Israel partisan Peter Berkowitz named head of State Dept Policy Planning
Peter Berkowitz flanked by Paul Singer (L) and Lawrence Mone (R) at 2018 Manhattan Institute event. Singer, chair of the Manhattan institute’s board of trustees, is a hedge fund billionaire known for supporting Israel causes. Mone is president of the institute. Its board has included numerous Israel partisans, includiing Daniel Loeb, a backer of the Emergency Committee for Israel; Weekly Standard editor William Kristol; Project for the New American Century director Mark Gerson; former American Enterprise Institute chairman Bruce Kovner; and Michael Fedak, board member of AIPAC spinoff Washington Institute for Near East Policy.
By Alison Weir | If Americans Knew | August 30, 2019
The new official in charge of the State Department’s long-term strategic thinking is yet another neoconservative with close ties to Israel.
Politico reports that the State Department’s new head of policy planning will be longtime Israel partisan and neocon Peter Berkowitz. According to Politico, the position “puts him in charge of long-term strategic thinking for the department.”
Politico reports that the announcement “came in an internal email to select State Department officials on Monday morning.” Berkowitz will specifically be in charge of the State Department’s Office of Policy Planning.
Berkowitz is extremely close to Israel. He received an M.A. degree from Israel’s Hebrew University in 1985, and currently teaches for the Tikvah Fund in Israel. He is the Co-founder and Director of the Israel Program on Constitutional Government, located in Tel Aviv. He has been on the advisory committee for the Center for Jewish Political Thought, a section within Israel’s Shalom Hartman Institute. Berkowitz has been the Tad and Dianne Taube Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institute (the Taubes donate to numerous Israeli organizations) and is on the faculty of the Hertog Foundation.
Berkowitz has written numerous articles about Israel, often for the neoconservative outlet, Weekly Standard. His fellow neocon, Stanley Kurtz, credits Berkowitz with causing South African jurist Richard Goldstone to recant after leading a fact-finding investigation whose findings Israel disliked. The investigation had determined that Israel had committed numerous war crimes in Gaza. The report’s findings were corroborated by a number of other investigations that found Israel had violated international law.
In one of his pieces, Berkowitz claimed that “No military in the history of warfare has made greater efforts in the face of grave national security threats to avoid the use of force or has tried harder, when obliged to fight, to protect noncombatants than the Israel Defense Forces. With the possible exception of the U.S. armed forces, no military has investigated itself as rigorously as the IDF. With the possible exception of the U.S. judiciary, no courts have done more to hold their military accountable than Israel’s. And with the possible exception of America, no democracy has gone further in wartime to legitimize dissent than Israel.”
Berkowitz’s contention flies in the face of documentary evidence compiled by Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, Christian Aid, B’Tselem (also see this), the International Red Cross, Physicians for Human Rights, Reporters Without Borders, Foreign Service Journal, and even the U.S. State Department. According to Berkowitz, all of these agencies are wrong.
Berkowitz also penned a piece attacking Harvard Professor Stephen Walt and University of Chicago Professor John Mearsheimer for their essay in the London Review of Books and Harvard working paper about the Israel lobby. Berkowitz accused the professors of “myriad half-truths, gross distortions, ignorant assertions, and defective reasoning.” Mearsheimer and Walt’s findings were later published in a book by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy.
Trump had initially opposed neocons and kept them out of his administration. Although neocons are nominally Republicans, many had endorsed Hillary (and many now remain, at least on the surface, Democrats). As Trump came under escalating attack, however, he moved ever closer to billionaire campaign donor Sheldon Adelson (who funds many neocon enterprises) and eventually began naming neocons to positions of power, where they often drive policy.
Neocons in the Bush Administration promoted the disastrous war with Iraq, and Israel and its partisans are central in the demonization of Iran that has resulted in the sanctions against Iran and threats of still worse.
Alison Weir is executive director of If Americans Knew, president of the Council for the National Interest, and author of the best selling book Against Our Better Judgment: The Hidden History of How the U.S. Was Used to Create Israel.
Google’s Power to Shift Elections—Zachary Vorhies, Greg Coppola and Dr. Robert Epstein
American Thought Leaders – The Epoch Times – August 23, 2019
According to Google whistleblower Zachary Vorhies, how is Google suppressing certain viewpoints, promoting others, and altering public perception?
Is there evidence of active intent on the part of Google staff or executives?
And in the eyes of Dr. Robert Epstein, what are the broader implications of Google bias—whether intentional or unintentional—for America and beyond?
This is American Thought Leaders 🇺🇸, and I’m Jan Jekielek.
In this special episode, we sit down with Google whistleblower Zachary Vorhies, a former senior Google engineer, who recently leaked nearly 1000 pages of documents that he says suggest Google has been secretly acting as a publisher, selectively boosting or demoting content, while publicly claiming to be a neutral platform.
We sent Google some questions regarding each specific allegation that Vorhies made in our interview. Google has not responded to our requests for comments.
We also spoke to another Google whistleblower Greg Coppola, who has also called out big tech bias, and Dr. Robert Epstein, a leading expert on Google search engine bias, to get their take on the leaked documents and Vorhies’ allegations against Google.
Liberals use RCMP in attempt to silence critics of their foreign policy
By Yves Engler · August 30, 2019
On Tuesday two RCMP agents came to my house. Two large men in suits asked for me and when my partner said I wasn’t there they asked who she was.
Why didn’t they email or call me to talk or set up a meeting? If they have my address, the RCMP certainly has my email, Facebook, Skype or phone number. My partner asked for their badges, took their photo and asked them to leave the stairway they had entered.
They returned the next day. Not wanting to interact, my partner ignored them. They rang the doorbell multiple times over many minutes. After she saw people at the restaurant across the street wondering what was going on – from the ground you can see into the front of our place – she poked her head down the stairway where they caught her eye. They asked why I didn’t call even though they didn’t leave a number.
The visits are a transparent effort to intimidate me from directly challenging the government’s pro-corporate and pro-empire international policies.
The day before their first visit to my house two RCMP officers physically removed me from a press conference when I asked Transportation Minister Marc Garneau about Canadian arm sales to Saudi Arabia. When I sat down at an event that was already underway an officer took the seat next to me. When I began to ask a question at the end of the press conference he used the cover of private property to try to block me. On this video one can see the RCMP agent asking the building security twice if I’m welcome in the space. Deferring to police, the security guard tells him I’m not welcome. The RCMP agent, who doesn’t have the right to remove me from the room without a directive, then uses the authority derived from a representative of the building to physically eject me and threaten arrest.
Last Wednesday lawyer Dimitri Lascaris and I were blocked from a talk by the prime minister at the Bonaventure Hotel in a similar way. In my case an RCMP agent called out my name as I entered the hotel and then accompanied me in the elevator, through a long lobby and down an escalator to ‘introduce’ me to hotel security. The representative of the hotel then said I wasn’t welcome, which gave the officer the legal authority to ask me to leave. Lascaris details the incident in “The RCMP’s Speech Police Block Yves Engler and Me From Attending A Speech By Justin Trudeau.”
After starting to write this story, I was targeted by the RCMP for removal from a press conference by Justice Minister David Lametti. On Thursday, a Concordia University security guard, who I walked past to enter the room, came up to me 15 minutes later and asked for my press credentials. There were two dozen people in the room who didn’t have press credentials and the release for the event said nothing about needing them. The RCMP agent admitted that he asked Concordia security to approach me. He also said he was only there for the physical — not political — protection of the minister, but refused my suggestion that he and the Concordia security agents sit next/in front of me to ensure the minister’s physical safety.
(Here is the question I planned to ask the Justice Minister: “Minister Lametti you have an important decision to make in the coming days about whether you believe in international law and consumer rights. As you know the Federal Court recently ruled against your government’s decision to allow wines produced on illegal settlements in the West Bank to be labeled as ‘Products of Israel’. While anti-Palestinian groups are pressuring your government to appeal the decision, the NDP and Greens want you to stop wasting taxpayer money on this anti-Palestinian agenda. Will you commit to accepting the court’s sensible ruling that respects consumers, international law and Palestinian rights?”)
Over the past six months Lascaris, I and other members of Solidarité Québec-Haiti and Mouvement Québécois pour la Paix have interrupted a dozen speeches/press conferences by Liberal ministers/prime minister to question their anti-Palestinian positions, efforts to topple Venezuela’s government, support for a corrupt, repressive and illegitimate Haitian president, etc. We are open about our actions and intentions, as you can read in this commentary. We film the interruptions and post them online. (If any illegal act were committed the RCMP could easily find all they need to charge me on my Facebook page!) The interruptions usually last no more than a couple of minutes. No politician has been stopped from speaking, let alone threatened or touched.
Did the RCMP receive a directive from a minister to put a stop to our challenging their policies? The federal election is on the horizon and government officials will increasingly be in public. The Trudeau government is playing up its ‘progressive’ credentials, but the interventions highlight how on one international policy after another the Liberals have sided with corporations and empire.
From the government’s perspective, having their PR announcements disrupted is a headache, but that’s democracy. The right to protest, to question, to challenge policies outweighs politicians’ comfort.
Science Goes Up In Rainforest Smoke
By Dr. David Whitehouse | August 29, 2019
The idea that the Amazon rainforest is the lungs of the world is so embedded in our minds that few questioned its widespread use when news about fires in the Amazon was reported this summer.
The idea is everywhere—so it’s obviously true. Trees absorb carbon dioxide (bad), don’t they, and give off oxygen (good), and there are billions of trees in the Amazon, so surely it makes sense.
Responding to the fires in the Amazon the Pope has said that the “Lungs of the forest are vital for the planet.”
Emmanuel Macron tweeted, “The Amazon rainforest – the lungs which produce 20% of the planet’s oxygen – is on fire.”
Leonardo DiCaprio has almost 3 million likes for his Instagram posting saying, “The lungs of the Earth are in flames.”
Christiano Ronaldo tweeted that The Amazon Rainforest produces more than 20% of the world’s oxygen,” adding #prayforamazonia
Green Party MP Caroline Lucas says “It’s the lungs of the Earth…which provides 20% of our oxygen.”
Barry Gardiner Shadow Minister for International Climate Change tweeted he couldn’t agree with Macron more.
Lib Dem MEP’s say the lungs of our planet are literally burning.
Even Donald Tusk, the President of the European Commission tweeted about “…the destruction of the green lungs of Planet Earth.”
The Rainforest Alliance said, “The lungs of the world are in flames.”
Friends of the Earth want a deal to stop the fires adding: “They need to say ‘we won’t do a deal with you if you are effectively condoning burning the lungs of the world’.”
WWF says the Amazon is popularly known as the lungs of the world.
DiCaprio’s Earth Alliance has formed an emergency Amazon Forest Fund with an initial commitment of $5 million to focus critical resources on the key protections needed to maintain the ‘lungs of the planet.’
However, as the saying goes, it’s not that simple – things never are in science. Check where the figure comes from (and it’s actually not that straightforward to do) and you will find that it’s not that simple. It’s actually wrong.
Geology’s Gift
The Amazon rainforest is not the lungs of the world and they do not produce 20% of the world’s oxygen as is so often said.
The Amazon rainforest is a vast, vital wonder, full of biodiversity and photosynthesizing plants producing 9% of the world’s photosynthetic output but, here is the key figure, 0% of its net output.
You could destroy all of the world’s forests and it would hardly affect our oxygen supply.
In fact, you could destroy every living thing on Earth and still not dent it because our atmosphere of 20.9% oxygen is the gift of geologic time, slow to build up and we have enough to last millions of years.
Yet this idea about the world’s lungs and of atmospheric oxygen needing to be refreshed and replenished—ideas unsupported by science—is everywhere.
Surely journalists would act differently from advocacy groups, celebrities, and politicians and check this fact before writing and broadcasting about it.
After all, journalists, especially science and environment journalists who are experts in their field, always check figures and statistics? Oh no, they don’t.
Just Google the phrase to see how many time it is repeated, by the BBC, the New York Times, CNN, The Australian, to name a few.
ITN, in particular, has risen above much of the other coverage with its over-the-top reporting. They say the Amazon is burning on a scale never seen before (nonsense). That the Amazon can never be replaced (nonsense), and that Nature is being killed (Oh come off it)!
Who Spoke Up?
If journalists, as well as politicians, celebrities, presidents and the Pope, can so easily slip into such scientific myth and get the facts so wrong, what credibility do they have on other issues of climate science?
Where are their science advisors? Surely they should make this mistake only once before being given proper advice.
Or is it that if any of them goes against the trend they fear the condemnation? This is not the way to tackle the important environmental issues we face.
Look how much we had to go through for science to wrench our minds free of what is “obviously true” and seek proof. Is climate science, or at least the public side of it, immune from normal scientific standards?
And where are the high-profile “public” scientists setting the record straight, highlighting that the Amazon rainforests are not the lungs of the world?
Another Syrian Victory – and West’s Telling Silence
Strategic Culture Foundation | August 30, 2019
The liberation of Khan Sheikhoun in Idlib Province by the Syrian army and its Russian ally marks another important victory towards ending the eight-year war in Syria.
Last week saw the return to relative normalcy in the northwestern town which had been held under siege by al Qaeda-affiliated militants for over five years. Situated south of Aleppo on the road to the capital Damascus, Khan Sheikhoun was officially declared under the control of Syrian state forces on August 21 after a hard-fought battle against militants.
International journalists from Italy, Bulgaria, Greece and Russia witnessed the return of residents and efforts to resume electricity services and reopening of schools. Khan Sheikhoun was ransacked by the routed jihadi terror groups, with the typical depravity that had been seen in other liberated areas. But despite the devastation, residents were relieved to begin the task of restoration of what was previously a town renowned for its culture and beauty before the war erupted in March 2011.
The remnants left behind by the defeated militants as well as the identity of dead fighters testified to their terrorist affiliation. Many of them were foreign mercenaries. Khan Sheikhoun was a stronghold for the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham group which was formerly known as Al Nusra Front. Notwithstanding the chameleonic name, they are part of the jihadi Al Qaeda terror network which is internationally proscribed and which Western governments are officially opposed to.
The capture of the town again demonstrates the vile nature of the Syrian war as being one of foreign-sponsored aggression for regime change. In particular, the United States government and its NATO allies, Britain, France, Turkey, and others, are now known to be fully complicit in covert sponsorship of these terrorists.
Khan Sheikhoun is of particular significance because on April 4, 2017, it was dramatically reported by Western news media as being the site of a Sarin chemical weapon attack, allegedly carried out by the Syrian state forces. Three days later, on April 7, the US, Britain and France launched over 100 airstrikes on Syria in what was claimed to be “revenge” against the “Syrian regime” for allegedly committing an atrocity with chemical weapons. Syrian authorities and Russia asserted the alleged Sarin attack at Khan Sheikhoun was a false-flag provocation, fabricated by the militants with the aim of eliciting a military strike on Syria by the US and its NATO allies.
Clearly, after the liberation of the town this month, it is evident that it was a den of terrorist groups which held residents under a reign of terror. Yet for years, the Western news media had proclaimed that these fighters were “rebels” who deserved support from Western intervention. Even as Syrian forces were launching their assault on Idlib Province in recent months, the Western media were animated by shrill reports of “rebels” and civilians being killed by indiscriminate “regime” air strikes.
Tellingly, the momentous victory at Khan Sheikhoun was met with an astonishing silence among Western governments and news media.
The same duplicitous pattern has been seen before when the Syrian army and its Russian ally liberated Douma, Ghouta, Daraa, Aleppo, Maaloula and many other areas besieged by the so-called “rebels” so lionized in Western media. Syrian residents have been invariably relieved and overjoyed to have their freedom and dignity restored by the Syrian army and Russian forces. Their stories of the horror they endured under captivity are shocking from the depravity and cruelty meted out by Western-backed “rebels”.
That is why the liberation of Khan Sheikhoun, as with other locations in Syria, has had to be studiously ignored by the Western news media. Because if they really performed normal journalistic duty what the Western public would learn is that their governments and media have been complicit in huge war crimes against the Syrian nation.
It is all the more despicable therefore that the US is shifting its efforts to block the reconstruction of war-torn Syria. This week, the country is to hold the annual Damascus International Trade Fair. Delegates from some 40 nations are attending and exploring ways to regenerate the Syrian economy and to meet the challenge of reconstruction. Some estimates put minimal repair of infrastructure at a cost of $388 billion. The true figure could be in trillions of dollars.
That bill should be assigned to Washington, London, Paris, Ankara, Riyadh, Doha and Tel Aviv for the criminal aggression they collectively and stealthily inflicted on Syria.
Ahead of the Damascus trade fair, the US was warning prospective foreign investors that they could face sanctions if they did business with Syria. Russia’s foreign ministry condemned the American effort to sabotage Syria’s reconstruction.
As Russian lawmaker Valery Rashkin, who was in Syria this week, put it, the US is trying to destroy Syria through economic warfare after losing its dirty-war military agenda.
The European Union also stands condemned for continuing to impose economic sanctions on Syria. The war is over and it has been exposed as Western-backed criminal aggression. All past accusations against the Syrian state are null and void as malign propaganda. Thus, sanctions on Syria are a contemptible attack on the country by nations whose criminal complicity should actually be a matter of prosecution.
We can only wish the people of Syria well. With international solidarity from Russia, China, Iran and others, Syria will recover its former strength and pride. Syria has won a tremendous victory. The losers are the Western governments and media who have been exposed for the corrupt charlatans they are.
YouTube Bans Infowars Relaunch – Days After Promising To Allow ‘Controversial’ Content
By Tyler Durden – Zero Hedge – 08/30/2019
On Tuesday, YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki announced that the platform would invite “offensive” content back onto the site – writing in an open letter to YouTube creators “Without an open system, diverse and authentic voices have trouble breaking through.”
“I believe preserving an open platform is more important than ever,” she added.
In response, Infowars relaunched its ‘War Room’ YouTube channel – which boasted 2.4 million followers before being terminated in August 2018 for “violating YouTube’s community guidelines.”
The first new video uploaded to the new War Room channel featured host Owen Shroyer celebrating Wojcicki’s announcement, and was titled “Breaking! YouTube CEO says ‘Alex Jones’ and ‘Infowars Ban Is Over.’”
Wojcicki didn’t mention Infowars in her letter, but this is how Shroyer apparently interpreted it. Since going live, War Room has uploaded 13 videos covering topics typical to Infowars, like “liberal racism,” the end of “globalism,” and how Lizzo’s performance at the VMAs was “disgusting.” –VICE
That didn’t last long
Shortly after VICE published their article noting that Shroyer’s video had been up for 17 hours, YouTube deleted Infowars’ War Room channel – again.
Remember how @SusanWojcicki stated #YouTube was an open platform the other day?
Yeah turns out she was gaslighting us… once again.@MarkDice you were spot on. https://t.co/zewI48h0Vr
— Zach Vorhies (@Perpetualmaniac) August 29, 2019
“We’re committed to preserving openness and balancing it with our responsibility to protect our community,” said YouTube spokeswoman Ivy Choi. “This means taking action against channels that continue to violate our policies.”
Infowars and its founder Alex Jones suffered coordinated bans across several platforms last year, including Facebook and Apple’s iTunes, after online activists Sleeping Giants lobbied tech companies to cut all ties with Jones and his network.
Okay… what is happening here?@iTunes @apple, are you really choosing to host Infowars on your platform after Alex Jones’ harassment of Sandy Hook parents and Vegas shooting victims and threats to the Special Counsel? How does this not break your Terms Of Service? https://t.co/Bfhwf6NXYN
— Sleeping Giants (@slpng_giants) July 30, 2018
So much for “preserving an open platform” so that “diverse and authentic voices” can break through.
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