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OPCW Report (Predictably) Smears Whistleblowers

Despite leaking credibility like a sieve, chemical weapons watchdog doubles down on Douma narrative

By Kit Knightly | OffGuardian | February 6, 2020

The OPCW has released a briefing note summarising the recent “independent investigation” into their recent Titanic-sized leaks. (You can read the summary at the link above, or the full “independent” report here).

It’s a fairly narrow statement, focusing entirely on the two unnamed inspectors (Inspector A and Inspector B) who worked with the Working Group on Syria, Propaganda and Media to leak the censored reports. (There is not a word about the e-mails later released by WikiLeaks).

You won’t be surprised to know that the report finds the two leakers, Ian Henderson and “Alex”, were wrong to leak the confidential information.

In that sense, it’s entirely self-contradictory. Attempting to tell us the information is at once “sensitive”, and also incomplete, incorrect and easily refuted.

Of course, none of that refutation is present here, because that wasn’t the remit of this report. This is just an investigation into the “Possible Breaches of Confidentiality” and not the veracity of the leaks, or the pertinence of the information therein.

Sometimes an incredibly narrow purview is a sound defence against an undesirable reality.

There’s really no new information here, just six pages of waffle telling us very little we didn’t already know. It’s not a report that really means anything at all. It’s just something that the OPCW literally had to say. Institutions have immune responses, they simply must attack their critics. It’s automatic.

If a CIA whistleblower were to announce the sky was blue, the CIA would release a memo claiming to have no official records concerning the visual appearance of our atmosphere and detailing the leaker’s history of alcohol abuse.

Attacking whistleblowers is just a reflex of self-defence, the most base instinct of every lifeform.

In its content and tone, this report is a clear example of that behaviour. Far more a smear and hit piece than a refutation or investigation (at one point it even straight-up lies about Ian Henderson’s career at the OPCW).

Essentially, it’s just a series of attacks on the competence and motivations of the whistleblowers, even to the point of attempting to deny them that status:

“spectors A and B are not whistle-blowers”

The head of OPCW bafflingly declares, before going on to explain:

“They are individuals who could not accept that their views were not backed by evidence. When their views could not gain traction, they took matters into their own hands and breached their obligations to the Organisation. Their behaviour is even more egregious as they had manifestly incomplete information about the Douma investigation.”

See – they’re not “whistleblowers”, they’re just individuals who believed that some documents being kept secret should be made public, and “took matters into their own hands”.

Apparently, that’s different from being a whistleblower. Somehow.

As with so much else in the current political sphere, it’s not so much an argument as an exercise in semantics.

Just as Julian Assange’s arrest became a debate over whether or not he was “really a journalist”, and “antisemitism” is redefined to increasingly ludicrous vagueness, here we are confronted by a memo essentially saying “ignore these leaks, these people are not real whistleblowers”.

It’s really not a report designed to make a case or prove a point. It won’t convert anybody or change a single mind. It’s just there to be at the other end of a link. To supply gate-keeping “journalists” with soundbites to bounce back and forth across twitter and blockquote in their articles.

A final redoubt to provide mainstream attack-dogs like Chris York or Scott Lucas some cover as they make a hasty retreat.

In that sense, it’s already doing its job:

A more obvious example of papering over the cracks, you will not see.

February 6, 2020 Posted by | Deception, Fake News, False Flag Terrorism, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | | Leave a comment

Two Birds with One Flu: Coronavirus Weaponized Against China… and American Dissidents

By Helen Buyniski | Helen of desTroy | February 4, 2020

By now, most people following the 2019 novel coronavirus outbreak have stumbled upon Event 201, the pandemic simulation held at Johns Hopkins University in conjunction with the World Economic Forum, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Johnson & Johnson, and other ruling-class heavy hitters two months before the epidemic was declared. Seemingly tailor-made to set off “conspiracy theorists” – that class of intellectually-curious thought-criminals whom the US media establishment have placed somewhere between child molesters and drunk drivers on the hierarchy of unforgivability – Event 201 was hurriedly “debunked” by that same establishment, which quickly set up and eviscerated a straw man (“No, Bill Gates didn’t cause the coronavirus epidemic!”) and convinced the group itself to issue a statement denying their exercise was meant to predict the behavior of the actual virus, 65 million deaths and all. 

But few are aware that the epidemic playing out in China and two dozen other countries, including the US, is unfolding in line with a decade-old simulation titled “Lock Step” devised by the Rockefeller Foundation in conjunction with the Global Business Network. The scenario, one of four included in a publication called “Scenarios for the Future of Technology and International Development” in 2010, describes a coronavirus-like pandemic that becomes the trigger for the imposition of police-state controls on movement, economy, and other areas of society. The novel coronavirus is thus not merely a depopulation exercise, as some have claimed. It could be the trigger for the imposition of a global police state.

Lock Step describes “a world of tighter top-down government control and more authoritarian leadership, with limited innovation and growing citizen pushback.” In “2012” (i.e. two years after the report’s publication), an “extremely virulent and deadly” strain of influenza originating with wild geese brings the world to its knees, infecting 20 percent of the global population and killing 8 million people in just seven months – “the majority of them healthy young adults.” It devastates global economies and ruptures international trade. But not everyone, the Rockefeller Foundation makes clear, is hit equally.

Countries of Africa, southeast Asia, and central America suffer the worst “in the absence of official containment protocols” – it wouldn’t be the Rockefeller Foundation if someone wasn’t licking their lips at the thought of a mass die-off in the Global South – but western “democracies” also pay the ultimate price. “The United States’ initial policy of ‘strongly discouraging’ citizens from flying proved deadly in its leniency, accelerating the spread of the virus not just within the US but across borders,” the report warns. But remove such obstacles as ‘individual rights’ and you have a recipe for surviving, even thriving in the event of a pandemic, the Foundation gushes:

“A few countries did fare better – China in particular. The Chinese government’s quick imposition and enforcement of mandatory quarantine for all citizens, as well as its instant and near-hermetic sealing-off of all borders, saved millions of lives, stopping the spread of the virus far earlier than in other countries and enabling a swifter post-pandemic recovery.”

The message is clear – police state good, freedom bad. And other governments rapidly get the message, according to the simulation. First and third world nations alike follow suit by “flexing their authority” and imposing quarantines, body-temperature checks, and other “airtight rules and restrictions” – most of which, the report is careful to note, remain in place even as the pandemic recedes into the past. “In order to protect themselves from the spread of increasingly global problems – from pandemics and transnational terrorism to environmental crises and rising poverty – leaders around the world took a firmer grip on power.”

This global power-grab is facilitated by a frightened citizenry who “willingly gave up some of their sovereignty – and their privacy – to more paternalistic states in exchange for greater safety and stability… tolerant, and even eager, for top-down direction and oversight.” Everything from tighter biometric identification to stricter industrial regulation is welcomed with open arms. It takes over a decade for people to “grow weary” of the authoritarian controls imposed in the wake of the pandemic, and hints that even the civil unrest that ultimately manifests is focused on the developed world. After all, a popular uprising in the technocratic police state envisioned by the simulation would be all but impossible – as it will be in real life once 5G makes real-time total surveillance of all cities a reality.

Pin the blame on the dragon

It remains unclear what – or who – unleashed the novel coronavirus in Wuhan. The initial claim that it originated in bats from a “wet market,” in which live animals are sold and then butchered in front of the customer, couldn’t have been more perfect from a western point of view – wet markets are reviled in the West, where consumers prefer that the animal cruelty required to put meat on their tables happens behind closed doors. While wet markets would seem to improve food safety by making it impossible to sell “mystery,” mislabeled or expired meat, time and again they are fingered as disease vectors by the disapproving West, every time followed by calls to ban them entirely. However, the Huanan seafood market hadn’t sold bats for years, meaning – if the “wet market” hypothesis is to persist – an “intermediate host” species would be required to get the virus to humans. Snakes were nominated, even though scientists weren’t sure they could be infected by a coronavirus – it was more important that they eat bats and were sold at the market. Three weeks after the Huanan seafood market was shuttered and disinfected, a Lancet study put the last nail in the hypothesis’ coffin, revealing the first several coronavirus cases had no exposure to the market at all. Perhaps unsurprisingly, this has not discouraged the media from continuing to blame it for the epidemic.

Beyond the disintegrating “official story,” rumormongers have pinned the blame on the Chinese government, suggesting that through malice or incompetence Beijing released a virus cooked up in a top-secret bioweapons program operating in the city’s high-security lab. The chief purveyor of this theory is Dany Shoham, an Israeli biosafety analyst, which should raise a forest of red flags in anyone familiar with Israel’s own experiments in gene-targeted biowarfare even before taking into account Shoham’s own history of fraudulently blaming Saddam Hussein’s Iraq for the 2001 anthrax attacks. Other outlets spreading this theory cite American biosafety consultant Tim Trevan, who opined in a 2017 Nature article – published before the Wuhan lab even opened! – that “diversity of viewpoint” and “openness of information” are both critical to the safe functioning of such a high-risk lab and alien to Chinese culture. The persistence of the “lab accident” theory of coronavirus’ creation thus owes more to cultural chauvinism and sinophobia than any fact-based clues.

While many alt-media outlets have fingered Event 201 as the replica “drill” that so often coincides with a false flag event, few are aware that on the day after that simulation, the 2019 Military World Games kicked off in Wuhan, bringing 300 US military personnel to the city. Former Malaysian PM Matthias Chang, however, zeroed in on the games as the likely entry point for what he described as a biological war waged by the US against China. In an interview with the Institute for War and Peace Reporting last month, Chang placed coronavirus on a continuum of American bio-attacks which he said included deliberate infection of Guatemalans with syphilis and gonorrhea and Cubans with dengue fever, as well as creating the Ebola epidemic in Sierra Leone. 

As of February 4, there are over 1,000 times more coronavirus cases in China than outside of it, and the foreign cases appear to be ethnically Chinese where reported. This is not a coincidence – a recent scientific paper revealed the enzyme which serves as a receptor for novel coronavirus is produced by a certain type of lung cell found in “extremely large numbers” in Asian men compared to those of other ethnicities. Even more intriguingly, those lung cells are involved in the expression of “many other genes that positively regulating [sic] viral reproduction and transmission.” The paper’s authors stop short of suggesting the virus came out of a lab, instead drily observing that it seems to have “cleverly evolved to hijack this population of [lung] cells for its reproduction and transmission,” but one man’s clever viral evolution is another’s expert bioweapon development.

Certainly, American researchers have been surreptitiously collecting Chinese DNA for decades. A notorious Harvard School of Public Health program in the mid-1990s drafted village medics to administer “free physicals” to locals “with asthmatic symptoms.” These “checkups” were conducted as part of a genetic project that also involved the US National Institutes of Health and Millennium Pharmaceuticals, supposedly aimed at “identify[ing] and characteriz[ing] genes that play a role in causing asthma and other allergic disorders.” It later emerged that the researchers had secured the required consent forms from neither the local experimental ethics board nor the test subjects themselves. A government inquiry was commandeered by an insider and squelched. Over 200,000 DNA samples were thus collected and spirited out of the country. 

US military literature has been lusting after genetically-targeted weapons for at least 50 years. The infamous Project for a New American Century, whose members have been steering the US ship of state into a series of icebergs since the George W. Bush administration, described gene-specific bioweapons as a “politically-useful tool,” part and parcel of the “new dimensions of combat” in which the future’s wars would unfold. In 1998, the year after PNAC’s formation, reports Israel was working on just such a weapon to target Arabs while leaving Jews untouched flooded the media – part PR campaign, part warning. And it is DARPA and other divisions of the US military, not  the Chinese, that has been intensively studying bat-borne coronaviruses for years, even as their own high-security biowarfare labs are being shut down for shoddy safety procedures.

Meanwhile, the likelihood of the Chinese government unleashing a genetically-targeted virus on its own population is vanishingly low. Unlike popular attitudes of “white guilt” in the West born of a hangover from colonialism, the Chinese do not traffic in racial self-loathing – indeed, outsiders have accused the Chinese of an unspoken, unshakeable belief in their own racial superiority, and regardless of whether that belief is problematic, it is unlikely to lead to intentional self-genocide. Even if a behavior-correcting false flag was sought by Beijing in Hong Kong, where US-backed pro-“democracy” protests have raged destructively for months, such an event would not have been unleashed hundreds of miles away in Wuhan.

Never let a good crisis go to waste?

The real-life coronavirus is much less virulent than the pandemic described in Lock Step, with an official death toll of “just” 427 and a global infection toll of “only” 20,629 as of February 4, and the dead were mostly over 60 with preexisting medical issues. Economies worldwide are nevertheless in free-fall just like the simulation predicted. This drop is fueled by scare-stories percolating in establishment media and alt-media alike (the name of an actual article in ZeroHedge by a Rabobank analyst: “What if we are on the brink of an exponential increase in coronavirus cases?”) while videos of dubious origin appearing to show horrific scenes from within China keep the virus viral on social media. Adding to the fear is coronavirus’ lengthy incubation period, up to two weeks in which a carrier could be blithely spreading it to everyone they meet, creating a constant threat of a “boom” in cases just around the corner.

China’s economy, of course, is being hit the worst, and the epidemic’s timing could not have been more disastrous from Beijing’s point of view, coming on the eve of the Lunar New Year holiday. At this time, some 400 million Chinese travel around the country to see family, mostly in the high-speed bullet trains that have their hub in – you guessed it – Wuhan. With much of this travel having occurred before the city was quarantined, cases are likely in their incubation phase all over the country, making today’s numbers look like a rounding error. 

Correspondingly, the situation couldn’t be better for the American ruling class: a pandemic that targets Asians striking China just when it’s most vulnerable is a powerful blow to the rising superpower. And in case anyone still believes the circumstances of the virus’ ascendance are merely an extended string of coincidences, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross took that plausible deniability and stomped on it last month, unable to stop himself from gushing that coronavirus would “help to accelerate the return of jobs to North America” in an interview with Fox News. Prefacing his victory lap by saying he didn’t “want to talk about a victory lap over a very unfortunate, very malignant disease,” he pointed out that businesses will be forced to take China’s inexplicable susceptibility to deadly viruses into account when reviewing their supply chains. Unmentioned, but adding to the perfect economic storm, was Trump’s signature on the USMCA trade agreement, supposed to bring in an extra 1.2 percentage points in GDP growth

“On top of all the other things, you had SARS, you had the African Swine virus there, now you have this,” Ross said, hammering home the point by linking coronavirus to other suspect plagues. Just as many scientists concluded SARS was a manmade bioweapon, many – scientists and statesmen as well as alternative media – have raised the alarm about coronavirus. Good luck finding any of their statements on Google, however. Facebook, Youtube and Twitter have been hard at work removing coronavirus “rumors,” and Google has memory-holed hundreds of search results regarding Chinese accusations of biowarfare. Even on platforms that don’t censor on government orders, the baseless claims from Shoham and other disinfo artists about Chinese biowarfare have muscled any comments from Chinese officials out of the way. Even the former Malaysian PM’s comments are obscured behind a Farsi language barrier – his original comments inexplicably missing from English-language media and reprinted only by Iran’s IRIB News Agency (this author can no longer even find the tweet that alerted her to those comments, but would like to thank that person).

Coronavirus is not the doomsday epidemic it is being portrayed as by irresponsible media actors. But as the Lock Step scenario makes clear, one does not need massive die-off or victims exploding in geysers of blood in the streets to achieve desired social goals. It’s possible the novel coronavirus epidemic is a “dry run,” a test of both China’s readiness to handle an outbreak and of the international community’s reaction to such a plague. It’s even possible, though unlikely, that the epidemic was a mistake – that the virus escaped from a lab, likely American, by accident.

It’s also possible the plague may suddenly become more virulent. Certainly the media buzz the first week of February is that coronavirus is close to being declared a “pandemic” by the WHO, which will necessitate the type of control measures hinted at in Lock Step and described more exhaustively in Event 201. From “limited internet shutdowns” and “enforcement actions against fake news” to government bailouts of “core” industries, mandatory vaccinations, property seizures, and other police-state provisions laid out in the Model State Emergency Health Powers Acts passed in many states in the paranoid aftermath of 9/11, the totalitarian nature of these provisions is limited only by the imaginations of the regimes carrying them out. Once events proceed to that stage, it is extremely difficult to reverse them. We would be wise not to allow this to happen.

February 6, 2020 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Fake News, Full Spectrum Dominance, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , | 1 Comment

Iowa disaster redux: DNC demands recanvass as more sordid details emerge about Shadow app’s backers

RT | February 6, 2020

Increasingly glaring irregularities in the Iowa caucus have forced DNC chair Tom Perez to call for a recanvass, as new revelations about those who funded the fiasco suggest a campaign to steal not just the election, but the party.

Just when it looked like the Iowa caucus nightmare was over, with 97 percent of precincts reporting and so many “inconsistencies” glossed over to reach that point that the most corrupt banana republic would raise an eyebrow, Perez has called for a do-over. “In light of the problems that have emerged” and “to assure public confidence in the results,” the party leader ordered its Iowa chapter to “immediately begin a recanvass” on Thursday, adding that a recanvass is not a recount per se but “a review of the worksheets from each caucus site.”

South Bend, Indiana mayor Pete Buttigieg’s brazen caucus-night declaration of victory had been hanging by a thread – Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, clearly the favorite by the popular vote, was gaining on his younger rival in delegate count as well before Perez suggested they restart the process.

Shell-shocked voters had sat patiently through three days of revelations that the corruption and malfeasance infecting the party made 2016’s efforts to rig the primary for Hillary Clinton look like milk and cookies. And now they had to do it again?

The straw that broke the camel’s back might have been the Iowa Democrats’ sheepish walk-back of a set of phony results for Black Hawk County on Wednesday night, which had mysteriously handed a large chunk of Sanders votes to billionaire Tom Steyer and former Massachusetts governor Deval Patrick. When the county supervisor published the actual results, the party dutifully updated their totals to reflect reality after promising a “minor correction.”

But this nonchalant correction of yet another supposedly innocent mistake – all of which, some noticed, had penalized Sanders – wasn’t enough for voters who had lost patience with the process. “How many other counties are having their results falsely reported by the IDP?” one group tweeted, giving voice to the suspicions shared by many.

Nor did Perez’s call for a recanvass pacify the angry mob. Instead, it merely sparked calls for him to resign. The establishment stalwart has been in the crosshairs of the party’s progressive wing since last week’s announcement that the 2020 convention would be packed to the brim with corporate lobbyists, Clinton and Obama administration alumni, and former Clinton campaign director John Podesta himself – whose hacked emails, along with those of the DNC itself, revealed the extent of the primary-rigging scheme against Sanders in 2016.

Monday’s caucus was marred almost immediately by a glitch in the app precincts were supposed to use to report vote totals. When the nature of the glitch became public – vote totals input one way came out differently – angry voters began looking into how and why the Iowa Democrats had used an untested app built by supposedly well-meaning but technologically-inept former Clinton staffers (at a company absurdly called Shadow). Warnings the app didn’t work had been ignored for over a week. The Buttigieg campaign had donated $40,000 to Shadow, whose app seemed to be handing him first place in spite of polls, and Shadow’s parent company Acronym’s founder Tara McGowan was married to a Buttigieg staffer herself. Despite MSM attempts to blame Trump supporters for flooding the hotline set up to report caucus vote totals in the event of a software malfunction, CNN caught line operators deliberately hanging up on precinct supervisors, indicating the problem went far beyond a simple software glitch.

Acronym has now been traced to another notorious figure in Democratic election-meddling circles. Reid Hoffman, the billionaire LinkedIn founder who bankrolled the Shadow-like New Knowledge’s rigging of the 2017 Alabama Senate race using fake “Russian bots” and social media disinformation campaigns, also provided the seed money for Acronym. CEO McGowan personally credited Hoffman for setting her up with the startup capital for her company, which in addition to Shadow runs fake news pages on Facebook remarkably similar to some of New Knowledge’s Alabama propaganda.

Acronym also gave rise to a lucrative political action committee that has sucked up millions of dollars in donations from hardline right-wing Jewish lobbyists, including Times of Israel founder Seth Klarman, who somehow came around from backing Trump and neocon Florida Senator Marco Rubio to embracing Buttigieg and a handful of other centrist Democrats. Klarman financed the Israel Project, which until it closed last year operated fake news pages on Facebook exactly like those run by New Knowledge and Shadow. A pattern appears to be emerging here…

Nor do Acronym’s ambitions end with the 2020 election. Shadow alone is involved in building a system called Lightrail, which will reportedly “help” the Democratic Party centralize its data – and hand the dodgy firm the levers of power within the party.

Sanders, meanwhile, appears to have decided not to wait for the recanvass, claiming victory with a 6,000-vote margin over Buttigieg, though he acknowledged that there was still mathematical correction to be done.

February 6, 2020 Posted by | Deception | , | Leave a comment

Ex-Netanyahu Adviser Brings Thousands Of Christians To Israel On Propaganda Trips

MEMO | February 6, 2020

A former adviser to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has brought thousands of Christian American students to Israel over the last four years for propaganda junkets, reported JTA. 

“Passages”, a nine-day trip whose itinerary includes Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Bethlehem and West Bank settlement Alfei Menashe, began in 2016 and will reach 10,000 participants by the end of this year.

The programme was founded by former Netanyahu adviser Rivka Kidron and former US marine Robert Nicholson.

The initiative is funded by what Kidron described to JTA as a “diverse group” of private donors to the tune of $16.7 million per year (the annual budget for 2020).

According to JTA, Passages is “unabashedly pro-Israel”, calling the country “a force for good in the region and in the world” on its website.

Passages participants “must be recommended and go through a rigorous screening process that aims to identify leadership potential”.

The executive director of “Passages”, Scott Phillips, described the success of the programme as a “long game”.

“Growing the number of students it brings to Israel is one goal, but the final measure of success will be keeping them engaged in the Christian community and in Israel advocacy,” JTA added.

 

February 6, 2020 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , , , | 1 Comment

Abbas is a mouthpiece for international impositions on Palestine

By Ramona Wadi | MEMO | February 6, 2020

The Palestinian Authority has learned nothing from decades of futile UN Security Council Resolutions. Do the people of Palestine really need international consensus regarding the already very clear illegality of US President Donald Trump’s so-called deal of the century?

Pushing on regardless, PA leader Mahmoud Abbas is pursuing repetitive, useless and time-wasting options to give an impression of being engaged diplomatically with the international community and its impositions. While Abbas pleads at the UN to obtain another symbolic show of alleged international support, Israeli Ambassador to the UN Danny Danon is lobbying the Security Council “to enlist their support for the joint US-Israeli action and to prevent support for any Palestinian declarations of protest.”

The draft resolution calls for a rejection of Trump’s deal and seeks yet another endorsement of the two-state compromise, despite the impossibility of its implementation. Abbas’s refusal to consider a unified Palestinian approach that encompasses all legitimate forms of resistance against Israeli colonisation makes UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres’s job of presiding over the constant Israeli violations of international law and human rights easier. As long as the PA scrambles after the international community for a solution, the UN only has to regurgitate the same rhetoric about its two-state vision. Accountability in this regard is not applicable, as the PA and the UN know full well.

In what would now be perceived as a weak condemnation of Trump’s deal, Guterres cautioned against “actions that would erode the possibility of a viable and contiguous Palestinian state,” with reference to Israeli settlement expansion. However, the US-Israeli scheming goes beyond expansion to formal, rather than merely fact-on-the-ground annexation. The UN is, as usual, several strategic steps behind, so as not to run out of the plethora of violations to speak out against during opportune moments in which the Palestinian cause is exploited yet again.

If the US vetoes the resolution, which is certain, the PA is likely to get another round of passive support from the UN General Assembly. For Abbas, a show of votes might be enough to claim validity, yet again, for the two-state compromise, as opposed to Palestinians’ political rights. The truth, however, is that the international community has only supported rhetoric about Palestinian rights. Altering its trajectory now would spell disaster for the UN in terms of its own complicity in endorsing Israel’s colonisation of Palestine. Hence, the cautious warnings against settlement expansion while refusing to advocate in favour of decolonisation. Likewise, the UN will entertain Abbas and his overtures because the PA has proved that it squanders any potential for change.

Trump’s deal is the least of the international community’s concerns. Abbas is only accentuating his irrelevance with resolution gimmicks at the UN. Palestinians are voiceless at the UN primarily because of the UN’s protection of Israel, but also due to Abbas consolidating his role as spokesman for international demands and counter-narratives about what Palestinians want. A resolution confirming what is already known makes no difference to the political violence that Israel continues to inflict upon Palestinians. The PA should be turning towards its own people, as it should have done on previous occasions and refused, instead of wasting time at the UN for yet another opportunity to lament about delays.

February 6, 2020 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Palestinians in Israel are the next target for the deal of the century

Women in Gaza come together to protest against Trump's 'peace deal' on 5 February 2020 [Mohammad Asad/Middle East Monitor]

Women in Gaza come together to protest against Trump’s ‘peace deal’ on 5 February 2020 [Mohammad Asad/Middle East Monitor]
MEMO | February 6, 2020

Israelis of all political persuasions welcomed the Trump “peace plan”, but the Palestinian citizens of the self-styled Jewish state are angry because the deal refers to land and population swaps between Israel and Palestinian Authority territory. This confirms that Israel wants to displace them, fulfilling right wing aspirations.

Arab members of the Israeli parliament have said that they will not agree to the deal of the century and its explicit annexation proposal. Nevertheless, the right-wing Israeli government now has a green light to strip citizenship from hundreds of thousands of Palestinians living in the “Triangle” in northern Israel.

It is clear that Trump’s plan is not just about taking more of the Palestinian land occupied in 1967, but that it also wants to “transfer” Palestinians from the areas occupied in 1948. Israel wants to “swap” the area with the PA; protests against this are not, therefore, simply in solidarity with the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and the refugees in the diaspora. There is also a conspiracy against their existence in Israel.

The Palestinians in Israel have held crisis talks about the implications of the deal, especially for those in the Triangle, which is a predominantly Arab area in Israel, near the West Bank, divided into the Northern Triangle and the towns of Kafr Qara, Ar’ara, Baqa Al-Gharbiyye and Umm Al-Fahm, and the Southern Triangle, which includes Qalansawe, Tayibe, Kafr Qasim, Tira, Kafr Bara and Jaljulia. It is a stronghold of the Islamic movement in Israel, led by Sheikh Raed Salah.

The part of the Triangle mentioned in the Trump plan covers 350 square kilometres. The area threatened by the swap proposal covers more than 42,000 acres, inhabited by 300,000 Palestinians, who make up 20 per cent of the total Palestinian population inside Israel and have Israeli citizenship. These villages are thus a source of demographic concern for Israel due to the steadily increasing population, which is expected to reach 500,000 in the next five years, tipping the demographic balance in favour of the Palestinian Arabs.

The Triangle is more conservative in nature than the more integrated Arab regions in Israel. Swapping the land and population out of Israel will see the loss of those who best preserve traditional Palestinian identity. Local political groups believe that the land and population swap is an extension of previous efforts by Israel to liquidate the Palestinian issue; Israel wants more land but without the people of Palestine on it. It is not the first time that the Israelis have sought to transfer the largest number of Triangle residents and the least amount of land. Such a move will not only hit the Palestinians directly involved, but also their extended families and social connections, many of which will be severed.

Efforts to Judaise the Triangle areas to provide Israel with some strategic depth have included a belt of settlements on the outskirts of the Arab towns. This has caused anxiety among the Palestinians, with almost daily attacks by settlers against them and their properties. There is also a fear that another massacre like that at Kafr Qasem in 1956 is on the cards in order to make the local population leave of their own accord.

A plan developed by the late Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, called the “Seven Stars” project, tried to change the demographic nature of the Triangle. A Jewish majority was to be created by establishing religious centres, hemming-in Umm Al-Fahm so that it could not be developed further, and linking the area to settlements in the West Bank. This would also have seen the removal of the so-called Green “Armistice” Line of 1949 dividing the Palestinian territories occupied in 1948 from those occupied in 1967. The latter were supposed to form the “State of Palestine” according to the international consensus. Sharon’s project did not get beyond the discussion stage.

It is clear that Israel is seeking to buy enough time to impose a fait accompli on the ground by getting Knesset approval for the deal. Although the Arab MKs have the third largest coalition with 12 seats, their chances of thwarting the vote on the plan are almost non-existent in light of the general agreement within Israel to implement Trump’s plan.

Israelis have declared the Palestinian-Israeli population growth as a “demographic time bomb”. With a falling birth rate among Israeli Jews, the fear is that Palestinians will outnumber them across historic Palestine within the next ten years.

Land swaps to defuse this “threat” to the “Jewishness” of the state of Israel have been mooted before, of course. Post-1967, Israel’s policies in the newly-occupied territories have included the annexation of Jerusalem, still unrecognised by most countries in the world; land confiscation; house demolitions and the removal of residency rights.

In 1982 a secret document called for the Interior Ministry to crack down on the Palestinians and push them to leave their land. This was picked up by the racist General Rehavam Ze’evi in 1988, and notorious Rabbi Meir Kahane, who called for Umm Al-Fahm to be attacked as a means of provoking its residents.

By 2004, former Defence Minister Avigdor Lieberman was proposing the swap of minor Israeli settlements in the West Bank with Arab villages and towns in the Triangle, based on similar agreements made post-World War Two in different parts of the world. Donald Trump’s “peace plan” is in many ways simply a US-endorsed Judaisation project giving Israel everything that it wants, for now. Its aims and objectives mirror those of earlier schemes.

Israeli security agencies are also concerned about the growing influence and activities of the Islamic movement within the “Jewish state”, particularly in the Triangle, as its ideas are similar to those of the Muslim Brotherhood. The movement also mobilises volunteers against Israeli violations at Al-Aqsa Mosque. The fear is that the conflict will spill over into serious clashes between Palestinian Muslims and religious Jews.

The timing of the release of the deal of the century helped Benjamin Netanyahu, who faces yet another general election next month — the third in less than a year — as well as indictments for corruption. The deal is a bit of a lifeline for the Israeli Prime Minister. Nevertheless, approval and implementation of its terms may be postponed until after the election, giving the Arab MKs time to try to prevent the displacement of citizens from the Triangle.

Palestinians within Israel believe that the Trump “peace plan” is anything but peaceful, and will lead to violence. In fulfilling the aims and aspirations of the Israeli far-right, it looks set to entrench even further Israel’s status as an apartheid state, with the indigenous people facing ever more discriminatory legislation and displacement. It remains to be seen if they can prevent the implementation of the plan, at least the land swap clause, which seeks to rob so many people of their citizenship and transfer them against their will.

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The PA will opt for losing Palestine if it means keeping its ‘authority’

February 6, 2020 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , , , | 2 Comments

First Morocco, then Sudan: Netanyahu Intensifies Normalization Efforts with more Arab Countries

Palestine Chronicle | February 6, 2020

Amid the ongoing Israeli efforts to normalize ties with African countries, Tel Aviv has been intensifying its diplomatic relations with Sudan and Morocco over the last week.

On February 4, Israeli media reported that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had been lobbying the United States to recognize Moroccan sovereignty over the occupied Western Sahara region, in exchange for a normalization of ties with Rabat.

Although the two countries have no official diplomatic relations, “contacts between Netanyahu and the Moroccans started getting more serious after a secret meeting with Moroccan Foreign Minister Nasser Bourita on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in September 2018,” according to American news website Axios.

Meanwhile, Sudan had agreed to allow flights to Israel to cross its airspace, Reuters news agency reported Wednesday.

This comes two days after Sudan’s top military official Abdel Fattah al-Burhan held a surprise meeting with Netanyahu in Uganda.

Burhan currently serves as the head of Sudan’s Sovereign Council, a transitional ruling body made up of civilian and military figures.

The visit stirred controversy in the African country, generating tensions between the military and civilian groups, with Sudan’s Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok declaring that “all decisions related to Sudan’s foreign affairs “should be made” exclusively by his Cabinet”, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported.

Defiant, the Sudanese military responded with a statement Wednesday in which it described the meeting as being in “the highest interests of national security and of Sudan.”

Sudan’s military spokesman Amer Mohamed al-Hassan told Al Jazeera that “Sudan has not announced full normalization (with Israel), but it is exchanging interests”.

“From Uganda, Netanyahu declared that Israel and Sudan were working towards normalizing relations.” Haaretz also reported. “For Israel, it was a major diplomatic breakthrough with a Muslim-majority African state.”

“The continent’s rapprochement with Israel is unfortunate, because, for decades, Africa has stood as a vanguard against all racist ideologies, including Zionism – the ideology behind Israel’s establishment on the ruins of Palestine,” wrote Palestinian journalist and editor of The Palestine Chronicle Ramzy Baroud.

“If Africa succumbs to Israeli enticement and pressure to fully embrace the Zionist state, the Palestinian people would lose a treasured partner in their struggle for freedom and human rights,” Baroud added.

February 6, 2020 Posted by | Corruption, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , , , , | 2 Comments

Syrian Army captured Saraqib. Netanyahu and Erdogan come to the rescue

South Front | February 06, 2020

In Greater Idlib the defences of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham and other favorites of the foreign powers supporting ‘Syrian democracy’ are collapsing.

On February 5, the Syrian Army, supported by Russian airpower, took control of a number of villages in southeastern Idlib and southwestern Aleppo including Resafa, al-Dhahabiyah, Ajlas, Talafih and Judiydat Talafih. They besieged a Turkish observation post established near Tal Toqan and reached another one, near al-Sheikh Mansur.

Late on the same day, the army’s Tiger Forces captured the eastern entrance to Saraqib and established fire control over the open roads leading from the town. According to local sources, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham and other al-Qaeda so-called freedom fighters started fleeing the town. The Turkish Army had stuck several observation posts right in the area, but these apparently did not help.

Early on February 6, pro-government forces seized the area of Duwayr, cutting off the M5 highway north of Saraqib. Thus, the road through Saramin remained the only way to flee for militants remaining in the town. However, it is under the fire control of the Syrian Army.

Several hours after this government forces took full control of Saraqib.

Saraqib Nahiyah is the largest subdistrict of the Idlib district of the province. The subdistrict is located on the crossroad of the M4 and M5 highways. Its pre-war population was approximately 88,000. The fall of Saraqib into the hands of Damascus and its allies will allow government troops to continue the operation clearing the entire M5 highway and open the road to Idlib city itself.

Right on cue, while the Syrian Army was storming Saraqib, the Israeli Air Force delivered a wide-scale strike on targets in the countryside of the Syrian capital, Damascus, and in the province of Daraa. The Al-Kiswa area, Marj al-Sultan, Baghdad Bridge and the area south of Izraa were among the confirmed targets of the attack.

Syria’s State media claimed that the Syrian Air Defense shot down most of the Israeli missiles before they were able to reach their targets. Pro-Israeli sources claim that the strikes successfully hit Iran-related targets destroying weapon depots and HQs of Iranian-backed forces. The Israeli leadership once again officially confirmed its participation in the club of terrorism supporters in Syria.

Another member of the al-Qaeda Rescue Rangers is Mr Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

On February 5, he vowed that Turkey would deploy locally made air-defense systems along the border with Syria. The President did not provide many details on the matter, but the aforementioned systems were likely the HISAR-A low-altitude air-defense system which will be deployed along the border with Idlib.

Additionally, Erdogan delivered an ultimatum to Syria claiming that “if the Syrian regime will not retreat from Turkish observation posts in Idlib in February, Turkey itself will be obliged to make this happen.” In other words, the Turkish president threatened to declare war on Syria if the Syrian Army does not withdraw from the territory it liberated from terrorists.

Video Report

February 6, 2020 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Intimidating or Coercing a Civilian Population Is Terrorism. Right?

So Trump’s ‘peace plan’ threatening to wipe out the Palestinians’ legitimate rights and reduce them to a fragmented vassal mini-state with restricted freedom and limited self-rule, to be forever at the mercy of their cruel and lawless neighbor, is a terror document. Right?

By Stuart Littlewood | American Herald Tribune | February 5, 2020

The US administration uses GW Bush’s Executive Order 13224, Section 3, to outlaw and crush any individual, any organisation or any nation that gets in its way. It deals with Blocking Property and Prohibiting Transactions With Persons Who Commit, Threaten To Commit, or Support Terrorism. And for this purpose, the term ‘‘terrorism’’ means an activity that—

(i) involves a violent act or an act dangerous to human life, property, or infrastructure; and

(ii) appears to be intended—

(a) to intimidate or coerce a civilian population;

(b) to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion; or

(c) to affect the conduct of a government by assassination or kidnapping.

The joke is that the US itself, and its special buddy Israel, fall straight in. It fits them like a glove. And they can’t see it.

The Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) is unhappy with the way the US State Department defines terrorism, pointing out that it only includes “violent acts carried out by non-state actors”. Where the Department, in its main report, does include “State Sponsors of Terrorism” it means only nations that sponsor non-state actors. Nowhere does it address the fact that states commit direct acts of terrorism or the extent to which non-state actors are simply reacting to such terrorism.

With America, it’s always the other guys who are terrorists. “For over a decade, Gaza has been ruled by Hamas, a terror organization, responsible for the murder and maiming of thousands of Israelis,” says Trump’s land-grab plan.

It adds: “Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza nearly 15 years ago was meant to advance peace. Instead, Hamas, an internationally recognized terrorist group, gained control over the territory, and increased attacks on Israel, including the launching of thousands of rockets…. As a result of Hamas’ terror and misrule, the people of Gaza suffer from massive unemployment, widespread poverty, drastic shortages of electricity and potable water, and other problems that threaten to precipitate a wholesale humanitarian crisis.”

The White House and their Tel Aviv puppet masters still delude themselves that they can fool all the people all the time. But alternative media speaking truth to power is increasingly heard, so fewer people are swallowing their lies. The Trump plan claims the governance structure in Gaza is run by terrorists who provoke confrontations, therefore, Israel will only implement its obligations under the Peace Agreement if the Palestinian Authority or some other body acceptable to Israel is in full control of Gaza and Gaza is fully demilitarized.  It threatens that Hamas, if it is to play a role in a Palestinian government, must adopt the Quartet principles, which include “unambiguously and explicitly recognizing the State of Israel, committing to non-violence, and accepting previous agreements and obligations between the parties, including the disarming of all terrorist groups”. There’s no similar obligation placed on Israel, no symmetry whatsoever.

At every opportunity, Hamas and Hezbollah, legitimate resisters to Israeli aggression, are demonized. It’s a bit rich for any ally of Israel to call Hamas terrorists.  It would be very difficult objectively to classify Hamas as a terror government, given the context of decades of brutal military occupation, economic suffocation, ethnic cleansing and denial of human rights at the hands of a lawless intruder.  And never mind the fact that Hamas was voted into power in full and fair elections.

In contrast, the state of Israel was founded on terror, which is well documented. Some years ago a colleague sent me a list of terror techniques in the Middle East “first used by Zionists”. They had appeared on several forums with requests for corrections. I’d seen evidence for some, but others were new to me. I mention them here only as claims and invite readers to point out any errors.

  • Bombs in Cafés: first used by Zionists in Palestine on March 17, 1937 in Jaffa (actually grenades).
  • Bombs on Buses: first used by Zionists in Palestine August 20-September 26, 1937
  • Drive-by shootings with automatic weapons: IZL [Irgun] in 1937-38 and 1947-48 (Morris, Righteous Victims, p681.)
  • Bombs in Market Places: first used by Zionists on July 6, 1938 in Haifa. (Delayed-action, electrically detonated)
  • Bombing of a passenger ship: first used by the Zionists in Haifa on 25 November 1940, killing over 200 of their own fellows.
  • Bombing of Hotels: first used by Zionists on July 22, 1946 in Jerusalem [the infamous attack by Irgun on the King David Hotel which served as the central offices of the British Mandatory authority of Palestine] Irgun’s leader, Menachem Begin, went on to become Prime Minister of Israel.
  • Suitcase bombing: first used by Zionists on October 1, 1946 against British Embassy in Rome.
  • Mining of Ambulances: First used by Zionists on October 31, 1946 in Petah Tikvah.
  • Car-bomb: first used by Zionists against the British near Jaffa 5 December 1946.
  • Letter Bombs: first used by Zionists in June 1947 against members of the British government, 20 of them.
  • Parcel Bomb: first used by Zionists against the British in London 3 September 1947.
  • Reprisal murder of hostages: first used by Zionists against the British in Netanya area on 29 July 1947.
  • Truck-bombs: first used by Zionists 4 January 1948 in the centre of Jaffa, killing 26.
  • Aircraft hijacking: world-first state hijack by Israeli jets Dec 1954 on a Syrian civilian airliner (random seizure of hostages to recover 5 spies).
  • Biological Warfare: pathogens used by Zionists in 1948, prior to the seizure of Acre, putting typhus into the water supply.
  • Chemical Warfare: nerve gas very likely used by Zionists in February/March 2001 in at least 8 attacks in Khan Younis and Gharbi refugee camps (Gaza) and the town of Al-Bireh (West Bank).
  • Nuclear threats made by Zionists e.g. 2003: “We have the capability to take the world down with us. And I can assure you that that will happen, before Israel goes under.” – Remarks of Martin Van Creveld, a professor of military history at Israel’s Hebrew University, 1 Feb 2003.

We can probably add “sofa slaughter” with armed drones. The Israelis use this armchair technique extensively in Gaza, unleashing death and destruction on civilians by remote control at no personal risk to themselves. There are interesting variations too. For example, during the 40-day siege of the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem in 2002 the Israeli Occupation Force set up cranes on which were mounted robotic machine guns under video control. According to eye-witnesses eight defenders, including the bell-ringer, were murdered, some by the armchair button-pushers and some by regular snipers.

Banned horror weapons spread terror

There’s also the use, suspected or real, of prohibited weapons to put Palestinians in a state of fear. In July 2006 doctors in Lebanon and Gaza were saying: “We never saw before wounds and corpses like those that arrive in the ward…” The majority of victims were women, children and elders caught in Israeli attacks in the street, in the market place and at home.

What doctors saw led them to believe that a new generation of weapons was being tested. Common to all victims was the lack of visible wounds, but they had serious internal edema and hemorrhage with loss of blood from all orifices. All the bodies had a covering of dark powder making them look black, but they were not burnt. Clothes and hair were not damaged or burnt.

Electron microscope scans showed the presence of phosphorous, iron and magnesium at below normally detectable levels. Elements that are used as additives to boost the blast of thermobaric (fuel-air energy) bombs and grenades were found on skin samples, but none of these could be seen by instruments normally used in hospitals and emergency wards.

The United States had developed thermobaric bombs and grenades for the war against “terror” in Afghanistan. “All enemy personnel within the effective radius will suffer lethal effects as opposed to the conventional fragmentation round.” These weapons produce a thermobaric overpressure blast and leave no fragments on or in the victims’ bodies, making it all the more difficult to provide proper care for the injured. “This fact already puts them outside established conventions of war, regardless of whether they are used against military or civilians,” say the doctors.

Thermobaric effects are devastating. “Those near the ignition point are obliterated. Those at the fringe are likely to suffer many internal, and thus invisible injuries, including burst eardrums and crushed inner ear organs, severe concussions, ruptured lungs and internal organs, and possibly blindness. The destruction, death, and injury are caused by the blast wave,” says one report.

Another, in Defense Technology, says: “Each tissue type… is compressed, stretched, sheared or disintegrated by overload according to its material properties. Internal organs that contain air (sinuses, ears, lungs and intestines) are particularly vulnerable to blast.”

Is the US sure it hasn’t supplied its bosom-pal Israel with these horrendous items knowing perfectly well they’d use them against women and children packed like sardines in Gaza?

And let’s not forget the assassinations and extra-judicial executions. In the US there’s a presidential prohibition on assassination except in war situations, but if they can conjure up an intelligence ‘finding’ that enables them to label the target a ‘terrorist,’ and claim assassination is an act of self-defense in a war situation, they’re in the clear – as Trump demonstrated when ordering Soleimani killed.

But for Israel, there are no such restraints. Assassination became an official Israeli policy in 1999. Their preferred method is the air-strike, which is lazy and often messy, as demonstrated in 2002 when Israeli F-16 warplanes bombed the house of Sheikh Salah Shehadeh, the military commander of Hamas, in Gaza City killing not just him but at least 11 other Palestinians including seven children, and wounding 120 others.

Which brings us back to Trump’s so-called peace deal designed to deny Palestinians their rights and put them in fear for their freedom, security, sovereignty, prosperity, dignity, and hopes for nation-building – now and forever.

It’s the very model of a vile terror document.

February 6, 2020 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , | 2 Comments

Russia was second-biggest energy exporter to US in Autumn 2019, volumes hit 8-year high

By Jonny Tickle | RT | February 6, 2020

Given the dire state of Russia-US political relations, and Washington’s steadfast defense of its alliance with Saudi Arabia, it seems almost unbelievable that Moscow sends more energy exports America’s way than Riyadh.

Nevertheless, figures recently published by the US Energy Information Administration (EIA) say it’s true: Russia is America’s second-biggest source of crude oil and petroleum products.

Despite years of sanctions, the autumn of 2019 saw the amount of Russian ‘black gold’ sold to the US reach levels not seen since before the 2013/14 Ukraine crisis. Last October, imports sharply increased, with the Americans purchasing 20.9 million barrels.

Although volumes sourced from Russia paled in comparison to those from Canada (136.5 million barrels), they managed to overtake both the US’s southern neighbor Mexico and Saudi Arabia – the world’s leading exporter of oil.

Last month, Russian media reported that the US had inadvertently helped Russia boost oil sales through restrictive measures against other countries, such as Iran and Venezuela. This led the Americans to turn to Moscow to make up shortfalls.

Venezuela traditionally ships about 15-20 million barrels of oil to the USA every month, but all imports ceased following sanctions last summer.

Raiffeisenbank analyst Andrey Polishchuk told Moscow daily RBK that another reason for the increase in deliveries may be a fall in prices for Russian Urals oil; in October 2019, the blend cost only $58.5 per barrel – 1.4 times cheaper than the previous year.

The sharp increase in exports beat a record which had stood for over eight years; the last time Russia supplied more oil to the USA was in November 2011, long before the start of tensions over Syria and Ukraine. In November, Russia dropped back into third place, as it delivered 19.2 million barrels compared to Mexico’s 21.2 million.

February 6, 2020 Posted by | Economics | , , | 1 Comment

Twitter Says It’ll Censor Deepfakes And Basically Anything Else It Wants To Ahead Of 2020 Election

By Tyler Durden – Zero Hedge – 02/05/2020

Just days after banning Zero Hedge, Twitter has announced it’ll also be implementing new rules to address deepfakes and “other forms of synthetic and manipulated media” as we head closer to the 2020 election.

Because we can’t have a repeat of 2016, right?

The company said it is going to not allow users to “deceptively share synthetic or manipulated media that are likely to cause harm,” according to CNBC. The rules go into effect after March 5 this year, where the company will now label some Tweets containing synthetic or manipulated media.

Social media can, and will, have a profound effect on the state of the election heading into November this year. Altered media often shows up, with candidates words sometimes parroted or mocked in certain ads that seek to undermine them. Lawmakers have been trying to figure out a way to hold social media companies accountable for the spread of misinformation.

According to CNBC, last month the “House Subcommittee on Consumer Protection and Commerce held a hearing where experts shared warnings of both deepfakes and potential over-regulation of tech platforms that host them.”

Twitter is now going to test media in three different ways to see if it meets parameters that violate its policy.

  • Is the media synthetic or manipulated?
  • Was it shared in a deceptive manner?
  • Is it likely the content will cause serious harm?

The article notes that if all three of these come back “yes”, that Twitter said it would be likely to remove the content.

But we’re willing to bet – and we know from experience – that Twitter is just going to remove the content it wants to, regardless. 

In fact, the new policy is broad enough that it’ll allow the company to even take action against “cheapfakes”, which are low-tech edits meant to deceive other users. And what example is immediately brought up in CNBC’s article? One video where a Twitter user simply slowed down a video of Nancy Pelosi:

The doctored video of Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi that circulated on social media last year, for example, would be an example of such amateur editing, since the video was simply slowed down to give the effect that her speech was slow and slurred. More sophisticated deepfakes can involve transposing a person’s face on a video of another person, for example, which could give false impressions of a person’s words or actions.

So we guess we won’t be seeing any videos of her tearing up the State of the Union Speech in slow motion.

Twitter also said that some world leaders would be exempt from some of its policy standards. They company said it’s because “it’s important for users to see and be able to debate their messages.” But we know it’s likely because Twitter doesn’t want to lose the traffic they drive and popularity they bring to the site.

Again it seems like a case of Twitter enabling itself for purely arbitrary and discretionary bans of whomever it wants, whenever it wants.

February 6, 2020 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , | 1 Comment

Stop using Russia as chief ‘bogeyman’, let’s normalize relations – Putin spokesman to US politicians

By Bryan MacDonald | RT | February 6, 2020

After a few years of ‘Russiagate’, which bizarrely mutated into a Ukraine-inspired impeachment trial, now that Donald Trump has been declared ‘not guilty’ by the Senate, the Kremlin would like to move on.

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, says it’s time for American politicians to stop using Russia as the main “bogeyman” in their internal battles. He added that as soon as Russian-American relations are taken off the domestic agenda in Washington, it should be possible to “normalize” relations between the two countries.

Asked to comment on the Senate’s verdict, Peskov noted that Russia “traditionally doesn’t like to interfere in the internal politics of the US,” but conceded the outcome of the trial was “quite easily predicted by anyone, not just specialists in American affairs.”

“For us, the main thing is that in their domestic political and election battles, Americans stop using Russia as the main bogeyman and, as it were, the primary demon of their political arena,” Peskov told reporters on Thursday morning. “For us, this is completely unacceptable.”

Some Russian politicians have publicly commented on the acquittal. The head of the Federation Council’s committee on international affairs, Konstantin Kosachev, believes the fallout will strengthen Trump’s position. And Senator Aleksey Pushkov believes it strengthens Trump’s chances of winning a second term, as reported by Izvestia.

Over the past four years, the levels of anti-Russia hysteria in the US shocked Russians, who broadly believed it belonged to the Cold War-era. The main culprit was cable television, and sections of the mainstream written press. For instance, MSNBC’s flagship ‘Rachel Maddow’ Show at one point dedicated more coverage to Russia than all other topics combined.

Much of Maddow’s scaremongering was based on the so-called ‘Steele Dossier’, an unverified, and largely discredited, document compiled by a former British spy. The Sunday Times, known to have good sources in British intelligence, recently reported that it was a “work of fabrication.”

February 6, 2020 Posted by | Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Russophobia | , | 1 Comment