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Hebron Plan is Israel’s Reminder to Palestinians that Settler Power knows no Limits

Proposed destruction of Hebron’s market to make way for a new settlement is Israeli government’s route to refashion its apartheid system as the rule of law

By Jonathon Cook | The National | December 10, 2019

US President Donald Trump told thousands of Israel’s supporters at a rally in Florida at the weekend that some American Jews “don’t love Israel enough”. It is certainly troubling that a US president insists a section of his country’s citizens – the Jewish population – be required to love a foreign state. But then Trump went further, muddying the waters about what constitutes “Israel”.

Echoing remarks made last month by Mike Pompeo, his secretary of state, he described the Jewish settlements in the West Bank as legal – thereby subverting a long-established principle of international law.

US Jews – and the rest of us, it seems – are expected not only to love Israel inside its internationally recognised borders but also to love the Jewish settlements that international law designates as a war crime. Those are the same settlements eating up ever more of the territory supposed to form the basis of a Palestinian state.

When Trump, like his predecessors, told his weekend audience that the US shared an “unbreakable” bond with Israel, what exactly was the “Israel” he referred to? Both the US and Israel have implied in recent declarations and actions that a central plank of the long-delayed Trump peace plan will be Israel’s annexation of the settlements – and with them most of the West Bank.

“Loving Israel” now is meant to include abandoning any hope of Palestinian statehood and accepting that Palestinians will live permanently under an Israeli version of apartheid, with inferior rights to Jews.

The Trump administration seems keen to press ahead with the peace plan – and annexation – but is being hampered by political chaos in Israel.

Mired in corruption scandals and having staged two inconclusive elections this year, Benjamin Netanyahu, the caretaker prime minister, is unable to cobble together a coalition to keep himself in power. The impasse is not over the occupation or the settlements but about who gets to dominate the next government: far-right religious settlers led by Netanyahu or right-wing, secular former army generals?

Nonetheless, Netanyahu is behaving as if Washington has given its blessing to annexation – even without a US peace plan.

That was what Pompeo’s statement last month backing the settlements amounted to. He offered one paltry safeguard, investing responsibility for monitoring and limiting settlement expansion in Israel’s supreme court. But this is the same court that has consistently failed to block settlement growth over five decades. It now includes two judges who actually live in settlements, as well as others who sympathise politically with the settlement project.

Meanwhile, in preparation for a likely third election campaign, the interim Netanyahu government has announced a splurge of new settlement building and boosted settler budgets.

In another fillip for the settlers last month, Netanyahu appointed one of their leaders, Naftali Bennett, to the sensitive role of defence minister. Bennett lost no time in unveiling his latest settlement plan last week, selecting an incendiary spot greatly prized by the settlers: the middle of Hebron, the West Bank’s largest Palestinian city.

For decades, life for Hebron’s 230,000 Palestinians has been forced to a virtual standstill by a few hundred Jewish religious extremists who have taken over the city centre, backed by more than 1,000 Israeli soldiers. Their ultimate goal is to wrestle away the city’s Ibrahimi mosque, the reputed burial site of Abraham, father of the world’s three main monotheistic religions.

After Baruch Goldstein, a settler, shot dead and wounded some 150 Muslim worshippers in 1994, Israel rewarded the settlers twice over.

First, it segregated the mosque site, splitting it into two. Half is now the Jewish Tomb of the Patriarchs. But in practice the Israeli army enjoys absolute control over who can pray there.

And next, Israel declared the surrounding area, including Hebron’s main commercial market, a closed military zone, thereby forcing the Palestinian merchants out. It has been a ghost town ever since, serving as a passageway between the settlement enclaves and the mosque.

For years, the closed market has stood as a potent, silent symbol of the way Israel has been tearing the city apart.

In February, Netanyahu gave the settlers another boost. He shuttered the international observer mission in Hebron, there to witness and record the abuse of Palestinians, especially at the checkpoints that litter the city centre. But still the settlers were not satisfied. They have long wanted to take over the Hebron market for themselves, to expand their enclaves.

So last week, Bennett granted their wish. He announced plans to destroy the market to make way for a settlement serving effectively as a bridge between the existing enclaves and the mosque site. The plan will double the number of settlers in Hebron and complete a wall of Jewish settlement dividing the city in two. This week Palestinian leaders called a citywide strike in protest.

As ever, the Israeli government has tried to put a surreal legal gloss on its criminality, apparently to spare the blushes of its US and European allies. Bennett’s advisers have insisted that Israel has legal title to the air above the roofs of the empty shops. This is where the settlers will supposedly be housed, after the shops have been demolished and rebuilt to support the new apartment blocks.

It emerged this week that Bennett had threatened Hebron’s municipality, warning it would lose property rights to the shops area too if it did not consent to the settler homes above.

Israel is reminding Palestinians that there are now no limits – military, legal, moral or diplomatic – to the settlers’ power. Israel will annex land where it chooses and deceptively refashion the resulting apartheid system as the rule of law.

The material losses to the Palestinians from Israel’s ever-growing settlement enterprise are devastating enough. This month, the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development issued a report estimating conservatively that the past 17 years of occupation alone had cost the Palestinians a whopping $48 billion – three times the current size of its economy.

That income would have generated two million job opportunities, freeing Palestinians from a miserable choice between life without work and, if they are issued a permit by Israel, precarious, exploitative casual labour in Israel or the settlements.

Equally significantly, the ever-expanding settlements have stripped Palestinians of their most basic freedoms, such as movement, and undermined their security and right to be treated with dignity.

And no one ought to love that.

December 10, 2019 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation | , , , , , | 5 Comments

The Art of Doublespeak: Bellingcat and Mind Control

By Edward Curtin | Behind the Curtain | December 10, 2019

In the 1920s, the influential American intellectual Walter Lippman argued that the average person was incapable of seeing or understanding the world clearly and needed to be guided by experts behind the social curtain. In a number of books he laid out the theoretical foundations for the practical work of Edward Bernays, who developed “public relations” (aka propaganda) to carry out this task for the ruling elites.  Bernays had honed his skills while working as a propagandist for the United States during World War I, and after the war he set himself up as a public relations counselor in New York City.

There is a fascinating exchange at the beginning of Adam Curtis’s documentary, The Century of Self, where Bernays, then nearly 100 years old but still very sharp, reveals his manipulative mindset and that of so many of those who have followed in his wake. He says the reason he couldn’t call his new business “propaganda” was because the Germans had given propaganda a “bad name,” and so he came up with the euphemism “public relations.” He then adds that “if you could use it [i.e. propaganda] for war, you certainly could use it for peace.” Of course, he never used PR for peace but just to manipulate public opinion (he helped engineer the CIA coup against the democratically elected Arbenz government in Guatemala in 1954 with fake news broadcasts). He says “the Germans gave propaganda a bad name,” not Bernays and the United States with their vast campaign of lies, mainly aimed at the American people to get their support for going to a war they opposed (think weapons of mass destruction). He sounds proud of his war propaganda work that resounded to his credit since it led to support for the “war to end all wars” and subsequently to a hit movie about WWI, Yankee Doodle Dandy, made in 1942 to promote another war, since the first one somehow didn’t achieve its lofty goal.

As Bernays has said,

The American motion picture is the greatest unconscious carrier of propaganda in the world today.

He was a propagandist to the end. I suspect most viewers of the film are taken in by these softly spoken words of an old man sipping a glass of wine at a dinner table with a woman who is asking him questions. I have shown this film to hundreds of students and none has noticed his legerdemain. It is an example of the sort of hocus-pocus I will be getting to shortly, the sly insertion into seemingly liberal or matter-of-fact commentary of statements that imply a different story. The placement of convincing or confusing disingenuous ingredients into a truth sandwich – for Bernays knew that the bread of truth is essential to conceal untruth.

In the following years, Bernays, Lippman, and their ilk were joined by social “scientists,” psychologists, and sundry others intent on making a sham out of the idea of democracy by developing strategies and techniques for the engineering of social consensus consonant with the wishes of the ruling classes. Their techniques of propaganda developed exponentially with the development of technology, the creation of the CIA, its infiltration of all the major media, and that agency’s courting of what the CIA official Cord Meyer called in the 1950s “the compatible left,” having already had the right in its pocket. Today most people are, as is said, “wired,” and they get their information from the electronic media that is mostly controlled by giant corporations in cahoots with government propagandists. Ask yourself: Has the power of the oligarchic, permanent warfare state with its propaganda and spy networks increased or decreased over your lifetime. The answer is obvious the average people that Lippman and Bernays trashed are losing and the ruling elites are winning.

This is not just because powerful propagandists are good at controlling so-called “average” people’s thinking, but, perhaps more importantly, because they are also adept – probably more so – at confusing or directing the thinking of those who consider themselves above average, those who still might read a book or two or have the concentration to read multiple articles that offer different perspectives on a topic.  This is what some call the professional and intellectual classes, perhaps 15-20 % of the population, most of whom are not the ruling elites but their employees and sometimes their mouthpieces.  It is this segment of the population that considers itself “informed,” but the information they imbibe is often sprinkled with bits of misdirection, both intentional and not, that beclouds their understanding of important public matters but leaves them with the false impression that they are in the know.

Recently I have noticed a group of interconnected examples of how this group of the population that exerts influence incommensurate with their numbers has contributed to the blurring of lines between fact and fiction. Within this group there are opinion makers who are often journalists, writers, and cultural producers of some sort or other, and then the larger number of the intellectual or schooled class who follow their opinions.  This second group then passes on their received opinions to those who look up to them.

There is a notorious propaganda outfit called Bellingcat, started by an unemployed Englishman named Eliot Higgins, that has been funded by The Atlantic Council, a think-tank with deep ties to the U.S. government, NATO, war manufacturers, and their allies, and the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), another infamous U.S. front organization heavily involved in so-called color revolution regime change operations all around the world, that has just won the International Emmy Award for best documentary. The film with the Orwellian title, Bellingcat: Truth in a Post-Truth World, received its Emmy at a recent ceremony in New York City. Bellingcat is an alleged group of amateur on-line researchers who have spent years shilling for the U.S. instigated war against the Syrian government, blaming the Douma chemical attack and others on the Assad government, and for the anti-Russian propaganda connected to among, other things, the Skripal poisoning case in England, and the downing of flight MH17 plane in Ukraine. It has been lauded by the corporate mainstream media in the west.  Its support for the equally fraudulent White Helmets (also funded by the US and the UK) in Syria has also been praised by the western corporate media while being dissected as propaganda by many excellent independent journalists such as Eva Bartlett, Vanessa Beeley, Catte Black, among others. It’s had its work skewered by the likes of Seymour Hersh and MIT professor Theodore Postol, and its US government connections pointed out by many others, including Ben Norton and Max Blumenthal at The Gray Zone. And now we have the mainstream media’s wall of silence on the leaks from the Organization for the Prohibition on Chemical Weapons (OPCW) concerning the Douma chemical attack and the doctoring of their report that led to the illegal U.S. bombing of Syria in the spring of 2018. Bellingcat was at the forefront of providing justification for such bombing, and now the journalists Peter Hitchens, Tareq Harrad (who recently resigned from Newsweek after accusing the publication of suppressing his revelations about the OPCW scandal) and others are fighting an uphill battle to get the truth out.

Yet Bellingcat: Truth in a Post-Truth World won the Emmy, fulfilling Bernays’ point about films being the greatest unconscious carriers of propaganda in the world today.

Who presented the Emmy Award to the film makers, but none other than the rebel journalist Chris Hedges. Why he did so, I don’t know. But that he did so clearly sends a message to those who follow his work and trust him that it’s okay to give a major cultural award to a propaganda outfit. But then, perhaps he doesn’t consider Bellingcat to be that.

Nor, one presumes, does The Intercept, the billionaire Pierre Omidyar owned publication associated with Glen Greenwald and Jeremy Scahill, and also read by many progressive-minded people. The Intercept that earlier this year disbanded the small team that was tasked with reviewing and releasing more of the massive trove of documents they received from Edward Snowden six years ago, a minute number of which have ever been released or probably ever will be. As Whitney Webb pointed out, last year The Intercept  hosted a workshop for Bellingcat. She wrote:

The Intercept, along with its parent company First Look Media, recently hosted a workshop for pro-war, Google-funded organization Bellingcat in New York. The workshop, which cost $2,500 per person to attend and lasted five days, aimed to instruct participants in how to perform investigations using “open source” tools — with Bellingcat’s past, controversial investigations for use as case studies… Thus, while The Intercept has long publicly promoted itself as an anti-interventionist and progressive media outlet, it is becoming clearer that – largely thanks to its ties to Omidyar – it is increasingly an organization that has more in common with Bellingcat, a group that launders NATO and U.S. propaganda and disguises it as “independent” and “investigative journalism.”

Then we have Jefferson Morley, the editor of The Deep State, former Washington Post journalist, and JFK assassination researcher, who has written a praiseworthy review of the Bellingcat film and who supports Bellingcat. “In my experience, Bellingcat is credible,” he writes in an Alternet article, “Bellingcat documentary has the pace and plot of a thriller.”

Morley has also just written an article for Counterpunch – “Why the Douma Chemical Attack Wasn’t a ‘Managed Massacre’” – in which he disputes the claim that the April 7, 2018 attack in the Damascus suburb was a false flag operation carried out by Assad’s opponents. “I do not see any evidence proving that Douma was a false flag incident,” he writes in this article that is written in a style that leaves one guessing as to what exactly he is saying. It sounds convincing unless one concentrates, and then his double messages emerge. Yet it is the kind of article that certain “sophisticated” left-wing readers might read and feel is insightful.  But then Morley, who has written considerably about the CIA, edits a website that advertises itself as “the thinking person’s portal to the world of secret government,” and recently had an exchange with former CIA Director John Brennan where “Brennan put a friendly finger on my chest,” said in February 2017, less than a month after Trump was sworn in as president, that:

With a docile Republican majority in Congress and a demoralized Democratic Party in opposition, the leaders of the Deep State are the most—perhaps the only—credible check in Washington on what Senator Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) calls Trump’s “wrecking ball presidency.”  

Is it any wonder that some people might be a bit confused?

“I know what you’re thinking about,” said Tweedledum; “but it isn’t so, nohow.”

“Contrariwise,” continued Tweedledee, “if it was so, it might be; and if it were so, it would be; but as it isn’t, it ain’t. That’s logic.”

As a final case in point, there is a recent book by Stephen Kinzer, Poisoner in Chief: Sidney Gottlieb And The CIA Search For Mind Control, the story of the chemist known as Dr. Death who ran the CIA’s MK-ULTRA mind control project, using LSD, torture, electric shock therapy, hypnosis, etc.; developed sadistic methods of torture still used in black sites around the world; and invented various ingenious techniques for assassination, many of which were aimed at Fidel Castro. Gottlieb was responsible for brutal prison and hospital experiments and untold death and suffering inflicted on all sorts of innocent people. His work was depraved in the deepest sense; he worked with Nazis who experimented on Jews despite being Jewish himself.

Kinzer writes in depth about this man who considered himself a patriot and a spiritual person – a humane torturer and killer. It is an eye-opening book for anyone who does not know about Gottlieb, who gave the CIA the essential tools they use in their “organized crime” activities around the world – in the words of Douglass Valentine, the author of The CIA as Organized Crime and The Phoenix Program. Kinzer’s book is good history on Gottlieb; however, he doesn’t venture into the present activities of the CIA and Gottlieb’s patriotic followers, who no doubt exist and go about their business in secret.

After recounting in detail the sordid history of Gottlieb’s secret work that is nauseating to read about, Kinzer leaves the reader with these strange words:

Gottlieb was not a sadist, but he might well have been…. Above all he was an instrument of history. Understanding him is a deeply disturbing way of understanding ourselves.

What possibly could this mean? Not a sadist? An instrument of history? Understanding ourselves? These few sentences, dropped out of nowhere, pull the rug out from under what is generally an illuminating history and what seems like a moral indictment. This language is pure mystification.

Kinzer also concludes that because Gottlieb said so, the CIA failed in their efforts to develop methods of mind control and ended MK-ULTRA’s experiments long ago. Why would he believe the word of a man who personified the agency he worked for: a secret liar? He writes,

When Sydney Gottlieb brough MK-ULTRA to its end in the early 1960s, he told his CIA superiors that he had found no reliable way to wipe away memory, make people abandon their consciences, or commit crimes and then forget them.

As for those who might think otherwise, Kinzer suggests they have vivid imaginations and are caught up in conspiracy thinking: “This [convincing others that the CIA had developed methods of mind control when they hadn’t] is Sydney Gottlieb’s most unexpected legacy,” he asserts. He says this although Richard Helms, the CIA Director, destroyed all MK-Ultra records. He says that Allen Dulles, Gottlieb, and Helms themselves were caught up in a complete fantasy about mind control because they had seen too many movies and read too many books; mind control was impossible, a failure, a myth, he maintains. It is the stuff of popular culture, entertainment. In an interview with Chris Hedges, interestingly posted by Jefferson Morley at his website, The Deep State, Hedges agrees with Kinzer. Gottlieb, Dulles, et al. were all deluded.  Mind control was impossible. You couldn’t create a Manchurian Candidate; by implication, someone like Sirhan could not have been programmed to be a fake Manchurian Candidate and to have no memory of what he did, as he claims. He could not have been mind-controlled by the CIA to perform his part as the seeming assassin of Senator Robert Kennedy while the real killer shot RFK from behind. People who think like this should get real.

Furthermore, as is so common in books such as Kinzer’s, he repeats the canard that JFK and RFK knew about and pressured the CIA to assassinate Fidel Castro. This is demonstrably false, as shown by the Church Committee and the Assassinations Record Review Board, among many others. That Kinzer takes the word of notorious liars like Richard Helms and the top-level CIA operative Samuel Halpern is simply incredible, something that is hard to consider a mistake. Slipped into a truth sandwich, it is devoured and passed on. But it is false. Bullshit meant to deceive.

But this is how these games are played. If you look carefully, you will see them widely. Inform, enlighten, while throwing in doubletalk and untruths. The small number of people who read such books and articles will come away knowing some history that has no current relevance and being misinformed on other history that does. They will then be in the know, ready to pass their “wisdom” on to those who care to listen. They will not think they are average.

But they will be mind controlled, and the killer cat will roam freely without a bell, ready to devour the unsuspecting mice.

December 10, 2019 Posted by | Deception, Fake News, Film Review, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Timeless or most popular | , , , | 1 Comment

‘Obama policies continue’: US Congress doing everything to destroy relations with Russia, says Lavrov

RT | December 11, 2019

Some US lawmakers are doing everything they can to prevent normalization of US-Russia relations, which would benefit both countries, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said while visiting Washington.

Lavrov spent Tuesday in meetings with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo at the State Department and Trump at the Oval Office. At a press conference later in the day, he was asked if Russia saw Trump as a reliable partner.

While Trump sincerely understands the benefits of good relations with Russia for both countries, Lavrov said, “Congress, in my opinion, is doing everything to destroy our relations,” continuing the policies of the Obama administration.

He was referring specifically to the proposed new sanctions in the Senate, and the attempt to amend the must-pass NDAA military funding bill with measures against two Russian-built natural gas pipelines in Europe.

“I can assure you that neither Nord Stream 2 nor Turk Stream will be halted,” Lavrov told reporters.

Both pipelines are in final stages of construction and will enable Russia to export billions of cubic meters of natural gas into Europe via Germany and Turkey, without having to worry about potential obstruction from Ukraine or Poland.

December 10, 2019 Posted by | Russophobia | , , | 6 Comments

Netanyahu-Pompeo Meeting Solidifies War Plan on Iran

By Finian Cunningham | Strategic Culture Foundation | December 10, 2019

Ratcheting economic sanctions, military force encirclement, inciting seditious violence and relentless war rhetoric. This all by the US and its allies over the past year towards Iran, yet it is Iran which is portrayed as posing “potential threats” to American interests.

The hastily arranged meeting last week between Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu and US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo had the hallmarks of a war-plan summit amid a peak in renewed media provocation against Iran.

In the last weeks there has been a flurry of US media reports claiming that Iran is secretly moving ballistic missiles into Iraq and elsewhere across the region. As usual the media credulously cite anonymous intelligence and Pentagon officials on those claims.

Here’s CNN quoting one administration official: “There has been consistent intelligence in the last several weeks,” the official said, referring to “a potential Iranian threat against US forces and interests in the Middle East.”

Last month, the head of US CentCom made a similar dire forecast of Iranian intentions. General Kenneth McKenzie said: “I would expect that if we look at the past three or four months, it’s possible they [Iran] will do something that is irresponsible.”

Notice how General McKenzie tacitly acknowledges the background of the Trump administration’s “maximum pressure” campaign of economic sanctions and US military force buildup against Iran as if that is somehow normal international conduct. Then he turns all that US aggression on its head by accusing Iran of possibly doing “something that is irresponsible”.

There are worrying signs that the US and Israel are redoubling the pressure of war against Iran. This pressure has to be seen in the context of a formidable deployment of US military forces – troops, warplanes and warships in the region since May this year. The earlier buildup was announced on the basis of unfounded claims that Iran was preparing to launch offensive operations against American interests. Then came a series of mysterious attacks on oil tankers in the Persian Gulf over the summer which Washington blamed on Iran without evidence.

Street protests in Iran since mid-November over fuel-price increases appear to be hijacked by subversive elements. President Trump and other US officials have openly called for the protests to destabilize the Iranian government.

Fresh claims that Iran is sending ballistic missiles to neighboring countries appear to be setting the stage for justifying a pre-emptive US attack on Iran.

No doubt the Iranian government is under severe pressure from the economic hardship that the US has re-imposed unlawfully since Trump dumped the international nuclear accord in May 2018. No doubt too Iran is apprehensive about the relentless military threats against it from Washington and its Israeli ally. Almost certainly, Iran will have mobilized forces in the reasonable calculation that it may come under attack at any moment.

But, perversely, US intelligence and military officials are interpreting Iranian defensive moves as “indications of a potential threat” to American “interests”.

The meeting last week between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo signals a foreboding development. Recall that this is in the context of US media reports of Iranian ballistic missiles being deployed and of reports that the Trump administration is considering a doubling of troop levels in the Middle East to 28,000, as well as sending more missiles and warplanes.

Netanyahu met Pompeo in Lisbon, Portugal, on Wednesday, December 04. The meeting was called urgently and was unscheduled. Netanyahu – who is fighting for his political survival over corruption charges – tried to arrange discussions with Pompeo on the sidelines of the NATO summit near London, but according to Israeli media reports there was not enough time for security logistics to be put in place by the British. That indicates the Israeli leader was trying to meet Pompeo in a hurry.

When Netanyahu met with Pompeo in Lisbon, he said at the start of their discussions: “The first subject that I will raise is Iran. The second subject is Iran, and so is the third. And many more.

The Israeli premier added: “We have been fortunate as President Trump has led a consistent policy of exerting pressure on Iran. Iran is increasing its aggression in the region as we speak, even today, in the region. They are trying to have staging grounds against us and the region from Iran itself, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Gaza and Yemen and we are actively engaged in countering that aggression.”

Netanyahu also gloated that the “Iranian empire [sic] is tottering… let’s make it totter even more.”

For several months Iran has steadfastly refused to take the bait of war laid down by the Trump administration. But with pressures mounting both within the country and externally, it would be imperative for the Iranian authorities to marshall their defenses.

US intelligence and military officials are using contorted logic to accuse Iran of posing a threat, and the American corporate media are ably assisting in the propagation of this oxymoron.

Netanyahu’s hasty meeting with Pompeo last week suggests that the US and Israel are putting the final touches to their malignant masterpiece for provoking a war with Iran.

December 10, 2019 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Militarism, Wars for Israel | , , , , | 2 Comments

Just how bad was the FBI’s Russia FISA? 51 violations and 9 false statements

John Solomon Reports | December 9, 2019

To understand just how shoddy the FBI’s work was in securing a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrant targeting the Trump campaign, you only need to read an obscure attachment to Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s report.

Appendix 1 identifies the total violations by the FBI of the so-called Woods Procedures, the process by which the bureau verifies information and assures the FISA court its evidence is true.

The Appendix identifies a total of 51 Woods procedure violations from the FISA application the FBI submitted to the court authorizing surveillance of former Trump campaign aide Carter Page starting in October 2016.

A whopping nine of those violations fell into the category called: “Supporting document shows that the factual assertion is
inaccurate.”

For those who don’t speak IG parlance, it means the FBI made nine false assertions to the FISA court. In short, what the bureau said was contradicted by the evidence in its official file.

To put that in perspective, former Trump aides Mike Flynn and George Papadopoulos were convicted of making single false statements to the bureau. One went to jail already, and the other awaits sentencing.

The FBI made nine false statements to the court.

And the appendix shows the FBI made another nine factual assertions that did not match the supporting evidence in the file. In another words, the bureau was misleading on nine other occasions.

The vast majority of remaining Woods violations — 33 in total — involved failing to provide any evidence in the Woods procedure backing up assertion in the FISA warrant application.

That’s serious too since the sole purpose of the Wood procedures is to ensure all evidence cited in a FISA application is documented as accurate and reliable so it can be trusted by the courts.

December 10, 2019 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception | , | Leave a comment

Trump’s Creaky Door to Peace in the Koreas

By Patrick Lawrence – Consortium News – December 10, 2019

In June 2018, when Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un summitted in Singapore, the American and North Korean leaders opened the door to peace on the Korean Peninsula wider than at any time since hostilities ceased in 1953. Eighteen months later, we watch as this door creaks closed.

Which side has betrayed the once-promising prospect of denuclearization and an end of seven decades of flashpoint tension in Northeast Asia? This is our question.

A succession of developments over the past week indicates that bilateral efforts to denuclearize the two Koreas will pass into history at year-end. Kim asserted nearly a year ago, that, absent a credible diplomatic framework for a bilateral accord, the North will give up on a settlement with the U.S. and “find a new way to defend the sovereignty of the country.”

A test conducted Sunday at a previously deactivated missile launch site suggests this means Pyongyang intends to recommit to nuclear and long-range missile programs it had suspended so long as talks with the U.S. progressed.

There is a good chance the North has already determined to pursue Kim’s “new way.” Pyongyang’s ambassador to the U.N. indicated as much just prior to the test at the Sohae site Sunday.

“We do not need to have lengthy talks with the U.S. now,” Kim Song said the previous day in New York. “Denuclearization is already gone out of the negotiating table.” By the time Kim Song spoke, the North Korean wire service, KCNA, had already begun to publish shrill warnings that hostilities with the U.S. could be renewed at any time.

John Bolton’s Impact 

Kim Jong-un set the Dec. 31 deadline for progress in bilateral talks after the failure last February of his second summit with Trump, held in Hanoi. Subsequent reporting by two Reuters correspondents revealed that Trump, on the advice of John Bolton, his national security adviser at the time, told Kim he must accede to all U.S. demands before Washington would negotiate any concessions of its own. The Reuters report demonstrated that Bolton’s advice to Trump — delivered just as the president sat down with Kim, so leaving him little time to consider it — was intended to precipitate precisely the sudden breach between the two leaders that then took place.

“It occurs to us that there may not be a need to continue,” Choe Son-hui, Kim’s vice-foreign minister, said after the North Korean leader abandoned the Hanoi talks in acrimony. “We’re doing a lot of thinking.” In hindsight, Choe’s remark seems to have signaled the North’s post–Hanoi distrust of U.S. intentions despite Kim’s notably friendly personal relations with Trump.

This wariness and impatience are justified. In a round of talks held in Stockholm in October, North Korean negotiators walked out in a matter of hours, complaining that the U.S. side had nothing to offer but a repackaged version of the fatal proposition presented in Hanoi. If you reject our proposal that 6 and 4 make 10, let us offer you 7 and 3: This is effectively the U.S. position to date.

Nothing that has occurred since the first Trump–Kim summit in Singapore suggests that the president is anything other than entirely sincere in his desire to forge an historic agreement with Pyongyang. One need not assign Trump any transcendent geopolitical vision to recognize this. The Dealmaker wants a deal, preferably one that has eluded all of his predecessors in the White House.

On Saturday Trump conferred with South Korean President Moon Jae-in for half an hour by telephone to discuss how to salvage the negotiation process between the North and the U.S. Moon has assiduously promoted negotiations with the North since he took office in May 2017. Plainly, Trump wants Moon to help him draw Kim back from the brink.

“Kim Jong-un is too smart and has too much to lose, everything actually, if he acts in a hostile way,” Trump said Sunday. “He does not want to void his special relationship with the President of the United States or interfere with the U.S. presidential election in November.”

These remarks appear to signal that, despite Trump’s conversation with Moon, the U.S. does not take Kim’s year-end ultimatum seriously. They also suggest that Trump considers the current escalation of tensions between Washington and Pyongyang nothing more than the posturing he indulges in prior to any significant negotiation.

In both cases, Trump is likely to be proven wrong for two reasons.

The first is that Trump may have just overplayed his hand. There are indications that Kim thinks the Sohae test Sunday — the nature of which remains unclear — significantly improves his diplomatic position. While the North’s tough talk may also be posturing, Washington now risks forfeiting some of Kim’s willingness to negotiate the elimination of the North’s nuclear and ballistic-missile capacities. “The results of the recent important test will have an important effect on changing the strategic position of the DPRK once again in the near future,” KCNA reported Sunday.

The second is that by now Trump almost certainly understands the extent to which policy cliques in Washington have circumscribed his agenda on questions such as Russia, Syria and North Korea. It may be to his credit that he persists in the face of this resistance, but his chances of overcoming it are, if anything, diminished after nearly three years of incessant subterfuge on the foreign policy side. Trump does not have a Kim Jong-un problem; he has a “deep state” problem at home.

When U.S.–North Korean talks have collapsed on previous occasions, official U.S. records tend to blur the chronology of events, erase causality, and then imply that responsibility for failure lies with the North Koreans. While there are already indications that we will see the same this time, there has been enough good reporting, mostly in other-than-corporate media, to make this fallacy plain. No one should be fooled when we read once again about those bellicose, irrational North Koreans.

All indications now suggest that Kim plans another of his blockbuster New Year’s speeches, similar to those delivered in previous years. In 2018 he announced that the North had achieved a weaponized nuclear capability with which to deter threats from the U.S. This year he declared he would be willing to meet Trump “anytime” while announcing his “new way” should diplomacy fail.

The first of these assertions is now patently true. After a year of disappointments, the second awaits the outcome of the current impasse. We will have to see in coming weeks.

After the talks in Stockholm collapsed in October, North Korea termed the debacle “sickening.” So it is, considering the opportunity that the U.S. — not for the first time — is in the process of intently squandering.

Patrick Lawrence, a correspondent abroad for many years, chiefly for The International Herald Tribune, is a columnist, essayist, author and lecturer. His most recent book is “Time No Longer: Americans After the American Century” (Yale). Follow him on Twitter @thefloutist. His web site is Patrick Lawrence.

December 10, 2019 Posted by | Militarism | , | Leave a comment

Russia offers Ukraine cheaper gas under new transit deal, Kiev promises to drop $3bn demand

RT | December 10, 2019

The price of gas for Ukraine may be lower if Moscow and Kiev manage to reach a new transit agreement, Russian President Vladimir Putin told at a press conference after the Normandy Four summit in Paris.

Gas for Ukraine “could be cheaper by 25 percent, as compared to what the end consumer currently gets, primarily the industrial consumer, because the price of gas for the domestic consumer, for citizens [of Ukraine], is subsidized, we can’t calculate the price from the subsidized price,” Putin said.

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky said in return that there is a good chance that the contract on gas transit from Russia to Europe via Ukraine would be extended after January 1.

Agreement for Russian gas supplies to Ukraine and those transiting to Europe expires at the end of this year. In November, Russia’s Gazprom offered Ukraine to extend the transit contract or enter into a new one for one year.

“There’s no agreement yet, but I’m sure that we have more chances to sign it under better conditions than before,” Zelensky told reporters in Paris, adding that “I insisted on the most favorable, ambitious conditions for Ukraine and Europe, which is ten years.”

He also said the issue of the $2.56 billion compensation has been taken off the table during the talks, and that Kiev “is ready to take it in gas.”

A Swedish court ruled Gazprom must compensate Ukraine’s Naftogaz for the transit of Russian gas through the Ukrainian territory between 2009 and 2017 even though the gas was not, in fact, transited over that period. The court justified its decision by referring to a difficult economic situation in Ukraine. Last month, Russia’s Gazprom lost the appeal.

December 10, 2019 Posted by | Economics | , , | Leave a comment

U.S. Efforts to Force Iran Out of European Energy Markets Have Failed

By Paul Antonopoulos | December 10, 2019

Despite the European Union attempts to save the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, which saw Iran reduce its low-enriched uranium by 98% and eliminate its stockpile of medium-enriched uranium in return for economic relief, JCPOA is hanging by a thread because of Washington’s withdrawal from the deal in October 2017.

The European Statistical Office revealed that from January to September trade between the EU and Iran was at €3.86 billion, a massive 74.92% drop compared to the same period in 2018. The report revealed that Germany (€1.23 billion), Italy (€734.78 million) and the Netherlands (€376.73 million) were Iran’s top three trading partners in EU while trade with Greece (€32.08 million), Luxembourg (€506,316), Spain (€207.36 million), France (€296.5 million) and Austria (€102.11 million) had plunged by  97.13%, 91.38%, 91.17%, 86.79% and 82.38% respectively.

Although Iran’s trade with Cyprus at €6.25 million and Bulgaria at €64.97 million increased by 85.12% and 29.24% respectively year-on-year— the highest among EU states — it still does not offset the massive decline in trade with Greece, Luxembourg, Spain, France and Austria. The major decline in trade is attributed due to European companies’ unwillingness to risk losing business with the U.S. for the sake of the much smaller Iranian market. Effectively, U.S. President Donald Trump’s economic war with Iran is to diminish Iranian-EU trade so that the U.S. may reap benefits from boosting its own oil and other commodities. However, this is set to change.

With this dramatic downturn in trade with the EU, Iran is now pushing to diversify its economy even further to overcome a reliance on oil and take a number of measures in an attempt to counter U.S. economic aggression, including increasing taxes, cutting energy subsidies and borrowing money from friendly states. Iranian President Hassan Rouhani explained on Sunday in parliament that oil revenues are expected to drop by at least 70% and that Iran’s budget next year “is designed to resist against sanctions and to announce to the world that we run this country despite sanctions.”

The Iranian president explained that the new budget will reach $115.3 billion because of the reduction of oil exportation from 2.8 million barrels of oil a day before Trump’s May sanctions to 500,000 barrels a day. In addition, Iran will sell more bonds in the domestic market and plans to increase revenues from taxes by 13%, but these changes come as the International Monetary Fund has already forecast that the Islamic Republic will have a reduction of its economy of about 9.5% this year.

This “budget of resistance,” as described by Rouhani, is “contrary to what the Americans thought. With the pressure of sanctions, our country’s economy would encounter problems, thank God we have chosen the correct path… and we are moving forward.”

Iran’s Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi announced on Monday that the European signatories to the JCPOA will not activate the “trigger mechanism” for the time being that could see the return of sanctions against the Islamic Republic. It is unlikely that the EU or Iran will withdraw from what remains of JCPOA as they attempt to bypass U.S. sanctions which can see the besieged country improve its economy through increased trade with Europe.

Not only has the EU pledged to maintain its nuclear deal commitments, in a joint statement late last month, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, the Netherlands, Norway and Sweden said they will attain shares in Instrument in Support of Trade Exchanges (INSTEX), that was launched by Britain, France and Germany in January to allow European companies to trade with Iran without using U.S. dollars so they could be protected from U.S. sanctions.

In their joint statement, they said: “In light of the continuous European support for the agreement and the ongoing efforts to implement the economic part of it and to facilitate legitimate trade between Europe and Iran, we are now in the process of becoming shareholders of INSTEX, subject to the completion of national procedures.”

This is also a part of a wider move to counter strong U.S. efforts to muscle in on the European oil market as U.S. sanctions have scared buyers from acquiring Iranian and Venezuelan crude. The so-called hydro-fracking and shale revolution that began a few years ago has seen the U.S. aggressively seek to export its oil to new markets. It is now unsurprising that earlier this year U.S. crude shipments to Europe reached new records, behind Russia but still more than Nigeria and Libya who are important OPEC members.

Therefore, a major reason for the false allegations by Trump that Iran was violating the JCPOA was to force Iran out of the European market to push the U.S. entrance. It appears that Trump’s plan has failed. Not only has Iran formulated its “budget of resistance,” but with Belgium, Denmark, Finland, the Netherlands, Norway and Sweden becoming shareholders INSTEX, they are prepared to continue their economic relations with Iran while being protected from U.S. repercussions. Effectively, although the U.S. has achieved a short-term reduction in European-Iranian trade, it will not only recover, but also be strengthened as new mechanisms are being made to bypass U.S. banks and dollars.

Paul Antonopoulos is a Research Fellow at the Center for Syncretic Studies.

December 10, 2019 Posted by | Economics | , , , | Leave a comment

No joke: Russian scientists marked problem Kara Sea polar bear with T-34

By Susan Crockford | Polar Bear Science | December 7, 2019

The media are so gullible. So eager are they for a sympathetic polar bear victim that news outlets everywhere carried a story earlier this week about a Russian polar bear that had ‘T-34’ spray-painted on its side. They took the word of Russian polar bear/walrus consultant to WWF and Netflix, Anatoly Kochnev, that this was some kind of cruel joke that meant an untimely death for the bear. Turns out it was nothing of the kind.

T-34 polar bear

Cruel animal abusers daubed T-34 – the name of an iconic Soviet tank – on a wild polar bear. Daily Mail (2 December 2019).

Polar bear spray-painted with ‘T-34’ baffles Russia wildlife experts BBC (2 December 2019).

Russians spotted a polar bear painted in cryptic graffiti. Scientists are searching for answers National Post (4 December 2019)

A polar bear was spray-painted with graffiti, scientists fear it won’t survive CNN (4 December 2019).

Apparently, the original video of the marked bear was posted on a social media site for Chukotak indigenous people and subsequently posted on Facebook by Sergey Kavry of the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), who also contacted local media.

Only five days ago, Kochnov was quoted as saying:

‘Scientists could not do this, it could have been somebody who ‘joked’ like this.

Polar beara checking out a Russian dump Kara Sea late November 2019_Irina Eliseeva photo

Except scientists did do it.

In a report in the Siberian Times published late today, it appears the bear was causing problems on Novaya Zemlya (where dump bears were a big problem last winter) and was tagged ahead of being driven off:

“The animal was marked with ‘safe paint’ which wears off over two weeks, and moved away to discourage him from coming back.

The bear was sedated and examined, said senior researcher Ilya Mordvintsev.

The check showed that the male predator was well-fed which meant that he would likely not attack.

The mark was made to allow both the locals and experts recognise the beast in case he returned, and to distinguish it from any other polar bear scavenging at the site.

Andrey Umnikov denied T-34 referred to the tank.

The video [that went viral] was filmed approximately a week ago, he specified.”

Poor sad polar bear news flash is over, morphing into an egg-on-the-face moment for WWF and Kochnev.

Habituated dump bears are a wide-spread problem in the Kara Sea, as the photo of a fat bear checking out a container below shows.

‘Polar bears checking on rubbish containers are not rarity. It happened at Beliy island and Vilkitskiy island,’ Andrey Umnikov explained.

Polar bears

Location of Vilkitskiy Island in the Kara Sea (Wikipedia):

Vilkitskiy island Kara_sea wikipedia

December 10, 2019 Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Russophobia, Science and Pseudo-Science | | Leave a comment