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‘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 | Leave a comment

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 | , , , , | Leave a 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 | , , , | Leave a comment

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 | , | Leave a comment

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 | , , , , | Leave a comment

Facebook to give French courts data on hate speech suspects, says minister

RT | June 25, 2019

Facebook has agreed to give French courts the identification data of users suspected of spreading hate speech on the platform, according to a French minister, in what is being described as a world first.

France’s minister for digital affairs and former top advisor to President Emmanuel Macron, Cedric O, confirmed the agreement on Tuesday, but suggested the courtesy would not be extended to other nations.

“This is huge news, it means that the judicial process will be able to run normally,” O told Reuters. “It’s really very important, they’re only doing it for France.”

The deal between the world’s largest social media network and France came after a series of meetings between Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and Macron.

The social network had already been giving French authorities IP addresses and identifying data of suspected terrorists after judges demanded their cooperation, but this is the first time the agreement has extended to hate speech.

Macron has made no secret of his interest in regulating online hate speech and fake news. Recently, parliament has been considering implementing a fine of 4 percent of a tech company’s global revenue if they are found to not have done enough to remove certain content from their network.

June 25, 2019 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , | Leave a comment

Only 19% of Americans want military strike on Iran

RT | June 25, 2019

Less than one quarter of Americans want the US to take military action against Iran, a new poll has found, amid rising tensions between Tehran and Washington.

The Hill-HarrisX survey revealed that 19 percent of voters want the US to launch a “limited military strike” on Iran — an action which the Trump administration said it considered but ultimately backed away from last week.

A more hawkish five percent of voters said they wanted the US to outright declare war on Iran, while another 19 percent of voters said they were unsure about what the US should do next.

The majority of respondents (58 percent), however, said they would prefer a non-military response to Iran’s shooting down of an American drone last week, which Tehran said had entered its airspace.

Forty-nine percent said they would like the US to “seek a negotiated solution” to the recent hostilities, while nine percent were less enthusiastic about engagement and feel the US should “do nothing.”

Broken down by party, only 16 percent of Democrats favored a military response, with 67 percent saying they wanted peaceful negotiations.

Republicans were more hawkish in their views, but only marginally. Thirty-one percent of GOP voters said they would like to see a limited military strike or declaration of war. Fifty percent said they would prefer a peaceful resolution.

Voters over the age of 65 were most reluctant to see the US go to war, with 60 percent against it. Some age groups were more open to a military response, but a majority in all age groups wanted to avoid conflict.

The poll results strengthen arguments made by some Trump supporters and sympathizers that launching military action against Iran would be unpopular with his base and could cost him during the 2020 election.

Trump campaigned heavily on the promise that he would end US regime change wars and conduct US foreign policy on an “America first” basis — a promise which many would view as broken if he entangled the US in a new military conflict in the Middle East.

Some of Trump’s top advisers, including National Security Advisor John Bolton and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, have long-advocated for military engagement against Iran.

Trump has so far opted for non-military response to Iran, hitting Tehran with cyber attacks, fresh sanctions and employing a policy of “maximum pressure” designed to force Iran to submit to US demands.

June 25, 2019 Posted by | Militarism, Wars for Israel | , | Leave a comment

Decolonise Palestine to achieve liberation

MEMO | June 25, 2019

Palestinians have rejected the Manama summit taking place today for several legitimate reasons – all pointing to how the US prelude to the so-called “deal of the century” normalises Israel at an unprecedented level. This normalisation will drastically reduce Palestinian prospects for liberation, which are already precariously low, given the focus on diplomacy which marginalised the role that Palestinian resistance movements could have played in the process.

For its own reasons, notably the issue of prolonging its survival, the Palestinian Authority (PA) has also denounced the summit. Israeli Ambassador to the UN, Danny Danon, has taken issue with the PA stance, penning an op-ed in the New York Times in which he discusses the purported benefits of political surrender.

Danon asks: “What’s wrong with Palestinian surrender?”

Palestinian surrender is non-existent, as it should be. Typical of sweeping statements in which Israeli officials eliminate the distinction between the Palestinian leadership and the Palestinian people, Danon deems the conflation necessary in order to support his preposterous argument that “a national suicide of the Palestinians’ current political and cultural ethos is precisely what is needed for peace.”

Pointing fingers at the PA and Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) Secretary General Saeb Erekat to make his argument, Danon seeks to pressure the PA into accepting the new framework, detrimental to Palestinians as it is, in order to validate his hypothesis that surrender equals liberation of the Palestinian people. Yet the very mention of liberation by an Israeli official makes clear the existence of a colonial project that has incarcerated Palestinians since before the Nakba of 1948.

Currently the PA has no other option but to speak out against US President Donald Trump’s “deal of the century” and related initiatives. Its authority is eroding, mirroring the divide between the PA hierarchy and the people. The current decision to align itself with the Palestinian people’s demands is a step taken out of necessity – there are no principles involved on behalf of the PA and Danon knows this all too well.

The PA has traded Palestine for symbolic concessions and contributed to making Israel stronger by compromising on the Palestinians’ right to land and return. Unless the current stance is backed up by a radical change within the PA, it will bolster Danon’s surrender requirements at a diplomatic level.

Far from leading to “peace”, which has also been bludgeoned in line with Israeli demands, Palestinian surrender will eliminate both the struggle and the people. Liberation is not tied to economic prosperity – it is a requirement that comes with the decolonisation of historic Palestine. Unless that demand is heeded, all suggestions and plans for negotiations should be rejected. That includes an outright rejection of the two-state compromise, which has proved to be a dangerous scheme and very much in line with what the US hopes to accelerate through its plan.

Is Danon predicting an eventual PA surrender? That hypothesis is much more likely than a Palestinian surrender of their rights to their land. As a coloniser, Danon has no right to dictate what trajectory Palestinians decide upon, much less insist upon a “national suicide” to conceal the fact that Israel – the colonial enterprise he forms part of – perpetuated the ongoing massacre against the Palestinian people.

June 25, 2019 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular | , , , | Leave a comment

British Society for Middle Eastern Studies endorses boycott of Israeli universities

MEMO | June 25, 2019

The British Society for Middle Eastern Studies (BRISMES) has endorsed the Palestinian call for a boycott of Israeli academic institutions, in a vote taken at its AGM in Leeds on Monday.

According to reports on social media, the resolution supporting the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) campaign was easily passed, with almost 80 percent support (final numbers to be confirmed).

The resolution highlights Israel’s obstruction of “Palestinians’ right to education by destroying Palestinian universities and schools, arresting students, raiding and forcing Palestinian universities to close, and restricting Palestinians’ movement”.

The text goes on to describe the “key role” played by Israeli universities “in planning, implementing and justifying Israel’s illegal military occupation”, and claims such institutions “are maintaining a close and supportive relationship with the Israeli military”.

Examples of this relationship include “involvement in developing weapons systems, providing justification for military actions and extra-judicial killings, rewarding students serving in the occupation forces, designing and delivering special programmes for soldiers and officers, building on occupied land, and systematically discriminating against non-Jewish students”.

Proposed by Professor John Chalcraft (LSE) and seconded by Dr Rafeef Ziadah (SOAS), the resolution commits BRISMES to “endorsing the call for a boycott of Israeli academic institutions until these institutions publicly end their support and complicity in violating Palestinian rights as stipulated in international law”.

After the resolution passed, Dr Ziadah tweeted: “members of #BRISMES2019 passed a #BDS resolution @ annual general meeting earlier today. This was a real grassroots campaign, long time in the making. Congratulations to every single person who worked tirelessly to make this happen!”

Palestinian boycott campaigners welcomed the move, and urged other international academic societies to take “similar measures against racism and oppression”.

BRISMES was established in 1973 “to encourage and promote the study of the Middle East in the United Kingdom”, and brings together “teachers, researchers, students, diplomats, journalists and others who deal professionally with the Middle East”.

 

June 25, 2019 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Solidarity and Activism, War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

Egypt’s NileSat halts broadcast of Press TV, other Iranian channels: Saudi media

Press TV – June 25, 2019

Saudi media say Egyptian-owned satellite firm NileSat has halted the broadcast of three Iranian TV channels, including English-language Press TV news network, in yet another attack on media freedom.

The Arabic-language Saudi daily newspaper Okaz, citing an informed source, said Sunday that the regional satellite provider halted the broadcast of Press TV as well as entertainment and movie channels of iFilm in English and Arabic languages.

Earlier, some informed sources had reported that Arab satellite companies had agreed to cancel their contracts with Iranian media outlets in the region.

The move by the Arab alliance was claimed to be a response to the networks’ “spread of rumors and creation of division.”

It is not the first time that Iranian television channels come under attacks by Arab and European satellite firms.

Egypt — a close Saudi ally — is party to a Riyadh-led coalition waging a bloody military campaign against Yemen. The Saudi regime and its allies are especially outraged by Iranian media’s wide coverage of the crimes being committed against Yemeni people, among other issues.

Since its launch in 2007, Press TV has been using a wide range of platforms, from TV broadcast and website to social media, to offer its audience a fresh view of world news, with a focus on developments in the Middle East’s conflict zones.

In April, Press TV’s verified YouTube account — along with the page of Iran’s Spanish-language Hispan TV — was blocked with no prior notice by tech giant Google.

The move came as the US stepped up its pressure campaign against Iran with the backing of Saudi Arabia and other repressive Persian Gulf Arab regimes. Washington is the main sponsor of the Saudi-led war on Yemen.

June 25, 2019 Posted by | Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , , | Leave a comment

The Economic Entrails at the Heart of the ‘Deal of the Century’

By Alastair Crooke | Strategic Culture Foundation | June 25, 2019

It is nothing new to say that the ‘Deal of the Century’ is – and always was – in essence an economic project. Indeed, it seems that its political ramifications are viewed by the White House as little more than the ineluctable consequences to an a priori economic architecture, already in the process of being unfolded.

In other words, it is the economic facts on the ground that are intended shape the political outcome — an attenuated political landscape that anyway has been minimised by Trump’s pre-emptive removal of key pieces of any Palestinian negotiating leverage.

The financial squeeze on the Palestinians is well attested. On the one hand, the Palestinian Authority (historically dependent on Saudi subvention) is gently slipping into bankruptcy; whilst Gaza is held in virtual abject dependency through the drip-feed of subventions channelled into Gaza by Qatar, with Israeli permission — the size of this latter monthly ‘lifeline’ subvention being carefully adjusted by Israel according to what it judges to be the norms of (generally Hamas) ‘good conduct’.

So, on the one hand there is the financial siege that is intended to make the Palestinians pliant to the ‘quality of life package’ which the ‘deal’ is supposed to bring — the Bahrain summit later this month being its shopfront. But there is another less well recognised side to the Deal which is summarised in the title to a McClatchy article entitled, White House sees Egyptian energy forum as a ‘roadmap to Middle East peace’.

In a later piece, McClatchy publishes the newly declassified map of the US East Mediterranean energy ‘roadmap’. And here the fuller picture becomes clear: the US sponsored ‘gas forum’, “according to three senior administration officials, that map [the] declassified one, obtained by McClatchy – has motivated members of the [US] National Security Council to prioritize the formation of a gas forum in the Eastern Mediterranean that would simultaneously boost and entangle the economies of several countries that have been at odds for decades”.

Well, let’s translate that little euphemism: ‘boost and entangle’. What that formula translates into is — the means to integrate Israel into the economic regional sphere is firstly, through energy. Yet, it is not intended to integrate Israel alone into this Egyptian economic sphere, but also to make Jordan, the PA (and maybe even Lebanon), too, partially dependent on Israeli energy – alongside putative partners, Italy, Greece, and (the Greek-linked part) of Cyprus — with the US offering to help flesh out the structure of the ‘gas forum’ with U.S. expertise.

This is the heart of ‘the deal’. Not just political normalisation for Israel into the region, but the making of economic dependency of the Egyptians, Palestinians, Jordanians (and possibly – but not so likely – Lebanon) on the US East-Med gas ‘hub’.

Source: McClatchy

And, inevitably there is a sub-plot to all this, (as McClatchy notes):

“On this front, the administration enjoys support from unlikely allies. Eliot Engel, the Democratic chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee … said the Mediterranean gas forum project was a strategic opportunity for the U.S. to stymie Russian influence efforts over local energy resources. “I think that [Russian President Vladimir] Putin and Russia can’t and should not be able to control the situation,” Engel stated”.

So, the US Administration is pursuing two bipartisan congressional efforts to ‘stymie’ Russia in the region: One is a bill promoting energy partnerships in the Eastern Mediterranean; and a parallel bill which threatens to sanction European firms supporting the construction of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline taking Russian gas into Germany.

There are however, two obvious big ‘catches’ to this notion of both ‘stymying’ Russia, whilst simultaneously normalising Israel economically into the region. The first, as Simon Henderson of the Washington Institute notes, [is the notion that] the area’s underlying geology could help Europe offset, or even replace, its dependence on Russian gas “seems farfetched at the present level of discoveries. Several more giant fields like Leviathan or Egypt’s Zohr would have to be found before this reality changes”:

“The idea that East Mediterranean energy could impact on the European energy balance in such a way as to dent Russian market share is a fantasy – Europe’s thirst for gas is so huge, and Russia’s ability to provide that gas is so great, that it’s a wild dream to even hope we can achieve it given the limited reserves discovered thus far,” Henderson said. “Hoping you can find gas is not the same as finding gas”.

In short, an Egyptian ‘hub’ serving exports, might only ‘work’, as matters stand, through patching some of the smaller East-Med discoveries – together with a large Israeli contribution – through pipelines into the two Egyptian gas liquefying plants near Port Said and Alexandria. But LNG availability globally is high, prices are hugely competitive, and it is by no means certain that ‘the hub’ can be commercially viable.

And here is the main catch: Geo-politics. Anything aimed at integrating Israel into the region is bound to be sensitive. So, whilst US officials are optimistic about Egypt’s leadership of their ‘gas forum’ in the wake of President Sisi’s April meeting with Trump – Egypt – a mainstay to the separate US Iran confrontation plan – shortly afterward the visit, rather notably withdrew from the strategic military alliance the Trump administration was trying to build to confront Iran: The Middle East Strategic Alliance (MESA), to the consternation of US officials.

When it comes to energy deals, however, even having a treaty with Israel does not put an end to public sensitivities about rapprochement with Israel, Henderson notes. Notwithstanding any ‘peace treaty’, many Jordanians still oppose the prospect of using (Israeli) Leviathan gas to provide for large-scale electricity generation, beginning early next year. Amman has tried to deflect such anger by calling the supplies “northern gas” or “American gas”, emphasizing Noble’s role in producing it.

But here is the other side to the issue: Clearly, Egypt does not want to be a part of any anti-Iranian US-led alliance (MESA). But equally, why should Egypt – or Jordan, or for that matter, or any other member of the ‘gas forum’ – wish to be tightly aligned with an US anti-Russian strategy for the region? Egypt may have signed up to the US ‘gas hub’ project. But at the very same time, Egypt also was signing a $2 billion contract to buy more than twenty Russian Sukhoi SU-35 fighter aircraft. Do ‘hub’ members really judge an Egyptian ‘hub’ to be a rival to Russian gas in Europe?

Probably not: For ultimately, the idea that a putative energy hub can ‘stymie Russia’ indeed is fantasy. The EU shows, for example, no particular interest in the US supported $7 billion mooted pipeline linking the eastern Mediterranean through Cyprus, to Greece. The undersea terrain is too problematic, and the cost too high.

Israel too, hopes to find more gas (of course). But the deadline for bids on nineteen of its offshore blocks has been pushed back to mid-August – seemingly reflecting a lack of investor interest. For now, the oil majors seem more tempted by the Cypriot blocks – up for bid.

But politics again: being a part of America’s ‘gas forum’ in which the Nicosia (i.e. the Greek-linked) government is a key member, explicitly places the forum and its members on a potential collision course with Turkey, who will not readily yield on its ambitious claims on the East Med basin (it has just announced that it will establish naval and air bases in Northern Cyprus). Nor will Lebanon, either. Sisi and Erdogan share a mutual, personal dislike, but will the others wish to be drawn into that quarrel?

Russia anyway, seems not greatly interested in the production possibilities of the Mediterranean Middle East. Rather it is focused on a pipeline corridor stretching from Iran and Iraq to Europe via Turkey or (eventually) Syria.

In sum then, the Kushner – Trump ‘Deal’, in respect to the integration of Israel into the regional energy economy seems destined to draw the same skepticism and distrust, as does the ‘Deal’s’ other parts.

June 25, 2019 Posted by | Economics, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Russophobia | , , , , | Leave a comment

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