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Georgia and Ukraine Joining NATO Will Likely Have the Opposite Effect Against Russia

By Paul Antonopoulos | December 30, 2019

Back in April, during a ministers of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) meeting in Washington, it was agreed that a package of measures to strengthen support for Georgia and Ukraine, particularly in the area of ​​maritime defense, would be made.

“We agreed on a package of measures to improve our situational awareness and to step up our support for both Georgia and Ukraine in areas such as the training of maritime forces and coast guards, port visits and exercises and sharing information,” NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said, while NATO ships were simultaneously conducting naval exercises with Ukraine and Georgia in the Black Sea.

There is little doubt that there is the long-term goal of bringing Ukraine and Georgia into the NATO alliance as a three-pronged attack against Russia in the attempt to isolate and pressure the Eurasian Giant:

Both Ukraine and Georgia are Black Sea states, along with Romania, Bulgaria and Turkey who are already NATO members. The Black Sea is the location of Russia’s warmwater ports, i.e. its access for year-round trade with the international community.

Although Russia’s Kaliningrad Oblast is completely surrounded by NATO members Poland and Lithuania, and fellow NATO members Norway, Estonia and Latvia share small land borders with Russia, a Ukrainian admittance into the alliance will be the biggest encroachment by NATO against Russia since the infamous February 1990 promise made by then-U.S. Secretary of State James Baker who made “iron-clad guarantees” to Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev that NATO would not expand “one inch eastward,” if the Soviets supported the reunification of Germany. This was obviously a lie.

Georgia will become a Caucasian salient, on the fringes of where Europe becomes Asia, in the attempt to surround and isolate Russia.

However, both Ukraine and Georgia face significant obstacles as they have unresolved territorial disputes: Ukraine with the Lugansk People’s Republic and the Donetsk People’s Republic, and Georgia which does not recognize the independence of Abkhazia and South Ossetia despite the reality that these states have achieved sovereignty. So long as the sovereignty and independence of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, and the status quo of Donbass remain unresolved, there is little chance Ukraine and Georgia will be able to join NATO with European member states unwilling to go to war with Russia for the sake of these two countries.

As L. Todd Wood, a former special operations helicopter pilot, said in an opinion piece published in the Washington Times in November last year, “Ukrainians and Georgians are good people and deserve our support to realize their dreams. But it’s time to stop with the creeping borders of the alliance. Moscow […] declared that if Georgia or Ukraine joined NATO, Russia would be “forced to act.” I take that threat at face value. Frankly, they have no choice. Any self-respecting Russian leader would have to react or resign.”

Perhaps this is exactly what the U.S. wants though? The Soviet Union, the reason for the establishment of NATO to begin with, is long gone and will not return. This calls into question the purpose of NATO today, and it comes down to two U.S. self-serving reasons:

The desperate prevention of a new Multipolar World Order, which Russia plays a critical part in. It is for this reason that China has now also been identified by NATO as a “very strong competitor.” However, Russia’s defense of South Ossetia in 2008 and the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative have already indicated that the era of unipolarity has come to an end.

To ensure that the U.S. Military Industrial Complex maintains a monopoly on arms sales to the 29-member alliance. The addition of Georgia and Ukraine to NATO will force these countries to spend at least 2% of their GDP on their military, which U.S. military manufacturers will benefit from.

Any Ukrainian-Georgian admittance into NATO will undoubtedly create problems for Russia as it will have to increase its defense spending and it would signal the final eastward expansion onto large swathes of Russia’s European borders. Realistically though, NATO is fractured as never seen before. It is unlikely that Georgia and Ukraine will join the alliance anytime soon, especially as mentioned, it is unlikely European states will want to risk a conflict with Russia over them despite what Washington may want.

In turn, Moscow has its own options to utilize against Georgia and Ukraine such as deepening military support and ties to Donbass, Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Also, as done in the Autonomous Republic of Crimea and the local government of Sevastopol in 2014, referendums could be conducted in Donbass, Abkhazia and South Ossetia to determine if these republic’s want to join Russia. With this trump card (trump being used unironically), by Ukraine and Georgia joining NATO, they could be further weakened by the potential expansion of Russian territory through legal means.

In this light, although Georgia and Ukraine have the goal of joining NATO in the belief that it will help defend their interests against a so-called Russian aggression, it is likely to have the opposite outcome.

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

December 30, 2019 Posted by | Militarism | , , | 1 Comment

NATO: General Delawarde assesses final London Declaration

By Alexandra Kamyshanova | December 30, 2019

General Dominique Delawarde, the former head of the “Situation – Intelligence – Electronic Warfare 19” section at the joint operational planning staff and a cyberwarfare expert, provides insight into the nine articles of the final London Declaration, published on the NATO website.

Question: Can members of the Alliance really “reaffirm their adherence to the purposes and principles of the United Nations Charter”, as stated in Article 1?

Answer: A simple observation of how history has unfolded after the Cold War demonstrates that two important elements of Article 1 are erroneous, if not flat-out false. Since 1991, NATO actions have been aimed not at preventing conflicts and maintaining peace, but exactly the opposite. They do cause them themselves by their never-ending destructive interference in the affairs of sovereign countries. Over a quarter-century (1995-2019), its member states dropped more than a million bombs on our planet, which entailed, whether overtly or covertly, the death of several million people. The only objective was to establish hegemony over the “international community”. Alliance members cannot “reaffirm their adherence to the purposes and principles of the United Nations Charter” by violating or ignoring international rules established by the United Nations. The illegal occupation of part of the Syrian territory serves as evidence of this.

Q: Can we say that the funding efforts outlined in Article 2 fail to reflect the true situation?

A: This statement about efforts to increase funding for NATO members’ defense capabilities is virtually misleading. It loses sight of the fact that defense spending has halved since 1991 (peace dividends) and does not specify any deadline for reaching the 2% target. Finally, this statement is unfeasible and won’t be implemented in the short or medium term, given the economic and social complexities faced by all the key NATO member states. So this is mere verbiage.

Besides, NATO will not be able to compete with the SCO (Shanghai Cooperation Organization), because defense spending parity in PPP (purchasing power parity) dollars has almost been reached between NATO and the SCO; the cumulative defense budget of NATO member states accounts for 1000 billion dollars (PPP), and that of SCO member states is going to reach parity with the NATO budget in 2020 already. To date, the annual growth rate of defense spending in SCO countries is two to three times higher as compared to NATO countries. The SCO has a much wider scope for expansion (major countries like Iran and perhaps Turkey, why not) than NATO (North Macedonia, Georgia, Bosnia). Speaking of Turkey, an untrained eye should know that the SCO-NATO dual membership is not prohibited, since in 2005, the United States itself applied to join the SCO as nonmember state (the application was unanimously rejected by SCO members, guess why).

Q: Should we consider Russia as a threat, as stated in Article 3?

A: This list of universal threats and perpetual accusations against Russia, which is presented as a source of aggression and threat, are familiar pretexts to justify the very existence of NATO. As for anti-Russian statements, NATO is clearly resorting to an accusatory inversion. It is NATO members, not Russia, who have dropped over a million bombs and caused the death of several million people since 1995, and it is them who violate UN rules by continuing the military occupation of part of the Syrian territory. This is also the case of the coup organized in Ukraine, the division of the former Yugoslavia, and the constant advancing to the borders of Russia, which is in total disregard of the promises made to Gorbachev.

As for terrorism and instability observed beyond our borders, the Alliance forgets to remind that both arise from their omnidirectional interference in the affairs of sovereign states at the slightest pretext. They arise from their unlawful bombings, humiliations at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo, the replacement of strong secular leaders with the chaos we observe today, and the wars waged under false pretexts (Serbia, Iraq, Libya, Syria). Migration is a blowback.

It should be recognized that state and non-state actors shattering the international order are mostly representatives of the West and NATO. The April 14, 2018 joint strike on Syria by the United States, France and the United Kingdom is yet another proof of this. Anglo-Saxon non-governmental NGOs, ostensibly independent but actually used by government agencies and / or their American sponsors (Soros), are wreaking havoc by promoting North Atlantic strategies. They use various useful idiots for their own purposes, who may inherently have good intentions. Finally, the main and only known cyber threat uncovered by Snowden, Assange and Manning is America, not Russia or China. The United States has installed wiretaps of all the political and economic Western leaders (NSA) and has pretty reliable bargaining chips to blackmail our heads of state and seize our businesses.

Q: Do you agree with the statement of Article 4: “NATO is a defensive alliance and poses no threat to any country”?

A: You need to ask the countries that have been bombed for 25 years.

The Alliance does not act “prudently and responsibly” in relation to Russia: the expansion to the East which runs counter to NATO promises of 1990, the coup in Ukraine, the unilateral withdrawal of the United States from the INF and other treaties, including the Iranian nuclear program. They pretend to be combating terrorism, even though many of its elements are funded by the West itself or some of its Arab allies – this is simply ridiculous. NATO members take us for perfect fools.

Q: What do you think about the phrasing of Article 5 that NATO seeks to “work to increase security for all, deepen political dialogue and cooperation with the United Nations”?

A: NATO provokes chaos, migration crisis, surge of terrorism and anti-Western hatred that have now pummelled Europe. You cannot drop a million bombs over 25 years on the countries that have never attacked a single member of the Alliance. Think about the five thousand soldiers from 11 NATO member states who died for nothing in Iraq, in a deceitful war unleashed in 2003. It is worth paying tribute to the memory of those who fell victim to American aggression supported by 10 European NATO member states that agreed to take part.

Q: What does NATO mean in Article 6 when mentioning “the resilience of our societies”, “our energy security” and “the need to rely on secure and resilient systems”?

A: This reflects the current US obsession: “to increase the resilience of our energy security” means ” NATO’s opposition to the construction of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline, to spite the vicious Russians and to the benefit of the goodу American gas market.” “Security of our telecommunications, including 5G” means “the rejection of the Chinese Huawei technology, to the detriment of the Chinese and in favor of American technologies.” The US has long been spying on our political and economic leaders’ telecommunications, while accusing China of “intending” to spy on the alliance members by means of its 5G system.

China poses “challenges that we need to address together”. So, NATO is embarking on a path of confronting China, which is beneficial to the United States alone.

Q: What is meant by “strengthening NATO’s political dimension” referred to in Article 7?

A: NATO’s ten-year strategy is now being updated, and the “relevant expertise” will be that of American and European neoconservatives. The essence of Article 7 is discernable: “strengthening NATO’s political dimension”. Since the end of the Cold War, the 1949 “military-defensive” alliance has been increasingly turning into a political and offensive one, often to accommodate certain economic interests.

Q: What do you think Article 8 is remarkable for?

A: For postponing the revision of the strategic concept from the year 2020 to 2021. Trump’s unpredictability scares Europe, with its people hopeful that he won’t be re-elected and that another President will bring the crisis-stricken Alliance back into the ranks.

Q: Is it serious that Article 9 stresses NATO’s greater protection for the peoples of its member states?

A: NATO has been sowing too much hatred and chaos on the planet since 1991 to be a security factor in Europe, and it has been so since the end of the Cold War. The North Atlantic Charter does not present NATO as an instrument of American hegemony. Therefore, the dissolution of NATO, or at least the withdrawal of France would be the best decision at the moment, unless NATO returns to the original principles of a defensive alliance with its activities covering only the territories of its member states, and ceases to invent new threats to serve as false pretexts to justify wars and intervention aimed at maintaining Western hegemony on the planet.

Q: What conclusion would you draw?

A: It is not just about a “brain death” in NATO. Can their solidarity survive the global economic crisis that experts predict, and the inevitable subsequent upheaval in the hierarchy of forces? Hardly probable. The prosperity of the West and the financing of its armed forces rest today on a whole ocean of debts.

The future will belong to those who keep ahead of the game. A long-term vision is needed to pursue foreign policy. Russia, China and India have long ago grasped this.

December 30, 2019 Posted by | Illegal Occupation, Militarism, Russophobia, War Crimes | , , | Leave a comment

How Impeachment Is Escalating the New US-Russian Cold War

Stephen F. Cohen • Unz Review • December 27, 2019

Podcast of John Batchelor Show

Summary of Broadcast Produced by Yvonne Lorenzo:

As the New Cold War gathers up speed and escalates, we are entering a “fact free world” as allegations are made that are proved not to be true are promoted; for example, the allegation that the DNC was hacked by Russia has been officially debunked—no one could name the seventeen intelligence agencies, the Coast Guard was one. The notion of the hacking was cooked up by two agencies: by the DNI’s head James Clapper and Brennan at the CIA. Nevertheless, recently News Anchor Chuck Todd of NBC (the most pro-Russiagate network, the ones who shamelessly accused presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard of being a Russian asset) took it one step further: ignoring the facts, Todd again stated that seventeen intelligence agencies agreed that the Russians not only interfered in the election but that they swung the election to Trump. While interference is one thing, no one has previously made that allegation. Consequently, we are now in a fact free discourse in America: no evidence is necessary to prove anything, falsehoods are taken up by the legacy media, what Professor Cohen would call a world of tabloid gossip media, except in their favor the tabloids, fearing lawsuits, will do some fact checking, which is conspicuous in its absence in the legacy media. And Professor Cohen noted that it’s hard to get traction and you can’t have a conversation with someone when you don’t agree upon the facts.

In conversation on a cruise with fellow liberals, Professor Cohen noted most take the view that where there is smoke there is fire and there is something to these allegations of Russiagate and Putin’s control over Trump; they state the media wouldn’t continue to promote these conspiracy theories, these allegations about Trump’s nefarious relations with the Kremlin, without reason and so there must be something to them. Yet while facts have become absolutely critical Cohen notes you can’t get people to focus on the facts; for that reason, he feels despair and observes that for the first time in his life in his public discussions of Russia there are no basic premises that people accept any more, for if you say “If there’s smoke, there’s fire,” that is just not a logical way of thinking: you either have the facts or you don’t.

Batchelor also points out in the impeachment charges there is a great deal of presumption; there are no facts regarding the president as well, and he cites Trump’s letter to Nancy Pelosi and poses this question: what does the Kremlin think about the impeachment?

Cohen answers that the Russian high policy class in the 1990s—the America worship period—they and not just the youth, strongly believed that Russia’s future was with the West and America in particular, and now what strikes Russians most is the role of Russian intelligence services in the Western allegations. Pro-America Russians thought that American intelligence services didn’t play the role that the Soviet ones did. In Russian history classes and as a staple of popular culture, the sinister role of the “secret police” goes back to the Czarist era but what distinguished America was that it didn’t have anything comparable in abuses by its intelligence services—or so it was believed. Consequently, for those who looked up to America, it’s a source of disillusion and shock to learn that the American special services “went off the reservation” for quite a long time, not unlike Russia’s, and so they have become disillusioned while for those who tried to get Russians to be more nationalistic, their perspective is to say with gratification, “We told you so. Now will you please grow up!”

Russians call the American agencies “the organs” perhaps not being clear on the difference between the CIA and the FBI and conflating them. For Russians, the role of such agencies is baked into the culture and this has resulted in rethinking not only about America but about their own special services. An Op-Ed piece in a Russian liberal newspaper the Russian liberal author wrote, after watching what’s unfolding in America, we used to beat up on our intelligence services for decades but now maybe we need them. Contrary to a “cult of the intelligence services,” Cohen thinks what must be determined is the role of the American intelligence services in creating Russiagate from the very beginning.

Yet what is critical is to know how Russiagate began in America, with the Barr-Durham probe into the origins of Russia and Russiagate will continue to be a major issue in the 2020 election. What struck Cohen about the letter from Trump to Pelosi—which was so eloquent he doubts Trump wrote it—was that he understands it will be an issue in the 2020 elections, and it was a campaign document. That aside, Trump is aware that Democrats are campaigning still on Russiagate; nothing has turned up that it factual. Therefore, despite the absence of facts, this will be a major issue. Ukraine has turned into a stand-in for Russia.

Jennifer Rubin of the Washington Post, once a quintessential conservative, published an article titled “Time to Call out and Remove Putin’s Propagandist in America.” While the article is slightly cagier than that headline, essentially she wants to shutdown and deprive access to media who aren’t espousing and promoting the Russiagate/Russophobic narratives. Cohen condemns that kind of behavior is that. On opposite side of Rubin, Cohen stated he himself has never advocated the silencing and removal of those who promote among other falsehoods the provably false Russiagate narrative. He asks where are things drifting and he answers discourse and relations are becoming ugly and awful.

Returning to the past, he notes there was an assumption that Russia under Yeltsin would emerge as a replica and junior partner of America; Cohen believes those who promote the Russiagate narrative and demonize Trump because their “impossible dream” failed—Russia is too old, too vast to ever be a replica of America. What took Professor Cohen aback in the testimony from Fiona Hill and others was how deep and wide the Russophobia runs in the Washington think tanks. Until she spoke and testified he had no idea how much she—and the other Russia experts—hate Russia.

Batchelor noted this is the language of civil war in Trump’s letter; Trump uses the term “Star Chamber of partisan persecution” and “coup” which are the language of a country torn in half and he asked the question whether the weakening of the civil contract to be an advantage to Putin and Russia. Cohen notes every newspaper and media source in America say Putin is delighted since it is his goal is to foment disarray in America.

The fact is, however, this chaos and dysfunction and enmity is one of the last things Putin wants. Putin’s purpose is to rebuild Russia from the economic and political catastrophes of the 1990s; Putin’s role is to reverse the demographic trend—men died in their fifties in the 1990s—and spend funds on modernization; that would be his legacy. Four hundred billion dollars has been saved to implement the modernization program. That attempt would be taken with modernizing partnerships with the West. Therefore, the last thing he wants is a new Cold War; the last thing he wants is political turmoil in America or in any Western nation. Cohen points out President Macron of France appears to understand that; he called for a rethinking of relations and said there could be no European security without Russia. Macron has broken with Washington and there will be a hell of fight because Washington is against it. But the notion that Putin wants to disrupt American society is wrong; Putin wants stability and partners.

Cohen still thinks that leadership—the new President of Ukraine, Trump and Putin—could make a difference.

December 29, 2019 Posted by | Russophobia | , , | Leave a comment

UK accused of “crimes against humanity” for not allowing people to return to Chagos islands

MercoPress | December 28, 2019

The UK has been accused of committing “crimes against humanity” for refusing to allow people to return to their former homes on the Chagos Islands, despite a ruling earlier this year by the United Nation’s highest court.

Describing Britain’s behavior as stubborn and shameful, the prime minister of Mauritius, Pravind Jugnauth, told the BBC that he was exploring the possibility of bringing charges of crimes against humanity against individual British officials at the International Criminal Court (ICC).

“It is a violation of the basic principle of human rights. I fail to understand why Britain, this government, is being so stubborn,” said Mr Jugnauth.

Elderly Chagossians, living in Mauritius, have echoed that criticism and accused Britain of deliberately dragging its heels on the issue in the hope that the community will simply die out.

Earlier this year, Mauritius won a major victory against Britain when the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague ruled – in an advisory opinion – that the Chagos Islands should be handed over to Mauritius in order to complete its “decolonization.”

The United Nations General Assembly then voted to give Britain a six-month deadline to begin that process. Britain has steadfastly refused to comply.

It is half a century since Britain took control of the Chagos Islands from its then colony, Mauritius, and evicted the entire population of more than 1,000 people in order to make way for an American military base – part of a secret deal negotiated behind Mauritius’s back as it was seeking to secure independence from the UK.

“Britain has been professing, for years, respect for the rule of law, respect for international law… but it is a pity the UK does not act fairly and reasonably and in accordance with international law on the issue of the Chagos archipelago,” said Mr Jugnauth.

Philippe Sands, a lawyer representing the Mauritian government, said: “Britain is on the edge of finding itself as a pariah state.

”We now have a situation where Chagossians – a deported population, want to go back and have a right to go back. And the UK is preventing them from going back.

“Question – is that a crime against humanity? My response is that, arguably, it is.”

Britain continues to insist that the ICJ ruling is wrong. But it has apologized for its past treatment of the Chagossians and promised to hand the islands over to Mauritius when they are no longer needed for security purposes.

In a statement, Foreign & Commonwealth Office (FCO) told the BBC: “The defense facilities on the British Indian Ocean Territory help protect people in Britain and around the world from terrorist threats and piracy.

”We stand by our commitment to cede sovereignty of the territory to Mauritius when it’s no longer required for defense purposes.“

The FCO said Britain had pledged more than £40m to improve the livelihoods of Chagossians living in Mauritius, the Seychelles and the UK.

The UK has also begun to take small groups of Chagossians back to the archipelago for brief ”heritage“ visits. But in Mauritius, those tours have been condemned as a crude attempt to ”divide and rule“ the Chagos community.

”I boycott those trips. The British are trying to buy our silence. That’s why we say our dignity is not for sale,“ said Olivier Bancoult, who heads the Chagos Refugees Group.

In a graveyard in the Mauritian capital, Port Louis, the graves of several Chagossians are marked with headstones mourning their failure to return to the islands.

”I fear my wish will not come true before I die – to see my motherland again,“ reads the script beside the grave of Mr Bancoult’s mother, Marie Rita Elysee Bancoult.

”Every day, one by one, we’re dying. I believe the British are waiting for us to die so there will be no one to claim the islands,“ said Liseby Elyse, 66, who was 20 when she left the archipelago.

”We’re like birds flying over the ocean, and we have nowhere to land. We must keep flying until we die,” said 81-year-old Samynaden Rosemond

December 29, 2019 Posted by | Illegal Occupation | , , , | 1 Comment

US strikes Kataib Hezbollah HQ in Iraq, Syria

Kataib Hezbollah members wave the party’s flags during a parade in Baghdad. © Reuters / Thaier al-Sudani
RT | December 29, 2019

US airstrikes have pounded three Kataib Hezbollah military facilities near the town of Qaim, Iraq, as well as two targets in Syria, in response to the group’s alleged bombing of an Iraqi military base on Friday.

The US carried out “defensive strikes” against the supposed Kataib Hezbollah facilities on Sunday, US officials told Reuters. The targets included weapons storage locations and command and control stations, and F-15 fighter jets were used in the attack. Three locations near Qaim, on the Iraq/Syria border, and two locations in Syria were hit.

Chief Pentagon spokesman Jonathan Hoffman said in a statement that the strikes were a “response to repeated Kataib Hezbollah attacks on Iraqi bases that host Operation Inherent Resolve (OIR) coalition forces.”

Reuters’ military sources said that at least 18 militiamen were killed in the strikes, including at least four local Kataib Hezbollah commanders.

Two days earlier, the same Kataib Hezbollah fighters and their Iraqi Shia allies were blamed by US officials for a rocket attack on an Iraqi military base in Kirkuk, some 250 miles east of Qaim. The rocket barrage killed an American contractor and wounded several US troops.

Kataib Hezbollah is an Iraqi paramilitary group, but is financially supported by Iran. Its allies in the so-called Popular Mobilization Forces were first deployed by the Iraqi government to combat Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS) jihadists in 2014, but the government has since struggled to bring them under the command of the Iraqi military.

The rocket attack inflamed anti-Iran sentiment in the US, with Republican Senator Tom Cotton (Arkansas) warning that “Tehran ought to face swift and severe consequences” for its alleged involvement. Responding to similar attacks, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo threatened Iran earlier this month with a “decisive US response” should they continue.
Iran’s involvement, however, has not been conclusively established.

December 29, 2019 Posted by | War Crimes | , , | 2 Comments

Gaza’s Local Industries in Ruins as 500 Factories are about to Close

Palestine Chronicle – December 29, 2019

2019 was one of the worst years for local Gaza economy that is struggling to stay afloat despite the hermetic Israeli blockade.

Palestinian sources told Quds News Network that over 500 factories, which have provided much of Gazans’ domestic needs, will shut down by the end of this year, due to the increasingly dire economic situation in the besieged Gaza Strip.

Successive Israeli wars and a prolonged, suffocating siege imposed on the heavily-populated enclave for over twelve years, are the main reasons for Gaza’s economic misfortunes, where, as of September 2019, unemployment has soared to 46.7%.

According to the General Union of Palestinian Industries, “2019 was even worse than the year before as 520 factories have been (or about to) shut down this year while other factories moved outside the Strip to Jordan or Egypt, leading to layoffs and increased unemployment among other social and humanitarian problems,” Quds News reported.

A World Bank report issued in September 2018 had already warned that Gaza’s economy was experiencing “free fall”.

“A combination of war, isolation, and internal rivalries has left Gaza in a crippling economic state and exacerbated the human distress,” said Marina Wes, the World Bank’s director for the region, at the time.

“The occupation state has targeted all kinds of economic installations during its wars on the besieged enclave,” Quds News reported.

“It also prevents Gaza’s importation of much essential material and equipment”.

December 29, 2019 Posted by | Economics, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , , , | 3 Comments

New Year’s swap: Dozens head home as Ukraine & breakaway Donbass conduct ‘all for all’ prisoner exchange

RT | December 29, 2019

Kiev is exchanging dozens of prisoners with the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Lugansk republics in the first such effort in two years. The swap was given a boost at the recent Normandy Four talks in Paris.

The self-declared Donetsk People’s Republic has handed over 51 people to Kiev, while receiving 61 of their followers. The Lugansk region returned 25 and took in 63 prisoners; nine people held by Kiev refused to partake in the exchange.

The office of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky confirmed that Kiev had received a total of 76 people from Donetsk and Lugansk.

Donetsk’s authorities said their list could be longer, as some people asked to be repatriated shortly before the exchange.

The swap, carried out under an “all for all” formula, was the first since a similar humanitarian effort in December 2017.

The prisoner exchange was overseen by officials from the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). No ceasefire violations were recorded on the frontier.

It also comes weeks after leaders from France, Germany, Russia, and Ukraine agreed at a peace summit in Paris to push for a full ceasefire and a new troop disengagement by March 2020.

The summit was the first of its kind in three years, also marking the first time Russian President Vladimir Putin talked reconciliation with his Ukrainian counterpart, Volodymyr Zelensky.

Before the summit, Kiev and the rebel forces ordered a partial pullback in several areas of the frontline. However, several Ukrainian nationalist organizations stood up against Zelensky’s policies, even deploying their own armed groups to prevent the government from withdrawing their soldiers.

December 29, 2019 Posted by | Aletho News | , , | 1 Comment

Bahrain’s Top Opposition Leader: Six Years of Persecution for Adopting Democracy and Reconciliation

By Sondoss Al Asaad | American Herald tribune | December 28, 2019

Although freedom of expression is a ratified constitutional right; yet it constitutes a heinous crime and poses an existential threat to the Manama regime. For instance, Sheikh Ali Salman, Secretary-General of the now-outlawed Al-Wefaq National Islamic Society, Bahrain’s top opposition political group, who has been held in custody since 2015, enters on Dec 28th his sixth year of arbitrary detention.

Indeed, the persecution of this peaceful leader is related to his commitment to peaceful protest and anti-corruption, marginalization and monopolization of power policies.

Al-Wefaq top leader had been initially serving a 4 years sentence on charges of ”insulting the interior ministry and inciting hatred.”

Prior to the current ongoing uprising, Sheikh Ali Salman had been severely tortured and arrested without trial, in 1994, before being exiled for more than 15 years.

The Bahraini High Court of First Tier acquitted Sheikh Salman on 21 June 2018; however, the Court of Appeal overturned the acquittal, on 4 November 2018, and handed him a life sentence after finding him guilty of spying for Qatar ”to transfer confidential information in exchange for financial compensation.”

Al-Wefaq slammed the verdict calling it a ”political revenge.” Sheikh Ali Salman’s co-defendants, former MP and Sheikh Hassan Sultan have also been sentenced to life in prison, while in absentia.

Seen as part of the diplomatic row with Qatar and following Saudi Arabia and other states’ boycott of what they call Doha’s ”extremist policies,” Sheikh Salman’s trial shifted to an intelligence-sharing case, relating to a clipped audio recording of a telephone call with Qatar’s former Prime Minister.

The incomplete clip was made in 2011, as part of mediation between Manama and the opposition, overseen and encouraged by the US, to deal with the political upheaval, i.e. it dates back to several years ago.

The edited clip was thus smeared by the Bahraini government to prolong the imprisonment of Sheikh Salman, merely because he long called for democratic reforms including a constitutional monarchy and elected prime minister.

Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Egypt accused Qatar of ”supporting terrorist groups and of being too close to Iran,” allegations Doha has vigorously denied.

Bahrain’s pro-democracy uprising had erupted in February 2011 but was violently suppressed by Saudi troops.

Ever since the tiny archipelago has been wracked by unrest as the government has stepped up its prosecution campaign against all forms of peaceful opposition demanding reforms, freedom of expression, release of political prisoners and to put an end to the politically-motivated discrimination against the Shiite majority population.

The government has curbed the rights to freedom of association and assembly, outlawed opposition groups, detained thousands of dissents, provoked the citizenship of hundreds and unfairly prosecuted citizens in military courts, accompanied with a wide range of physical, sexual and psychological torture and ill-treatment.

Bahrain hosts the US Navy’s 5th fleet and a UK permanent base. Those two powerful allies; however, have blatantly failed to speak out about the deteriorating human rights status-quo, ongoing crackdown on prisoners of conscience and the politically motivated conviction and unlawful imprisonment of Sheikh Ali Salman and the rest of opposition leaders.

December 29, 2019 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Subjugation - Torture | , | Leave a comment

Narrative Managers Claim White Helmets Founder Was Driven To Suicide By Syria Skeptics

By Caitlin Johnstone | American Herald Tribune | December 29, 2019

Imperialist spinmeisters are trial-ballooning a new Syria narrative that is so breathtakingly stupid it needs its own article solely for the purpose of mockery.

On Christmas Eve PBS aired a bizarre segment on the death of James Le Mesurier, the former military intelligence officer who founded the extremely shady propaganda construct known as the White Helmets. The segment makes relentless, ham-fisted appeals to emotion, even attempting to associate the White Helmets with Armistice Day using wistful camera pans over poppy flowers and misty war memorial art exhibits, but by far the most yogurt-brained part is its repeated suggestions that Le Mesurier killed himself because people had been accusing him of being a propagandist.

“And now a story of a humanitarian trying to help Syria: the suspicious death in Turkey last month of James Le Mesurier, the co-founder of the White Helmets rescue organization in Syria,” opens PBS News Hour‘s Judy Woodruff. “Friends and colleagues fear that he may have been murdered or driven to suicide by a campaign of character assassination.”

“Whatever the cause, Le Mesurier was a victim of a very modern war,” the special’s narrator solemnly intones. “There is no hiding place in cyberspace. Le Mesurier was at the epicenter of a propaganda war, and his friends are appalled at what they regard as a campaign of character assassination.”

“The amount of abuse, the amount of ill-placed propaganda, disinformation that’s on social media and the Internet coming out of Russian bots and Syria, Syrian regime, and others was unbearable,” Col. Hamish de Bretton-Gordon mourns.

This ridiculous narrative was picked up and run with by Syria narrative managers on Twitter.

“On lethal disinformation— a thread,” tweeted virulent Syria narrative manager Idrees Ahmad. “This is a disturbing report by Malcolm Brabant on the lethal consequences of conspiracism. It shows how slander and disinformation may have pushed James Le Mesurier, one of the finest humanitarians, to his death. The report highlights the pernicious lies issuing from the self-described ‘Working Group on Syria, Propaganda and Media’, which is a small group of academics, none specialising in Syria or the Middle East, in alliance with a group of pro-Kremlin trolls like Vanessa Beeley et al.”

It is true that both Beeley and the Working Group on Syria, Propaganda and Media have accused Le Mesurier of running a propaganda operation on behalf of western governments using western government funding. But if Ahmad truly believed that accusing people of conducting propaganda caused them to kill themselves, he should turn himself in for attempted murder, because he accuses people of being propagandists constantly.

Here’s a link to Ahmad calling journalist Max Blumenthal a “propagandist for Maduro”. Here’s a link to Ahmad calling Beeley a “pro-regime propagandist”. Here’s a link to Ahmad calling award-winning journalist Jonathan Steele “a fabricator and a propagandist”. Here’s a link to Ahmad calling CIA whistleblower John Kiriakou “a propagandist for Putin”.

Talk about “lethal disinformation”, Idrees.

But of course, no one really believes that accusations of conducting propaganda actually drive people to suicide. If they did, people like me would have thrown ourselves off a building years ago.

I am accused of being a propagandist nearly every day. At the height of Russiagate hysteria it happened many times a day in my blog post comments and social media notifications. Depending on what’s in the news and how I’ve responded to it I’ve been accused of writing paid propaganda for the Kremlin, Assad, the Iranian government, Palestinians, Pyongyang, Beijing, Maduro, the alt-right, George Soros, and WikiLeaks, just off the top of my head.

Every anti-imperialist, anti-interventionist, and antiwar activist with any kind of platform has had this experience. Ever since the new McCarthyism of establishment-driven Russia hysteria took off, accusing people who question imperialist narratives of conducting psyops for foreign governments has become the norm in political discourse. It’s created an extremely hostile and vitriolic environment in which productive conversations are vanishingly rare.

Where’s our PBS special? Does anyone care? Is there any compassion from these hand-wringing establishment loyalists for the fact that Vanessa Beeley and the members of the Working Group on Syria, Propaganda and Media are hounded day in and day out by establishment narrative managers and their brainwashed followers with accusations of spreading propaganda, supporting genocide, and embracing war crimes? I know I’ve never had a garment-rending Idrees Ahmad thread written about concerns for my psychological well being, and I’ve been targeted by multiple online harassment campaigns over the years.

The amount of hateful vitriol that gets leveled at people for simply opposing imperialism, for wanting peace, is truly astonishing. Just for saying “Hey here are some reasons we should maybe reconsider toppling yet another government in yet another Middle Eastern nation” will bring in complete strangers calling you all sorts of names, calling you disgusting, calling you evil, calling you a monster. For supporting peace.

There are all kinds of people in the world who are very deserving of harsh words. Powerful exploiters, oppressors and manipulators. People who destroy the environment for profit. People who get rich selling weapons of war while paying politicians and think tanks to advance the cause of war. War criminals who’ve never faced justice. With all those people in the world who we can all agree are terrible, you wouldn’t think peace activists should feature anywhere near the top of anyone’s list. But they do. Because war propaganda is just that influential.

And, of course, nobody cares. None of these narrative managers care about what psychological burden they might be placing on people by assuring their audiences that it’s perfectly sane and normal to hound and harass anyone who questions imperialist propaganda. Their concern is not and has never been about anyone’s psychological health. Their concern is in managing narratives in a way that favors the US-centralized empire that they serve.

I do not know what caused Le Mesurier’s death; to be in any way confident that a known spook committed suicide at all, or was murdered by Russians, is absurd. Maybe he killed himself because he failed to listen to the adage “Before you diagnose yourself with depression or low self-esteem, first make sure that you are not, in fact, just surrounded by assholes.”

What I absolutely do know, with absolute certainty, is that only idiots believe that skepticism about western regime change agendas in the Middle East kills people.

December 29, 2019 Posted by | Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , | 1 Comment

More Holocaust Reparations for 2020: the Gift That Keeps on Giving

Yad Vashem – Benjamin and Sara Netanyahu, Donald Trump and Melania, Ivanka and Jared Kushner, Rabbi Yisrael lau. credit: Amos Ben Gershom GPO/ Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs/ Flickr)
By Philip Giraldi • American Herald Tribune • December 29, 2019

Now that 2019 has ended, it is more than seventy-four years since the end of the Second World War. America’s “Greatest Generation” that actually fought the war and endured it on the home front, is dying off and the remembrance of the conflict is increasingly experienced second hand, if at all. The war has been relegated to the history books, one might think, but that would be to ignore one aspect of it which seems to never fade from sight. That would be the so-called holocaust, which has produced a host of taxpayer funded museums, is regularly featured in the media and also is part of mandatory public education in a growing number of states and school districts.

That the established holocaust narrative lives on in spite of its irrelevancy and obvious contradictions is a reflection of Jewish power in the United States. Since the 1970s, when the regular evocations of the holocaust began in earnest, Jews have come to wield considerable influence in American economic, cultural, intellectual and political life. Jews played a central role in American finance during the 1980s, and they were among the chief beneficiaries of that decade’s corporate mergers and reorganizations. Today, though barely two percent of the nation’s population is Jewish, close to half its billionaires are Jews. The chief executive officers of the three major television networks and the four largest film studios are Jews, as are the owners of the nation’s larg­est newspaper chain and the most influential single newspaper, The New York Times. The role and influence of Jews in Ameri­can politics has also developed simultaneously, with Jews heavily over-represented in the Democratic Party and in Congress.

The rise to power on the part of American Jews coincided with the trajectory of Israel in the Middle East. Protecting Israel and Jewish privilege became two sides of the same coin, leading to creation of the holocaust narrative, which Professor Norman Finkelstein has aptly described as The Holocaust Industry. And promotion of the sanctity of the holocaust story has enabled the damnation of skeptics as holocaust-deniers while also increasing the exploitation of the charge of anti-Semitism for those who would dare to criticize either the Jewish tribe itself or Israel.

One of the singular manifestations of the Jewish power in both the U.S. and in Europe has been the creation of mechanisms to address the perceived needs of “holocaust survivors.” One might argue reasonably enough that there cannot be actually that many genuine survivors remaining after 74 years, but the term has proven to be extremely elastic. It has come to include not only the actual victims who were allegedly sent to labor or concentration camps but also any Jew who survived 1939 through 1945 in Europe or even in Asia living in ghettos. And it also includes their children, even if born after the war.

Stuart E. Eizenstat, former Special Representative of the President and Secretary of State on Holocaust-Era Issues. Credit: U.S. National Archives/ Flickr

As a result, the so-called holocaust survivors are now well into their second generation, receiving extra Social Security and Medicare benefits in the United States as well as a steady flow of reparations from Germany and other Europeans, to include France, where forty-nine people who made it out of the Holocaust alive are receiving around $400,000 each, helped by the State Department’s expert on holocaust issues Stuart Eizenstat. The U.S. State Department even has a Holocaust Deportation Claims Program which is always staffed by Jews like Eizenstat.

The reparations programs are generally structured in a way that the payments are limited to Jews, even though there were millions more non-Jews who were victims of the German camps and prisons. Recently there have even been claims that the traumatic holocaust experience might have caused genetic damage, meaning that the need to address the issue by extorting money from the German and other governments will conceivably extend into the foreseeable future.

When in doubt about where to find the money, it is only necessary to get in touch with a professional Zionist Zealot like Eizenstat or with one of the commercial firms that is into the holocaust reparations business. The International Center for Holocaust Reparations is one of them, a corporation registered in Israel with offices located in Jerusalem, Berlin and in Pompano Beach Florida. It was founded by Israeli Zachi Porath and the actual incorporation is in his name as Zachi Porath Ltd.

The organization website headlines that it is “Pursuing Rights of Holocaust Survivors.” It is indeed doing so in a manner of speaking, but it is also a business that makes money by taking a cut of what it obtains. Its website asks what it considers to be key screening questions: “Are you a Holocaust survivor who was interned in a Ghetto?” and “Are you a child of a Holocaust survivor who was interned in a Ghetto?” before getting to the crux of the matter, “You may be entitled to a large sum of money! Even if you are already receiving compensation from the Claims Conference or from the German authorities, including the German Pension Insurance you may be eligible to receive additional payments.”

According to the website “The pension is paid even to those who were interned for a short period of time in a Ghetto (including Ghettos in Poland, Romania, Czernowitz, Shanghai, Sofia, Thessaloniki, Transnistria, Amsterdam, Lithuania, Latvia and Belarus and many more). The possibilities are for a one-time retroactive compensation, as well as a monthly payment from the German Social Security… If you are an heir of a ghetto survivor, and the survivor or their spouse was alive on June 27th 2002, you may be entitled to a one-time payment… We will help you to file the claims for all the money you justly deserve… After you have received the restitution payment, we will charge a fee of 15% of the retroactive sum.”

The website also advises that even second-generation survivors whose parents were interned in a ghetto somewhere for even a short time “may be entitled to a one-time compensation payment… We have been aiding Holocaust survivors all over the world in exercising their rights and have successfully helped many survivors attain their rightful money.”

Some might object to the assertion that Jewish suffering in the war was somehow unique given the fact that far more Russians died than Jews. But the difference is one of perception, due to the effective marketing of a preferred narrative by a powerful and wealthy group that has easy access to the media, to the entertainment industry and to policy makers. And one should not be dismissive of the hard work that has gone into making holocaust reparations eternal. It takes a great deal of ingenuity to devise mechanisms that separate German, French and American taxpayers from their money in perpetuity on behalf of numerous people concentrated apparently in Israel and Florida who may not have suffered at all in the Second World War.

December 29, 2019 Posted by | Aletho News | , , | 6 Comments

Hoax Confirmed: Honking on Hanukkah (2019)

Semitic Controversies | December 27, 2019

According to the ‘Times of Israel’ there has been an ‘anti-Semitic hate crime’ at Yeshiva University in Manhattan, New York city.

To wit:

‘A man was arrested and accused of setting fire to a Yeshiva University dormitory on Friday using matches set out for Hanukkah, authorities in New York said.

 Peter Weyand, 33, is suspected of setting three fires in the Schottenstein Residence Hall dormitory in Midtown Manhattan as students slept, New York’s Fire Commissioner Daniel Nigro said in a statement.

 Firefighters responded within five minutes and there were no injuries in the fires, he said.
Surveillance video released by the fire department shows the suspect kicking in a glass door to break into the building at about 3:50 a.m. Friday. The department said Weyand used matches that had been set out for lighting Hanukkah candles.

 FDNY

 ✔

 @FDNY

 FDNY Fire Marshals have arrested Peter Weyand, age 33, for breaking into the Yeshiva University Schottenstein Residence and using matches intended for a Chanukah menorah to set three separate fires in the building.

  “Attacking any religious institution is a serious crime and we have zero tolerance for acts of arson in this city. Thanks to the thorough investigative work of our Fire Marshals, a dangerous individual has been quickly apprehended,” Nigro said.

 Weyand is being charged with arson, burglary with criminal intent, reckless endangerment of property, criminal mischief, criminal trespass and aggravated harassment, the fire commissioner said.
Authorities did not indicate if there was any hate crime motive in the incident.’ (1)

Going by the video that has been helpfully provided; Weyand broke in to the lobby of the Schottenstein residence, couldn’t find or get access to anything to steal and promptly began trying to light the place on fire instead. This is clearly not an ‘anti-Semitic hate crime’ by Weyand if we go by the video footage and this is further supported by the lack of any ‘hate crime’-related charge being made by the authorities in New York, which has subsequently been confirmed to be the case by the NYPD. (2)

We have also been informed that Weyand is the grandson of famous jewish physicist and creator of the Hydrogen Bomb Edward Teller (born Ede Teller in Budapest) and is therefore jewish himself. (3)

Go figure.

Regardless of this however; it was quite the attempt prank… no?

References

(1) https://www.timesofisrael.com/man-arrested-for-setting-fire-to-yeshiva-u-dorm-with-hanukkah-matches/; alternatively see https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/20/nyregion/yeshiva-university-ny-fires.html
(2) https://forward.com/fast-forward/437220/yeshiva-univeristy-arson-dorm-edward-teller/
(3) Ibid.

December 29, 2019 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , | 1 Comment

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.

December 28, 2019 Posted by | Deception, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , , , | Leave a comment

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