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Teaching Holocaust

Don’t know much about history

By Philip Giraldi • Unz Review • July 16, 2019

A friend of mine recently commented that if the current trend to reduce the study of history in schools to easily digestible politically correct soundbites that are being successfully pushed by social justice warriors continues, we will soon be limited to discussing how horrible slavery was, the Stonewall Inn riots and the so-called holocaust. Indeed, it seems that those who complain the loudest are the only ones listened to and no one complains more often or at greater volume than American Jewish groups intent on preserving the benefits that are derived from always being able to claim their perpetual victimhood.

Recent media accounts from Florida detail how low pandering to Israeli and Jewish interests can go. A high school principal identified as Dr. Willian Latson was removed from his position after he revealed to a parent that he considered the holocaust to be a belief and not a demonstrated fact. According to statement made by the school district, the action was taken “out of an abundance of concern” for students and staff after Latson had “made a grave error in judgment.” It added that “In addition to being offensive, the principal’s statement is not supported by either the School District Administration or the School Board.”

The story took place in the School District of Palm Beach County. Latson, now the ex-principal of Spanish River High School in West Palm Beach, presided over his school in a heavily Jewish district that includes Boca Raton. Latson is currently being considered for reassignment by the school district though there are have also been recurring calls from county and state legislators to fire him, which will undoubtedly occur.

The tale is somewhat convoluted and there are some disagreements about what actually took place, but it goes basically like this: roughly one year ago a high school parent, unidentified but presumably Jewish, emailed Latson asking him to confirm that holocaust education was a top priority in Spanish River H.S. He responded by email that the school has a “variety of activities” for holocaust education but “Not everyone believes the Holocaust happened. And you have your thoughts, but we are a public school and not all of our parents have the same beliefs.” He added that an educator has “the role to be politically neutral but support all groups in the school… I can’t say the Holocaust is a factual, historical event because I am not in a position to do so as a school district employee.”

After the emails were revealed to school officials, presumably by the parent, a year-long investigation commenced in which Latson apologized for having caused offense, saying his emails “did not accurately reflect my professional and personal commitment to educating all students about the atrocities of the Holocaust.” The school board initially ruled that he had not done anything meriting disciplinary action or a reprimand, but the story did not end there. Simultaneously, an online petition which eventually included 6,000 signatures was initiated demanding Latson’s replacement and he was subsequently removed from his position. The school board officials justified their change of course by citing his apparent unwillingness to comply with instructions, stating that they previously had ordered him to “expand the Holocaust curriculum at Spanish River and ordered him to spend ‘several days at the United States Holocaust Museum to increase his personal knowledge.’”

Latson responded that his emails and comments were not “accurately relayed” to the media: “I have been reassigned to the district office due to a statement that was not accurately relayed to the newspaper by one of our parents. It is unfortunate that someone can make a false statement and do so anonymously and it holds credibility but that is the world we live in.”

His statement implicitly blaming a school parent generated new problems for Latson with two Palm Beach County state lawmakers and the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) calling for his firing because he had not groveled sufficiently. ADL stated that “ADL had hoped his apology was sincere and Latson could learn from his mistakes. Given that he cannot take responsibility for his actions, Latson should resign, and if not we believe the district should end his employment.”

The two state officials, Senator Kevin Rader and Representative Tina Polsky issued a statement saying “By his latest email, Dr. Latson has shown no remorse for his actions and we call on the district to immediately terminate him.”

The publication of Latson’s comments also unleashed heavy criticism from a broad range of other Florida public officials. Governor Ron DeSantis, who calls himself the most pro-Israel governor in American, joined in with “Look, to act like the Holocaust is a matter of debate, I mean, is just absurd.”

Senator Rick Scott called Latson’s comments anti-Semitism and tweeted that the “fact that someone charged with educating children would be unable to speak unequivocally on the realities & horrors of the holocaust is incredibly concerning.” Jewish State Representative Randy Fine, who recently introduced legislation officially banning “anti-Semitism” in Florida public schools, said “the law does not allow a Holocaust-denier to serve as a public school principal.” In a published statement he expanded on that point, writing that “anti-Semitism by public employees in our K-20 public education system must be treated the same as racism.”

The controversy inadvertently revealed the extent to which state law now requires the holocaust to be taught in all Florida public schools. Ironically, Spanish River High has one of the country’s most rigorous holocaust education programs with the subject being taught both in ninth- and 10th-grade English classes as well as a component of both U.S. and world history. There is also an elective course as well regular holocaust assemblies for the entire school featuring keynote speakers. After the Latson controversy started, the school district required all 10th graders to read “Night” by Elie Wiesel. There are now plans to add multiple annual assemblies for students in every grade in the school district this year.

So, if you go to school in Florida your English and history courses will be about the holocaust and you will have to attend holocaust assemblies just in case some alleged atrocity has not been described extensively enough in class. Well, when does it end? When does the almost incessant pandering to Zionists and Jewish groups become too much for the deliberately kept-in-ignorance American public to tolerate?

The so-called holocaust was an historical event that took place in Europe seventy-five years ago. It has an established but very debatable narrative that pretty much has been contrived over the past fifty years for political reasons, see Professor Norman Finkelstein’s brilliant deconstruction of it in his book “The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering.” Those inconsistencies in the holocaust story and its general lack of credibility may have been what Latson was referring to.

The imposed holocaust narrative is full of holes and contradictions in terms of who was killed and how, but it is impossible for genuine academics to critique it if they want to stay employed. Books like Wiesel’s “Night” are largely works of fiction. The narrative exists to perpetuate the belief in Jewish suffering, which brings with it a number of practical advantages. First, it is regularly deployed to excuse the horrific treatment of the Palestinian people by Israel – Jewish suffering means that the creation of a homeland is a debt that all the world owes to the Jews without regard to what has been done to the area’s other inhabitants. Second, guilt over the alleged holocaust means that reparations from countries involved must be continued indefinitely. Currently the Poles are resisting new Jewish claims while the Germans have been paying for years. It is now being asserted that the descendants of so-called holocaust survivors have been genetically psychologically damaged, in the womb as it were, so reparations will presumably continue forever.

Third, holocaust guilt is used in the United States to counter any criticism of what Israel and Jewish groups are up to, as they use their wealth and access to power to corrupt America’s institutions and drive the country to needless wars. One might well ask, when confronted by the taxpayer funded holocaust museums that appear to spring up like mushrooms, why so much interest in a possible crime that has nothing to do with the United States? Where are the museums and courses in Florida schools discussing the mass killing that happened on our own shores, the genocide of the native Americans?

Lest we forget, the holocaust industry operates everywhere in America, particularly in the education system. Eight states already have laws mandating holocaust education (California, New York, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Florida, Illinois, Indiana and Michigan) and there is considerable pressure to make it universal in the United States. An alarmed World Jewish Congress (WJC) is urging required holocaust education for everyone everywhere “citing statistics from a 2018 poll revealing half of millennials can’t name a single Nazi concentration camp.”

A currently circulating WJC petition in Congress expresses concern over the rise in anti-Semitism, with a warning that “the horrors of the Holocaust are fading from our collective memory…” A bill to brainwash students so they will not forget, ‘The Never Again Education Act’, is currently making the rounds in the House of Representatives. It would make holocaust study mandatory in public schools and set up a Department of Education program that would train teachers to properly instruct students about the story of Jewish suffering.

Yes, the “Never Again Education Act” will soon be sucking up taxpayer money like an enormous vacuum cleaner and creating lots of new jobs for holocaust instructors, who will, of course, all be Jewish. Public schools will be teaching the next generation about what a great place Israel is and how the holocaust justifies vigilant groups like AIPAC and ADL, though it will not mention how they have corrupted the U.S. government and turned America’s foreign policy into an Israeli wag-the-dog. But who’s complaining? It’s good for the Jews, isn’t it?

So Dr. William Latson will be unemployed and possibly unemployable because he spoke the truth, a lesson to all of us that one must never cross the red lines established by the wielders of Jewish power in America. One might reasonably currently expect that serial pedophile Jeffrey Epstein will use the holocaust get-out-of-jail-free card in his defense, claiming that his recollection of the event has so traumatized him that he did bad things that he would not have otherwise considered. Poor Jeffrey. He has suffered so much.

Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is inform@cnionline.org

July 15, 2019 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance, Timeless or most popular | , | 6 Comments

UK govt unveils plan to teach school kids about ‘fake news’… What could go wrong?

RT | July 15, 2019

The British government is planning a new initiative which will aim to help schoolchildren distinguish real information from ‘fake news’ — in an eyebrow-raising move which could be described as a little bit Orwellian.

British Secretary of State for Education Damian Hinds unveiled the new plan, warning that teachers need to better prepare students for the risks posed by “fake news” online, the Independent reported.

From 2020, British kids in both primary and secondary schools will learn about “confirmation bias” and “online risks” as part of a compulsory section of the curriculum. As part of the plan, teachers will help children identify techniques used for “persuasion” and be told “when to seek support.” They will also learn about the reasons why someone might wish to “bend the truth” in the first place.

A concerned Hinds warned that the internet makes it easier for both state actors and individuals to “spread falsehoods.” One area in particular which the government is looking at is “misleading content” regarding vaccinations. Without “firm action,” the proliferation of allegedly misleading information online will “get a lot worse,” he said.

Hinds recalled that propagandists have sought to “manipulate the truth” since “ancient times.” Indeed, this is something any British government official should be well aware of, since it’s well-known that the British mainstream media — including the BBC and British newspapers — have historically been infiltrated by intelligence agents from MI5 and MI6. One could probably safely assume that such inconvenient information will be left off the agenda, however, with the British program more likely to focus on the evils of propaganda emanating from Britain’s geopolitical adversaries.

Aside from the obvious question of whether governments are best placed to create a curriculum on fake vs. real news, there’s also the added dilemma of whether teachers should be responsible for imparting wisdom on media manipulation to children, when so much of the task of deciphering the news these days comes down to pure opinion. What one teacher might regard as real, another might view as fake.

Presumably, for example, Hinds would regard an institution like the BBC as a “trusted” source — and yet many others of a different political persuasion would likely disagree. The initiative raises the question of who exactly should be allowed to set the standards of ‘truth’ and ‘trusted’ when it comes to media. This is usually only the role of government in dystopian novels.

It’s not the first time Western governments or government-linked initiatives have sought to ‘educate’ the public about fake news through arguably sketchy means. The CIA-linked NewsGuard app has managed to get itself automatically installed on Microsoft’s Edge mobile browser, warning users away from “unreliable” whistleblowing and alternative news sites and directing them firmly toward mainstream sources that don’t often question establishment narratives.

A cynic might suggest such that the British government’s latest plan amounts to a form of state indoctrination of children to support the ‘correct’ narratives to serve its agenda from an early age.

Also on rt.com:

No need to install: Microsoft has controversial fake news filter NewsGuard built into mobile browser

July 15, 2019 Posted by | Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance | | Leave a comment

Israeli firm spying on Palestinians says it only works with ‘democratic countries’

RT | July 15, 2019

An Israeli facial recognition firm secretly tracking Palestinians in the West Bank says it only works with ‘democratic countries’, ironically dismissing Israel’s own human rights abuses against the Palestinians.

Anyvision Interactive Technologies is a company with Microsoft funding, a former head of the Defense Ministry’s security department as its president, and a former Mossad head as his adviser. Its facial recognition software is used by the Israeli Army at checkpoints in the West Bank, allowing soldiers to check whether Palestinians have work permits for Israel. It also has a more secretive project with the army that installs its software in cameras inside the West Bank to surveil Palestinians.

Anyvision addressed concerns about facial recognition software by saying it “only works with democracies,” and doesn’t “operate in China” or “sell in Africa or Russia,” with CEO Eylon Etshtein explaining, “We only sell systems to democratic countries with proper governments,” Haaretz reports.

Anyvision’s dismissal of countries like China and Russia is at odds with the fact that its software is secretly being used by the Israeli military to spy on Palestinians in the West Bank, which is under Israeli occupation and subject to Israeli checkpoints and surveillance, despite being Palestinian territory.

Israel has been accused of a series of human rights violations against the Palestinians it is spying on, and its continued building of Israeli settlements within the West Bank violates UN resolutions and the Fourth Geneva Convention. The UN has said it may have committed war crimes for the killing of protesters, medics, and journalists at the Gaza March of Return demonstrations. Israel does not use Anyvision’s spying software in Israel or the Jewish settlements in the West Bank.

Israel holds democratic elections for its citizens, but not all of the over 13 million people under its control. No Palestinians in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, can vote, even though Israel controls much of their movements, security, water, roads, and building permits. Israeli settlers living in the West Bank can vote, however.

When asked about arguments that the West Bank is not governed democratically, Etshtein said, “It’s really a huge dilemma, but I’m not the guy to ask this,” adding the company does “the maximum so that its technology isn’t misused.”

July 15, 2019 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , , | Leave a comment

Israel’s Latest ‘Security Problem’: Who’s to Blame for Gaza’s Environmental Crisis

By Ramzy Baroud | MEMO | July 15, 2019

Writing in The Jewish Journal under the title, “A Spillover Crisis: How Gaza’s Water Shortage Affects Israel”, Dominik Doehler explains the direct link between Gaza’s water problems and Israel.

Doehler offered a scientific explanation behind the besieged Strip’s water crisis, but when it was time to assign responsibility, something went wrong. Instead of recognising how Israel’s war and protracted siege destroyed Gaza’s infrastructure, the writer blamed the “ongoing conflict between Hamas and the Palestinian Authority” for Gaza’s suffering.

“Today, those who pay the price of the conflict between the Palestinian factions are the two million people in Gaza,” Doehler writes, without any mention of Israel’s primary role in any of this.

The dishonesty of the writer should not be entirely surprising, considering the biased nature of the publication. This is particularly symptomatic of Israeli and pro-Israeli media which often shy away from acknowledging the facts, but deflect responsibility from Israel, and point the finger of blame on Palestinians only.

That said, it is interesting that Gaza’s growing humanitarian crisis is finally registering in Israel as a pressing problem requiring action. However, it is not the impact of the crisis on the population of Gaza that is sounding the alarm bells in Tel Aviv, but rather the potential environmental damage Gaza’s ongoing misery may cause Israel.

On June 3, researchers from Israel’s Tel Aviv and Ben-Gurion universities presented a report commissioned by the environmental organization, EcoPeace Middle East, in which they warned that “the collapsing water, sewage and electricity infrastructure in the Gaza Strip pose a material danger to Israel’s groundwater, seawater, beaches and desalination plants”.

One would expect any report on the environmental situation in Gaza to focus on the fact that nearly two million Palestinians in the Strip are living in inhumane conditions due to a relentless 12-year Israeli blockade and repeated devastating military assaults which are rending the area “uninhabitable by 2020“.

Instead, the report has implied that the residents are solely responsible for the imminent environmental catastrophe in Gaza, which is threatening the security and well-being of Israeli citizens. The Israeli newspaper, Haaretz, which published a detailed report on the presentation, also spun the issue as a matter of national security.

But what Israel has now identified as a “national security problem” is indeed a disaster of its own making. The occupation, colonisation, dispossession and aggression against Palestine and the Palestinians have caused untold environmental damage to the extent that now, even the Israeli occupier is suffering.

The environmental situation in Gaza is indeed dire at the moment, but it is not the Palestinians who made it so. Neither the “rapid population growth”, nor neglect or ignorance of residents that are its root causes. Countless reports by the United Nations and other organisations have documented in detail how and why the main culprit is Israel, its violent assaults on Gaza and its merciless siege.

Israeli settlers flood Khan al Ahmar with wastewater [Twitter]

Take the problem of untreated sewage ending up in the sea, which is causing issues for Israeli beach-goers and water desalination plants. The reason why Gaza’s sewage is getting disposed of in this “irresponsible” way is that water treatment plants are not operational; they were targeted in the 2014 Israeli assault on the Strip and were never rebuilt because the Israeli siege does not allow for construction materials and spare parts to be brought in.

Untreated sewage is part of the larger water crisis in Gaza. As the report rightly points out, Gaza residents are overusing the aquifer under the Strip, which has become increasingly contaminated with seawater and chemicals and which constitutes the only source of freshwater for residents because of the involuntary separation with the West Bank.

The reason for Palestinians in Gaza being unable to establish a proper water management system is again Israel’s doing. Israel has repeatedly bombed its water infrastructure, including water pipes, wells and other facilities, and the debilitating Israeli siege has prevented the local authorities from fixing it and building a water desalination plant.

Gaza’s water problem is not only an annoyance for the Israelis but a potential source of an epidemic for the Palestinians. Already, diarrheal diseases have doubled, reaching epidemic levels, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health, while salmonella and typhoid fever are also on the rise.

Then there is the problem with rubbish which Palestinians are burning, hence “polluting Israeli air”. As Cambridge University academic, Ramy Salemdeeb, has pointed out, Gaza has been unable to develop a proper waste management system because of economic restrictions due to the Israeli siege and a “limited land availability” because of its isolation from the rest of the occupied Palestinian territories.

Given that Israel is a settler-colonial project, the overexploitation of the colonised land to the detriment of the environment and the local population is naturally a part of its modus operandi.

Indeed, all the land Israel has taken and occupied has suffered from environmental degradation in one way or another, with its harmful effects being conveniently shifted towards Palestinians area, villages and cities.

If Israel continues to treat the issue as a “security problem” it will never get resolved because at the heart of it is the destructive logic of a colonial enterprise which seeks to exploit both land and people with no regard for nature and human wellbeing.

In other words, Israel will never achieve security – environmental or otherwise – as long as it continues to oppress the Palestinians, occupy their land and ravage the environment. Israeli air, water and the overall environment will never be immune from the Israeli-made disasters in occupied Palestine. 

July 15, 2019 Posted by | Environmentalism, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , , , , | 2 Comments

Palestinians lose $270m per year due to military checkpoints: Study

MEMO | July 15, 2019

Palestinians lose about 60 million work hours per year due to restrictions on movement in the occupied West Bank imposed by Israeli occupation forces, according to a study by the Applied Research Institute – Jerusalem (ARIJ).

This loss is estimated at $270 million per year, as well as added fuel consumption of 80 million litres, costing up to an additional $135 million and leading to an increase in carbon dioxide emissions by 196,000 tonnes per year.

The study tracked the movement of citizens through 15 major Israeli military checkpoints between cities in the occupied West Bank as well as 11 crossing points into Jerusalem and Israeli territories. The data was collected from the beginning of January to the end of July 2018, using GPS tracking devices installed on Palestinian vehicles, including public transport and private vehicles. Each device monitored the location, time and speed of the vehicle every ten seconds, giving an accurate idea of the time spent at military checkpoints.

Israel maintains a system of checkpoints that can be closed at any time, preventing Palestinians from travelling to school, hospital or work, or to access their land.

In a July 2018 survey, the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHAoPt) recorded that there are “705 permanent obstacles across the West Bank restricting or controlling Palestinian vehicular, and in some cases pedestrian, movement.”

Israel also runs a system of “flying checkpoints” which can disrupt travel at a moment’s notice. OCHAoPt notes that, “between January 2017 and the end of July 2018, Israeli forces employed an additional 4,924 ad-hoc ‘flying’ checkpoints, or nearly 60 a week. These involve the deployment of Israeli forces for several hours on a given road for the purpose of stopping and checking Palestinian drivers and vehicles, but without any permanent physical infrastructure on the ground.”

July 15, 2019 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture | , , , , | Leave a comment

Israel face-recognition start-up ‘secretly tracking Palestinians’

MEMO | July 15, 2019

A start-up known as “Israel’s most high-profile biometric recognition firm” is playing a key role in monitoring Palestinians at checkpoints in the occupied West Bank, reported Haaretz.

According to the article, Anyvision Interactive Technologies “is taking part in two special projects in assisting the Israeli army in the West Bank”.

One project “involves a system that it has installed at army checkpoints that thousands of Palestinians pass through each day on their way to work from the West Bank.”

In a statement in February, the army said “27 biometric crossings” had been established in the West Bank, as part of a “wide-ranging” effort to “upgrade” the checkpoints in question.

The second project, however, “is much more confidential”, reported Haaretz, and “includes facial recognition technology elsewhere in the West Bank, not just at border crossings”, as “cameras deep inside the West Bank try to spot and monitor potential Palestinian assailants”.

Anyvision’s president, Amir Kain, is the former head of Malmab, the Defence Ministry’s security department, while one of the company’s advisers is Tamir Pardo, a former head of Mossad.

The company claims to operate in 43 countries and at more than 350 locations such as stadiums, airports and casinos, and recently raised $31 million from Microsoft’s M12 venture capital fund.

As reported by Haaretz, “Anyvision’s involvement in the West Bank is being revealed amid a lively debate around the world on the use of biometric technology, especially facial recognition.”

“About a month ago, San Francisco became the first American city to outlaw facial recognition technology. And camera maker Axon recently decided to eliminate its products’ facial recognition capacity, based on the recommendations of an ethics committee that it had formed.”

According to the paper, “the Israeli surveillance operation in the West Bank is undoubtedly among the largest of its kind in the world. It includes monitoring the media, social media and the population as a whole — and now it turns out also the biometric signature of West Bank Palestinians.”

July 15, 2019 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , , , | Leave a comment

US mission in Baghdad serves as Mossad, Daesh headquarters: Iraqi MP

This file photo shows the US embassy building in the Iraqi capital of Baghdad.
Press TV | July 15, 2019

A senior Iraqi parliamentarian warns that the US embassy in Baghdad is involved in “suspicious activities,” saying agents of the Israeli spy agency Mossad and the Daesh terrorist group have been spotted regularly visiting the diplomatic mission.

“The US embassy in Baghdad has turned into a center for Israel’s Mossad and ISIS (Daesh) terrorists,” Hassan Salem was quoted as saying by the Iraqi Arabic-language al-Sumariya news website.

Salem said the US embassy is interfering in Iraq’s internal affairs by spying, spreading rumors and hatching plots.

“The US embassy’s violation of laws and forgetting its responsibilities based on the international laws mean that the center could not be called an embassy and therefore, its closure is legally necessary,” the Iraqi lawmaker said.

US giving Daesh head protection

Salem had earlier suggested that US forces in Ain al-Assad military base were protecting Daesh ringleader Ibrahim al-Samarrai, aka Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, in the western desert of Iraq’s Anbar province.

“Al-Baghdadi is using the Anbar desert as a safe haven, while the US forces provide him with all means of support from their station at the Ain al-Assad military base in Anbar province,” Salem said in February.

The Iraqi MP argued then that America’s support for al-Baghdadi “stems from Washington’s fear of a draft bill on expelling foreign troops from Iraq, which the parliament intends to vote on during the new legislative term.”

Also in February, former Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki for the first time divulged explosive secrets about how the United States supported Daesh and intentionally allowed the Takfiri terror outfit to gain power in Iraq so that Washington could creep back into the Arab country.

He said the administration of former US President Barack Obama had played a key role in the creation of Daesh by allowing the terrorist group to overrun Iraqi territories.

In March, an Iraqi security expert also revealed that the American embassy in Iraq was carrying out suspicious measures, describing the mission as a US-Israeli operations room that sought to destabilize the region.

Abbas al-Ardawi was quoted by the Arabic-language al-Ma’alomeh news website as saying that US administration was exerting pressures on Baghdad and killing time to prolong its deployment in Iraq.

He said the relocation of terrorists from the town of Baqouz in Eastern Syria to the US bases in Iraq was aimed to stir security tensions in the country and find a pretext for continued deployment of American forces.

Al-Ardawi said Iraqi lawmakers certainly want all US forces to be expelled from the country as soon as possible.

Another senior Iraqi expert had in January warned of Washington’s attempts to increase its influence in Iraq, saying Israeli spies and Daesh terrorists were present at across US bases in Iraq.

Hafez Al-e Basharah told al-Ma’aloumeh news website that the US was attempting to boost its presence in Iraq and the American forces had been stationed in the southern parts of Baghdad.

He went on to say that the US forces did not allow any Iraqis to enter their bases in the country in an attempt to conceal the realities from the public opinion.

Israeli intelligence agents were also operating from the bases, where Takfiri terrorists also received shelter and training, he added.

July 15, 2019 Posted by | Deception, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Wars for Israel | , , , , | 2 Comments

Real Hedge-Fund Managers Think Epstein’s Actual Business Was Blackmail

cryptogon | July 14, 2019

Via: New York Magazine :

Long before Jeffrey Epstein pleaded guilty to prostitution charges in Florida more than a decade ago, his fellow Palm Beach resident and hedge-fund manager Douglas Kass was intrigued by the local gossip about his neighbor.

“I’m hearing about the parties, hearing about a guy who’s throwing money around,” says Kass, president of Seabreeze Partners Management. While stories about young girls swarming Epstein’s waterfront mansion and the sex parties he hosted for the rich and powerful were the talk of the town, Kass was more focused on how this obscure person, rumored to be managing billions of dollars, had become so wealthy without much of a track record.

Kass was well-connected on Wall Street, where he’d worked for decades, so he began to ask around. “I went to my institutional brokers, to their trading desks and asked if they ever traded with him. I did it a few times until the date when he was arrested,” he recalls. “Not one institutional trading desk, primary or secondary, had ever traded with Epstein’s firm.”

When a reporter came to interview Kass about Bernie Madoff shortly before that firm blew up in the biggest Ponzi scheme ever, Kass told her, “There’s another guy who reminds me of Madoff that no one trades with.” That man was Jeffrey Epstein.

“How did he get the money?” Kass kept asking.

…

Given this puzzling set of data points, the hedge-fund managers we spoke to leaned toward the theory that Epstein was running a blackmail scheme under the cover of a hedge fund.

July 15, 2019 Posted by | Corruption, Deception | | 4 Comments

Ending myth of ‘Millionaire Mullah’ – Part 3

By Ramin Mazaheri | Press TV | July 9, 2019

Part 1 of this article discussed why the recent US sanctions on Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei provoked laughter in Iran and derision even from Iranophobic Western mainstream media.

Part 2 proved that – between zakat, khums, the bonyads, generalized Iranophobia and a desire to denigrate any economic thought which is not far-right neoliberal capitalism – it is easily understandable how we have arrived at Western nonsense like “Millionaire Mullahs”.

Part 3 will show how this propaganda is unrelenting.

Like the 2013 Reuters report on Setad, a bonyad headed by the Leader post, “Khamenei controls massive financial empire built on property seizures.”

Uhhh… yes, confiscating the ill-gotten property of the king and his 1% was undoubtedly the democratic choice of Iran. Iran is a rare country to have done that, but it was not the first. Economically right-wing Reuters, of course, opposes every such occasion where this has happened.

Reuters’ report spends just ten miserly words to describe for their readers both bonyads and khums, which is certainly not enough to give a sympathetic, much less objective, rendering of these rather vital parts of the Iranian economy. Reuters makes apparent its total disinterest in admitting Setad’s universally-known, multi-billion charitable functions with the brief and dismissive “It’s unclear how much of its revenue goes to philanthropy.” It’s a report which openly airs the grievances of lawyers based in Beverly Hills, California, because talking about the economically-redistributive concepts at work in the Iranian economy are expressly against Reuters’ editorial policy.

As Reuters admitted, with a brief sentence that indicates their maximum disappointment: “Reuters found no evidence that Khamenei is tapping Setad to enrich himself.” Exactly. All Iran already knew that. Reuters buried a sentence which has been a headline in Iran.

Beyond the role of Islamic charity, the usury-banning role of Islamic finance, and the unique (revolutionary) economic principles installed after 1979, the widest-view statement I can give about the Iranian economy is this: because it is (Islamic) socialist-inspired when it comes to handling the economy, the Iranian state controls the Iranian economy even more completely than today’s “hosting-tourists-is-ok” Cuba. Both nations control their economies in a patriotic way, though Iran has, thankfully, far more oil wealth; both nations reject foreign control (neoliberal/globalist capitalism); and both nations have been incredibly successful at improving the lives of their average citizens despite decades of murderous sanctions by the US and Europe.

The revolutionary Iranian economy is thus most succinctly described (this is “daily journalism,” after all) as “Iranian Islamic Socialism” because it is exactly that, and in exactly that order of importance: first come the patriotic needs of Iran, then adherence to the principles of Islam as much as possible, and then the clear rejection of capitalism-imperialism and neoliberalism/globalism. Importantly — at least to those who believe Iranians have a democratic right to choose their own path — Forbes, Reuters, and Washington are resolutely dead-set against the success of all of these principles, and their actions and stances show that they view tolerance, accommodation, and limited cooperation as impossible.

But this — the enormously anti-neoliberal aspects and the enormously successful redistributive aspects of the Iranian economy — is something the West can never admit because… they might be copied! Indeed, when Washington talks about Iran’s “destabilising behaviors,” there is nothing more destabilising to US and Israeli hegemony in the Muslim world than the very example of Iranian democratic success.

What works usually is copied, but Iranian economic solutions do not “work” for the aristocratic readers of Forbes. Therefore, “Millionaire mullahs” has been the Western editorial line, and they are sticking to it.

It should be clear: it is a well-known reality that Ayatollah Khamenei does not personally have much to sanction at all; the Iranian economy is so unique (revolutionary) that it is easily distorted and rarely attempted to be understood; the guiding economic concepts democratically installed after the Iranian Islamic Revolution will always be the subject of massive Western propaganda.

Therefore, pity Trump and his New York City slumlord/Pentagon gun-runner advisors — by foolishly sanctioning Ayatollah Khamenei, all they did was insult him, and insult his tens of millions of often-ardent supporters, and show their total ignorance of how the Iranian economy actually works!

How did they get so misled? Simple: they read too much Western propaganda, which since 1979 has had an editorial line of “100% fake news, 24/7” when it comes to Iran. Such an editorial line is designed by their 1%-owners to push Trump, and others, to wrongly assume that Iran is some sort of dystopian, totalitarian regime where the top leader owns everything and can liquidate anything at any time for their personal profit.

Such a system only exists in comic books… and in the Arab monarchies. And are sanctions on these Arab despots arriving next? LOL, not likely. Forbes and the neoliberal-loving, English-Canadian Reuters are likely in the middle of preparing their latest puff-piece on yet another Arab monarch-dictator.

It is ironic that the only type of “millionaires” these rabidly capitalist media seem to have a problem with are of the Iranian clerical variety, a variety which Forbes was the first to ever claim even existed. But the phenomenon they allege does not exist, and Ayatollah Khamenei is often held up as a standard of good and moral leadership in many nations for very justified reasons.

What is certain is that Washington’s ignorance of and opposition to the nature of the Iranian economy will cost them dearly — sanctions on Ayatollah Khamenei will be totally ineffective in reaching their totally unjust aims. Such sanctions are amusing… but that is actually a sad commentary: the decades of murderous sanctions on Iran, Cuba, Korea, and others shouldn’t be funny at all.

Ramin Mazaheri is the chief correspondent in Paris for Press TV and has lived in France since 2009. He has been a daily newspaper reporter in the US, and has reported from Iran, Cuba, Egypt, Tunisia, South Korea, and elsewhere. He is the author of “I’ll Ruin Everything You Are: Ending Western Propaganda on Red China.”

July 15, 2019 Posted by | Economics | | Leave a comment