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How an Internet ‘Persona’ Helped Birth Russiagate

By Ray McGovern | Consortium News | June 15, 2020

Four years ago today, on June 15, 2016, a shadowy Internet persona calling itself “Guccifer 2.0” appeared out of nowhere to claim credit for hacking emails from the Democratic National Committee on behalf of WikiLeaks and implicate Russia by dropping “telltale” but synthetically produced Russian “breadcrumbs” in his metadata.

Thanks largely to the corporate media, the highly damaging story actually found in those DNC emails — namely, that the DNC had stacked the cards against Bernie Sanders in the party’s 2016 primary— was successfully obscured.

The media was the message; and the message was that Russia had used G-2.0 to hack into the DNC, interfering in the November 2016 election to help Donald Trump win.

Almost everybody still “knows” that — from the man or woman in the street to the forlorn super sleuth, Special Counsel Robert Swan Mueller III, who actually based indictments of Russian intelligence officers on Guccifer 2.0.

Blaming Russia was a magnificent distraction from the start and quickly became the vogue.

The soil had already been cultivated for “Russiagate” by Democratic PR gems like Donald Trump “kissing up” to former KGB officer Vladimir Putin and their “bromance” (bromides that former President Barack Obama is still using). Four years ago today, “Russian meddling” was off and running — on steroids — acquiring far more faux-reality than the evanescent Guccifer 2.0 persona is likely to get.

Here’s how it went down:

1 — June 12: WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange announced he had “emails related to Hillary Clinton which are pending publication.”

2 — June 14: DNC contractor CrowdStrike tells the media that malware has been found on the DNC server and claims there is evidence it was injected by Russians.

3 — June 15: Guccifer 2.0 arises from nowhere; affirms the DNC/CrowdStrike allegations of the day before; claims responsibility for hacking the DNC; claims to be a WikiLeaks source; and posts a document that forensic examination shows was deliberately tainted with “Russian fingerprints.” This to “corroborate” claims made by CrowdStrike executives the day before.

Adding to other signs of fakery, there is hard evidence that G-2.0 was operating mostly in U.S. time zones and with local settings peculiar to a device configured for use within the U.S., as Tim Leonard reports here and here.)

Leonard is a software developer who started to catalog and archive evidence related to Guccifer 2.0 in 2017 and has issued detailed reports on digital forensic discoveries made by various independent researchers — as well as his own — over the past three years. Leonard points out that WikiLeaks said it did not use any of the emails G2.0 sent it, though it later published similar emails, opening the possibility that whoever created G2.0 knew what WikiLeaks had and sent it duplicates with the Russian fingerprints.

As Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) told President Trump in a memorandum of July 24, 2017, titled “Was the ‘Russian Hack’ an Inside Job?”:

“We do not think that the June 12, 14, & 15 timing was pure coincidence. Rather, it suggests the start of a pre-emptive move to associate Russia with anything WikiLeaks might have been ready to publish and to ‘show’ that it came from a Russian hack.”

We added this about Guccifer 2.0 at the time:

“The recent forensic studies fill in a critical gap. Why the FBI neglected to perform any independent forensics on the original ‘Guccifer 2.0’ material remains a mystery – as does the lack of any sign that the ‘hand-picked analysts’ from the FBI, CIA, and NSA, who wrote the misnomered ‘Intelligence Community’ Assessment dated January 6, 2017, gave any attention to forensics.”

Guccifer 2.0 Seen As a Fraud

In our July 24, 2017 memorandum we also told President Trump that independent cyber investigators and VIPS had determined “that the purported ‘hack’ of the DNC by Guccifer 2.0 was not a hack, by Russia or anyone else. Rather it originated with a copy (onto an external storage device – a thumb drive, for example) by an insider. Information was leaked to implicate Russia. We do not know who or what the murky Guccifer 2.0 is. You may wish to ask the FBI.” [Emphasis added.].

Right. Ask the FBI. At this stage, President Trump might have better luck asking Attorney General William Barr, to whom the FBI is accountable — at least in theory. As for Barr, VIPS informed him in a June 5, 2020 memorandum that the head of CrowdStrike had admitted under oath on Dec. 5, 2017 that CrowdStrike has no concrete evidence that the DNC emails published by WikiLeaks on July 22, 2016 were hacked — by Russia or by anyone else. [Emphasis added.] This important revelation has so far escaped attention in the Russia-Russia-Russia “mainstream” media (surprise, surprise, surprise!).

Back to the Birth of G-2

It boggles the mind that so few Americans could see Russiagate for the farce it was. Most of the blame, I suppose, rests on a thoroughly complicit Establishment media. Recall: Assange’s announcement on June 12, 2016 that he had Hillary Clinton-related emails came just six weeks before the Democratic convention. I could almost hear the cry go up from the DNC: Houston, We Have a Problem!

Clinton at the 2016 convention. (Wikimedia Commons)

Here’s how bad the problem for the Democrats was. The DNC emails eventually published by WikiLeaks on July 22, 2016, just three days before the Democratic convention, had been stolen on May 23 and 25. This would have given the DNC time to learn that the stolen material included documents showing how the DNC and Clinton campaign had manipulated the primaries and created a host of other indignities, such that Sanders’ chances of winning the nomination amounted to those of a snowball’s chance in the netherworld.

To say this was an embarrassment would be the understatement of 2016. Worse still, given the documentary nature of the emails and WikiLeaks’ enviable track record for accuracy, there would be no way to challenge their authenticity. Nevertheless, with the media in full support of the DNC and Clinton, however, it turned out to be a piece of cake to divert attention from the content of the emails to the “act of war” (per John McCain) that the Russian “cyber attack” was said to represent.

The outcome speaks as much to the lack of sophistication on the part of American TV watchers, as it does to the sophistication of the Democrats-media complicity and cover-up. How come so few could figure out what was going down?

It was not hard for some experienced observers to sniff a rat. Among the first to speak out was fellow Consortium News columnist Patrick Lawrence, who immediately saw through the Magnificent Diversion. I do not know if he fancies duck hunting, but he shot the Russiagate canard quite dead — well before the Democratic convention was over.

Magnificent Diversion

Patrick Lawrence

In late July 2016, Lawrence was sickened, as he watched what he immediately recognized as a well planned, highly significant deflection. The Clinton-friendly media was excoriating Russia for “hacking” DNC emails and was glossing over what the emails showed; namely, that the Clinton Dems had pretty much stolen the nomination from Sanders.

It was already clear even then that the Democrats, with invaluable help from intelligence leaks and other prepping to the media, had made good use of those six weeks between Assange’s announcement that he had emails “related to Hillary Clinton” and the opening of the convention.

The media was primed to castigate the Russians for “hacking,” while taking a prime role in the deflection. It was a liminal event of historic significance, as we now know. The “Magnificent Diversion” worked like a charm — and then it grew like Topsy.

Lawrence said he had “fire in the belly” on the morning of July 25 as the Democratic convention began and wrote what follows pretty much “in one long, furious exhale” within 12 hours of when the media started really pushing the “the Russians-did-it” narrative.

Below is a slightly shortened text of his article:

“Now wait a minute, all you upper-case “D” Democrats. A flood light suddenly shines on your party apparatus, revealing its grossly corrupt machinations to fix the primary process and sink the Sanders campaign, and within a day you are on about the evil Russians having hacked into your computers to sabotage our elections …

Is this a joke? Are you kidding? Is nothing beneath your dignity? Is this how lowly you rate the intelligence of American voters? …

Clowns. Subversives. Do you know who you remind me of? I will tell you: Nixon, in his famously red-baiting campaign — a disgusting episode — … during his first run for the Senate, in 1950. Your political tricks are as transparent and anti-democratic as his, it is perfectly fair to say.

I confess to a heated reaction to events since last Friday [July 22] among the Democrats, specifically in the Democratic National Committee. I should briefly explain …

The Sanders people have long charged that the DNC has had its fingers on the scale, as one of them put it the other day, in favor of Hillary Clinton’s nomination. The prints were everywhere — many those of Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who has repeatedly been accused of anti-Sanders bias. Schultz, do not forget, co-chaired Clinton’s 2008 campaign against Barack Obama. That would be enough to disqualify her as the DNC’s chair in any society that takes ethics seriously, but it is not enough in our great country. Chairwoman she has been for the past five years.

Last Friday WikiLeaks published nearly 20,000 DNC email messages providing abundant proof that Sanders and his staff were right all along. The worst of these, involving senior DNC officers, proposed Nixon-esque smears having to do with everything from ineptitude within the Sanders campaign to Sanders as a Jew in name only and an atheist by conviction.

Wasserman fell from grace on Monday. Other than this, Democrats from President Obama to Clinton and numerous others atop the party’s power structure have had nothing to say, as in nothing, about this unforgivable breach.They have, rather, been full of praise for Wasserman Schultz. Brad Marshall, the D.N.C.’s chief financial officer, now tries to deny that his Jew-baiting remark referred to Sanders. Good luck, Brad: Bernie is the only Jew in the room.

The caker came on Sunday, when Robby Mook, Clinton’s campaign manager, appeared on ABC’s “This Week” and … CNN’s “State of the Union” to assert that the D.N.C.’s mail was hacked “by the Russians for the purpose of helping Donald Trump.” He knows this — knows it in a matter of 24 hours — because “experts” — experts he will never name — have told him so. …

What’s disturbing to us is that experts are telling us that Russian state actors broke into the DNC, stole these emails, and other experts are now saying that Russians are releasing these emails for the purpose of helping Donald Trump.

Is that what disturbs you, Robby? Interesting. Unsubstantiated hocus-pocus, not the implications of these events for the integrity of Democratic nominations and the American political process? The latter is the more pressing topic, Robby. You are far too long on anonymous experts for my taste, Robby. And what kind of expert, now that I think of it, is able to report to you as to the intentions of Russian hackers — assuming for a sec that this concocted narrative has substance?

Making lemonade out of a lemon, the Clinton campaign now goes for a twofer. Watch as it advances the Russians-did-it thesis on the basis of nothing, then shoots the messenger, then associates Trump with its own mess — and, finally, gets to ignore the nature of its transgression (which any paying-attention person must consider grave).

Preposterous, readers. Join me, please, in having absolutely none of it. There is no “Russian actor” at the bottom of this swamp, to put my position bluntly. You will never, ever be offered persuasive evidence otherwise.

Reluctantly, I credit the Clinton campaign and the DNC with reading American paranoia well enough such that they may make this junk stick. In a clear sign the entire crowd-control machine is up and running, The New York Times had a long, unprofessional piece about Russian culprits in its Monday editions. It followed Mook’s lead faithfully: not one properly supported fact, not one identified “expert,” and more conditional verbs than you’ve had hot dinners — everything cast as “could,” “might,” “appears,” “would,” “seems,” “may.” Nothing, once again, as to the very serious implications of this affair for the American political process.

Now comes the law. The FBI just announced that it will investigate — no, not the DNC’s fraudulent practices (which surely breach statutes), but “those who pose a threat in cyberspace.” … it is the invocation of the Russians that sends me over the edge. My bones grow weary …

We must take the last few days’ events as a signal of what Clinton’s policy toward Russia will look like should she prevail in November. … Turning her party’s latest disgrace into an occasion for another round of Russophobia is mere preface, but in it you can read her commitment to the new crusade.

Trump, to make this work, must be blamed for his willingness to negotiate with Moscow. This is now among his sins. Got that? Anyone who says he will talk to the Russians has transgressed the American code. … Does this not make Hillary Clinton more than a touch Nixonian?

I am developing nitrogen bends from watching the American political spectacle. One can hardly tell up from down. Which way for a breath of air?”

A year later Lawrence interviewed several of us VIPS, including our two former NSA technical directors and on Aug. 9, 2017 published an article for The Nation titled, “A New Report Raises Big Questions About Last Year’s DNC Hack.”

Lawrence wrote, “Former NSA experts, now members of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS), say it wasn’t a hack at all, but a leak—an inside job by someone with access to the DNC’s system.”

And so it was. But, sadly, that cut across the grain of the acceptable Russia-gate narrative at The Nation at the time. Its staff, seriously struck by the HWHW (Hillary Would Have Won) virus, rose up in rebellion. A short time later, there was no more room at The Nation for his independent-minded writing.

Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, a publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in inner-city Washington. His 27-year career as a CIA analyst included preparing and briefing The President’s Daily Brief and leading the Soviet Foreign Policy Branch. In retirement he co-founded Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity.

June 16, 2020 Posted by | Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Russophobia | , , | 1 Comment

The Miracle of Salisbury

By Craig Murray | June 16, 2020

It turns out that the BBC really does believe that God is an Englishman. When the simple impossibility of the official story on the Skripals finally overwhelmed the dramatists, they resorted to Divine Intervention for an explanation – as propagandists have done for millennia.

This particular piece of script from Episode 2 of The Salisbury Poisonings deserves an induction in the Propaganda Hall of Fame:

Porton Down Man: I’ve got the reports from the Bailey house
Public Health Woman: Tell me, how many hits?
Porton Down Man: It was found in almost every room of the house. Kitchen, bathroom, living room, bedrooms. It was even on the light switches. We found it in the family car too. But his wife and children haven’t been affected. I like to think of myself as a man of science, but the only word for that is a miracle.

Well, it certainly would be a miracle that the family lived for a week in the house without touching a light switch. But miracle is not really the “only word for that”. Nonsense is a good word. Bullshit is a ruder version. Lie is entirely appropriate in these circumstances.

Because that was not the only miracle on display. We were told specifically that the Skripals had trailed novichok all over Zizzis and the Bishops Mill pub, leaving multiple deadly deposits, dozens of them in total, which miraculously nobody had touched. We were told that Detective Bailey was found to have left multiple deadly deposits of novichok on everything he touched in a busy police station, but over several days before it was closed down nobody had touched any of them, which must be an even bigger miracle than the Baileys’ home.

Perhaps even more amazingly, as the Skripals spread novichok all over the restaurant and the pub, nobody who served them had been harmed, nobody who took their payment. The man who went through Sergei’s wallet to learn his identity from his credit cards was not poisoned. The people giving first aid were not poisoned. The ducks Sergei fed were not poisoned. The little boy he fed the ducks with was not poisoned. So many miracles. If God were not an Englishman, Salisbury would have been in real trouble, evidently.

The conclusion of episode two showed Charlie Rowley fishing out the perfume bottle from the charity bin at least two months in the timeline before this really happened, thus neatly sidestepping one of the most glaring impossibilities in the entire official story. I think we can forgive the BBC that lie – there are only so many instances of divine intervention in the story the public can be expected to buy in one episode.

It is fascinating to see that the construction of this edifice of lies was a joint venture between the BBC and the security services’ house journal, the Guardian. Not only is all round pro-war propagandist “Colonel” Hamish De Bretton Gordon credited as Military Advisor, but Guardian journalists Caroline Bannock and Steven Morris are credited as Script Consultants, which I presume means they fed in the raw lies for the scriptwriters to shape into miracles.

Now here is an interesting ethical point for readers of the Guardian. The Guardian published in the last fortnight two articles by Morris and Bannock that purported to be reporting on the production of the drama and its authenticity, without revealing to the readers that these full time Guardian journalists were in fact a part of the BBC project. That is unethical and unprofessional in a number of quite startling ways. But then it is the Guardian.

[Full disclosure. I shared a flat with Caroline at university. She was an honest person in those days.]

Again, rather than pepper this article with links, I urge you to read this comprehensive article, which contains plenty of links and remains entirely unanswered.

June 16, 2020 Posted by | Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Russophobia | , , | 1 Comment

Meet The Company Who Created More Than 500 Police Snitching Apps

MassPrivateI | June 16, 2020

The company responsible for creating a network of police snitching apps in the U.S. and Canada is trying to convince the public to use a new app.

Want to report your neighbor for not social distancing, report them for being a George Floyd protester, or perhaps you have seen something suspicious? Chances are pretty good that OCV, LLC has created that app.

OCV has created a mind-boggling 500 law enforcement apps.

“With over nine years of experience serving public safety agencies, OCV, LLC. has developed over 500 custom mobile apps and proudly serves over 40 states and Canada.”

As The Daily Globe explains, OCV’s latest app allows users to “lookup jail inmates and wanted lists, as well as submit anonymous tips about crime.”

In Rock County, Minnesota, the Sheriff’s department has already received a tip from a concerned citizen. Because who doesn’t want to send police an anonymous tip about their neighbors?

OCV’s “TheSheriffApp.com” is particularly good at masking its real purpose.

“TheSheriffApp.com will help your office brand itself as innovative leaders in law enforcement within your community and provide easy access to important information to your citizens.”

Want to help re-brand law enforcement’s image? OCV has at least 500 apps that will help convince the public that law enforcement is here to help.

OCV is so good at masking what TheSheriff App’s real purpose is, it is easy to miss.

“App users have the ability to receive instant push notifications from your sheriff’s office, submit a tip, view the most wanted page, see a map of sex offenders in their area and more – all from an app!”

TheSherrifApp is specifically designed to allow users to send anonymous tips to law enforcement. The first thing they mention in their “Common Features” section is submitting a tip.

“Submit tips right from your smartphone. Use your smartphone capabilities to include pictures, GPS location and more in your tip.”

TheSherrifApp has taken public snitching to a whole new level by combining real-time social media accounts.

“Combine all social media accounts into one continuous stream within the app. Updated in real time.”

Would anyone like to guess what the “Main Feature” of TheSheriffApp is? If you guessed public snitching, congratulations.

“Submit a tip with a tap by using our tip submission feature! Users can easily submit tips directly from their smartphone. Take advantage of a mobile app and use your smartphone to be as detailed as possible with your submission: upload pictures, videos… even include the GPS location of an incident! Users also have the option to submit a tip anonymously.”

During the coronavirus outbreak, the news has been littered with stories of neighbors snitching on each other. Private companies like, NextDoor have even gone so far as to shower law enforcement with gifts so they can spread public snitching to every neighborhood in America.

 “As part of the chosen group, Charles Husted, the chief of police in Sedona, Arizona would be flown to San Francisco on President’s Day, along with seven other community engagement staffers from police departments and city offices across the country. Over two days, they’d meet at Nextdoor’s headquarters to discuss the social network’s public agency strategy. Together, the plan was, they’d stay at  the Hilton Union Square, eat and drink at Cultivar, share a tour of Chinatown, and receive matching Uniqlo jackets. All costs — a projected $16,900 for the group, according to a schedule sent to participants — were covered by Nextdoor.”

Hasn’t law enforcement learned anything about the recent slew of “Karen’s” calling police on black people? The last thing American’s need or want is a “Karen” police app disguised as “TheSherrifApp.” (To find out more about NextDoor’s “Karen” problem, click here.)

If there is to be any hope of police reform, then we must demand an end to the culture of police surveillance, and the corporations who profit from it.

June 16, 2020 Posted by | Aletho News | , | 1 Comment

EU diplomacy is profitable for Israel, but a disaster for the Palestinians

By Ramona Wadi | MEMO | June 16, 2020

Since Israel announced its plan to annex swathes of the occupied West Bank, the EU has only hypothesised on what steps the bloc may take in response. The most prominent of these could be the exclusion of Israel from the Horizon 2020 research grants. Other than this possibility (it is no more than that at this stage), which should have been done long before now in any case due to Israel’s perpetual violations of international law, the EU has tacitly approved Donald Trump’s deal upon which annexation is based, and will most likely restrict its collective response to rhetoric.

US President Trump has dealt Palestinians a severe blow, which would have been impossible if the international community had united, decades ago, to rectify its colonial approach to Palestine. Through non-binding resolutions, the UN led the way in creating Israel’s ability to act with impunity which is derived from Palestinian dependence. No strategy other than anti-colonial resistance could have worked, and despite the UN’s purported intentions to eradicate colonialism, it reneged and instead provided Israel with the necessary diplomatic cover to appropriate virtually all of Palestine.

The EU is no different. It placed itself at the helm of alleged peace-building strategies, in particular through its financial assistance to the Palestinian Authority alongside its diplomatic relations with Israel. As a result, Palestinians became pawns in a state-building project without a state, presided over by an internationally-funded entity that has no political legitimacy and which functions as a colonial collaborator with, and defender of, the colonial-settler state of Israel, as well as a mouthpiece for international diplomacy.

Spanish MEPs have criticised the EU’s Foreign Affairs Chief Josep Borrell’s statement, noting that calling upon Israel to refrain from annexation is not enough. However, the EU is also portrayed as “the only international actor that can force upon them genuine negotiations between the parties involved.” There are no genuine negotiations, as any diplomat knows. Israel must be identified as a colonial power and decolonisation should take the place of negotiations, thus reversing the power imbalance that prevents Palestinians from uncompromised political decision-making.

Consider Luxembourg’s Foreign Minister Jean Asselborn’s recent statement that the EU would “inevitably” recognise Palestine as a state “if Israel moves forward with its controversial plan to annex the West Bank.” Is this ludicrous diplomacy what the PA has been striving to achieve; the recognition of a hypothetical state when there is barely any land upon which to build it? Symbolic recognition of Palestine within the two-state context has failed to achieve any political advantage for Palestinians, but recognising a state when the demise of its hypothesis has been obvious for years is the epitome of EU hypocrisy.

Writing “reproachful letters would be a humiliation for the EU,” Asselborn added. Belatedly recognising a Palestinian state is not, in EU diplomacy, because when it comes to Palestine and the Palestinian people, there is no limit to what the international community can get away with while still proclaiming itself to be a champion of human rights. The EU, in particular, relishes this status, which the PA supports unabashedly, to the detriment of the Palestinian people. Without a plan to prevent Israel’s annexation of the occupied West Bank, what role is the EU playing other than facilitating the US deal of the century? The reality is that EU diplomacy is profitable for Israel, but an absolute disaster for the Palestinians

June 16, 2020 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation | , , | 1 Comment

Do Palestinians’ Lives Matter?

By Stuart Littlewood | American Herald Tribune | June 15, 2020

Lately, anti-racism activists and their fellow-travelers have been vandalizing statues in the UK, including a memorial to Winston Churchill. Even Nelson is threatened. And Robert Peel, like Churchill, has been boarded up for protection from the loonies. Incredibly Robert the Bruce, king of Scotland 1306-1329, hero of Bannockburn and bringer of independence, has been branded a racist by graffiti scribblers. Bruce (or de Brus), Earl of Carrick and 7th Lord of Annandale, was of Norman descent I believe. So, is our entire medieval history and culture – 1066 and all that – condemned? If it’s the feudal system and the struggle between mighty lords and their lowly vassals that bothers today’s hypersensitive agitators, most of our history books will have to be taken off the shelves and our monarchs consigned to the dustbin in order to appease them.

Why don’t these firebrands look for modern-day racists to complain about? In which case they might focus on “Israel’s knee-on-the-neck occupation of Palestine”, as Leslie Bravery describes it. This snarling, brutal entity illegally occupies Palestine and part of Syria and is stuffed with baddies with no redeeming features whatsoever. They have been busy ethnically cleansing the native Palestinians and stealing their lands for seven decades.  And what of their many supporters in high places? What should we call people who defend the indefensible… who admire the despicable… who applaud the expulsion at gunpoint of peaceable civilians and the confiscation of their homes?

Being a Friend of Israel – like most of the Conservative Party at Westminster – means embracing the terror and racism on which the state of Israel was built. It means embracing the dispossession of the innocent and oppression of the powerless. It means embracing the discriminatory laws against those who stubbornly remain in their homeland. It means embracing the jackboot gangsterdom that abducts civilians — including children — and imprisons and tortures them without trial. It means embracing the theft and annexation of Palestinian lands and water resources, the imposition of hundreds of military checkpoints, the severe restrictions on the movement of people and goods, and maximum interference with Palestinian life at every level.

It means not minding the bloodbaths inflicted by Israel on Gaza and feeling not too bothered about blowing hundreds of children to smithereens, maiming thousands more, trashing vital infrastructure such as hospitals, schools, power plants and clean water supplies, and causing $billions of devastation that will take 20 years to rebuild. And where is the money coming from? That’s right – from you and me.

It means turning a blind eye to the strangulation of the West Bank’s economy and the cruel 14-year blockade on Gaza. It means endorsing the denial of Palestinians’ right to self-determination and return to their homes. It means shrugging off the religious war that humiliates Muslims and Christians and prevents them visiting their holy places. It means meekly accepting a situation in which hard-pressed American and British taxpayers are having to subsidize Israel’s illegal occupation of the Holy Land.

And if, after all that, you are still Israel’s special friend, where is your self-respect?

Pandering to Israel has been immensely costly in blood and treasure and stupidly damaging to our reputation. Is it not ludicrous that a foreign military power which has no regard for international law and rejects weapons conventions and safeguards can exert such influence on foreign policy in the US and UK?

Everyone outside the Westminster/Washington bubble knows perfectly well that there can be no peace in the Holy Land without justice. In other words no peace until the occupation ends. Everyone knows that international law and countless UN resolutions still wait to be enforced. Everyone knows that Israel won’t comply unless sanctions are imposed. Everyone knows that the siege on Gaza won’t be lifted until warships are sent.

What’s more, everyone now knows that the US is not an honest broker, that Israel wants to keep the pot boiling and that justice won’t come from more sham ‘negotiations’. Nor will peace. Everyone knows who is the real cause of turmoil in the Middle East. And everyone knows that Her Majesty’s Government’s hand-wringing and empty words of ‘concern’ serve no purpose except to prolong the daily misery for Palestinians and buy time for Israel to complete its criminal scheme to make the occupation permanent.

And that is about to happen.

Can’t breathe!

For the last year Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been saying he’ll “extend sovereignty on all the settlements” including sites that have security importance or are important to Israel’s heritage. And that will include Hebron, Jericho and the Jordan Valley.

The move would be another major step in the fulfillment of the long-running Plan Dalet (otherwise known as Plan D) which was the Zionists’ blueprint for the violent takeover of the Palestinian homeland as a prelude to declaring Israeli statehood – which they did in May 1948. It was drawn up by the Jewish underground militia, the Haganah, at the behest of David Ben-Gurion, then boss of the Jewish Agency.

Plan D’s intention was not only to gain control of the areas of the Jewish state and defend its borders but also to control the areas of Jewish presence outside those borders and ensure “freedom of military and economic activity” by occupying important high-ground positions on a number of transport routes.

“Outside the borders of the state” was a curious thing to say when nobody would admit to where Israel’s borders actually ran, but the aim was to steal land that wasn’t allocated to Israel but was reserved for a Palestinian state on the 1947 UN Partition Plan map. Since then Israel has purposely kept its borders fluid in order to accommodate the Zionists’ perpetual lust for expansion into Palestinian and Syrian territory and eventual takeover.

No doubt with this in mind the Israeli government has confirmed the appointment of the pro-annexation Settlements Minister Tzipi Hotovely as Israel’s next ambassador to the UK. Hotovely is a religious-nationalist extremist committed to the ‘Greater Israel’ project.  As Minister of Settlement Affairs in the Israeli government many here will regard her as a war criminal. All Israeli settlements (a more appropriate word would be ‘squats’) in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT) violate Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention and are considered illegal under international law. And many see Israel’s long-running squatter policy as a war crime for the simple reason that Article 8(2) of the Rome Statute defines “the transfer, directly or indirectly, by the Occupying Power of parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies, or the deportation or transfer of all or parts of the population of the occupied territory within or outside this territory” as such “when committed as part of a plan or policy or as part of a large-scale commission of such crimes”.

Hotovely tends to run off at the mouth having criticised American Jews for not understanding the complexities of the region because “they never send their children to fight for their country, most of the Jews don’t have children serving as soldiers”. She herself slid out of compulsory military service by becoming an educational guide in Jerusalem and an emissary of the Jewish Agency in the United States.

She’s also keen to re-write New Israel’s sordid history: “We need to delete the word ‘occupation’ and we need to redefine the term ‘refugee’….” Hotovely rejects Palestinians’ hopes for statehood and instead dreams of a Greater Israel spanning the length and breadth of current Israel plus the Palestinian territories, saying “We need to return to the basic truth of our rights to this country…. This land is ours. All of it is ours. We did not come here to apologise for that.”

But what is the basic truth of her right to the land? She came there from the Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic so a question that immediately springs to mind is: “What ancestral links does she have with the Holy Land? Has she had a DNA check-up? And what exactly gives her and her kind the right to lord it over the Palestinians who have been there all the time?”

In London she’ll replace Mark Regev, former Netanyahu spokesman and mastermind behind Israel’s propaganda programme of disinformation and dirty tricks. Under Regev’s watch in January 2017 a senior political officer at the Israeli embassy in London, Shai Masot, plotted with stooges among British MPs and other maggots in the rotting political woodwork to “take down” senior government figures including Boris Johnson’s deputy at the Foreign Office, Sir Alan Duncan.

Masot was almost certainly a Mossad asset. His hostile activities were revealed not, as one would have wished, by Britain’s own security services and media but an Al Jazeera undercover news team. Her Majesty’s Government’s response? “The UK has a strong relationship with Israel and we consider the matter closed.”

At a Labour Party conference fringe meeting Israel insider Miko Peled warned that “they are going to pull all the stops, they are going to smear, they are going to try anything they can to stop Corbyn…. the reason anti-Semitism is used is because they [the Israelis] have no argument….”

And that’s exactly what happened. Corbyn, a perceived threat to Israel’s cosy relationship with the UK, is now relegated to the sidelines.

Regev came to help silence criticism of the Israeli regime. Why the switch to lovely Tzipi? I’d say she’s here to smooth ruffled feelings caused by Israel’s latest planned land grab in the creeping annexation of the West Bank. And Regev, mission accomplished in the UK, is needed in Tel Aviv to defend Netanyahu from the ensuing flak if he goes ahead with annexation.

EU’s shame

Where does the EU stand in all this? A year ago one hundred and fifty-five European researchers and academics delivered a stinging rebuke to Federica Mogherini, High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs & Security Policy and Vice-President of the European Commission, and Carlos Moedas, European Commissioner for Science, Research & Innovation.

Their letter expressed the outrage felt throughout the world, and especially in European countries including the UK, at the EU’s policy of endlessly rewarding the war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by Israel. Perversely each new act of unspeakable brutality, each new onslaught of disproportionate force against civilians had brought fresh privileges, fresh co-operation, fresh embraces from an enthusiastic EU élite. The letter said among other things:

“In spite of continual and serious breaches of international law and violation of human rights, and regardless of the commitment for upholding human rights of European countries, Israel enjoys an exceptionally privileged status in dealing with Europe also through the Association Agreement and has been receiving grants from the European Commission in the area of research and innovation (FP7 and its successor Horizon 2020).

“Funds are granted even to Israeli arms producers such as Elbit Systems and Israel Aerospace Industries Ltd, the producers of lethal drones that were used in the Gaza military assaults against civilians, together with numerous academic institutions that have close ties with Israeli military industry.

“We appeal to the European Union to impose a comprehensive military embargo on Israel, as long as Israel continues to blatantly violate human rights. We are deeply disturbed that public funds contributed by European tax payers are channeled to a country that not only disregards human rights but also uses most advanced knowledge and technology for the very violation of human rights.”

The EU-Israel Association Agreement has a lot to answer for. It came into force in 2000 for the purpose of promoting (1) peace and security, (2) shared prosperity through, for example, the creation of a free trade zone, and (3) cross-cultural rapprochement. It governs not only EU-Israel relations but Israel’s relations with the EU’s other Mediterranean partners, including the Palestinian National Authority. To enjoy the Association’s privileges Israel undertook to show “respect for human rights and democratic principles” as set out as a general condition in Article 2, which says:

“Relations between the Parties, as well as all the provisions of the Agreement itself, shall be based on respect for human rights and democratic principles, which guides their internal and international policy and constitutes an essential element of this Agreement.”

Essential being the operative word.

Respecting human rights and democratic principles is not optional. Article 2 allows steps to be taken to enforce the contractual obligations regarding human rights and to dissuade partners from pursuing policies and practices that disrespect those rights. The Agreement also requires respect for self-determination of peoples and fundamental freedoms for all. Given Israel’s contempt for such principles the EU, had it been an honorable group, would have enforced Article 2 and not let matters slide. They would have suspended Israel’s membership until the regime fully complied. Israel relies heavily on exports to Europe so the EU could by now have forced an end to the brutal occupation of the Holy Land.

Rewarding annexation

Questions in the House of Commons last week revealed that the Government plans to host a UK-Israel trade and investment conference in London. One such question advertised the fact that “Israeli exports to the UK grew by 286% over the last decade, and bilateral trade levels are at a record high”. The Minister, Conor Burns, announced: “We strongly value our trading relationship with the State of Israel and are working closely with the Israeli government to implement the UK-Israel trade and partnership agreement.… We are working with the Israeli counterparts to host a UK-Israel trade and investment conference in London, which will have its primary focus on scoping out and identifying new opportunities and collaboration between Israel and the United Kingdom.”

Then Andrew Percy MP, a notorious stooge for Israel, asked the Secretary of State for International Trade what recent discussions she’d had with her counterpart in the Israeli government on a UK-Israel free trade deal. Ranil Jayawardena, answering for the Secretary of State, said that the UK-Israel Trade and Partnership Agreement, signed in February 2019, will enter into force at the end of the Transition Period in January 2021. It will allow businesses to trade as freely as they do now, without additional tariffs or barriers. “Total trade between the United Kingdom and Israel increased by 15 percent in 2019 to £5.1bn. We value this trade relationship and are committed to strengthening it, so we will seek to work with counterparts in the new Israeli government to host a bilateral trade and investment summit in London.”

So there’s still a desire at the heart of UK government to reward racist Israel, not only for its knee-on-the-neck brutality but even for a crime of such enormity as can’t-breathe annexation.

June 16, 2020 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Progressive Hypocrite, Timeless or most popular | , , , , | 1 Comment

Israel’s Military Occupation Must Be Discussed in the Colonial Context

By Ramona Wadi | Strategic Culture Foundation | June 15, 2020

In June 1967, Israel displaced over 400,000 Palestinians as a result of the Six-Day War. The Naksa (setback) is the most prominent wave of Palestinians expulsion after the 1948 Nakba, resulting in Israel seizing the Gaza Strip, Jerusalem and the West Bank. Decades later, the UN Security Council still feels it accomplished its duty through Resolution 242 which considers Israel’s withdrawal from the occupied territories a “principle”, rather than an obligation.

The Naksa is synonymous with Israel’s military occupation – a term which has eclipsed colonialism and which shields Israel from accountability. Political rhetoric does not confront Israel with decolonisation; instead it focuses on military occupation and as a result, shifts attention away from the ongoing colonial expansion which is still displacing the Palestinian people.

Within the international community and especially in relation to the two-state compromise, diplomacy regarding Israel’s military occupation proved a veneer to refrain from acknowledging the UN’s role in Israel’s creation and maintenance. Accepting Israel as a state marked the first collective normalisation of Zionist colonialism in Palestine. Sovereignty, built upon the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people from their land, was attributed to the colonial entity in Palestine. With Palestinians deemed a humanitarian urgency since 1948 and the classification further entrenched in 1967, the international community’s dismissal of the Zionist colonial project not only normalised colonialism, but also the ensuing military occupation of Palestine.

This has occurred due to the UN’s narrative of Israel’s international law violations, which are isolated from the earlier violence meted out by Zionist paramilitaries during the Nakba. From 1967 onwards, the military occupation provided Israel with the opportunity to legislate violations in order to collectively punish Palestinians and increase the likelihood of gradual Palestinian displacement, thus appropriating more land for its colonial expansion.

To describe Israel only as a military occupation is inconsistent with Israel’s colonial identity. Likewise, the calls to end Israel’s military occupation of Palestine ignore the colonial reality which supports the legislation depriving Palestinians of their movement, political expression, livelihood, basic necessities and freedom. Military occupation is a tool for colonial Israel; it does not define Israel and should not be exploited by the international community as the means to further deprive Palestinians of their anti-colonial endeavours, as is their political right.

For Palestinians, 1967 is a continuation of the 1948 Nakba, as is the military occupation of Palestine. It is the international community that played upon equivalence between colonialism and occupation, making them synonymous to facilitate the two-state diplomacy. In addition, the US consolidated its ties with Israel following the Six-Day War, which under President Donald Trump resulted in the so-called deal of the century which builds upon the two-state paradigm to pave the way for Israel’s annexation of the occupied West Bank.

Although the 1967 war reinforced colonial domination over Palestine, the UN is partial to the military occupation, as it provides an alternative, albeit incomplete, departure point for the current framing of Israel’s narrative and its dissemination. The ongoing international law violations against the Palestinian people, including settlement expansion, now form part of Israel’s purported security narrative, which the UN has regularly defended, even as it issues weak statements condemning the transgressions.

The earlier Palestinian political unity and commitment to anti-colonial struggle post 1967 has been disrupted not only due to political rifts between Palestinian factions, but also due to the UN’s insistence on negotiations, which have in turn vilified the military occupation while normalising Zionist colonisation. For Israel, 1948 was the initiation; 1967 was the path to secure complete domination over all Palestinian land, facilitated by the subsequent betrayal, decades later, of the Palestinian cause at a regional and international level.

Remembrance of 1967 must take into account the earlier colonial process. The Palestinian people’s current predicament on the verge of annexation carries with it the international community’s complicity in diluting colonialism to the more preferable military occupation terminology. Calling for an end to military occupation does not eradicate colonialism. On the contrary, the UN is protecting Israel’s colonial process by normalising the steps of forced displacement and appropriation of territory, in the name of Israel’s security concerns.

June 16, 2020 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation, Timeless or most popular | , , , | Leave a comment

Don’t Rename Those Military Bases. Close Them Instead.

By Jacob G. Hornberger | FFF | June 16, 2020

A controversy has erupted over the naming of U.S. military bases here in the United States. The bases are named after Confederate generals, and there are people who want to change that. They want the bases to be named for more politically correct military figures.

I’ve got a better idea: Let’s not rename the bases. Let’s close them instead.

When people are born and raised under a particular form of governmental structure, it is extremely difficult for them to mentally or psychologically challenge the structure itself. The natural tendency is to want to work within the structure by coming up with ways to modify or improve it rather than to contemplate arguments for dismantling it.

That’s the situation we have with the national-security state structure that characterizes the United States. We have all been born and raised under a massive military-intelligence system that consists of the Pentagon, the vast military-industrial complex (as President Eisenhower termed it), the CIA, and the NSA. We’ve all been taught that “national security” is everything — that the national-security state protects our “freedom” and our, well, our “national security.” We are told that it does this through thousands of military bases both here at home and abroad. We’re taught that interventionism in foreign countries is essential to keep us safe here at home.

Thus, the natural tendency of people is to simply accept the permanence of this way of life and try to come up with ways to make it better. That’s what the impulse to rename all those military bases is all about. The bases are considered to be a permanent part of American life. So, the idea is let’s just make them better by renaming them.

An important question

Notice that in this renaming debate, the debaters never ask a critically important question: What do we need those bases for? For people who are embroiled within the paradigm, it’s just obvious. We need them because … well … just because.

After all, it’s not as though the United States is under the threat of an invasion by some foreign power. No nation-state in the world, including Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, Venezuela, or any other nation-state that has been labeled an adversary, rival, or enemy of the United States, has the remotest military capability to invade the United States. All of them lack the troops, equipment, supplies, transports, ammunition, armaments, and money to undertake such an enormous task.

So, if there is no threat of a foreign invasion of the United States, what do we need all those bases for, old names or new names?

One might assert that the bases protect us from “the terrorists.” But “the terrorists” are a direct result of U.S. military interventionism abroad. Given that the U.S. military and CIA have been killing people in the Middle East and Afghanistan for decades, it stands to reason that there are going to be people who wish to retaliate against Americans.

There is an easy fix for anti-American terrorism: Bring all the troops home from everywhere and discharge them. Their interventionism produces nothing positive and lots of negatives, including anti-American terrorism and the resulting destruction of our liberty here at home to protect us from “the terrorists” that their interventionism produce.

Even given anti-American terrorism, the notion that domestic military bases protect us from terrorism is ludicrous. Terrorists strike at civilians and civilian targets. When they do so, they are engaged in a federal criminal offense. Under U.S. law, the military is precluded from enforcing criminal laws. So, what good are those military bases when it comes to protecting us from terrorism?

America’s founding system

The U.S. government wasn’t always a national-security state. The nation’s founding governmental system was a limited-government republic, which is an opposite type of governmental system, one whose powers are limited.

For the first 150 years of our nation’s history, there was a basic military force but it was relatively small. Its principal purpose was to protect Americans from Native American attacks. That’s why in the 1800s, it might have made sense to have a fort near a community.

But why do American cities and towns today need military bases near them? There is no longer a threat of attack from Apaches, Comanches, or any other Native American tribe. And, as I previously observed, there is no realistic threat of a foreign invasion.

The U.S. government was converted from a limited-government republic into a national-security state after World War II. The justification given was that America faced a gigantic worldwide communist conspiracy to take over the United States and the rest of the world, one whose base was in Moscow, Russia (yes, that Russia), with tentacles to China, North Korea, North Vietnam, Cuba, Chile, Guatemala, and others.

That conversion fundamentally transformed not only America’s governmental structure but also American life. Now Americans were living under a totalitarian form of governmental structure, one that wielded omnipotent, dark-side powers, such as state-sponsored assassinations, kidnappings, executions, torture, coups, and regime-change operations.

Largess, dependency, and danger

I would be remiss, of course, if I failed to mention the trillions of dollars in U.S. taxpayer money that have been spent over the decades to sustain and maintain this vast military empire. The national-security state has played a principal role in the massive taxation, spending, debt, and monetary debasement that has plundered the American people since the end of World War II.

Of course, there is also the mindset of dependency on all this military largess that has come to characterize thousands of American communities, where people live in desperate fear of losing their military base, convinced that they will die if it happens.

Finally, we must never forget President Eisenhower’s profound warning to the American people, one that echoed the sentiments of our American ancestors—that the national-security state poses a grave threat to the liberties and democratic processes of the American people.

Regardless of what one might think about the original post-World War II conversion to a national-security state, everyone agrees on one thing: With the demise of the suppose worldwide communist conspiracy in 1989 with the end of the Cold War, the original justification for America’s conversion to a national-security state disintegrated more than 30 years ago.

We have the right to the restoration of our limited-government republic. We have the right to the restoration of our rights and liberties. Forget about renaming those useless and destructive military bases. Close them instead.

June 16, 2020 Posted by | Militarism, Progressive Hypocrite, Timeless or most popular | | 2 Comments

America’s Own Color Revolution

By F. William Engdahl – New Eastern Outlook – 16.06.2020

Color Revolution is the term used to describe a series of remarkably effective CIA-led regime change operations using techniques developed by the RAND Corporation, “democracy” NGOs and other groups since the 1980’s. They were used in crude form to bring down the Polish communist regime in the late 1980s. From there the techniques were refined and used, along with heavy bribes, to topple the Gorbachev regime in the Soviet Union. For anyone who has studied those models closely, it is clear that the protests against police violence led by amorphous organizations with names like Black Lives Matter or Antifa are more than purely spontaneous moral outrage. Hundreds of thousands of young Americans are being used as a battering ram to not only topple a US President, but in the process, the very structures of the US Constitutional order.

If we step back from the immediate issue of videos showing a white Minneapolis policeman pressing his knee on the neck of a black man, George Floyd, and look at what has taken place across the nation since then, it is clear that certain organizations or groups were well-prepared to instrumentalize the horrific event for their own agenda.

The protests since May 25 have often begun peacefully only to be taken over by well-trained violent actors. Two organizations have appeared regularly in connection with the violent protests—Black Lives Matter and Antifa (USA). Videos show well-equipped protesters dressed uniformly in black and masked (not for coronavirus to be sure), vandalizing police cars, burning police stations, smashing store windows with pipes or baseball bats. Use of Twitter and other social media to coordinate “hit-and-run” swarming strikes of protest mobs is evident.

What has unfolded since the Minneapolis trigger event has been compared to the wave of primarily black ghetto protest riots in 1968. I lived through those events in 1968 and what is unfolding today is far different. It is better likened to the Yugoslav color revolution that toppled Milosevic in 2000.

Gene Sharp: Template for Regime Overthrow

In the year 2000 the US State Department, aided by its National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and select CIA operatives, began secretly training a group of Belgrade university students led by a student group that was called Otpor! (Resistance!). The NED and its various offshoots was created in the 1980’s by CIA head Bill Casey as a covert CIA tool to overthrow specific regimes around the world under the cover of a human rights NGO. In fact, they get their money from Congress and from USAID.

In the Serb Otpor! destabilization of 2000, the NED and US Ambassador Richard Miles in Belgrade selected and trained a group of several dozen students, led by Srđa Popović, using the handbook, From Dictatorship to Democracy, translated to Serbian, of the late Gene Sharp and his Albert Einstein Institution. In a post mortem on the Serb events, the Washington Post wrote, “US-funded consultants played a crucial role behind the scenes in virtually every facet of the anti-drive, running tracking polls, training thousands of opposition activists and helping to organize a vitally important parallel vote count. US taxpayers paid for 5,000 cans of spray paint used by student activists to scrawl anti-Milošević graffiti on walls across Serbia.”

Trained squads of activists were deployed in protests to take over city blocks with the aid of ‘intelligence helmet’ video screens that give them an instantaneous overview of their environment. Bands of youth converging on targeted intersections in constant dialogue on cell phones, would then overwhelm police. The US government spent some $41 million on the operation. Student groups were secretly trained in the Sharp handbook techniques of staging protests that mocked the authority of the ruling police, showing them to be clumsy and impotent against the youthful protesters. Professionals from the CIA and US State Department guided them behind the scenes.

The Color Revolution Otpor! model was refined and deployed in 2004 as the Ukraine Orange Revolution with logo and color theme scarves, and in 2003 in Georgia as the Rose Revolution. Later Secretary of State Hillary Clinton used the template to launch the Arab Spring. In all cases the NED was involved with other NGOs including the Soros Foundations.

After defeating Milosevic, Popovic went on to establish a global color revolution training center, CANVAS, a kind of for-profit business consultancy for revolution, and was personally present in New York working reportedly with Antifa during the Occupy Wall Street where also Soros money was reported.

Antifa and BLM

The protests, riots, violent and non-violent actions sweeping across the United States since May 25, including an assault on the gates of the White House, begin to make sense when we understand the CIA’s Color Revolution playbook.

The impact of the protests would not be possible were it not for a network of local and state political officials inside the Democratic Party lending support to the protesters, even to the point the Democrat Mayor of Seattle ordered police to abandon several blocks in the heart of downtown to occupation by protesters.

In recent years major portions of the Democratic Party across the US have been quietly taken over by what one could call radical left candidates. Often they win with active backing of organizations such as Democratic Socialists of America or Freedom Road Socialist Organizations. In the US House of Representatives the vocal quarter of new representatives around Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), Rashida Tlaib and Minneapolis Representative Ilhan Omar are all members or close to Democratic Socialists of America. Clearly without sympathetic Democrat local officials in key cities, the street protests of organizations such as Black Lives Matter and Antifa would not have such a dramatic impact.

To get a better grasp how serious the present protest movement is we should look at who has been pouring millions into BLM. The Antifa is more difficult owing to its explicit anonymous organization form. However, their online Handbook openly recommends that local Antifa “cells” join up with BLM chapters.

FRSO: Follow the Money

BLM began in 2013 when three activist friends created the #BlackLivesMatter hashtag to protest the allegations of shooting of an unarmed black teenager, Trayvon Martin by a white Hispanic block watchman, George Zimmermann. Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors, and Opal Tometi were all connected with and financed by front groups tied to something called Freedom Road Socialist Organization, one of the four largest radical left organizations in the United States formed out of something called New Communist Movement that dissolved in the 1980s.

On June 12, 2020 the Freedom Road Socialist Organization webpage states, “The time is now to join a revolutionary organization! Join Freedom Road Socialist Organization… If you have been out in the streets this past few weeks, the odds are good that you’ve been thinking about the difference between the kind of change this system has to offer, and the kind of change this country needs. Capitalism is a failed system that thrives on exploitation, inequality and oppression. The reactionary and racist Trump administration has made the pandemic worse. The unfolding economic crisis we are experiencing is the worst since the 1930s. Monopoly capitalism is a dying system and we need to help finish it off. And that is exactly what Freedom Road Socialist Organization is working for.”

In short the protests over the alleged police killing of a black man in Minnesota are now being used to call for a revolution against capitalism. FRSO is an umbrella for dozens of amorphous groups including Black Lives Matter or BLM. What is interesting about the self-described Marxist-Leninist roots of the Freedom Road Socialist Organization (FRSO) is not so much their left politics as much as their very establishment funding by a group of well-endowed tax-exempt foundations.

Alicia Garza of BLM is also a board member or executive of five different Freedom Road front groups including 2011 Board chair of Right to the City Alliance, Board member of School of Unity and Liberation (SOUL), of People Organized to Win Employment Rights (POWER), Forward Together and Special Projects director of National Domestic Workers Alliance.

The Right to the City Alliance got $6.5 million between 2011 and 2014 from a number of very established tax-exempt foundations including the Ford Foundation ($1.9 million), from both of George Soros’s major tax-exempts–Open Society Foundations, and the Foundation to Promote Open Society for $1.3 million. Also the cornflake-tied Kellogg Foundation $250,000, and curiously, Ben & Jerry’s Foundation (ice cream) for $30,000.

Garza also got major foundation money as Executive Director of the FRSO front, POWER, where Obama former “green jobs czar” Van Jones, a self-described “communist” and “rowdy black nationalist,” now with CNN, was on the board. Alicia Garza also chaired the Right to the City Alliance, a network of activist groups opposing urban gentrification. That front since 2009 received $1.3 million from the Ford Foundation, as well as $600,000 from the Soros foundations and again, Ben & Jerry’s ($50,000). And Garza’s SOUL, which claimed to have trained 712 “organizers” in 2014, when she co-founded Black Lives Matter, got $210,000 from the Rockefeller Foundation and another $255,000 from the Heinz Foundation (ketchup and John Kerry family) among others. With the Forward Together of FRSO, Garza sat on the board of a “multi-racial organization that works with community leaders and organizations to transform culture and policy to catalyze social change.” It officially got $4 million in 2014 revenues and from 2012 and 2014, the organization received a total of $2.9 million from Ford Foundation ($655,000) and other major foundations.

Nigeria-born BLM co-founder Opal Tometi likewise comes from the network of FRSO. Tometi headed the FRSO’s Black Alliance for Just Immigration. Curiously with a “staff” of two it got money from major foundations including the Kellogg Foundation for $75,000 and Soros foundations for $100,000, and, again, Ben & Jerry’s ($10,000). Tometi got $60,000 in 2014 to direct the group.

The Freedom Road Socialist Organization that is now openly calling for a revolution against capitalism in the wake of the Floyd George killing has another arm, The Advancement Project, which describes itself as “a next generation, multi-racial civil rights organization.” Its board includes a former Obama US Department of Education Director of Community Outreach and a former Bill Clinton Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights. The FRSO Advancement Project in 2013 got millions from major US tax-exempt foundations including Ford ($8.5 million), Kellogg ($3 million), Hewlett Foundation of HP defense industry founder ($2.5 million), Rockefeller Foundation ($2.5 million), and Soros foundations ($8.6 million).

Major Money and ActBlue

By 2016, the presidential election year where Hillary Clinton was challenging Donald Trump, Black Lives Matter had established itself as a well-organized network. That year the Ford Foundation and Borealis Philanthropy announced the formation of the Black-Led Movement Fund (BLMF), “a six-year pooled donor campaign aimed at raising $100 million for the Movement for Black Lives coalition” in which BLM was a central part. By then Soros foundations had already given some $33 million in grants to the Black Lives Matter movement. This was serious foundation money.

The BLMF identified itself as being created by top foundations including in addition to the Ford Foundation, the Kellogg Foundation and the Soros Open Society Foundations. They described their role: “The BLMF provides grants, movement building resources, and technical assistance to organizations working advance the leadership and vision of young, Black, queer, feminists and immigrant leaders who are shaping and leading a national conversation about criminalization, policing and race in America.”

The Movement for Black Lives Coalition (M4BL) which includes Black Lives Matter, already in 2016 called for “defunding police departments, race-based reparations, voting rights for illegal immigrants, fossil-fuel divestment, an end to private education and charter schools, a universal basic income, and free college for blacks.”

Notably, when we click on the website of M4BL, under their donate button we learn that the donations will go to something called ActBlue Charities. ActBlue facilitates donations to “democrats and progressives.” As of May 21, ActBlue had given $119 million to the campaign of Joe Biden.

That was before the May 25 BLM worldwide protests. Now major corporations such as Apple, Disney, Nike and hundreds others may be pouring untold and unaccounted millions into ActBlue under the name of Black Lives Matter, funds that in fact can go to fund the election of a Democrat President Biden. Perhaps this is the real reason the Biden campaign has been so confident of support from black voters. What is clear from only this account of the crucial role of big money foundations behind protest groups such as Black lives Matter is that there is a far more complex agenda driving the protests now destabilizing cities across America. The role of tax-exempt foundations tied to the fortunes of the greatest industrial and financial companies such as Rockefeller, Ford, Kellogg, Hewlett and Soros says that there is a far deeper and far more sinister agenda to current disturbances than spontaneous outrage would suggest.

F. William Engdahl is strategic risk consultant and lecturer, he holds a degree in politics from Princeton University and is a best-selling author on oil and geopolitics.

June 16, 2020 Posted by | Deception | , , | 1 Comment

Iran: E3 unconstructive draft resolution at IAEA meeting mockery of international rules

Press TV – June 16, 2020

Iran has condemned as “unconstructive” a resolution reportedly drafted by the three European signatories to a 2015 nuclear deal for a vote at the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)’s governing board meeting, saying such a resolution makes a mockery of international rules.

Speaking to reporters on Tuesday, Kazem Gharibabadi, Iran’s permanent representative to Vienna-based international organizations, urged France, Germany and the UK — also known as E3 — not to complicate the situation surrounding the Iran deal if they cannot fulfill their end of the bargain and help salvage the accord.

The comments came as IAEA Board of Governors started a four-day meeting on Monday, with Iran on the agenda.

According to a Bloomberg report, the resolution prepared by the European trio urges Tehran to “fully cooperate” with the IAEA investigation of its nuclear facilities. It came after the nuclear watchdog’s inspectors claimed they had not been given access to two locations that may have hosted atomic activities two decades ago.

The resolution will have to be presented during the meeting and is expected to win Washington’s backing.

During the Monday session, the IAEA Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi claimed that for over four months, “Iran has denied us access to two locations and that, for almost a year, it has not engaged in substantive discussions to clarify our questions related to possible undeclared nuclear material and nuclear-related activities.”

Gharibabadi dismissed the claims in the reported resolution and said, “While Iran is cooperating extensively and constructively with the agency, submitting a resolution with the purpose of asking Iran to cooperate and fulfill the two demands of the IAEA is regrettable and a totally unconstructive move.”

He criticized the European trio’s double standards on Tehran’s nuclear program and said such a resolution is being put forth by the countries that “either possess nuclear weapons or play host to such destructive and deadly weapons.”

Such a move, Gharibabadi said is “a mockery of international norms and rules governing disarmament and non-proliferation regimes.”

Gharibabadi also called on all members of the IAEA Board of Governors to exercise vigilance and avoid taking any “political and hasty” measures in order for Iran to continue cooperation with the Vienna-based agency.

“Naturally if such a resolution, which clearly serves American goals, is approved, the Islamic Republic of Iran will have to take the necessary measures accordingly,” he noted.

The Iranian envoy further stressed that the new IAEA request is founded on the claims raised by the Israeli regime, which is an enemy of Iran.

Tehran’s transparent cooperation with the agency “does not mean that we should agree to every request from the IAEA on the basis of delusional claims of our enemies,” he emphasized.

Iran signed the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) with six world states — namely the US, Germany, France, Britain, Russia and China — in 2015.

However, Washington’s unilateral withdrawal in May 2018 and the subsequent re-imposition of sanctions against Tehran left the future of the historic agreement in limbo.

Iran remained fully compliant with the JCPOA for an entire year, waiting for the co-signatories to honor their commitments.

As the European parties failed to do so, the Islamic Republic moved in May 2019 to suspend its JCPOA commitments under Articles 26 and 36 of the deal covering Tehran’s legal rights.

June 16, 2020 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Wars for Israel | , , , , , , , | 5 Comments

UNHRC joins pile-on against US police’s ‘systemic racism,’ but US military makes police brutality look like amateur hour

By Helen Buyniski | RT | June 15, 2020

The UN Human Rights Council has joined the worldwide protests taking aim at racism and police brutality among US police forces. But where are these voices when the US military kills millions in the Middle East and Africa?

Burkina Faso, speaking on behalf of 54 African nations, requested an urgent debate on “racially motivated human rights violations” – specifically systemic racism and police brutality – in the US, and the UNHRC has agreed to hold the debate on Wednesday. But compared with what US military policy has wrought on the populations of the Middle East and northern Africa, police killings are a blip on the radar.

The UNHRC debate is the latest grand public statement in the wake of the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis last month, and speaks to a growing disconnect between what has become a laser-focus on US policing and awareness of the much greater harms caused by Washington’s foreign policy – harms that are just as racialized, if not more so, but which mysteriously fly under the radars of activist groups.

Because this blindness doesn’t just afflict the UNHRC. In the US, groups like Black Lives Matter and the Sunrise Movement are demanding that US cities “defund police” and reallocate that funding to social programs, a solution that divides the American people and ignores the root causes of police violence – over-militarization, lack of accountability, lack of enforcement of existing laws, poor training, and austerity budgets that have slashed services like mental health and social welfare programs.

There’s no doubt US police forces need a dramatic overhaul. But the sudden international focus on domestic policing ignores the much greater casualty numbers among black and brown populations resulting from the ‘War on Terror’, which is nearly two decades old and showing no signs of ending anytime soon, despite the feeble campaign promises of President Donald Trump. In addition to the declared wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and Syria, the US has bombed or helped to bomb innocent people in Yemen, Somalia, and Pakistan over the past 19 years, and has covertly extended its military tentacles deep into Africa in a bid to counter Chinese influence.

The result has been millions of deaths and countless more injuries, largely among non-white, Muslim populations. It’s difficult to calculate the true toll of US military violence, but a 2015 report by Physicians for Social Responsibility, Physicians for Global Survival, and International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War concluded at least 1.3 million had died in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan alone since the 9/11 terror attacks were used as an excuse to launch the US’ holy war on the Middle East. Their report cautioned that the true number could exceed two million – a total which does not include hundreds of thousands (if not millions) more war deaths in Libya, Somalia, Yemen, and elsewhere.

It’s hard to get a reliable count of civilian casualties, as leaked documents from the drone program have shown as many as 90 percent of those killed in US airstrikes are not the intended targets, and the Pentagon labels any unknown bodies as “enemy combatants” if it can’t identify them. As the military itself admitted at the height of the Iraq invasion, “We don’t do body counts.” And some of the worst harm caused by US foreign policy extends beyond simple killing.

With the help of NATO, the US’ ‘humanitarian bombing’ of Libya in 2011 transformed it from the most advanced nation in Africa, where technological advances were literally turning the desert green, to a brutal place where slaves were sold in open markets. Black people in Libya were targeted for the cruelest atrocities by the NATO-supported rebels, and were often arrested for nothing more than their skin color. It’s difficult to forget the horrific photos that emerged from Abu Ghraib prison, or the tales of CIA ‘black spots’ where innocent men were tortured for weeks on a mere tip from a vengeful neighbor.

Even the indirect involvement of the US military causes extensive harm. Ever-tightening sanctions strangle Iran, and the US has severely restricted humanitarian aid flowing to Somalia and Nigeria, blaming terror groups that arose in the power vacuum left by Gaddafi’s gruesome murder. Some 14 million Yemenis are at risk of starvation thanks to aid blockades maintained by US ally Saudi Arabia, and the UN predicted last year that the conflict would claim over 233,000 lives by 2020.

Those institutions that do try to address US military atrocities face significant opposition – the Trump administration just last week announced sanctions on members of the International Criminal Court for having the gall to do their job and attempt to investigate US war crimes. Perhaps this is why an open UN letter signed by 22 African officials this weekend glossed over the devastating history of US military action in perpetuating systemic racism around the world, instead keeping its condemnations politely vague. Yet domestic activist groups are just as silent about the harm US military power causes worldwide, even while claiming they want justice for black and brown populations.

The activists who genuinely want a better world – as opposed to the professional agitators who’d lose their jobs if all human suffering vanished off the face of the Earth – might consider replacing their rallying cry of “defund the police” with “defund the Pentagon.” The $738 billion that institution received in 2020 could buy a lot of social justice. If black lives truly matter, they matter everywhere – not just inside US borders.

Helen Buyniski is an American journalist and political commentator at RT. Follow her on Twitter @velocirapture23

June 16, 2020 Posted by | Militarism, Progressive Hypocrite, War Crimes | | Leave a comment