context, David Lammy was already a study in liberal meltdown prior to Clegg’s interview. For the likes of him, the 17.4 million people in Britain who cast a vote to leave the EU in 2016 did so in the manner of unthinking drones, directed on this day by Moscow to vote leave rather than remain – as they should have were they behaving according to the dictates of the high church.

Since then, Mr. Lammy has been on a one-man crusade to locate Russians under the bed.

In the same interview with the BBC, Clegg, who for some unconscionable reason received a knighthood from the Queen in 2017, expands on how he arrived at his conclusion that Russian interference in the EU referendum is a myth.

To wit:

“We ran two full analyses of all the data we have in the run-up to the Brexit referendum, we’ve shared all of this information with the select committee in Westminster and elsewhere – we have found no evidence of a significant attempt by outside forces.”

Times columnist Hugh Rifkind also piled on against Clegg for daring to commit blasphemy in questioning the holy cow of Russian interference in the Brexit referendum. In a piece he wrote in response, he opines: “What was it about going to work for the fifth richest man in the world that changed his mind, I wonder?”

Here Rifkind is referencing the fact that prior to starting work at Facebook for Mark Zuckerberg, Clegg, as befitted his position within the liberal establishment, was a devoted adherent of the ‘Russia is behind everything that goes wrong and always will be’ school of liberal mania.

The crucial difference perhaps is that in his capacity as Facebook’s Vice President of Global Affairs and Communications, he’s had the opportunity to examine the evidence, or lack thereof, and changed his view accordingly.

What Lammy, Rifkind, and every other disciple of the high church fail to appreciate – or are in denial of – is the fact that the world changed forever with the 2008 global financial crash and ensuing economic recession.

It was no mere blip this crash. Instead it was the result of the insurmountable contradictions that exist within a neoliberal economic model that has only ever existed as tyrant in the lives of the majority, and faithful servant of the needs of a small minority.

It is from within this minority of stakeholders in the now rotting corpse of neoliberalism that these unhinged claims of Russian interference and influence emanate. Its peddlers are people for whom austerity and recession are and will only ever be words in the dictionary. For them and theirs, life prior to Brexit was gravy.

Not for them foodbanks, low wages, insecure employment, zero hours contracts, benefit sanctions, and a crushing daily struggle to survive. Not for them any reason to question the mantra, the big bright shining lie that this world is the best of all possible worlds. Because for such people, those struggling to ‘make it’ in this world are victims of their own personal failings and not any failure of the status quo.

Brexit was a scream from the bowels of austerity Britain. It was in large swathes of deindustrialised Britain the voice of the dispossessed, discarded, and disdained unleashed against the aforementioned status quo, characterised by hot yoga classes, chai lattes, and sushi bars.

It is neoliberalism, not Russia, that is the question. And the normalisation of economic injustice and suffering the former cultivates had by 2016 reached the point of critical mass, producing both Brexit and Trump. Brexit, I have never believed, is the solution to that suffering, but the fear it has instilled within the dark heart of the high church of liberal centrism is all that it deserves.

With this in mind, Nick Clegg’s excommunication is small price to pay.

June 26, 2019 Posted by | Russophobia | | Leave a comment

‘Wake Up Before it is Too Late’: Tusk Warns the World Has Come Close to the Brink

Sputnik – June 26, 2019

On 9 August 1945, a US bomber dropped a 21-kiloton atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Nagasaki, killing approximately 70,000 people and leaving thousands of others injured. Earlier that month, about 140,000 people died following the US dropping a nuclear bomb on Hiroshima, Japan.

In a statement on Wednesday, European Council President Donald Tusk warned G20 members not to lose control over global developments, also calling for joint efforts to resolve crises.

“Even such a short visit has made me forcefully aware of how tragic the lesson of Nagasaki is, and yet, how full of hope it is. Today, two days before the meeting of world leaders in Osaka, it should also be a lesson of responsibility for our common future”, Tusk said after his trip to the Atomic Bomb Museum and the National Peace Memorial in Nagasaki.

Urging G20 participants “to wake up before it is too late”, Tusk stressed that the international stage should not “become an arena where the stronger will dictate their conditions to the weaker without any reservations” and “where nationalistic emotions will dominate over common sense”.

“You should understand: you take responsibility not only for your own interests, but above all, for peace and a safe, fair world order”, Tusk pointed out.

He singled out unstable situations in “dozens of places on all continents” which Tusk claimed indicates “how close to the brink the world has come”.

“We continue to pretend that we are in full control of the dynamics of events and changes, but this is an illusion. The awareness of those risks should guide discussions in Osaka.

“It is you, the leaders of world superpowers, who are responsible for the fact that the lesson of Nagasaki will not be in vain”, he concluded.

The statement comes in the run-up to a two-day G20 summit that will kick off in the Japanese city of Osaka on 27 June.

The final stage of the Second World War saw the US detonate two nuclear weapons in the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 6 and 9, 1945, respectively. The bombings killed about 214,000 people.

Around 200,000 people were exposed to radiation and either died of or suffered from related diseases for the rest of their lives, raising the casualties to almost half a million, according to some estimates.

June 26, 2019 Posted by | Militarism, Timeless or most popular | 3 Comments

NSA Again Exposed For Unauthorized Collection Of Americans’ Phone Records

By Tyler Durden – Zero Hedge – 06/26/2019

Yet again, the National Security Agency has been exposed for “accidentally overcollecting” call-record metadata of millions of Americans. According to a WSJ report that relied on documents obtained by the ACLU, the NSA received metadata records from an unnamed phone company that the agency hadn’t been authorized to collect.

According to the report, it’s unclear how the overcollection occurred, but the incident took place after the NSA said it had purged hundreds of millions of metadata records it had amassed since 2015 in a separate overcollection episode.

For those who aren’t familiar with the concept, “Metadata” include the numbers called or texted and the associated time stamps, but not the contents of the conversation.

NSA

The documents didn’t make clear how many records had been collected by the NSA since October. The NSA’s media relations chief, Greg Julian, refused to comment on this specific episode, but referred to the prior overcollection episode – which resulted in the NSA deleting an entire database of collected metadata – where the NSA had collected information it hadn’t been authorized to collect.

Essentially, the agency blamed the incident on service providers who incorrectly interpreted the NSA’s request.

“While NSA lawfully sought data pertaining to a foreign power engaged in international terrorism, the provider produced inaccurate data and data beyond which NSA sought,” Julian said.

The company began delivering those records to the NSA on Oct. 3, 2018 through Oct. 12, when the agency asked it investigate the “anomaly.”

Exposure of the incident has predictably provoked outrage from lawmakers, who have been railing against the NSA’s surveillance programs since they were first exposed by former contractor Edward Snowden in 2013. Former lawmaker Pat Toomey, now an ACLU staff attorney, said the incident is just the latest reason why the NSA metadata-collection program, launched in the aftermath of 9/11 as part of the Patriot Act, should be discontinued.

“These documents only confirm that this surveillance program is beyond redemption and should be shut down for good,” Patrick Toomey, an ACLU staff attorney, said in a statement. “The NSA’s collection of Americans’ call records is too sweeping, the compliance problems too many, and evidence of the program’s value all but nonexistent. There is no justification for leaving this surveillance power in the NSA’s hands.”

The House Judiciary Committee has already started weighing which expiring Patriot Act provisions will be renewed, and according to several lawmakers, the phone surveillance program likely won’t be reauthorized.

“Every new incident like this that becomes public is another reason this massive surveillance program needs to be permanently scrapped,” said Sen. Ron Wyden, a longtime critic of the program. “But it is unacceptable that basic information about the program is still being withheld from the public.”

June 26, 2019 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception | , , | Leave a comment

There is no parity between ethnic cleansing in Palestine and Jews’ exodus from Arab states

By Nasim Ahmed | MEMO | June 26, 2019

British Conservative MP Theresa Villiers blundered into a debate on Israel and Palestine last week. In doing so, the former Northern Ireland Secretary rehashed discredited myths the function of which has historically been to shield Israel from taking responsibility for the plight of Palestinian refugees. During deliberations in the House of Commons on “Jewish Refugees from the Middle East and North Africa”, Villiers spoke of the “untold story” of the “ethnic cleansing” of 856,000 Arab Jews from Arab countries.

According to the member of Conservative Friends of Israel, ignoring the plight of these Jewish refugees and concentrating only on the Palestinians “gives the international community a distorted view of the Middle East dispute.” Villiers added that, “A fair settlement needs to take into account the injustice suffered by Jewish refugees as well as the plight of the Palestinians.”

The MP for Chipping Barnet claimed that, “The historic UN Resolution 242 states that a comprehensive peace agreement should include ‘a just settlement of the refugee problem’; the language is inclusive of both Palestinian and Jewish refugees.”

Villiers-who often speaks in support of Israel and has even used a Commons debate about terrorism on the streets of London to appeal for “sympathy and solidarity” for the Zionist state- mimicked discredited claims made by Israeli officials since the 1950s to absolve the country from its obligations under international law to the 750,000 Palestinians who were ethnically cleansed in 1947-8.

As others have pointed out, “The analogy between Palestinian displacement and the Jewish ‘exodus’ from Arab countries is misleading.” The claims of the two communities are very different; the history and circumstance of their displacement bears no resemblance to each other, which makes any attempt to use the plight of one group to dismiss the other, as though it were a kind of population transfer reminiscent of countries split apart by civil war, totally fanciful.

Contrary to what Villiers suggested, there was no forced mass exodus of Jews from Arab countries, in the way that there was a deliberate, forced expulsion of Palestinians from their own land. If we look at Iraq, for example, Arab Jews left due to a combination of factors, of which a hostile environment following the creation of the State of Israel in Palestine was certainly one. Other push factors, according to Abbas Shiblak, author of The Lure of Zion: Case of the Iraqi Jews, include laws that were enacted to facilitate the Jewish exodus. One such law is 1/1950, known as the denaturalisation law, which empowered the Iraqi government to “divest any Iraqi who wished of his own free will and choice to leave Iraq for good, of his Iraqi nationality.” Shiblak points out that this law was welcomed by Israel, as well as Britain and the US, both of which were applying pressure on Iraq to agree to a population transfer deal involving 100,000 Iraqi Jews. It was indeed a driving factor in the flight of Iraqi Jews.

Other factors, though mired in controversy, also played a part. The 1950s saw a number of Israeli false flag operations. One that grabbed global attention was the failed covert operation, known as the “Lavon Affair”. Egyptian Jews were recruited by Israeli military intelligence to plant bombs inside British and American civilian targets, including churches and libraries. The attacks were to be blamed on the Muslim Brotherhood and Egyptian communists in order to induce the British government to maintain its occupation army in the Suez Canal zone.

While that operation was not intended to create a hostile environment for Jews in Egypt with the hope of persuading them to go to Israel — that result was an arguably unintended consequence — similar plots in Iraq were designed with exactly that in mind. From 1950 through to 1951 Israeli spy agency Mossad orchestrated five bomb attacks on Jewish targets in an operation known as Ali Baba, to drum up fear amongst and hostility towards Iraqi Jews. As the mood darkened, more than 120,000 Jews — 95 per cent of the Jewish population in Iraq — left for Israel via an airlift known as Operation Ezra and Nehemiah.

In addition to the anti-Jewish feelings that took root in Arab cities following the creation of the State of Israel and prompted Jewish flight, there was also a powerful pull factor that had nothing to do with hostility in Arab countries. The very creation of Israel was based on the idea of “the ingathering of the exiles”, which assumed that the self-styled “Jewish State” would attract as a matter of course Jews from around the world to make “aliyah” and migrate there. This was not only intended to fulfil the secular dream of a Jewish “national home” (as the Balfour Declaration put it, not a “state”) but also to bring about what fundamentalist Evangelical Christians believe is a Biblical prerequisite for the long-awaited return of Jesus Christ, Armageddon and the end days; what they refer to as the “rapture”. If the whole purpose of the State of Israel was and remains to attract Jewish migration from across the world — Arab states included, presumably — then to claim that those who make the move are “refugees” is totally inaccurate and a false representation of reality.

In stark contrast, the ethnic cleansing (a term applied by Israeli historians) of three-quarters of the Palestinian population of historic Palestine, and the subsequent further expulsions of the native population that followed the June 1967 war, was premeditated in order to create a Jewish majority in the land. This is not only an indisputable historical fact, but is also reflected in various UN resolutions.

Israel’s membership of the UN was conditional upon the nascent Zionist state taking responsibility for the plight of Palestinian refugees and allowing them to return to their homes. It’s worth noting that Israel first applied to join the UN on 15 May, 1948, the day after it declared its independence; the application was rejected. A second application on 17 December the same year was also turned down on the grounds that the fighting was ongoing in Palestine and that Israel had failed to establish a demilitarised zone in the Negev Desert. It was only at its third attempt a year later that the international community allowed Israel to become a member of the organisation with the aforesaid condition.

UN General Assembly Resolution 273 of 11 May, 1949 admitted the state as a member, but required Israel to comply with Resolution 194 of 11 December, 1948 which “resolves that the [Palestinian] refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbours should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date, and that compensation should be paid for the property of those choosing not to return and for loss of or damage to property which, under principles of international law or in equity, should be made good by the Governments or authorities responsible.” The Israeli government agreed to this condition. In pursuit of this goal, the UN ordered the creation of a commission to facilitate the repatriation, resettlement and economic and social rehabilitation of the refugees and the payment of compensation.

However, Israel has never shown any inclination to fulfil that condition of its UN membership, despite agreeing to do so. Palestinians who were expelled from their land, and their descendants, still live in refugee camps across the occupied Palestinian territories and neighbouring countries, with many others in the wider diaspora around the world.

The international community recognises no such moral and legal claims for Arab Jews who moved to Israel, though it should also be pointed out that many chose to settle elsewhere. Villiers cited UN Resolution 242 when she claimed that such an obligation does indeed exist. However, the strongest interpretation of this resolution given its context in being adopted by the Security Council in 1967 after Israel occupied the West Bank and Gaza during a war that led to the displacement of a further 400,000 Palestinians, is that UN Resolution 242 refers only to Palestinian refugees. The resolution also required Israel to withdraw from the territories that it occupied during the war; it hasn’t done that yet, either.

One could of course make a case for Arab Jews to be compensated for the suffering that they endured and the property they left behind, but that should not in any way be at the expense of Palestinian refugees. Such a move would have no basis in international humanitarian law, and would thus be baseless. Human rights are not interchangeable: you cannot simply exchange the rights of one person with those of another as though it were some kind of commodity to be bartered. The rights and claims of Palestinian refugees on the state of Israel cannot be wiped away by rights that Jews may or may not have over Arab states. The simple truth is that there is not, and never has been, any parity between the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians since 1947, and the exodus of Jews from Arab states. As a lawyer, Theresa Villiers should know that but, as a strong supporter of the State of Israel, like many others she chooses to ignore it as she tries to deny Palestinians of their legitimate rights.

June 26, 2019 Posted by | Deception, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, False Flag Terrorism, Timeless or most popular | , , , , | 1 Comment

Israeli security, peace cannot be built on injustice of Palestinians

By Ramzy Baroud | The Star | June 22, 2019

In 1948 my grandfather, along with 3000 other Badrasawis, was expelled by Israeli military forces from our ancestral village of Beit Daras in Palestine.

Like hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from over 500 other villages, my grandfather assumed he would be back home in a few weeks. “Why bother to haul the good blankets on the back of a donkey, exposing them to the dust of the journey, when we know that we will return to Beit Daras in a week or so?” he asked my bewildered grandmother, Zeinab.

Beit Daras was located 32 kilometres north-east of the Gaza Strip, perched between a large hill and a small river that seemed never to run dry. A massacre took place as people fled the village. Houses were blown up, and wells and granaries sabotaged.

A peaceful village, that had existed for millennia, was completely destroyed with the intention of erasing it from existence. In its place now stands the Israeli towns of Giv’ati, Azrikam, and Emunim. The life of those Israeli towns is based on the death of our village.

Seventy years later, we have still not returned. Not just the Badrasawis, but millions of Palestinians, who are scattered in refugee camps all across the Middle East and a growing diaspora globally. Our good blankets have been lost forever, replaced with endless exile and dispossession.

The occupation of Palestine is not a “conflict” – as the Israelis like to present it. Israel is a colonial power that is ethnically cleansing an entire indigenous population in order to legitimise and grow its colony.

And like all people, we Palestinians have the right to resist colonial domination and occupation. This is an inalienable right enshrined in international law. ]

It is this right that justified Africa’s anti-colonial struggles and wars of liberation in the 1950’s and 1960’s, the American Revolution and the Cuban Revolution. This right also legitimates Palestinian resistance – whether that resistance is through the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Movement, prosecution of Israeli war criminals at the International Criminal Court, or through armed struggle.

Dedan Kimathi is celebrated as a hero to Kenyans because of his resistance to – not because of his subservience to – colonialism and occupation. The Mau Mau rebellion is a source of inspiration – not just for Kenyans – but for all of humanity.

Israel will claim its occupation of Palestine is self-defense; that its demolition of Palestinian homes, detention without trial policies, construction of illegal settlements, theft of Palestinian land in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and restrictions on Palestinian freedom of movement, are necessary for ‘security’. Israeli security and peace cannot be built on injustice and occupation – at the expense of Palestinian security, justice, dignity and peace. The life of one group should not be based on the death of the other.

Israeli military strikes on Palestinian targets in the Gaza Strip are always portrayed as a “response” to Palestinian fire. But Palestinian fire is never contextualised. It is never “in return” for the cruel, years-long Israeli siege that has systematically destroyed Gaza’s economy and subjected an entire generation of Palestinian children to malnutrition-related deficiencies.

It is never “in return” for decades of devastating military occupation of Palestinian land and life. Fire from Gaza is never “in return” for the continued dispossession of historic Palestine which made most of the population in Gaza refugees in the first place.

The Palestinian liberation struggle is simply dismissed as “terrorism”. The word “terrorism” is readily applied to Palestinian individuals or groups who use homemade bombs, but never to a nuclear-armed Israeli state that has used white phosphorous, DIME bombs, and other internationally-prohibited weapons against Palestinian civilians.

What is happening in occupied Palestine is incremental genocide – not self-defence. Israel is asking the Palestinian people to let their freedom die, so that the Israeli people can live.

Submit or fight. These were the two choices facing Kenyans during your anti-colonial struggle. Like you, we Palestinians have also chosen to fight for our dignity – for ourselves and our children. We will not let our dream of freedom die.

For me, Beit Daras is not just a piece of earth but a perpetual fight for justice that shall never cease, because the Badrasawis belong to Beit Daras and nowhere else.

Israel can no longer rationalise its oppression of Palestinians by blaming Palestinians who exercise their natural and internationally recognised right to resist occupation and colonialism.

We will continue to resist Israeli colonialism, armed with our rights and international law.

Dr. Ramzy Baroud is a Palestinian journalist, author and editor of the Palestine Chronicle newspaper. He is currently on a tour of Nairobi, discussing his latest book ‘The Last Earth: A Palestinian Story’ (Pluto Press, London).

June 26, 2019 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular | , , , | 3 Comments

Toronto Raptors’ Trip to Israel

The Obscenity of Jewish Power

By Kevin Barrett • American Herald Tribune • June 26, 2019

I recently received an email from Code Pink:

“Winning the NBA finals is a great achievement, but Raptors billionaire co-owner Larry Tennenbaum—an unapologetic Israel supporter—wants to reward them with a propaganda trip to Israel. Help us appeal to the Raptors to reject their coach’s offer: Tell them to dunk the ball for Palestinian rights by refusing to travel to Israel.”

“Dunk the ball for Palestinian rights?” That is not exactly the world’s catchiest protest chant. No rhyme or alliteration, the meter doesn’t scan, and the image that comes to mind is…what, exactly? Kawhi Leonard stealing Larry Tennenbaum’s head right off his neck and slamming it through the hoop?

Regardless, the well-meaning lefties at Code Pink have their hearts in the right place. Like most well-meaning lefties these days, they feel bad about Israeli atrocities. Unlike most well-meaning lefties, they are trying to do something about them. And unlike just about everybody else in America, they have the guts to get loud and visible, risking arrest or worse. (I will never forget hearing about Medea Benjamin getting her arm broken by al-Sisi’s thugs.)

But Code Pink’s courage does not extend to telling the truth about Jewish power and its most egregious abuses and vulnerabilities. Medea Benjamin must know that 9/11 was a false flag operation—she essentially admitted her suspicions to me, and cheered on my 9/11 activism, during her 2007 interview on my Truth Jihad Radio show. Yet during a 2014 New Horizon Conference in Iran, she and Gareth Porter loudly complained about the Conference’s focus on 9/11 “conspiracy theories” and other forms of “anti-Semitism.” While everyone else at the conference accepted that 9/11 was a Zionist-driven false flag (the show of hands was unanimous except for Benjamin and Porter), the two holdouts raised a stink with the Conference organizers about supposed anti-Jewish sentiment at the event. The two were particularly appalled by a couple of attendees representing the the European New Right, who espoused Holocaust revisionism and ferociously condemned what they saw as grossly disproportionate Jewish power dominating the West.

Which brings us to Gilad Atzmon’s million-dollar question: Why can’t we talk about Jewish power? Some say Jewish power is the elephant in the living room: It is so overwhelmingly huge and obvious that we just don’t notice it. But why don’t we notice it? And why are we met with embarrassed cringes when we mention it? Could it be that the elephant in the living room is standing on its hind legs and displaying a massively oversized sex organ?

In our current cultural living room, Jewish power is a kind of obscenity: It performs unspeakably blasphemous and perverted acts—shooting Palestinian children for sport, putting targets on the bellies of pregnant Palestinian mothers in order to kill the “little snakes” as well as their moms, killing the Kennedies, blowing up the World Trade Center in broad daylight, and so on—and then uses its monopoly on mainstream media to gaslight us and tell us that such things cannot possibly exist. (I analyzed this obscene, “unspeakable” dimension of 9/11 in a 2007 essay.)

When I try to talk about these matters with well-meaning liberal Jews like Medea Benjamin or Rabbi Michael Lerner, I run into a brick wall of denial. Rabbi Lerner seems to think that Jewish power in America is roughly proportional to Jewish demographic status as 1.5% of the population:

Barrett: Is there an American politician who could do that, though, given the ever increasing power of the ever more radical Zionist lobby here in the US? …

Lerner: Well, I think you’re mistaken about the causation. The American Jews represent about 1.5% of the population of the United States. The major force that supports the Republican Party and pushes also forces in the Democratic Party are the Christian fundamentalists. They are at least some place between 30 and 40 million, essentially about 5 or 6 times as many of them as there are Jews…. I think it’s a mistake to exaggerate Jewish power. The United States would be taking the same stance if Israel had no Jews in it, if Israel was simply another country that was willing to play ball with the United States…

Lerner’s seeming obliviousness to the reality of Jewish power in America, and the monstrous crimes it has enabled, is not unlike the reaction of a deep-in-denial child or spouse of an extreme abuser or serial killer. Good-hearted Jews like Rabbi Lerner just can’t face the fact that their community is (a) obscenely disproportionate in its power, and (b) complicit in the obscene crimes of the worst, dominant element of its leadership.

Rabbi Lerner’s assertion that the (organized) Jewish community’s power in America is proportional to its numbers, and has nothing to do with US support for Israel, is absurdly, laughably false. Yet ask average Americans “is Jewish power in America disproportionate, and if so, how disproportionate?” and you’ll probably get a lot of blank, embarrassed stares. We have been trained by the Jewish-dominated mainstream media to imagine that the only people who ask such questions are paranoid Nazi nutcases who fantasize about Jews secretly running the world from Elders of Zion headquarters beneath the South Pole, no doubt in cahoots with a still-living Elvis.

So let’s leave the “how disproportionate is Jewish power” question aside for a moment, and ask a parallel question: “Are African-Americans dominant, i.e. disproportionately represented, in professional basketball?” The answer, as we all know, is “yes.” How disproportionate are they? Rather than bothering to confirm with redundant research what we all know thanks to our own eyes, I confidently opine that the average pro basketball game features ten players, roughly eight of whom appear to be African-Americans. So African-Americans, who make up about 12% of the US population, constitute about 80% of NBA players. In other words, there are between six and seven times as many black NBA players as there would be if their presence was proportional to the black population. That’s a 600% to 700% overrepresentation. One could summarize this all-too-obvious reality by saying that “black people are massively overrepresented on the pro basketball court. They dominate!”

So how about NBA owners? One list claims that 17 out of 39 NBA owners (43.6%) are Jewish. The same list erroneously states that Jews constitute 3% of the population; the reality is less than 1.5%. It seems that Jews are overrepresented in NBA ownership positions by a factor of 2,900%—four times more overrepresentation than black players enjoy on the pro basketball court! So if we say that blacks are massively overrepresented and dominate the NBA courts, what words could possibly describe the overrepresentation of Jews as NBA owners?!

If you’re a Code Pink supporting liberal, it’s OK to protest Larry Tennenbaum dragging his basketball team to Israel to “sportswash” Zionist crimes. But it’s not OK to remark upon the fact that “Tennenbaum” is an obviously Jewish name. It’s even less OK to point out that Jews are absurdly overrepresented in NBA ownership positions. And it is the penultimate in non-OK-ness to point out that this is because Jews are similarly overrepresented among American billionaires, millionaires, people who make at least $100k per year—you name the metric of wealth, Jews pretty much own it. Finally, if you want to really make yourself unpopular by uttering the worst possible obscenity, just point out that this extreme overrepresentation of Jewish wealth, along with even more extreme and disproportionate Jewish dominance of mainstream media, is OBVIOUSLY (sorry Rabbi Lerner) the main reason the US has been bled by the state of Israel to the tune of trillions of dollars while squandering its power, reputation, and freedoms in an endless series of Middle Eastern wars.

Former ADL chief Abe Foxman, upon reading the above words, will no doubt be thrashing around in his plush retirement home bed with rage, screaming: “THE ‘RICH JEW’ IS A PERNICIOUS ANTI-SEMITIC TROPE!” More honest Jewish Americans, like the irrepressible Joel Stein, might reply that like Ilhan Omar’s “anti-Semitic tropes,” this one happens to be true. Joel might even wisecrack that he doesn’t care if Americans think Jews are obscenely rich and powerful, he just wants to keep them that way.

The Jewish community reacted to Stein’s legendary article “Who Runs Hollywood? C’mon!” in much the same way a classroom full of fourth graders might react to an especially loud and stinky fart: Half turned away and held their nose, while the other half giggled. There could be no better illustration of the parallel between the way people naturally react to obscenity, and typical polite middle class liberal reactions to the mention of Jewish power.

June 26, 2019 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Progressive Hypocrite, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | , | 6 Comments

Netanyahu boasts ‘100s of anti-Iran ops’ in Syria as Russia reminds to love thy neighbor’s security

RT | June 26, 2019

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made it clear that Israel will stop at nothing to protect itself against any perceived threats, as he boasted about Tel Aviv’s successful raids against alleged Iranian targets in the neighboring Syria.

“Israel has acted hundreds of times to prevent Iran from entrenching itself militarily in Syria,” he said, speaking ahead of a trilateral meeting between the Russian, American and Israeli national security advisers, who met in Jerusalem on Tuesday to discuss rising tensions in the Middle East and other urgent matters.

“We have acted hundreds of times to prevent Iran from delivering increasingly sophisticated weaponry to Hezbollah, or to form a second front in the north against us from the Golan Heights. Israel will continue to prevent Iran from using neighboring territory as platforms to attack us, and Israel will respond forcefully to any such attacks.”

Such belligerent statements did not sit well with the Russian Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev, who called on the Israeli PM to respect the security of his neighbors as well, explaining that it was effectively the only way to ensure Israel’s own safety.

“We understand the concerns that Israel has and want those threats to be eliminated,” Patrushev said, explaining that Israel’s security is important for Moscow, but added that “one should also take the national interests of other regional nations into consideration.”

“If we do not … acknowledge and reckon with those interests, I doubt we can achieve any tangible result” in terms of regional security, the Russian Security Council secretary warned.

June 26, 2019 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | , , , , | 7 Comments