THE DARK SIDE
- Since the 20th century, the West has been and continues to be the most avid users of bioweapons. The United States is the biggest user of biochemical weapons in history, including in Cuba; Iraq, Syria and Iran (by proxy); Serbia, Japan, Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, and America has eagerly used them on its own people, apparently more often than we care to admit.
- In the 1940s the United States purposely infected thousands of Guatemala, natives with syphilis and gonorrhea, to test these human guinea pigs with antibiotics. Of course, these suffering souls were sexually active for the rest of their lives and unwittingly infected everybody they came in contact with, including spouses.
- At Tuskegee, hundreds of American blacks were allowed to carry syphilis from the 1930s to the 1970s, to act as human petri dishes. This was to track the progress of the disease and observe the eventual macabre deaths that this bacteria is wont to inflict on its victims, in its final stages: insanity, nervous disorders, liver and heart disease.
- The United States has a long, illustrious history of using bioterrorism around the world. Cuba has been a favorite target and has seen hundreds of thousands of its people infected with Dengue fever as well as its entire swine herd wiped out by swine fever.
- The United States of America holds the exclusive patent on the Ebola virus: US patent number 20120251502, is owned by the American government. Ebola has been Uncle Sam’s bioweapon plaything since 1976, when it was discovered in Zaire and shipped 3,500km by America’s bio-warfare lab at Fort Detrick, Maryland, then to West Africa for cultivation and development (via the UK’s bio-warfare labs in Porton Down and with the help of the World “Health” Organization), specifically, to Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone, the current epicenters of the Ebola epidemic on the Great Continent.
- The 2014 Ebola outbreak came as a result of another rogue US Military operation in austral Africa from which the Soros/Gates-funded Kenema bioweapons lab in Sierra Leone was involved.
- The US has a long history of biowarfare against China. The Report of the International Scientific Commission for the Investigation of Facts Concerning Bacteriological Warfare in Korea and China (ISC report) validated claims by North Korea and China that the US had launched bacteriological warfare (biological warfare, BW) attacks against both troops and civilian targets in those two countries over a period of months in 1952. This 667 page truth commission report has the dubious distinction of being the most vilified written document of the 20th Century. The report’s release in September 1952 brought a withering international attack. It was roundly denounced by American and British politicians of the highest rank, ridiculed by four star generals, accused of fraud by celebrated pundits, misquoted by notable scientists, and scorned by a compliant Western press. In subsequent decades, volumes placed in American university library collections were quietly and permanently removed from circulation. When the rare copy came up for auction, it was discretely purchased and disappeared from public view.
- In March 2019, in a mysterious event, a shipment of exceptionally virulent viruses from Canada’s NML biological labs ended up in China. Canadian officials say the shipment was part of its efforts to support public-health research worldwide. They claimed that it was just normal procedure. What is unclear is why it was done in secret, and why the Chinese officials lodged a complaint. For certain, if this was just a routine transfer, the Chinese government would have been notified. In July 2019, a group of Chinese virologists were forcibly dispatched from the Canadian National Microbiology Laboratory (NML). The NML is Canada’s only level-4 facility and one of only a few in North America equipped to handle the world’s deadliest diseases, including Ebola, SARS, Coronavirus, etc.
- On October 18th, 2019, the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, in conjunction with the World Economic Forum assembled “15 leaders of business, government, and public health” to simulate a scenario in which a coronavirus pandemic was ravaging the planet. Major participants were American military leadership, and certain neocon political figures. The Chinese were not invited. The members took notes, and then returned to their day to day operations.
- In Simulation Run 3 Months Ago, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation Predicted Up To 65 Million Deaths Via Coronavirus.
- 300 US military personnel arrived in Wuhan for the Military World Games on October 19. The first coronavirus case appeared two weeks later, on November 2. Coronavirus incubation period is 14 days.
- Two months later a very similar coronavirus pandemic hit China at Wuhan, a major transport hub in Central China and for the high-speed train network, and with 60 air routes with direct flights to most of the world’s major cities, as well as more than 100 internal flights to major Chinese cities right at the Spring Festival travel rush when hundreds of millions of people travel across the country to be with their families.
- The Coronavirus (2019-nCoV) is an entirely new strain related to the MERS (MERS-CoV) and the SARS (SARS-CoV) viruses, though early evidence suggested that it was not dangerous. SARS was proven to be caused by a strain of the coronavirus, a large family of mostly harmless viruses also responsible for the common cold, but
- SARS exhibited characteristics never before observed in any animal or human virus, did not by any means fully match the animal viruses mentioned above, and contained genetic material that still remains unidentified – similar to this new coronavirus in 2019.
- SARS had the hallmarks of a bioweapon. After all, aren’t new biological warfare agents designed to produce a new disease with a new infectious agent? As in prior military experiments, all it might take … to spread SARS is an aerosol can . . .” Several Russian scientists suggested a link between SARS and biowarfare. Sergei Kolesnikov, a member of the Russian Academy of Medical Sciences, said the propagation of the SARS virus might well have been caused by leaking a combat virus grown in bacteriological weapons labs. According to a number of news reports, Kolesnikov claimed that the virus of atypical pneumonia (SARS) was a synthesis of two viruses (of measles and infectious parotiditis or mumps), the natural compound of which was impossible, that this mix could never appear in nature, stating, “This can be done only in a laboratory.” And Nikolai Filatov, the head of Moscow’s epidemiological services, was quoted in the Gazeta daily as stating he believed SARS was man-made because “there is no vaccine for this virus, its make-up is unclear, it has not been very widespread and the population is not immune to it.”
- Virologist Dr. Alan Cantwell wrote at the time that “the mysterious SARS virus is a new virus never before seen by virologists, “This is an entirely new illness with devastating effects on the immune system, and there is no known treatment.” Dr. Cantwell noted that the genetic engineering of coronaviruses has been occurring in both medical and military labs for decades. When he searched in PubMed for the phrase “coronavirus genetic engineering”, he was referred to 107 scientific experiments dating back to 1987. To quote Dr. Cantwell: “I quickly confirmed scientists have been genetically engineering animal and human coronaviruses to make disease-producing mutant and recombinant viruses for over a decade.”
- The virus outbreak coincides with the trade war on China.
- The virus outbreak coincides with the HK “pro democracy” riots fully funded and instigated by the NED / CIA.
- The virus outbreak occurred just after Swine Flu decimated the Chinese pork industry.
- The virus outbreak occurred just after Bird Flu decimated the Chinese chicken industry.
- The virus outbreak occurred just before NED support and training of Uyghur Muslim extremists.
- This month, CNN published a gleeful (and untrue) report, “China’s economy is slumping and the country is still suffering the effects of the trade war with America. An outbreak of a new and deadly virus is the last thing it needs.”
Full article
January 29, 2020
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | Africa, China, United States |
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Ukraine’s National Anti-Corruption Bureau has opened a probe against former president, Petro Poroshenko, who is suspected of abuse of power, embezzlement “on a grand scale” and allegedly stealing US aid funds.
The case against the ex-president was opened following a complaint by a group of Ukrainian MPs and the nation’s High Anti-Corruption Court demanding the authorities investigate embezzlement and misappropriation of the foreign financial aid at the time of Poroshenko’s term in office, a Ukrainian MP Renat Kuzmin said in a Facebook post.
Kuzmin, a member of the Opposition Platform – For Live party, also published the anti-corruption bureau’s documents, confirming that the case against Poroshenko had been launched. The papers state that the former president and some “unknown people” from his administration are suspected of embezzling “on a grand scale,” subsequent legalization of criminally obtained funds, and abuse of power.
The MP himself said that the investigation would look into the misappropriation of funds provided to Ukraine in the form of international aid, including by the administration of the former US President Barack Obama.
Poroshenko did not react directly to the accusations against him. Instead, his lawyer told the media that the ex-president plans to file as many as 14 lawsuits seeking moral compensation from Ukraine’s National Bureau of Investigations, the anti-corruption bureau and the police. His lawyer also denounced the investigation against his client as political persecution instigated by the administration of the current president, Volodymyr Zelensky.
The news comes just months after Poroshenko’s ally, Kiev mayor and three-time world boxing champion Vitali Klitschko was also accused of embezzlement and even treason by the anti-corruption bureau.
An oligarch candy-maker, who supported the Maidan coup in 2014, Poroshenko came to power in Ukraine just months after the ousting of President Viktor Yanukovich as the nation was quickly plunging into the abyss of a post-coup crisis. During his presidency, he repeatedly played the nationalist card and used Moscow as a boogeyman to raise support while his achievements in the field of economics and the fight against corruption, which still plagued Ukraine years after the Maidan, were far less impressive.
Eventually, he suffered a crushing defeat at the hands of former comedian Zelensky in the runoff at the presidential elections last year.
January 29, 2020
Posted by aletho |
Corruption | Obama, Ukraine, United States |
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Syria demands that the international community condemn the US peace plan on the Middle East and ensure that the legitimate land rights of Palestinians be protected, Syria’s Foreign Ministry said on Wednesday.
“Syria demands that the international community condemns the United States’ dismissive position in regard to international law and to confirm [previously adopted] resolutions to end the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories and to ensure the legitimate rights of the Palestinians,” the foreign ministry said.
The ministry also said that Damascus strongly condemned and rejected the “deal of the century,” describing it as a call to surrender to the Israeli occupation of West Bank territories.
“The US plan demonstrates again that the US policy in the region benefits only Israel and its expansionistic plans at the expense of the Arabs’ rights and interests,” it added.
In addition, Damascus called on the international community to condemn the US’ stance toward international law and confirm resolutions on ending the occupation of Palestinian territories by Israel and ensuring rights of the Palestinian people.
On Tuesday, US President Donald Trump presented his so-called deal of the century that proposes a two-state solution for the Israeli-Palestine conflict. Earlier in the day, the Arab League said that the plan violated Palestinians’ legitimate land rights.
The so-called deal of the century was revealed by Trump during a joint press conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. According to the peace plan, the Palestinians would be able to have a state of their own with the capital in East Jerusalem, while Washington would, in turn, recognise Israeli settlements in the West Bank. The United States and Israel will form a joint committee to monitor the deal implementation.
Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas has rejected Trump’s initiative, saying the Palestinians would only negotiate with the Middle East Quartet rather than with the United States or under the terms of the US peace plan.
January 29, 2020
Posted by aletho |
Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | Human rights, Israel, Syria, United States, Zionism |
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The United Nations has rejected US President Donald Trump’s ‘deal of the century’ and reiterated that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict should be solved based on UN resolutions and international law.
In a statement, a copy of which was sent to MEMO, Stephane Dujarric, a spokesperson for the UN Secretary-General, said: “The position of the United Nations on the two-State solution has been defined, throughout the years, by relevant Security Council and General Assembly resolutions by which the Secretariat is bound.”
He added: “The United Nations remains committed to supporting Palestinians and Israelis in resolving the conflict on the basis of United Nations resolutions, international law, and bilateral agreements and realizing the vision of two States – Israel and Palestine – living side by side in peace and security within recognized borders, on the basis of the pre-1967 lines.”
It is worth noting that Trump has ignored the two-state solution adopted by the UN and the international community and proposed his own view of the two-state solution, which ignores the 1967 borders and has all of Jerusalem under full Israeli sovereignty.
January 29, 2020
Posted by aletho |
Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation, Timeless or most popular | Human rights, Israel, Palestine, United Nations, United States, Zionism |
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Deputy chief of the Islamic Jihad resistance movement Ziyad Nakhala
Secretary General of Islamic Jihad Palestinian Resistance movement Ziad Nakhale stressed that the so-called “Deal of the Century” target the Palestinian people and the entire nation.
In a statement released a day after the announcement of US President Donald Trump’s so-called “peace plan”, Nakhale described the plan as a conspiracy “that represents a great challenge to our nation and unprecedented bullying.”
Trump started his plan by blaming Arab and Muslim world for not recognizing Israel,” Nakhale added.
He noted that Washington “wants to make our people slaves to Israelis after a long history of struggle, resistance and sacrifices.”
“They (US administration and occupation authorities) think they can simply change the history… They think they can wipe out our culture.”
“This stage is different and needs more forms of resistance,” Nakhale said, lashing out at Arab states’ stances towards the “Deal of the Century.”
January 29, 2020
Posted by aletho |
Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | Human rights, Israel, Palestine, Zionism |
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UK Gov’t not bothered. ‘Israel is our friend, has an unquestionable right to exist, shares our values, has a right to defend herself, mustn’t be punished even for war crimes…’
When Israel confiscated a Palestinian medical jeep it may not have sounded like a big deal. But it was, and still is, a matter of life and death to hundreds of oppressed people and the Israelis know it.
Haaretz reported earlier this month that Israel had impounded the only vehicle available to a medical team that provides assistance to 1,500 Palestinians living inside an Israeli military firing zone in the Palestinian West Bank. It’s the second time in a year that the vehicle serving residents of Masafer Yatta in the south Hebron hills has been confiscated, cutting off healthcare to an isolated and impoverished population.
The jeep and medical team belong to the Palestinian Authority’s Health Ministry. They visit small villages in the area, accessible only by dirt roads, every week. The excuse for this outrage was that the team weren’t allowed there without prior co-ordination, since the area was inside a firing zone. The team’s doctor said medical assistance was necessary for these villages because of their long distance from a city and lack of financial resources. “We come here with all the medications we can administer outside a hospital to treat the villagers.”
When the jeep was previously confiscated it was returned after 6 months on payment of a 3000 shekel fine. All that time the team were unable to provide basic medical care as it was the only vehicle capable of traveling those roads.
The firing zone covers 7,400 acres and Israel declared it a closed military zone in the 1980s. In 1999, the army expelled the residents, arguing that they were living there illegally. But a temporary injunction by the Israeli Supreme Court let them return when they provided evidence that they had lived in the area long before Israel’s occupation in 1967.
The story is symptomatic of the evil permeating the Holy Land under Israel’s military occupation for 70+ years.
Last week Baroness Jenny Tonge, in a parliamentary question, asked what representations the UK Government intended making to the Israeli government. On 24 January Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon, Minister for the Commonwealth, UN and South Asia, replied: “We have made clear to the Israeli authorities the importance of medical assistance being available to Palestinians, most recently on 30 October 2019.” And that was it.
Tariq Ahmad is a Muslim of Pakistani origin. Since his elevation to the Lords he seems to have joined the ranks of those anxious to downplay Israel’s crimes and guarantee the rogue state’s impunity.
For example, in a debate on the Israel-Palestine conflict last March he said: “Any party that believes in the destruction of Israel of course cannot be party to a peace process. The UK Government have made it clear that, before taking part in any peaceful negotiations on the two-state solution, any party at the negotiating table needs to agree the right of Israel to exist.”
He didn’t mention the equal need to agree the Palestinians’ right to exist and the UK Government still refuses to recognize Palestinian statehood. Doesn’t that bar Britain from the peace table? And once again we’re fed nonsense about a ‘two state solution’. Given the many irreversible facts on the ground that the Israelis have been allowed to create with impunity, what would it look like? Yeah, too messy and ridiculous to even begin to describe. Netanyahu has said repeatedly that there will be no Palestinian state during his tenure as Israel’s prime minister. He declared: “We will not withdraw from one inch…. There will be no more uprooting of settlements in the land of Israel…. This is the inheritance of our ancestors. This is our land…. We are here to stay forever.”
And that from somebody who, like most of his vile comrades, has no ancestral links whatever to the ancient land of Israel and therefore no claim to it.
So that disqualifies the Israeli government too from any peace process. As for the US administration, it is so overloaded with Zionist pimps, has fouled up so many peace moves, is so discredited by its past and present performances, and is so contemptuous of international law that it too has no place at the peace table.
The Montevideo Convention of 1933 on Statehood sets out the criteria for becoming a state and these include a defined territory. So when it comes to “agreeing Israel’s right to exist”, Lord Ahmad surely knows that Israel has always refused to declare its borders. So which Israel would he like us all to recognize? Israel behind the borders drawn by the UN Partition Plan? Israel behind the 1967 armistice borders? Israel with its boot on every Palestinians’s neck and illegally occupying the entire Palestinian territory? Or Israel seen by many as a brazen ‘racist endeavor’ that has just passed laws declaring itself “the historic homeland of the Jewish people and they have an exclusive right to national self-determination in it”?
Or will he and the rest of Boris Johnson’s ministerial stooges now insist on Israel according to the preposterous ‘deal’ put forward by Trump and his son-in-law?
Let’s not forget that the new state of Israel’s admission to the UN in 1949 was conditional upon honoring the UN Charter and implementing UN General Assembly Resolutions 181 and 194. It has failed to meet these obligations and to this day repeatedly violates provisions and principles of the Charter.
Israel doesn’t even comply with the rules of the EU-Israel Association Agreement of 1995 which require adherence to the principles of the UN Charter and “respect for human rights and democratic principle (which) constitute an essential element of this agreement” in return for trading privileges. Here too Israel grabs the privileges without delivering on the obligations.
Should everyone be expected to accept Israel’s right to exist while Palestinians are denied the right to their state?
January 29, 2020
Posted by aletho |
Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | Human rights, Israel, Palestine, UK, Zionism |
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Despite Trump’s apparent show of strength in the cynical ‘Peace to Prosperity’ plan, he is actually helping Netanyahu destroy Israel, the European colony in Palestine.
Palestinian envoy to Britain Husam Zomlot said the announcement was a “piece of political theatre” and will push the situation “over the cliff and into apartheid”. Hamas rejected the plan as “nonsense” (RT 2020). Netanyahu, who has always been focussed on the expansion of ‘Greater Israel’, said that the Zionist state owes both Kushner and Trump “an eternal debt of gratitude”.
Trump’s ‘Peace to Prosperity’ plan (“A vision to improve the lives of the Palestinian and Israeli people”) is a revised version of the 2019 Kushner plan (the so-called “deal of the century”), which offered an illusory promise of long term money (mostly Gulf Arab money) in exchange for political surrender. The new version speaks of a “realistic two state solution” – because “Israel has now agreed to terms for a future Palestinian State” – with a tiny Palestinian statelet cramming the majority Arab population of historic Palestine into 15% of the land. Israel would control the vast majority of the West Bank (White House 2020). With no sovereign powers for the statelet, this deliberately enhances the status quo of a single state.
Trump’s latest plan follows a series of initiatives hostile to Palestinian and Syrian interests: breaching international law to recognize Jerusalem as a Zionist possession, breaching international law to annex the Syrian Golan, trying to legitimize the multiple Israeli colonies on the West Bank, demanding (in the Kushner plan) an effective Palestinian surrender on statehood and adopting the IHRA claim that any anti-Israel criticism is ‘racist’ and so illegitimate (IHRA 2016).
At this stage in the history of the colony, the 72 year old illusion of a ‘two state solution’ remains the main obstacle to a democratic Palestine. Trump’s plan seems an ‘advance’ on the Kushner Plan, in trying to keep that illusion alive. A majority of liberal Jews in the USA, for example, still hold to the two state illusion. But Netanyahu and his colleagues have always wanted it all.
The problem for the more ambitious Zionists is two-fold: (1) Palestinians have resisted, by guerrilla warfare and by not going away, and now slightly outnumber Jewish Israelis in historic Palestine; (2) destruction of the two state myth, and widespread recognition that there is only a single apartheid state, will bring a dramatic collapse in Israeli legitimacy across the world.
The more astute Zionist leaders know this. Former Israeli PM Ehud Olmert recognized that “if the day comes when the two-state solution collapses, and we face a South African-style struggle for equal voting rights … the State of Israel is finished” (Olmert 2007).
Historically, Israel as a sectarian European colony, has always relied on substantial ethnic cleansing. On 3 December 1947, as the campaign intensified, Zionist leader David Ben Gurion told his party faithful that the “40% non-Jews in the areas allocated to the Jewish state” was “not a solid basis for a Jewish state .. only a state with at least 80% Jews is a solid and viable state” (Pappe 2006: 76).
For that reason, Ben Gurion’s ‘Plan Dalet’ of March 1948 called for operations “destroying villages (by setting fire to them, by blowing them up, and by planting mines in their debris) and especially of those population centers which are difficult to control … [the operations required are] encirclement of the villages, conducting a search inside them. In case of resistance, the armed forces must be wiped out and the population expelled outside the borders of the state” (Pappe 2006: 68; Vidal 1997).
That plan was carried out and featured the Deir Yassin massacre of 9 April, where 107 villagers were killed, and a series of expulsions in which 531 villages and eleven urban neighborhoods were destroyed and 800,000 became refugees (Pappe 2006: xiii; Vidal 1997).
Yet despite this ethnic cleansing, military domination and annexations, Israeli agencies confirm that the current Arab population of historic Palestine (Arab Israelis plus those on the West Bank and in Gaza) is roughly equal to the population of Jewish Israelis.
A report from Jerusalem in 2011 showed that the Palestinian population of that city had risen from 25.5% in 1967 to 38% in 2009 (AIC 2011: 10, 12). The Jewish Virtual Library shows that the Jews of Israel / 1948 Palestine have declined from a peak of 88.9% in 1960 to 74.7% in 2017 (JVL 2017). In parallel, officials from Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics and the military run civil administration of the Occupied Territories (COGAT) say that the Arab population of Gaza, the West Bank and Arab [second class] citizens of Israel, along with residents of the annexed East Jerusalem municipality, add up to 6.5 million, about the same number as “Jews living between the Jordan Valley and the Mediterranean” (Heller 2018).
For all the apparent advances of Israeli power, Palestinian resistance has enhanced both the ‘demographic threat’ to Israel and the colony’s illegitimacy, in the international sphere.
In that context, Trump and Netanyahu are building an even more extreme illegitimacy, by consolidating a more openly apartheid state. In a report commissioned for the UN several years back, legal scholars Richard Falk and Virginia Tilley (2017), made it clear that Israel had already become an ‘apartheid state’, which is a crime against humanity. The international community had a responsibility to dismantle such a regime, they said.
Richard Falk, who had been a Special Rapporteur on Occupied Palestine for the UN, said that Palestine was wining the legitimacy battle: “Palestine is winning what in the end is the more important war, the struggle for legitimacy, which is most likely to determine the political outcome”. In the context of anti-colonial struggles, he continues, citing Vietnam, Algeria and Iraq, “the side with the greater perseverance and resilience, not the side that controlled the battlefield, won in the end” (Falk 2014).
Ironically it is the Palestinian Authority (PA), paid and contracted by the US and the Israeli regime, that helps keeps alive the illusion of two states. The PA blocks a clear and unified Palestinian strategy to dismantle apartheid Israel in favor of a single democratic state.
But where the PA has failed, Netanyahu and Trump are succeeding. While Israeli expansion has been blocked by the Lebanese resistance in the north and the resistance of Gaza in the south, Netanyahu has persisted with a steady colonization of the West Bank, undermining any viable Palestinian state.
Now Trump has added to this drive, offering only the fig leaf of a powerless ghetto on a small part of the West Bank and in Gaza. Israel’s contempt for the people of Gaza is plain. This is reminiscent of the failed Bantustan Homelands solution offered by apartheid South Africa, just before that regime collapsed (SAHO 2020). More open apartheid in Palestine will mean the death of Israel. Thank you Trump and Netanyahu.
References
AIC (2011) ‘Jerusalem: facts and figures’, Alternative Information Center, December, Jerusalem and Beit Sahour, Palestine
Anderson, Tim (2008) The Future of Palestine, Centre for Counter Hegemonic Studies, 7 August, online: https://counter-hegemonic-studies.net/future-palestine-1/
Falk, Richard (2014) ‘On ‘Lost Causes’ and the Future of Palestine’, The Nation, 16 December, online: https://www.thenation.com/article/lost-causes-and-future-palestine/
Falk, Richard and Virginia Tilley (2017) Palestine – Israel Journal of Politics, Economics, and Culture; East Jerusalem Vol. 22, Issue 2/3, 191-196; also available here: https://counter-hegemonic-studies.net/israeli-apartheid/
Heller, Jeffrey (2018) ‘Jews, Arabs nearing population parity in Holy Land: Israeli officials’, Reuters, 27 march, online: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-israel-palestinians-population/jews-arabs-nearing-population-parity-in-holy-land-israeli-officials-idUSKBN1H222T
IHRA (2016) ‘Working Definition of Antisemitism’, online: https://www.holocaustremembrance.com/working-definition-antisemitism
JVL (2017) ‘Demographics of Israel: Jewish & Non-Jewish Population of Israel/Palestine (1517 – Present), Jewish Virtual Library, online: http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jewish-and-non-jewish-population-of-israel-palestine-1517-present
Olmert, Ehud (2007) ‘Olmert to Haaretz: Two-state Solution, or Israel Is Done For’, Haaretz, 29 November, online: https://www.haaretz.com/1.4961269
Pappe, Ilan (2006) The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, Oneworld Publications, London
Pappe, Ilan (2014) ‘Israel’s incremental genocide in the Gaza ghetto’, Electronic Intifada, 13 July, online: https://electronicintifada.net/content/israels-incremental-genocide-gaza-ghetto/13562
RT (2020) ‘Trump proposes a two-state solution for Israel-Palestine in ‘win-win opportunity’ for both sides’, 28 January, online: https://www.rt.com/news/479412-trump-two-state-solution-israel/
SAHO (2020) ‘The Homelands’, South African History Online, online: https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/homelands
Vidal, Dominique (1997) ‘The expulsion of the Palestinians re-examined’, le Monde Diplomatique, December, online: https://mondediplo.com/1997/12/palestine
White House (2020) ‘President Donald J. Trump’s Vision for Peace, Prosperity, and a Brighter Future for Israel and the Palestinian People’, 28 January, online: https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/president-donald-j-trumps-vision-peace-prosperity-brighter-future-israel-palestinian-people/
Dr. Tim Anderson is Director of the Sydney-based Centre for Counter Hegemonic Studies. He has worked at Australian universities for more than 30 years, teaching, researching and publishing on development, human rights and self-determination in the Asia-Pacific, Latin America and the Middle East. In 2014 he was awarded Cuba’s medal of friendship. He is Australia and Pacific representative for the Latin America based Network in Defence of Humanity. His most recent books are: Land and Livelihoods in Papua New Guinea (2015), The Dirty War on Syria (2016), now published in ten languages; Countering War Propaganda of the Dirty War on Syria (2017) and Axis of Resistance: towards an independent Middle East (2019).
January 29, 2020
Posted by aletho |
Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation, War Crimes | Human rights, Israel, Palestine, United States, Zionism |
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One of the few growth industries in Donald Trump’s United States is the protection of Jewish citizens and their property from a largely contrived wave of anti-Semitism that is allegedly sweeping the nation. Even while potentially catastrophic developments in the Middle East continue to unfold, the threat of anti-Semitism continues to dominate much of the news cycle in the mainstream media.
There are a number of things that all Americans should know about the anti-Semitism hysteria. First of all, the extent to which there is actual anti-Semitism and the back story to many of the incidents has been deliberately distorted or even ignored by the press and by the government at all levels. Anti-Semitism is hatred of Jews for either their religion or their ethnicity, but many of the so-called anti-Semitic incidents are actually related to the policies advanced by the state of Israel. Organizations like the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), which have a vested interest in keeping the number of anti-Semitic incidents high, deliberately conflate the two issues in their reports.
In its 2018 report, ADL reported “1,879 acts,” in the United States during the course of the year. It is not a particularly large number given the size and population of the U.S. and also with respect to what is included. There were certainly some physical attacks, including two shooting incidents at synagogues in Pittsburgh and Poway, but most of the incidents were much less kinetic, including shouting and name calling on university campuses between groups supportive of and opposed to Israel’s repression of the Palestinians.
Politicians, the media, and Jewish leaders have all blamed much of the alleged violent anti-Semitism on “white supremacists,” but any examination of the actual incidents does not support that view. Anyone who has any knowledge of the so-called white groups is aware that they are little more than a fringe movement within a fringe movement. Most of the physical attacks on Jews actually are carried out by blacks and most of those attacks are based on aggressive behavior by the largely Hasidic Jewish communities in New York City and surrounding areas. Hasidic Jews are relatively easy to identify as targets because of their distinctive attire, but the tension between the black community, which is being displaced by gentrifying and hostile Hasidic communities, is the root cause of the problem, not religion or race.
Indeed, the whole story of Hasidic community growth and its impact on some established neighborhoods has been pretty much ignored by the mainstream press. Hasidic activities in Brooklyn, in Jersey City, in New York ex-urb Bloomingburg and Lakewood and Toms River, New Jersey are deplorable, and attempts by local communities to fight back are regularly met with claims that the locals are anti-Semites. Hasidim routinely register their homes as places of worship to avoid property taxes, making other local residents pay for police and fire services as well as maintenance of infrastructure. When sufficient Hasidim become residents to get elected to the public school board, they divert the funding of state provided education to support their own private schools. As Hasidim get married within their community and do not register with the state, the women routinely file as single mothers to get public childcare subsidy checks. The men often do not work at all so they can study the Talmud so they are able to engage in wholesale welfare fraud, claiming poverty, to get food stamps, social security, and other money services.
Hasidim also do not consider the judicial system applicable to themselves. They have private courts that have served to hide criminals including even child molesters in their community. Once they achieve a certain presence in a town or city neighborhood, they buy up buildings and force long-term residents out. They ignore building codes and zoning to bring in co-religionists with their large families, and, once established, they create enclaves that are hostile to outsiders.
That has been the source of much of the tension with blacks in New York City and Jersey City as well as with suburban and rural whites north of New York City and in Lakewood and Toms River, New Jersey.
A final source of anti-Semitism incidents is Jews themselves who, for various reasons, either lie or fabricate tales of their persecution. In a recent incident, a Jewish student set a fire in a dormitory at Yeshiva University. In other incidents, bomb threats and graffiti were attributed to “white supremacists” but later determined to have been done by young Jewish males.
No matter how one regards the anti-Semitism issue, there is one thing for sure, and that is that 2020 will cost non-Jewish taxpayers a lot of money. There will be considerable money in the pipeline for Jewish groups to establish and maintain security for their buildings and other facilities with the federal government not surprisingly leading the charge. On Dec. 31, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), who is Jewish and regards himself as the protector of Israel in the Senate, said he would introduce legislation to quadruple the Department of Homeland Security’s annual Nonprofit Security Grant Program. It would make available $360 million. The grant program is already completely corrupted through the kind offices of folks like Schumer and serves essentially as a free handout to Jewish organizations. Over 90% of the money disbursed annually now goes to Jewish recipients for security and infrastructure upgrades, a percentage that will surely continue.
There is a certain irony in all of the tax money going to protect the wealthiest and most politically powerful demographic in the United States, but that is how politics works in Washington and also at the state and local level. Police resources in New York and other cities will now be redirected to concentrate on Jewish neighborhoods and synagogues. Rockland County in New York state is going one step farther, paying for a private security force dedicated to protecting Jews and their property.
Schumer will also increase funding for a program that pays for Department of Justice experts to train state and local officials in investigating and prosecuting hate crimes while Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) has introduced a bill that would for the first time both define attacks on Jews as domestic terrorism while also at the same time making domestic terrorism a federal crime.
And there also will be increased pressure to make holocaust education mandatory in public schools. Currently, 12 states require holocaust instruction in their public school curricula, though that includes five of the six biggest states. A bipartisan bill would provide money for school districts to develop and improve their own curricula with the ultimate objective of making such education mandatory through the United States.
The response of government to the alleged wave of anti-Semitism is understandable given the political power of the Jewish community. But it is inappropriate for the state to commit scarce resources to pressure groups when students get into shouting matches at a university or religious extremists seek to carve out enclaves for themselves at the expense of an existing community. That is where government has to step back, and it also should avoid the usual remedy of throwing money at the problem. The money belongs to the American taxpayers and this is one instance where it should stay safely in their pockets.
Philip Giraldi is a former CIA counter-terrorism specialist and military intelligence officer and a columnist and television commentator. He is also the executive director of the Council for the National Interest.
January 29, 2020
Posted by aletho |
Corruption, Supremacism, Social Darwinism | New York City, United States |
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The U.S. House of Representatives Select Committee on the Climate Crisis has demanded Google demonetize climate skeptics, and provide education to millions of people who have been exposed to “dangerous misinformation”.
Letter from Congress
If the letter is not readable on your device, the original link is available here.
The key actions demanded:
- Stop promoting climate denial and climate disinformation videos by removing them immediately from the platform’s recommendation algorithm.
- Add ‘climate misinformation’ to the platform’s list of borderline content
- Stop monetising videos that promote harmful misinformation and falsehoods about the causes and effects of the climate crisis.
- Take steps to correct the record for millions of users who have been exposed to the climate misinformation on YouTube.
The people who wrote that letter seem to believe ordinary people are too stupid to figure things out for themselves; they think voters have to be guided into making acceptable choices, by experts like the Democrat majority members of The U.S. House of Representatives Select Committee on the Climate Crisis.
January 29, 2020
Posted by aletho |
Full Spectrum Dominance, Science and Pseudo-Science | United States |
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The United States does not currently have a landfill for nuclear waste from the defence industry, which is normally stored inside metal canisters buried underground near the nuclear plants where it was produced.
The United States could face the risk of nuclear contamination due to inadequate nuclear waste storage methods, a new publication in the journal Nature Materials revealed.
According to the lead scientist behind the research, Xiaolei Guo, the existing techniques are insufficient to keep waste stored safely, as the material used in the current storage methods quickly becomes corroded, raising the risk of nuclear waste leaking into the soil, water and air.
The research team carried out an experiment in simulated conditions under Yucca Mountain where the US waste repository is expected to be built. They found that the corrosion level of stainless steel, used in storage canisters, was ‘severe’ due to chemical reactions being accelerated by nuclear waste.
“In the real-life scenario, the glass or ceramic waste forms would be in close contact with stainless steel canisters. It creates a super-aggressive environment that can corrode surrounding materials”, Guo said.
According to the scientist, if the casing of the containers gets damaged, the high-level radioactive material could cause ecological devastation.
January 29, 2020
Posted by aletho |
Environmentalism, Militarism, Nuclear Power, Timeless or most popular | United States |
1 Comment
During the 1990s, Portugal was devastated by a drug crisis where one in every 100 people became addicted to heroin and the rate of HIV infection soared to become the highest in the European Union.
But, as Statista’s Niall McCarthy notes, Portugal’s radical move to put an end to the carnage should prove an example to other countries dealing with similar problems, especially the United States where opioids have killed more people than the totality of American military casualties in Vietnam, both Iraq wars and Afghanistan combined.
That move was decriminalizing the consumption of all drugs and Portugal became the first country to do it.
The policy saw the status of using or possessing drugs for personal use remain illegal. However, offenses were changed from being criminal in nature which involved prison as a possible punishment to being administrative if the amount possessed was no more than a ten-day supply. Needle exchange programs have also been in place since 1993 and today, all drug users can exchange syringes at pharmacy counters across Portugal. Drug treatment was also expanded and improved with successful results.
Finding historical data highlighting the severity of the addiction problem during the late 1990s is difficult but some important numbers do exist which help to show just how remarkable Portugal’s recovery has been. The following infographic pulls data together from several sources to illustrate some key developments.
You will find more infographics at Statista
January 29, 2020
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties | Human rights, Portugal |
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Drinking skim or low-fat (1 percent) instead of whole milk seems to promote obesity in children, according to a meta-analysis in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. As summarized by Nicholas Bakalar in the Times :
“Canadian researchers analyzed 14 prospective studies including 20,897 children up to 18 years old. The studies compared children who drank whole milk (3.25 percent fat) with those given milk containing less than 2 percent fat.
“Combining the data from these studies, the scientists calculated that compared with children who drank low-fat milk or skim milk, those who drank whole milk were at a 39 percent reduced risk for overweight or obesity, and the risk for obesity declined steadily as whole milk consumption increased.
“The authors speculate… It may be that children who drink whole milk consume fewer calories from other food. Some studies suggest that milk fat has properties that make people feel full. Reverse causality could also be at play: It’s possible that skinny children have parents who offer them whole milk to fatten them up.
Our vote is for explanation B, milk fat has properties that make people feel full, i.e., satisfied.
January 29, 2020
Posted by aletho |
Science and Pseudo-Science |
1 Comment
Aletho News 