Family of Slain Palestinian Say Israeli Officials Are Lying About How He Was Killed
IMEMC & Agencies – December 28, 2019
Although a month and a half has passed since the killing of the Jerusalemite, Faris Bassam Abu Nab, questions remain about the circumstances of his death, and his family members say Israeli officials have had contradictory and deceptive statements. Abu Nab was shot by Israeli forces near the Tunnel checkpoint, south of Jerusalem.
According to the Jerusalem-based Silwan Information Center, Bassam Abu Nab, the father of the killed Palestinian, said that he assigned a lawyer to follow up on the case of shooting his son and investigate, stressing that he continues to search for the truth of what happened to his son, and to hold the perpetrators accountable and punish them.
Abu Nab said: “AbuKbeir Institute of Forensic Medicine refuses, to this day, to give me the results of the autopsy, and I did not receive the initial or final report, and he told me that it was transferred to the Police Investigation Unit (Mahash), and when I headed to the police and asked the official, he first denied and then refused to provide any information”.
Abu Nab added that the condition of his son’s body revealed that he was killed “in cold blood”, because the bullets were in the upper part of the body, in the heart, chest, head, and neck, and the signs of assault were clear on his head from the back and lower back, as if he was dragged to the ground, in addition to dislocating his elbow, and all this refuted the occupation’s narration that only his feet were shot — but his feet did not contain any bullets.”
Abu Nab continued, “From the moment I learned about the incident, the occupation police told me that they opened fire at the vehicle from the rear on the pretext that it was ‘illegal’. But I myself found the car by chance parked in the parking lot of Al-Maskobyeh in West Jerusalem, and it had no sign of any bullets, and after examination and investigation it was found that it was legal.”
Abu Nab wondered: “Where are the surveillance cameras at the military checkpoint, and why did the Israeli media present a report on the incident with edited scenes?” He called for the full disclosure of the cameras’ recordings on the day of the incident.
He said: “The occupation forces have no right to kill anyone, whatever the reason, and they can use non-lethal electric weapons to arrest him.”
Abu Nab pointed to his pursuit and his family by the occupation authorities after his son was killed, including the invasion of his home, the assaults of himself and his children, and the interrogation of his three children last week. The interrogator told them: “Why do you say we killed your brother, the accident occurred in the West Bank. We didn’t have anything to do with it.” They also told the children to “not talk too much about this incident… it was a mistake and it happened.”
The mother of the victim confirmed that her son was committed to his work and said: “Faris was killed in cold blood, and he used his car to do delivery services and was working in cleaning restaurants and usually worked until after midnight. On the day of his martyrdom, he wore his clothes as usual and went out to work.”
The family confirmed that they would follow-up the case of their son’s martyrdom until the truth is revealed, and that they would remain steadfast in Jerusalem despite the abuse and prosecutions they are subjected to.
The Israeli occupation soldiers opened fire on Faris Abu Nab who is a resident of Silwan, on November 17th 2019, at the Tunnel checkpoint, south of Jerusalem, and his body was released to his family after three days of detention.
Netanyahu Announces Six-Point Plan to Annex Palestinian Land, Defeat Iran
Palestine Chronicle | December 28, 2019
Following his triumph in the Likud party’s primary elections on December 26, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu introduced a political plan aimed at securing US recognition of Israel’s annexation of West Bank settlements and rolling back Iran’s influence in the region.
Netanyahu’s plan, which is likely to play a major role in his desperate attempt to cling to power after yet another general election, slated for March, also proposes the normalization of ties between Tel Aviv and Arab countries, without ending Israel’s occupation of Palestine.
Israeli newspaper Times of Israel reported on Netanyahu’s six-point plan, which was revealed during the Israeli leader’s victory speech on Friday.
“First, we will finalize our borders; second, we will push the US to recognize our sovereignty in the Jordan Valley and the northern Dead Sea; third, we will push for US recognition of our extension of sovereignty over all the communities in Judea and Samaria, all of them without exception,” Netanyahu said.
“Fourth, we will push for a historic defense alliance with the US that will preserve Israeli freedom of action; fifth, stop Iran and its allies decisively; and sixth, push for normalization and agreements that will lead to peace accords with Arab countries”.
“Israeli officials have been preparing for this moment for more than half a century, since the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza were seized back in 1967,” wrote Palestine Chronicle contributor Jonathan Cook last June.
“Annexation is not a right-wing project that has hijacked the benign intentions of Israel’s founding generation. Annexation was on the cards from the occupation’s very beginnings in 1967, when the so-called center-left – now presented as a peace-loving alternative to Netanyahu – ran the government,” Cook added.
“Ultimately, Israel wants the Palestinians gone entirely, squeezed out into neighboring Arab states, such as Egypt and Jordan. That next chapter is likely to begin in earnest if Trump ever gets the chance to unveil his deal of the century’.”
In his speech on Friday, Netanyahu promised his Likud supporters that he will “fight for them” as “they fought for me,” reported The Times of Israel.
“Opposing Interventionism In Nation X Means You Love Nation X’s Government!”
By Caitlin Johnstone | December 27, 2019
Every time you speak out against western imperialism in a given nation or question western propaganda narratives about that nation’s government, you will inevitably be accused of loving that nation’s government by anyone who argues with you.
When I say “inevitably”, I am not exaggerating. If you speak in any public forum for any length of time expressing skepticism of what we’re told to believe about a nation whose government has been targeted by the US-centralized empire, you will with absolute certainty eventually run into someone who accuses you of thinking that that government is awesome and pure and good.
I have never, ever had this fail to occur, even once. If I write an article about the mountain of evidence suggesting we were lied to about a chemical attack in Syria, I get people telling me I think Bashar al-Assad is a girl scout who’s never ever done anything wrong. If I express skepticism of the flimsy narratives we’re being fed in the escalating propaganda war against China, I get “If you love Beijing so much and think Xi is so innocent you should go and move to China!” It’s one of the only completely predictable things about this job.
Which is of course idiotic. Understanding that the US government and its allies lie constantly with the full-throated support of western news media in no way suggests a belief that the targeted government in question is wonderful, and there’s absolutely no legitimate reason to infer such a thing. The indisputable fact that US-led military interventionism is universally disastrous and based on lies has nothing to do with anyone’s level of emotional support for the governments targeted for destruction by the US-centralized empire. Yet everyone reading this who’s ever tried to speak out against US foreign policy has encountered the behavior I’m describing here.
Why is that? Why do establishment loyalists engage in such a weird, nonsensical behavior with such reliable consistency? Why do they literally always accuse anyone who questions any narrative about any empire-targeted government of having positive emotions toward that government, even though there is no rational reason for them to do so?
I’ll tell you why: Hollywood.
Well, not just Hollywood. Really the dynamic we’re about to discuss has been going on for as long as there have been war stories. But the dominant storytellers of today are in Hollywood, and that’s where the dominant war stories are told.
For as long as war stories have been told, those stories have been framed as a battle between good and evil. The good side is the side you identify with, and the evil side is the one you want to lose. You see this in almost all depictions of war coming out of Hollywood today, from movies based on actual wars to sci-fi and fantasy films like Star Wars and The Lord of the Rings. Over and over and over again from childhood we are trained to assume that mass military violence must have a Good side and an Evil side, so when we see a war being depicted anywhere we immediately start trying to sort out who are the Good Guys and who are the Bad Guys, usually without even thinking about it.
Obviously war isn’t actually about Good versus Evil; usually it’s nothing more noble than geostrategic agenda versus geostrategic agenda. But because people are conditioned from an early age to overlay any ideas about large-scale conflict with this false Good or Evil dichotomy, there’s an immediate assumption that if you’re suggesting that one side might not be Good, then the other side are the Good Guys. If you say the government pushing regime change in Iran is doing something immoral, then you’re saying they’re the Bad Guys, which means you think the Iranian government are the Good Guys.
Yes, the behavior in question really does boil down to something that stupid. This phenomenon where empire apologists will predictably accuse you of loving an empire-targeted nation just because you oppose imperialist agendas is primarily due to a combination of dumb binary thinking and watching too many Hollywood movies. In other words, it’s due to bad information meeting bad thinking.
All we can really do to address this dynamic is bring consciousness to it. When someone’s acting out the unexamined assumption that because you are critical of western imperialism you must necessarily believe that all of its targets are perfect and wonderful, you can point out the absurdity of this position and invite them to think a little harder about it. Or just link them to this article.
Beyond that, all you can really do is understand what you’re looking at, roll your eyes, and sigh.
US plans to conduct cyberwar against Russia in retaliation for unproven election meddling
By Scott Ritter | RT | December 28, 2019
Despite having provided no proof of Russian meddling in the 2016 or 2020 US presidential election, the Pentagon is preparing to launch a cyberwar against Russia in retaliation. Could the real reason be political?
From May 2017 until March 2019, a team of investigators and lawyers led by Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller engaged in a frenetic search for evidence sustaining allegations that individuals affiliated with the campaign of President Donald Trump—and even the president himself—had colluded and conspired with the Russian government to influence the outcome of the 2016 US presidential election in Trump’s favor. Numerous high-profile politicians, civil servants, and media personalities invested a tremendous amount of political and personal capital pursuing various allegations.
Among the most prominent of these held that hackers allegedly working on behalf of Russian Military Intelligence (the GRU) gained access to computer servers belonging to the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC), extracted sensitive data, and then conspired to have this information released to the public in a manner designed to harm the presidential campaign of Hillary Clinton.
While the charges against Trump were subsequently shown to be unfounded, the American public was led to believe that the underlying facts of the case—especially the allegations concerning the hacking of the DNC server—were undisputed fact. Moreover, the same people who invested so heavily in the Mueller investigation are now claiming that Russia—with or without the knowledge and support of President Trump—is actively preparing for a similar intervention in the 2020 election. Prodded by these concerns, the US Cyber Command, a Department of Defense organization responsible for cyber warfare and computer security, has reportedly been tasked with developing a range of offensive operations to deter and, if necessary, punish Russia for engaging in such malign activity.
While the US preparations are real, the intelligence that underpins the justification for these planned cyber-attacks is highly speculative and, more importantly, unproven, creating a situation similar to that which occurred in Iraq back in 2003, when the US went to war on flawed and largely manufactured intelligence alleging Iraq retained significant stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction, when in fact none existed. As with Iraq, the case against Russia is mainly speculative in nature, full of specific allegations that are not backed up with any hard intelligence.
The foundation for the alleged Russian activities comes in the form of two documents. The first, an indictment of 12 named Russian intelligence officers allegedly employed by the GRU, was prepared by the Department of Justice (DOJ). Referred to as the Netyksho Indictment, after one of the named GRU officers, the document lays out a damning list of malign activities by the named individuals and the GRU units they belonged to. However, there is absolutely no sourcing provided, meaning that the allegations must be taken at face value.
The events alleged in the Netyksho Indictment are likewise contained in the body of the report prepared by Special Counsel Robert Mueller based upon his investigation into allegations of Russian interference in the 2016 US presidential election (Mueller’s team also prepared the Netyksho Indictment). The Mueller Report does provide sourcing, but only in a superficial way, either referring to the unsourced Netyksho Indictment, cryptic compilations of investigative reports, or heavily redacted passages. There is no indication as to how either the Indictment or the Mueller Report came to their conclusions.
There is a document, however, that mitigates against the conclusions reached by both the Netyksho Indictment and the Mueller Report. Entitled ‘Spear-Phishing Campaign TTP’s [tactics, techniques and procedures] used against US and Foreign Government Entities’, the document consists of a diagram attached to a classified National Security Agency (NSA) document leaked to the US press by whistleblower Reality Winner. This document serves as a Rosetta Stone, so to speak, for both the Mueller Report and the Netyksho Indictment. The document is derived from the various intelligence reports assembled by the NSA regarding the allegations against the GRU that underpin the Mueller Report and the Netyksho Indictment.
The document diagram contains three types of information—confirmed, analyst judgement, and contextual. While most of the specific cyber events are reported as confirmed, the connection between these events and Unit 74455 (one of two GRU units named in the Netyksho Indictment and the Mueller Report) are recorded as being based upon the judgement of the analysts, and not confirmed fact. Likewise, the linkage between the entity assessed as Unit 74455 and GRU Headquarters is listed as contextual, meaning that there is no fact-based data that links either Unit 74455 or GRU Headquarters to the events in question.
The Winner document makes it clear that the involvement of Unit 74455 is pure analytical supposition—i.e. guesswork. The attribution of blame to the unit and its named personnel isn’t derived from intelligence collection and analysis, but rather the case presented to a grand jury by the Mueller prosecution team.
There is a saying in the US that a grand jury can indict a ham sandwich—in short, because the prosecution controls the process through which evidence is presented, anyone can be indicted for anything, regardless of the lack of actual proof. In the present matter, Unit 74455 and its named personnel are the proverbial ham sandwich.
This does not mean that the Russians did or didn’t carry out a cyber-attack on the DNC and DCCC computers in 2016, or conspire to disseminate information thus gained to influence the 2016 US presidential election. It does mean, however, that the case against Russia is not nearly as conclusive as the Mueller Report and Netyksho Indictments would lead one to believe.
Mueller knew the Russians would not allow the GRU or its personnel to be subjected to a trial, regardless of innocence or guilt. As such, the DOJ could—and did—get creative in breathing life into allegations which, on their own volition, provided zero Russian attribution. All it took was a DOJ analyst to access a GRU organizational chart and start plugging in names and unit designations where they could be used to manufacture a narrative that would be presented to the Grand Jury.
Left unchallenged, the allegations set forth by the Netyksho Indictment and the Mueller Report morphed into unquestioned fact which was then used to justify the anti-Russian activities currently being undertaken by US Cyber Command. The scope and scale of the cyber-operations allegedly being planned appear to be more akin to juvenile retaliation than punitive deterrence, along the lines of “I’ll leak your private information if you leak mine.” But it is only a matter of a few keystrokes to transition from relatively harmless leaks of personal data to more nefarious offensive operations designed to impact economic and military targets.
The mere fact that the US is preparing to undertake military operations of any sort directed at Russia should send alarm bells ringing in the heads of all Americans. The planned activities of US Cyber Command are derived more from the frustration of those who invested so heavily in the outcome of the Mueller investigation, and who are now desperate to manufacture a narrative that somehow breathes life into the ‘Russia did it’ story line.
The use of false and misleading intelligence to justify a conflict should be familiar to anyone who followed the events of 2003 and the manufactured case for war in Iraq. The US and the world continue to pay a heavy price for that intelligence failure. Given the deteriorating state of US-Russian relations, the last thing the US, Russia or the world need is another avoidable conflict, cyber or otherwise, based upon similarly flawed intelligence, for no other reason than to prop up the reputations of those who had bet everything on the outcome of the Mueller Report, and failed.
Scott Ritter is a former US Marine Corps intelligence officer. He served in the Soviet Union as an inspector implementing the INF Treaty, in General Schwarzkopf’s staff during the Gulf War, and from 1991-1998 as a UN weapons inspector.
The IG Report: Malfeasance, Lies, Threats and Denials
By Renée Parsons | OffGuardian | December 28, 2019
It is no surprise that when the Inspector General’s Report was released in early December, the corporate media, which itself has been knee-deep and complicit in spreading the false Russiagate narrative, chose to focus on one narrow conclusion: that, given DOJ’s ‘lax guidelines,’ the IG found no bias related to opening the Crossfire Hurricane investigation.
Ergo, once the Media labels the IG Report, all dutiful subscribers and readers fall in line with its dictates, nodding in concurrence, as those who refuse to do their own homework get on board and accept the hogwash they are being fed. Once the Media hypes the repetitive drone that there was ‘no bias,’ the phrase becomes embedded into the collective unconscious and the disinformation becomes gospel.
The question has yet to be asked what role the FISA Court played in its own debasement by blindly accepting the majority of surveillance requests and by lax procedures that allow its own credibility to be violated.
What remains uncertain is exactly how Crossfire Hurricane was born. While it is known that the Clinton campaign (via the DNC) hired GP Fusion (which hired DOJ deputy AG Bruce Ohr’s wife) to dig dirt on a Republican candidate for President and we know that former MI6 asset Christopher Steele became involved with creating a salacious Dossier – but the specific links tying those diverse parts to the FBI remains enigmatic.
An almost immediate response to the ‘no bias’ allegation came from AG William Barr stating that…
The Inspector General’s report now makes clear that the FBI launched an intrusive investigation of a U.S. presidential campaign on the thinnest of suspicions that, in my view, were insufficient to justify the steps taken.”
… with Special Investigator US Attorney John Durham adding that he:
advised the IG that he did not agree with some of the report’s conclusions as to predication and how the FBI case was opened.”
Both responses were highly unusual and may be interpreted as affirmation of a deeper level of complicity than the IG discovered although his investigation was limited to DOJ employees and to the FISA Court process.
It was not until IG Horowitz’s testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee that the true scathing impact of the full Report was understood; thus revealing the true depth of the FBI’s embedded systemic problems.
Horowitz told the Senate panel:
We found and are deeply concerned that so many basic and fundamental errors were made by three separate handpicked investigative teams on one of the most sensitive FBI investigations after the matter had been briefed to the highest levels within the FBI even though the information sought through the use of FISA authority related so closely to an on-going Presidential campaign and even though those involved with the investigations knew that their actions would likely be subjected to close scrutiny. The circumstances reflect the failure not just by those who prepared the applications but also by the managers and supervisors in the Crossfire Hurricane chain of command including FBI senior officials who were briefed as the investigation progressed”
In dialogue with Sen. Crapo about FBI misconduct as ‘mind-numbing’, Horowitz responded “there is such a range of conduct here that is inexplicable and the answers we got were not satisfactory that we’re left trying to understand how could all these errors occur over a nine month period or so…”
In other words, the FBI, with a tainted history of deeply embedded corruption, has been out of control for decades with an aggressive pursuit of political opponents, corruption of its Forensic Lab and a COINTEL program against American citizens.
It is ironic that some of the FBI’s Congressional supporters are now recipients of that corruption.
In response to Barr’s statement regarding the IG Report, former Attorney General Erik Holder who once referred to himself as “still Obama’s wing man so i’m there with my boy,” wrote a divisive op ed for the Washington Post provocatively entitled “Eric Holder: William Barr is Unfit to be Attorney General“.
In a classic example of covering one’s butt, it can be assumed that Holder is still protecting Obama’s wing as he took cheap shots at Barr for a “series of public statements and taken actions that are so plainly ideological, so nakedly partisan and so deeply inappropriate” making him ‘unfit to lead the Justice Department.”
Suffering a partisan anxiety attack, Holder has clearly been directed to slander a successor who exhibits more candor and principle than he himself demonstrated as AG.
Given the IG report’s otherwise thorough analysis, the Hope and Change crowd may be feeling the heat that those morning tete a tete intel briefings in the Oval Office may have included updates on Crossfire Hurricane.
Holder’s condescension, as if he had special privilege to pontificate on “career public servants,” falls flat with his thinly veiled threat to Durham:
I was troubled by his unusual statement disputing the inspector general’s findings. Good reputations are hard-won in the legal profession, but they are fragile; anyone in Durham’s shoes would do well to remember that, in dealing with this administration, many reputations have been irrevocably lost.”
With focus now on whether Durham will succumb to Holder’s warning may instead boomerang, inspiring Durham to dig deeper than he had previously planned.
The IG Report cited former FBI Director Jim Comey for “clearly and dramatically” departing from department norms in the investigation of HRC’s email server and that he made a “serious error of judgment” in sending a letter to Congress announcing the re-opening of the Clinton probe. Comey was fired from the FBI for ‘insubordinate’ acts and ‘dangerous’ behavior in deceiving the FISA Court.
When asked by CNN’s Anderson Cooper,
“When you read what the report said, do you think this is a vindication
Comey responded:
It is. The FBI has had to wait two years while the President and his supporters lied about the institution, finally the truth gets told.”
Apparently Comey had not read the Report in its entirety, not listened to Horowitz’s testimony to the Senate or he continues to live under a rock.
In a recent interview with NBC News Pete Williams, Barr explained that
“One of the problems in the IG investigation is that Comey refused to sign back up for his security clearance and therefore could not be questioned (by the IG) on classified matters.…so someone like Durham can compel testimony.”
In other words, Comey is shrewd enough to know how to deliberately avoid pertinent questions from Horowitz without implicating himself but the day will come when Durham has the legal authority to demand Comey’s full participation.
In a Fox News Sunday interview with Chris Wallace, Comey refused to accept and was significantly at odds with many of the IG most significant findings including denial of any personal role in Crossfire. “I didn’t know, As Director I am not kept informed on the details of an investigation.
I didn’t know the particulars with an agency of 38,000 people ‘seven layers below.” Wallace repeatedly pushed back with Comey remaining smooth as silk, carefully coached, as he slipped around every iota that he had any responsibility for the investigation of a President and its constitutional screw ups.
When asked if he would resign if all these misdeeds were revealed under his watch, Comey replied “No, I don’t think so. There are other mistakes I consider more consequential than this during my tenure.”
Pray, we await those revelations.
‘Because You’d Be in Jail!’ The Real Reason Democrats Are Pushing Trump Impeachment?
By Robert Bridge | Strategic Culture Foundation | December 28, 2019
In the time-honored tradition of Machiavellian statecraft, all of the charges being leveled against Donald Trump to remove him from office – namely, ‘abuse of power’ and ‘obstruction of congress’ –are essentially the same things the Democratic Party has been guilty of for nearly half a decade: abusing their powers in a non-stop attack on the executive branch. Is the reason because they desperately need a ‘get out of jail free’ card?
Due to the non-stop action in Washington of late, few believe that the present state of affairs between the Democrats and Donald Trump are exclusively due to a telephone call between the US leader and the Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. That is only scratching the surface of a story that is practically boundless.
Back in April 2016, before Trump had become the Republican presidential nominee, talk of impeachment was already in the air.
“Donald Trump isn’t even the Republican nominee yet,” wrote Darren Samuelsohn in Politico. Yet impeachment, he noted, is “already on the lips of pundits, newspaper editorials, constitutional scholars, and even a few members of Congress.”
The timing of Samuelsohn’s article is not a little astonishing given what the Department of Justice (DOJ) had discovered just one month earlier.
In March 2016, the DOJ found that “the FBI had been employing outside contractors who had access to raw Section 702 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) data, and retained that access after their work for the FBI was completed,” as Jeff Carlson reported in The Epoch Times.
That sort of foreign access to sensitive data is highly improper and was the result of “deliberate decision-making,” according to the findings of an April 2017 FISA court ruling (footnote 69).
On April 18, 2016, then-National Security Agency (NSA) Director Adm. Mike Rogers directed the NSA’s Office of Compliance to terminate all FBI outside-contractor access. Later, on Oct. 21, 2016, the FBI and the DOJ’s National Security Division (NSD), and despite they were aware of Rogers’s actions, moved ahead anyways with a request for a FISA warrant to conduct surveillance on Trump campaign adviser Carter Page. The request was approved by the FISA court, which, apparently, was still in the dark about the violations.
On Oct. 26, following approval of the warrant against Page, Rogers went to the FISA court to inform them of the FBI’s non-compliance with the rules. Was it just a coincidence that at exactly this time, the Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and Defense Secretary Ashton B. Carter were suddenly calling for Roger’s removal? The request was eventually rejected. The next month, in mid-November 2016 Rogers, without first notifying his superiors, flew to New York where he had a private meeting with Trump at Trump Towers.
According to the New York Times, the meeting – the details of which were never publicly divulged, but may be guessed at – “caused consternation at senior levels of the administration.”
Democratic obstruction of justice?
Then CIA Director John Brennan, dismayed about a few meetings Trump officials had with the Russians, helped to kick-start the FBI investigation over ‘Russian collusion.’ Notably, these Trump-Russia meetings occurred in December 2016, as the incoming administration was in the difficult transition period to enter the White House. The Democrats made sure they made that transition as ugly as possible.
Although it is perfectly normal for an incoming government to meet with foreign heads of state at this critical juncture, a meeting at Trump Tower between Michael Flynn, Trump’s incoming national security adviser and former Russian Ambassador to the US, Sergey Kislyak, was portrayed as some kind of cloak and dagger scene borrowed from a John le Carré thriller.
Brennan questioning the motives behind high-level meetings between the Trump team and some Russians is strange given that the lame duck Obama administration was in the process of redialing US-Russia relations back to the Cold War days, all based on the debunked claim that Moscow handed Trump the White House on a silver platter.
In late December 2016, after Trump had already won the election, Obama slapped Russia with punitive sanctions, expelled 35 Russian diplomats and closed down two Russian facilities. Since part of Trump’s campaign platform was to mend relations with Moscow, would it not seem logical that the incoming administration would be in damage-control, doing whatever necessary to prevent relations between the world’s premier nuclear powers from degrading even more?
So if it wasn’t ‘Russian collusion’ that motivated the Democrats into action, what was it?
From Benghazi to Seth Rich
Here we must pause and remind ourselves about the unenviable situation regarding Hillary Clinton, the Secretary of State, who was being grilled daily over her use of a private computer to communicate sensitive documents via email. In all likelihood, the incident would have dropped from the radar had it not been for the deadly 2012 Benghazi attacks on a US compound.
In the course of a House Select Committee investigation into the circumstances surrounding the attacks, which resulted in the death of US Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other US personnel, Clinton handed over some 30,000 emails, while reportedly deleting 32,000 deemed to be of a “personal nature”. Those emails remain unaccounted for to this day.
By March 2015, even the traditionally tepid media was baring its baby fangs, relentlessly pursuing Clinton over the email question. Since Clinton never made a secret of her presidential ambitions, even political allies were piling on. Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), for example, said it’s time for Clinton “to step up” and explain herself, adding that “silence is going to hurt her.”
On July 24, 2015, The New York Times published a front-page story with the headline “Criminal Inquiry Sought in Clinton’s Use of Email.” Later, Jennifer Rubin of the Washington Post candidly summed up Clinton’s rapidly deteriorating status with elections fast approaching: “Democrats still show no sign they are willing to abandon Clinton. Instead, they seem to be heading into the 2016 election with a deeply flawed candidate schlepping around plenty of baggage — the details of which are not yet known.”
Moving into 2016, things began to look increasingly complicated for the Democratic front-runner. On March 16, 2016, WikiLeaks launched a searchable archive for over 30 thousand emails and attachments sent to and from Hillary Clinton’s private email server while she was Secretary of State. The 50,547-page treasure trove spans the dates from June 30, 2010 to August 12, 2014.
In May, about one month after Clinton had officially announced her candidacy for the US presidency, the State Department’s inspector general released an 83-page report that was highly critical of Clinton’s email practices, concluding that Clinton failed to seek legal approval for her use of a private server.
“At a minimum,” the report determined, “Secretary Clinton should have surrendered all emails dealing with Department business before leaving government service and, because she did not do so, she did not comply with the Department’s policies that were implemented in accordance with the Federal Records Act.”
The following month brought more bad news for Clinton and her presidential hopes after it was reported that her husband, former President Bill Clinton, had a 30-minute tête-à-tête with Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch, whose department was leading the Clinton investigations, on the tarmac at Phoenix International Airport. Lynch said Clinton decided to pay her an impromptu visit where the two discussed “his grandchildren and his travels and things like that.” Republicans, however, certainly weren’t buying the story as the encounter came as the FBI was preparing to file its recommendation to the Justice Department.
The summer of 2016, however, was just heating up.
Hack versus Leak?
On the early morning of July 10, Seth Rich, the director of voter expansion for the Democratic National Committee (DNC), was gunned down on the street in the Bloomingdale neighborhood of Washington, DC. Rich’s murder, said to be the result of a botched robbery, bucked the homicide trend in the area for that particular period; murders rates for the first six months of 2016 were down about 50 percent from the same period in the previous year.
In any case, the story gets much stranger. Just five days earlier, on July 5th, the computers at the DNC were compromised, purportedly by an online persona with the moniker “Guccifer 2.0” at the behest of Russian intelligence. This is where the story of “Russian hacking” first gained popularity. Not everyone, however, was buying the explanation.
In July 2017, a group of former U.S. intelligence officers, including NSA specialists, who call themselves Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) sent a memo to President Trump that challenged a January intelligence assessment that expressed “high confidence” that the Russians had organized an “influence campaign” to harm Hillary Clinton’s “electability,” as if she wasn’t capable of that without Kremlin support.
“Forensic studies of ‘Russian hacking’ into Democratic National Committee computers last year reveal that on July 5, 2016, data was leaked (not hacked) by a person with physical access to DNC computer,” the memo states (The memo’s conclusions were based on analyses of metadata provided by the online persona Guccifer 2.0, who took credit for the alleged hack). “Key among the findings of the independent forensic investigations is the conclusion that the DNC data was copied onto a storage device at a speed that far exceeds an Internet capability for a remote hack.”
In other words, according to VIPS, the compromise of the DNC computers was the result of an internal leak, not an external hack.
At this point, however, it needs mentioned that the VIPS memo has sparked dissenting views among its members. Several analysts within the group have spoken out against its findings, and that internal debate can be read here. Thus, it would seem there is no ‘smoking gun,’ as of yet, to prove that the DNC was not hacked by an external entity. At the same time, the murder of Seth Rich continues to remain an unsolved “botched robbery,” according to investigators. Meanwhile, the one person who may hold the key to the mystery, Julian Assange, is said to be withering away Belmarsh Prison, a high-security London jail, where he is awaiting a February court hearing that will decide whether he will be extradited to the United States where he faces 18 charges.
Here is a question to ponder: If you were Julian Assange, and you knew you were going to be extradited to the United States, who would you rather be the sitting president in charge of your fate, Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump? Think twice before answering.
“Because you’d be in jail”
On October 9, 2016, in the second televised presidential debates between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, Trump accused his Democratic opponent of deleting 33,000 emails, while adding that he would get a “special prosecutor and we’re going to look into it…” To this, Clinton said “it’s just awfully good that someone with the temperament of Donald Trump is not in charge of the law in our country,” to which Trump deadpanned, without missing a beat, “because you’d be in jail.”
Now if that remark didn’t get the attention of high-ranking Democratic officials, perhaps Trump’s comments at a Virginia rally days later, when he promised to “drain the swamp,” made folks sit up and take notice.
At this point the leaks, hacks and everything in between were already coming fast and furious. On October 7, John Podesta, Clinton’s presidential campaign manager, had his personal Gmail account hacked, thereby releasing a torrent of inside secrets, including how Donna Brazile, then a CNN commentator, had fed Clinton debate questions. But of course the crimes did not matter to the mendacious media, only the identity of the alleged messenger, which of course was ‘Russia.’
By now, the only thing more incredible than the dirt being produced on Clinton was the fact that she was still in the presidential race, and even slated to win by a wide margin. But perhaps her biggest setback came when authorities, investigating Anthony Weiner’s abused laptop into illicit text messages he sent to a 15-year-old girl, stumbled upon thousands of email messages from Hillary Clinton.
Now Comey had to backpedal on his conclusion in July that although Clinton was “extremely careless” in her use of her electronic devices, no criminal charges would be forthcoming. He announced an 11th hour investigation, just days before the election. Although Clinton was also cleared in this case, observers never forgave Comey for his actions, arguing they cost Clinton the White House.
Now James Comey is back in the spotlight as one of the main characters in the Barr-Durham investigation, which is examining largely out of the spotlight the origins of the Trump-Russia conspiracy theory that dogged the White House for four long years.
In early December, Justice Department’s independent inspector general, Michael E. Horowitz, released the 400-page IG report that revealed a long list of omissions, mistakes and inconsistencies in the FBI’s applications for FISA warrants to conduct surveillance on Carter Page. Although the report was damning, both Barr and Durham noted it did not go far enough because Horowitz did not have the access that Durham has to intelligence agency sources, as well as overseas contacts that Barr provided to him.
With the AG report due for release in early spring, needless to say some Democrats are very nervous as to its finding. So nervous, in fact, that they might just be willing to go to the extreme of removing a sitting president to avoid its conclusions.
Whatever the verdict, 2020 promises to be one very interesting year.
Iraqi resistance groups decry Salih’s resignation as submission to US interests
Press TV – December 28, 2019
Iraqi resistance groups have denounced President Barham Salih’s resignation as a violation of the constitution and have accused him of caving in to pressure from the United States.
The groups said the president, by resigning, had effectively refused to carry out his legal duty of designating the candidate nominated by the parliament’s largest bloc to act as prime minister, as required by the constitution.
Salih announced his resignation on Thursday, explaining that he made the move since the constitution did not allow him to reject the premiership of Assad al-Eidani, who was nominated by the Fatah parliamentary bloc.
“It is better for me to resign rather than assign an individual that is objected by the protesters to form a government,” he said, referring to months-long protests which have swept the capital and southern areas of the country.
The Iraqi resistance group Kata’ib Hezbollah, which is part of Iraq’s anti-terror Popular Mobilization Units (PMU) and is affiliated with the Fatah bloc, however, described the move as “suspicious”.
“We know that he is carrying out an American will that aims to pull the country toward chaos,” it said.
The statement added that by bowing to pressure from Washington and other forces trying to exploit the anti-government protests, Salih is pushing the country towards crisis and is setting the stage for US intervention in the country.
The group also called for a speedy election that can prevent certain parties from imposing weak leaders and elements favored by the US or those which harbor corrupt partisan interests.
Iraqi parliamentarian Odai Awad, which is a member of the Asaib Ahl al-Haq resistance group affiliated with Fatah and the PMU, also vehemently rejected the president’s resignation.
He described Salih as a coward who should be discarded by “every Iraqi”.
Salih’s refusal to appoint the parliament’s nominated premier comes after Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi stepped down last month amid ongoing anti-government rallies.
Abdul Mahdi currently retains the position of a caretaker premier.
The protests, which began on October 1, have been pressing the government to bring in reforms that would root out corruption and alleviate the country’s economic woes.
The rallies, however, soon turned violent — amid reports of foreign interference – killing hundreds of people, including members of the security forces, the Parliament’s Human Rights Commission says.
According to reports, Iraqi security sources have claimed that a US-backed plan seeks to install a pro-Washington government in Baghdad by provoking internal strife and instability in the country.
Survivors tell of France’s ‘dirty war’ for Cameroon independence
Press TV – December 28, 2019
The Cameroonian war of independence was a “dirty war” waged by French colonial troops but it never made headlines and even today goes untold in school history books.
The brutal conflict unfolded in Cameroon, which on January 1 marks its 60th anniversary of independence — the first of 17 African countries that became free from their colonial masters in 1960.
Many decades on, those who witnessed the violence recall events which shaped countless lives in the central African country yet remain unchronicled today.
“My life was overturned,” Odile Mbouma, 72, said in the southwestern town of Ekite.
On the night of December 30, 1956, French troops arrived in the town and slaughtered dozens of people, perhaps as many as a hundred, she recalls.
“We were sitting under a tree when we suddenly heard the crackle of gunfire,” she said. “It was everyone for themselves.”
Taking to her heels, the seven-year-old found herself jumping over bodies. “They were everywhere.”
The troops were looking for independence fighters — members of the Union of the Peoples of Cameroon (UPC), a nationalist movement established in 1948 that faced repression first by the French and later by Cameroonian soldiers.
French authorities labeled the UPC “communist” and cracked down on them from 1955, driving the movement underground, though its charismatic founder Ruben Um Nyobe preached non-violence.
Buried in cement
In September 1958, Um Nyobe — nicknamed Mpodol (for “he who brings the word” in the Bassa language) — was killed by French troops.
“His body was dragged around and displayed so that everybody (saw the corpse) of a man who was considered immortal,” said Louis Marie Mang, UPC activist in Eseka, where Um Nyobe is buried in a Protestant graveyard.
“To prevent traditional rites from being held, he was put in a block of cement and buried (without) a coffin.”
The conflict continued long beyond independence, for repression of the nationalists continued under Cameroon’s first president, Ahmadou Ahidjo, who also banned public references to the UPC and to Um Nyobe.
The violence “passed unnoticed, wiped from memories,” according to Thomas Deltombe, Manuel Domergue and Jacob Tatsitsa, authors of “La guerre du Cameroun” (“Cameroon’s War”), published in 2016.
They estimate that between 1955 and 1964, tens of thousands of people, including civilians as well as UPC members, were killed.
In Ekite, a wreath of flowers lies on the soil of a scrubland field at the end of a dirt track. “The Nation will remember your sacrifice,” says a memorial notice.
“This is one of the mass graves where the nationalists were buried,” said Jean-Louis Kell, a UPC militant.
A second ditch was apparent a dozen meters away, and “a third was discovered not long ago,” said Benoit Bassemel. He was seven during the French massacre and has tears in his eyes when he tells how his father was murdered.
Benoit Bassemel, who’s father was killed during the massacre on the night of December 31 1956, files his machete at his home in Edéa, on December 11, 2019. (Photo by AFP)
‘Free like the others’
UPC nationalists believe that the independence granted on January 1, 1960, was not what they fought for.
They view the country’s two post-independence presidents, Ahidjo and Paul Biya, who has been in office since 1982, as working hand-in-hand with France.
“We wanted to be free like the other countries. We no longer wanted white people to subjugate us,” said 80-year-old Mathieu Njassep, in his tiny family apartment in Petit Paris, a poor district of Douala, the economic capital.
In 1960, aged 21, Njassep joined the Cameroon National Liberation Army (ALNK), the UPC’s armed wing.
After two years of fighting, he was appointed secretary to Ernest Ouandie, a leading figure in the movement. He was sentenced to death but escaped the firing squad, unlike Ouandie, who was executed in 1971.
“We had almost nothing to wage a war with,” Njassep said. “We carried out ambushes with machetes, sticks and homemade guns. If we had had enough weapons, we would have beaten them.”
At the time, the ALNK had established its headquarters in the village of Bandenkop, on the land of the main western tribal group, the Bamileke. Fighting was fierce between the nationalists and the French army.
In the rugged valley from which ALNK commanders led operations, there is no sign of human life today and the only sound is that of a bubbling stream.
“This whole zone was regularly bombed” by the French air force, said Michel Eclador Pekoua, a former UPC official.
Pekoua and other nationalists say French planes dropped napalm. France has neither confirmed nor denied the use of the notorious incendiary weapon.
Decapitations
On a road 30 kilometers to the north, in Bafoussam, a roundabout is known as the “crossroads of the guerrillas,” for it was where the decapitated heads of nationalists were placed on show, said Theophile Nono, head of a historical association, Memoire 60.
The regime’s methods “ranged from the arrest and arbitrary imprisonment of any Cameroonian suspected of ‘rebellion’ to systematic torture, with extrajudicial summary executions,” Nono said.
For many years the conflict mostly remained taboo in Cameroon. It was in the 1990s, when the authorities came under mounting pressure for democratic change, that people began to consider the historic past.
Biya, in a speech in 2010, paid tribute to “people who dreamed of (independence), fought to obtain it and sacrificed their lives for it… Our people should be eternally grateful to them.”
After years of French silence, then president Francois Hollande in 2015 became his country’s first head of state to speak of “a repression” of Cameroonian nationalists leading to “tragic episodes”.
For many survivors, this is not enough.
“France must accept its responsibility,” Nono said. “It must undertake to compensate victims of the dirty war, which has been carefully concealed by both the French side and the Cameroonian side.”
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Book Excerpt
World War Two Was Not a Just War
By David Swanson | September 20, 2016
Excerpted from the just released book War Is Never Just.
World War II is often called “the good war,” and has been since the U.S. war on Vietnam to which it was then contrasted. World War II so dominates U.S. and therefore Western entertainment and education, that “good” often comes to mean something more than “just.” The winner of the “Miss Italy” beauty pageant earlier this year got herself into a bit of a scandal by declaring that she would have liked to live through World War II. While she was mocked, she was clearly not alone. Many would like to be part of something widely depicted as noble, heroic, and exciting. Should they actually find a time machine, I recommend they read the statements of some actual WWII veterans and survivors before they head back to join the fun.[i] For purposes of this book, however, I am going to look only at the claim that WWII was morally just. … continue
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