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YouTube Removes RT’s Video of Trump’s ‘Violative’ CPAC Speech – yet it’s ok when posted by Western outlets

By Nebojsa Malic | RT | March 2, 2021

Having a video of former US President Donald Trump’s speech at CPAC may get you warnings and a deletion from YouTube, but apparently only if you’re RT, as the platform seems to selectively apply its arbitrary and capricious rules.

On Tuesday, RT and its German-language channel RT DE got a notice from YouTube that the video of Trump speaking at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Florida on Sunday was being flagged for a “strike” under the platform’s rules on “supporting the 2020 US presidential election” announced in December.

Those rules say any questioning of the 2020 US presidential elections or claims of fraud is verboten. However, YouTube explicitly says “news coverage and commentary on these issues can remain on our site if there’s sufficient education, documentary, scientific or artistic [EDSA] context.”

A live-streamed public address by a former US president is the very definition of “news coverage.” According to one estimate, over 31 million people watched in on various social media platforms.

Yet when asked for a clarification, YouTube responded that the video lacks “enough context that additionally describes and demonstrates that this is Trump’s violative CPAC speech” and that “more details and explanatory information must be provided.”

There was no answer as to how such details and explanations should be provided in a live feed that did not have a correspondent commenting, or if it would be enough to include it in the text description underneath – something RT and our video news agency Ruptly have repeatedly asked about, without ever getting a response.

After RT’s inquiry YouTube proceeded to delete the video outright, for violating its “spam, deceptive practices and scams policy.”

Meanwhile, Trump’s speech was posted on YouTube by multiple other outlets – Reuters, ABC and The Independent, for example – without any of the aforementioned “context” or disclaimers. While it’s impossible for us to know if they also got warnings or strikes, their videos are still up, so it certainly appears that RT was singled out for enforcement.

Back in December, YouTube said it would boost “authoritative news” and suppress “problematic misinformation.” It now seems that the same exact video is treated as “problematic misinformation” when it comes from RT or RT DE, but as “authoritative news” when it comes from a Western corporate outlet.

It would be one thing if YouTube demanded that anything showing what Trump says be labeled as lies, or come with a disclaimer. Admittedly, that is the behavior of a publisher and not a platform, as YouTube claims to be in order to enjoy the protections of the infamous Section 230. Singling out RT channels for enforcement, while giving Western establishment outlets a free pass, however, is far more troubling. If that is indeed the case, then the Alphabet subsidiary is telling the world it does not judge videos on the basis of their content, but on the identity of their uploader.

That this sort of discrimination is posing as YouTube’s “community guidelines” and policies aimed at “supporting” – or would that be “fortifying”? – the US presidential elections, speaks volumes about the platform, but also the state of American democracy.

March 2, 2021 Posted by | Full Spectrum Dominance | | 1 Comment

Russia triples gas supplies to China via Power of Siberia pipeline

RT | March 1, 2021

Russia’s energy major Gazprom said on Monday that it had pumped more gas to China in February via the Power of Siberia pipeline than it had initially planned, more than tripling supplies compared to the same month last year.

“The export of gas to China through the Power of Siberia gas pipeline continues to grow. Supplies regularly exceed our daily contractual obligations. The actual monthly volume of supplies in February is 3.2 times more than in February 2020,” Gazprom said in a statement.

The 3,000km (1,864 mile) cross-border pipeline started official deliveries of Russian natural gas to China in 2019. The so-called eastern route’s capacity is 61 billion cubic meters of gas per year, including 38 billion cubic meters for export. Last year, Gazprom supplied 4.1 billion cubic meters of gas to China via the Power of Siberia. It plans to boost exports by an additional six billion cubic meters.

The agreement on gas supplies via the Power of Siberia pipeline was reached in 2014, with Gazprom and the China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) inking a 30-year contract. It is Gazprom’s biggest-ever agreement and the first natural gas pipeline between Russia and China.

Russia is set to further increase supplies of piped gas to China, including via the Power of Siberia 2 project. This second pipeline entered the design stage last year, and will be capable of delivering as much as 50 billion cubic meters of gas once it’s finished. Gazprom intends to become China’s biggest natural gas supplier, accounting for more than 25 percent of Chinese imports by 2035.

March 2, 2021 Posted by | Economics | , | 6 Comments

The Origin of the Species – and of our Viral Issue!

Ivor Cummins | March 2, 2021

The New York Times, WSJ and all of the media have mused about the origins of this virus – well here we explain the actual science and data, and what IT actually tells us.

NOTE: My extensive research and interviewing / video/sound editing and much more does require support – please consider helping if you can with monthly donation to support me directly, or one-off payment: https://www.paypal.com/donate?hosted_…​

Alternatively join up with my Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/IvorCummins

March 2, 2021 Posted by | Deception, Timeless or most popular, Video | | Leave a comment

New data reveals British sea level records stretching back 200 years

Credit: University of Liverpool / National Oceanography Centre (Liverpool branch)
Tallbloke’s Talkshop | March 2, 2021

The graph looks consistent with mild warming following the Little Ice Age. About 30 cms. or 1 foot of sea level rise in 130 years since 1890 is nothing remarkable. The average duration of solar cycles was longer in the 19th century than in the 20th but that trend is reversing now, with a lot more sunspot-free days per cycle. Climatic effects may follow.
– – –
A study published by University of Liverpool scientists, alongside colleagues from the Liverpool branch of the National Oceanography Centre, has uncovered and analyzed new sea level records from the nineteenth century which show that the increased rate of the rise of British sea level took place from 1890 onwards, says Phys.org.

Nowadays, sea level measurements around the British Isles are made by tide gauges which record digitally and transmit the data automatically.

The best of these records are fed into the Permanent Service for Mean Sea Level (PSMSL) which brings together the long, reliable tide gauge records from around the world.

However, in the nineteenth century the only long tide gauge records for Britain which stretched back beyond 1895 were from Aberdeen, Liverpool and Sheerness, and of these only Sheerness has records from before 1858.

None of these records is continuous, and it is not clear whether they represent the sea level of Britain as a whole, but they suggest that there was little in the way of British sea level rise prior to 1890.

Now in a paper published in the journal Progress in Oceanography, Liverpool researchers have for the first time produced a continuous sea level rise record for Britain dating back to 1820 by piecing together new sources of information from more than 100 new sites.

The new sources include old manuscripts, maps, admiralty dockyard data and tidal ledgers and provide a huge amount of detailed sea level data for different times and different locations around Britain.

Continued here.

March 2, 2021 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | | 1 Comment

CNN.com Gaslights Readers on Failed Ocean Predictions – Now Claims Opposite

By James Taylor | ClimateRealism | March 2, 2021

Just one year after climate activists and their media allies spread fear with claims that global warming is causing the world’s ocean currents to speed up, CNN.com is now claiming the opposite – and claiming scientists predicted a slowing of ocean currents all along. CNN’s attempt at “Gaslighting” (a term derived from the 1944 movie Gaslight, in which a man attempts to convince his wife that she cannot believe her own memory) reveals the lack of honesty and lack of scientific basis for alarmist climate claims.

CNN published an article this morning titled, “The slowing down of ocean currents could have a devastating effect on our climate.” In the course of claiming all sorts of existential threats caused by slow ocean currents – including stronger hurricanes, heat waves, and sea-level rise – CNN asserted, “The slowdown of ocean circulation is directly caused by warming global temperatures and has been predicted by climate scientists.”

Except that “climate scientists” and the activist media were telling us exactly the opposite just one year ago.

On February 6, 2020, NASA published an article titled, “Arctic Ice Melt Is Changing Ocean Currents.” The article claimed global warming is speeding up ocean currents. According to the article, “A major ocean current in the Arctic is faster and more turbulent as a result of rapid sea ice melt, a new study from NASA shows. The current is part of a delicate Arctic environment that is now flooded with fresh water, an effect of human-caused climate change.”

On February 6, 2020, Scientific American published an article titled, “Ocean Currents Are Speeding Up, Driven by Faster Winds.” The article claims, “Climate change may in part be spurring the acceleration, which could change how heat and nutrients are pushed around the oceans.”

On February 5, 2020, Science magazine published an article titled, “Global warming is speeding up Earth’s massive ocean currents.” Quoting a scientist reviewing data on ocean-current speeds derived from instruments on Argo robotic floats, Science reported, “The evidence in the Argo data is absolutely astonishing,”

On February 6, 2020, the website Live Science published an article titled, “Ocean currents are getting faster.” The article claimed, “The change is driven by global warming and wind.”

To ensure the public was sufficiently aware and sufficiently alarmed about accelerating ocean currents, Washington Post climate change reporter Chris Mooney published a February 5, 2020, article titled, “World’s oceans are speeding up – another mega-scale consequence of climate change.” According to the article, “It’s the latest dramatic finding about the stark transformation of the global ocean — joining revelations about massive coral die-offs, upheaval to fisheries, ocean-driven melting of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, increasingly intense ocean heat waves and accelerating sea level rise. … This suggests the Earth might actually be more sensitive to climate change than our simulations can currently show.”

On February 11, 2020, NBC News published an article titled, “Climate change models predicted ocean currents would speed up – but not this soon.” According to the article, “Climate models had predicted that ocean circulation would accelerate with unmitigated climate change, but the changes had not been expected until much later this century … The disparity suggests that some climate models may underestimate the effects of global warming.”

Now, quickly and completely forget everything you just read. New data are destroying all those claims of climate change speeding up ocean currents. As CNN reports this morning, ocean currents now appear to be slowing down, not speeding up, due to global warming. And, remember, as CNN tells us, climate scientists predicted this all along.

March 2, 2021 Posted by | Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | | Leave a comment

Seven years after Maidan divided country, Ukraine intensifies shelling of Donbass to deafening media silence

By Eva Bartlett | RT | March 2, 2021

While much of the world is focused on Covid-related issues, Ukraine’s seven-year war on the people of Donbass continues. In recent weeks, Kiev’s shelling of civilians has intensified, met by the predictable Western media silence.

Ostensibly, following the Minsk agreements, there was a ceasefire. In reality, Donbass residents in villages bordering peace lines are incessantly subject to Ukrainian shelling.

Ukraine uses heavy weapons in violation of the agreement, including 82mm and 120mm mortar shells, routinely shelling at night when Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) observers are not patrolling the area.

But Ukrainian forces also shell during the day, and have done so a lot more of late, including allegedly with phosphorus, and shelling further behind the front lines.

Most people could be forgiven for not being aware of events in Ukraine’s breakaway Republics of Donetsk and Lugansk (DPR/LPR) in the Donbass region, with corporate media either not touching the matter or doing so with glasses tinted heavily by the Ukrainian government.

There are in fact journalists and news sites that regularly give updates, but they aren’t as widely known as they should be.

From my own September 2019 reporting from frontline villages of the DPR, I maintain contact with reporters and residents who update on the situation there.

One of these was the mayor of Gorlovka, a city northeast of Donetsk, who on his Telegram channel on February 19 detailed the nearby villages of Zaitsevo and Mine 6/7 being under heavy weapons fire (by Ukraine). On February 20, he wrote of Mine 6/7 and another village being heavily shelled since early morning, with locals saying more than one hundred hits occurred.

The same day, Alexey Karpushev, a resident of the northern city of Gorlovka, wrote, “From about five in the morning until now, there is heavy shelling of the city from the Air Force artillery.”

According to Karpushev – who is a former first secretary of Gorlovka’s committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine – in recent weeks, the number of attacks from the Ukrainian army “increased significantly.” He mentioned that a 22 year old civilian was recently seriously injured in the attacks.

I asked why the increased shelling now.

“Ukraine’s aggression intensified just when Biden came to power in the United States.” It is quite likely that President Volodymyr Zelensky feels more confident with the return of the  warmongers to the White House. Not long after Biden took power America resumed illegally bombing Syria.

We’re Not Living, We’re Surviving

In villages northwest and north of Gorlovka, passing many boarded up and destroyed homes (including one still smouldering from the shell-induced fire that gutted it), I met residents who stayed in spite of the nightly shelling and damage to their homes, because they had no other option.

One of these was a 74-year-old woman, whose home was falling apart after having been shelled on multiple occasions. “I’m afraid at night; that’s when they start shelling heavily. My husband is dead. I have nowhere to go.”

In another village I met a man who was about to walk down the lane that I had been cautioned to avoid due to the risk of being shot by Ukrainian snipers. His house was in a district largely unpopulated now because getting there meant being in the line of fire, but like others I met, he had nowhere else to go.

He consented to speak, but off camera, saying Ukraine had shelled his home directly after he did a video interview. He also said he had once been shot in the leg by a sniper and many other times had to drop to the ground when snipers started firing.

Another man in the area wasn’t worried about speaking on camera, although his house had also been damaged by Ukrainian attacks.

“Why do you support Nazis if you remember WW2? Why do you now support the Nazis? Openly Nazis… Why is Europe silent? Everyone comes here and agrees with me, but nothing changes. OSCE shouts, but when they are under fire, they are silent, they don’t say that Ukraine attacks them.”

In Zaitsevo, another frontline village, the head of administration, Irina Dikun, told me of the hell they had been living for the past six years, saying the ceasefires never reached her village.

“Here, we are not living, we’re surviving. Those who could leave, have left. Those who remain are mostly elderly.”

Ambulances couldn’t reach homes close to the front line where Ukraine was shelling, so she learned to drive and took First Aid training in order to help injured residents. In addition to detailing Ukraine’s destruction, “street by street,” of the village, she emphasized that what Western media claims about Russia invading the breakaway republics was false.

“There is no Russian invasion here. Just normal, peaceful people who wanted to live another way. In the beginning, we didn’t want to make a Republic; we just wanted to be autonomous. But we were not listened to. Ukraine moved its armed forces against the people and used their artillery against us.”

I also spoke with numerous DPR soldiers, asking them, among many things, why they had picked up weapons.

“Because of the killing of people in Odessa. That’s what made us join the military, to defend our area,” one soldier said.

Another man said he had initially joined protests against the coup in Kiev, that he “didn’t support the Nazi regime,” and eventually took up arms to defend the DPR.

In those frontline areas, 500 metres from Ukrainian forces, I wore body armour and a helmet. As I listened to various elderly people speak of the near-nightly shelling and heavy machine gun fire they were subject to, it struck me how these brave souls had nothing to protect them, no global body to prevent Ukraine from maiming and killing them, damaging or destroying their homes, year after year.

Meanwhile Ukraine has Western nations whitewashing its crimes and sending it weapons.

Western Ambassadors Get front line Disinfo Tour

On February 11, Ukraine reported that President Zelensky and a gaggle of Western ambassadors visited a front line on the Ukraine-controlled side, with Zelensky waffling on about the importance of his cohorts in disinformation seeing “with their own eyes” what is happening in Donbass.

Yeah, no. They didn’t see anything beyond the sterile visit they were allotted. They certainly would not have heard the anguished accounts I did on the other side of that front line.

They wouldn’t know of the many people, many of whom are elderly, living in shells of homes, or the basement of a school, deprived of electricity, water, cooking gas, reliant on aid for their survival. Nor that Ukraine has reportedly blocked UN and Red Cross aid from entering the DPR, including recently.

On February 24 and 25, Ukrainian forces shelled Yelenovka, south of Donetsk, a point through which humanitarian aid from the UN and Red Cross was to enter, preventing the aid delivery.

Preventing the entrance of aid, on top of continually shelling civilian areas, is the furthest from Ukraine “fulfilling its obligations to establish a ceasefire regime,” as President Zelensky claimed to Western ambassadors.

While Russian officials warn of the dire fate of 4 million people under Ukrainian shelling, Western officials either remain silent or fabricate more accusations against Russia and against Donbass’ defenders.

Western media have predictably remained silent on Ukraine’s crimes, painting defenders of Donbass as “pro-Russian separatists” with no context as to what people in Donbass actually want. From what I heard there, all they want is autonomy from the criminal government in Ukraine, and above all an end to the war.

And while Western officials and media harp on about a supposed “Russian invasion” of the republics, even the chairman of the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission recently emphasized that was untrue.

An aside: one of the soldiers asked me about the reaction of people in the West to Ukraine’s brazen display of Nazi symbols. My reply was that, thanks to Western media, most people don’t know.

Recently, the head of the DPR warned, “We need to be ready for anything” from Ukraine. Indeed, with the pro-war Biden administration, we can surely expect more Western support to Ukraine in further bombing the people of Donbass.

Eva Bartlett is a Canadian independent journalist and activist. She has spent years on the ground covering conflict zones in the Middle East, especially in Syria and Palestine (where she lived for nearly four years). Follow her on Twitter @EvaKBartlett

March 2, 2021 Posted by | Militarism, War Crimes | , | 1 Comment

American mouthpieces for Israeli regime had unrivaled access to Obama White House: Former Official

Press TV – March 2, 2021

A former senior US official has said some 20 American mouthpieces for the Israeli regime had unrivaled access to the White House during Barack Obama’s presidency, highlighting the close link between Israeli lobbies and the White House and Congress.

Ben Rhodes, former deputy national security adviser under Obama, said he had to meet with Israel lobbyists as much as all other interest groups combined.

He said there were 10 to 20 individuals who invariably took the position of the Israeli regime and were apparently scripted by the Israelis in some cases.

“You just have this incredibly organized pro-Israel community that is very accustomed to having access in the White House, in Congress, at the State Department. It’s taken for granted, as given, that that’s the way things are going to be done,” Rhodes said in an interview with US-based Foundation for Middle East Peace.

Rhodes said White House national security aides were expected to appear at the Israel lobby group AIPAC’s annual conference, but if they paid attention to Arab-American or peace groups, they could “get in trouble.”

The former Obama official said he was warned at times by members of Congress about the “acute” financial threat of taking on the lobby as the Israel lobby’s access was reinforced by “compliant media and Congress.”

Rhodes said the Biden team is forgetting the “history,” that Israel made life hell for Obama, when the Obama White House pretended that Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu believed in a “two-state solution” when he never did.

He also recalled Netanyahu’s pressure by calling on “vast” rightwing media resources in the US.

“The media interest is dramatically intensified [on this issue]. And that’s both a very aggressive kind of pro-Likud media in the United States. It’s also just the mainstream media delights in any Israel controversies. Netanyahu knew that he could gin up the rightwing pro-Likud media in the United States, which is pretty vast, but he also knew that if he needled Obama he would create a week-long political story, because political reporters view Israel as a domestic political story, not a foreign policy issue.”

Regarding efforts to block anti-Israeli moves at the UN, the former Obama official said whenever there was an international incident like the Goldstone Report or the Turkish Flotilla,” you have to make sure that you’re doing everything that you can at the UN to kind of block this from going forward.”

On Iran, Rhodes said “by the way, it’s not as if anyone plans to “decenter” Jews! Today it is no coincidence that the top three officials in the Biden State Department — Tony Blinken, Wendy Sherman and Victoria Nuland — are all Jewish. These appointments are meant to reassure the Israel lobby of Biden’s support.”

“The same reason Obama hired Hillary Clinton as secretary of state in 2008 by reaching out to an Israel lobbyist to be the intermediary. The same reason that for many years all of the Treasury undersecretaries for counter-terrorism, enforcing Iran sanctions, were Jewish.”

March 2, 2021 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | , , , | 1 Comment

Israeli interrogator sexually assaults Palestinian child detainee

Defense for Children International – Palestine – February 10, 2021

Ramallah – An Israeli interrogator allegedly physically and sexually assaulted a 15-year-old Palestinian boy in Israeli custody during interrogation in mid-January at a Jerusalem detention facility.

The 15-year-old boy* was detained by Israeli paramilitary border police forces from his home around 5 a.m. on January 13, 2021, in the occupied East Jerusalem neighborhood of Issawiya. Israeli forces transferred him to Al-Mascobiyya interrogation and detention center in West Jerusalem where he was bound and blindfolded and detained in an interrogation room. An individual accused him of throwing stones and Molotov cocktails and then allegedly subjected the boy to physical and sexual violence amounting to torture, according to documentation collected by Defense for Children International – Palestine.

“Israeli forces routinely subject Palestinian child detainees to systematic ill-treatment and torture following arrest,” said Ayed Abu Eqtaish, Accountability Program Director at DCIP. “These latest allegations are a particularly disturbing reminder that Palestinian children in Israeli custody are vulnerable to all forms of violence. Israeli authorities must immediately investigate these allegations that amount to torture.”

DCIP maintains that all children must be entitled to have a parent present at all times during interrogation, as well as have access to a lawyer of their choice prior to interrogation and throughout the interrogation process. DCIP demands that all interrogations of children must be audio-visually recorded.

When he was detained on January 13, the boy was already subject to house arrest following a previous arrest in November 2020 and was scheduled to appear in court that day.

Upon arrival at Al-Mascobiyya interrogation and detention center, the boy was forced to sit in a hallway bound and blindfolded where he was subject to physical violence by those passing by, according to documentation collected by DCIP.

“Every two to three minutes, someone would come by and slap, push, punch, or kick me,” the boy told DCIP. “I kept silent and never said anything. I did not know what was going on, but it was painful and tiring.”

He was eventually brought into an interrogation room. “A man came to the room and told me his name was Captain Kamel,” the boy told DCIP. “He kicked me and punched me while shouting and saying I should tell him what I did. Whenever I told him I did not do anything, he would beat me harder. He threatened to shock me with electricity, but I told him I did not do anything.”

The boy alleges the individual then knocked him to the floor while blindfolded and raped him with an object, according to documentation collected by DCIP. The individual threatened that the sexual violence would continue unless he confessed to the allegations against him.

The boy was then made to stand against a wall, where the individual inflicted extreme pain on his genitals. “There are no words to describe that moment,” the boy told DCIP. The Captain subsequently threatened the boy, telling him that the physical and sexual violence would continue if he told his lawyer what had occurred.

Around 15 minutes after the incident, Israeli forces transferred the boy to another room where he met with a lawyer for about five minutes. Then, he was taken to a room where a man in civilian clothing introduced himself as an Israeli interrogator. The boy was interrogated for almost four hours, during which he experienced verbal abuse and was forced to sign papers written in Hebrew, the content of which he did not understand, according to information collected by DCIP.

With his court session adjourned for four days, the boy was detained in a room with four other children for three days. After that time, he was again taken to an interrogation room. He was interrogated for approximately four hours, at the end of which he was again forced to sign papers in Hebrew. The following day, January 17, he was released under the terms of house arrest pending another court session at a later date, according to information collected by DCIP.

“What he did to me was very oppressive and humiliating,” the boy told DCIP. “I want this house arrest to end because it is exhausting. I want my life back. I want to leave the house and see my friends.”

Palestinian children in East Jerusalem are prosecuted in Israel’s civilian criminal legal system, not the Israeli military court system, due to Israeli authorities’ unilateral annexation of East Jerusalem, a move unrecognized by the international community. Palestinian children living in East Jerusalem are generally subject to the Israeli Youth Law, which theoretically applies equally to Palestinian and Israeli children in Jerusalem. However, evidence collected by DCIP clearly demonstrates that Israeli authorities implement the law in a discriminatory manner, denying Palestinian children in East Jerusalem of their rights from the moment of arrest to the end of legal proceedings.

Palestinian children in the Israeli military detention system are overwhelmingly subjected to widespread and systematic violence and ill-treatment, according to documentation by DCIP. Between January 1, 2014, and December 31, 2019, DCIP collected sworn affidavits from 752 child detainees, describing their arrest, interrogation, and detention experiences. Of these, 72 percent were subjected to physical violence and 61 percent to verbal abuse. Less than one percent were threatened with sexual violence; however, sexual violence amounting to torture or cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment are known to be underreported by child detainee survivors.

A 2015 study on sexual torture by Israeli authorities found that the sexual torture of adult Palestinian male detainees by Israeli authorities is systematic, and includes verbal sexual harassment, forced nudity, and physical sexual assault.

*The boy’s name is known to DCIP but is not disclosed here due to privacy concerns.

March 2, 2021 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture, Timeless or most popular | , , , | 1 Comment

Biden Digs Up the Hatchet

By Vladimir Danilov – New Eastern Outlook – 02.03.2021

Just one month has passed since the newly elected, 46th US President started his tenure in the White House, and he has clearly shown that his foreign policy strategy for the next four years is by no means dovish. Demonstratively renouncing the “era of the previous Republican president”, which was, incidentally, marked by the fact that Donald Trump was the only US president over the past thirty years who did not start any new wars, Joe Biden decided from his very first days to plunge the US – and the entire world – into the cold world of armed confrontation, something that was a trademark for the 44th US president, Democrat Barack Obama.

It is worth recalling how right when Barack Obama was about to leave office The American Conservative gave an objective assessment for this president (with whom Joe Biden had worked on the same team) who had undeservedly won the Nobel Peace Prize, emphasizing his particular love for the use of brute military force abroad: “Obama [is] … the only president to spend his entire tenure presiding over foreign wars… [T]he US has bombed at least half a dozen countries on his watch, and his administration has assisted other governments in laying waste to one of the poorest countries on earth.” According to Airwars data for that period, during 2014-2016 alone the United States carried out more than 9,600 air raids in Iraq, and about 5,000 in Syria, with dozens of thousands of civilians killed. And in the United States itself, many people died because of Obama’s policies, and therefore it was with good reason that WorldNetDaily back then emphasized that “Obama has been blithely watching coffins float by his entire presidency”.

Having understood from the example set by the 44th President of the United States that the Nobel Peace Prize can be won for efforts that are anything but peaceful, Joe Biden, using a specially chosen slogan: “America is Back”, in his very first days in office started to “intimidate” Russia and China, trying to show everyone “who is in charge in the world.”

Long-suffering Syria (primarily at the hands of the United States itself!) was chosen as the starting point of the “Biden-style” war saga, where the United States launched an airstrike on February 25 on a facility that may have belonged to the Iranian military. According to the American side, the airstrike was a response to a series of attacks that were carried out on US targets in Iraq.

As Assistant to the Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs John Kirby said, the United States executed precision strikes against targets run by pro-Iranian forces in Syria located along the border zone with Iraq. According to US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, the US military allowed the Iraqi side to “develop intelligence” for the operation, and encouraged them to do so. At the same time, Austin stressed that cooperation on the part of the Iraqi side greatly helped to clarify their goals. F-15 fighter jets were involved in executing the US strikes. In its report on Washington’s operation, Reuters emphasized that the order to launch the airstrike was personally given by the head of the White House, Joe Biden.

According to the monitoring group The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), at least three trucks with weapons and ammunition were destroyed in a strike by the US air force in eastern Syria, and at least 17 militants were killed. The militants themselves announced that one person was killed, and that several others suffered minor injuries. The Washington Post also reported on the deaths of people as a result of this airstrike, stressing that before this occurred no US representatives had spoken about eliminating terrorists, or that civilians could have died because of this airstrike.

This strike in Syria by the US Air Force is being fiercely debated in international circles. What was highlighted in particular was that, clearly guided by the “pieces of silver” from the US military-industrial complex that brought Biden to power, the new master in the White House used this attack on Iranian [backed] militias on Syrian territory in an obvious attempt to placate Israel and the Gulf countries, which are afraid of the new American administration sliding towards a pro-Iranian position.

There was emphasis placed on how the consequences of these actions by Washington could be an escalation of military confrontation across the region. Among other risks, what also stands out is the failure of the process charted out to normalize relations between Washington and Tehran on the nuclear deal.

In the telephone conversations between Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif and his Syrian counterpart Faisal Mekdad that took place immediately after the US airstrike on the Syrian-Iraqi border, the ministers pointed out the need for the West to adhere to the UN Security Council resolution on Syria, respect the sovereignty and independence of the Arab republic, and not to lend support to terrorist groups. In addition, they stressed their commitment to the process of settling the situation in Syria as agreed upon during the talks in Astana. The airstrikes that the US Air Force carried out in Syrian territory near the border with Iraq are a manifestation of “American aggression”, the state-run TV channel Al-Ikhbariyah Syria emphasizes. The Syrian government-run TV channel Al-Surya stressed that “the United States took aggressive action against Syria, attacking ground targets in the eastern Deir ez-Zor Governorate”.

As the chair of the Russian Federation Council Foreign Affairs Committee Konstantin Kosachev pointed out, despite the fact that four states are involved in the situation – the United States, Iraq, Iran, and Syria – the United States is the only one overtly using military force, in violation of international law. According to him, the American authorities are again assigning themselves the right to “conduct an investigation, pass sentence, and execute it out of court.”

Discussing the airstrike on Syria carried out by the United States under the leadership of Democrat Joe Biden, even American observers (in particular, the conservative FOX News channel) highlight that his predecessor, Donald Trump, was criticized for taking the same actions by Jen Psaki, the current White House press secretary. For example, users pointed to Psaki’s Twitter post after the 2017 airstrikes, where she questioned the legitimacy of the attacks and stressed that Syria is a sovereign state, even if President Bashar al-Assad is a “brutal dictator.”

After the most recent airstrike, Psaki’s remarks were cited by both social media users and politicians in the United States. For example, Muslim House Representative Ilhan Omar posted a short response to an old Psaki tweet: “Good question.”

March 2, 2021 Posted by | Militarism, War Crimes, Wars for Israel | , , | 3 Comments

More Suggestions for Dealing with Israel

Recusal and banning dual nationality good places to start

By Philip Giraldi | Unz Review | March 2, 2021

My article last week that made some suggestions about what ordinary Americans can do to put pressure on Israel and on the lopsided bilateral relationship with Washington that has done so much damage to the United States proved to be quite popular. It also resulted in some comments by readers who saw other issues that might be considered pressure points that could be exploited to bring about change or at least to mitigate some of the damage.

Two areas that were mentioned a number of times were the possibility of recusing the most strident Israeli partisans from some discussions on Middle East policy and also refusing to issue security clearances to American government employees and politicians who are “dual national” citizens, which raises the issue of dual loyalty. Recusal is defined as removing oneself from participation to avoid a conflict of interest due to lack of impartiality while refusing to issue clearances would completely block dual national Israeli and other foreign citizens from having high level positions in the U.S. government.

Some would argue that recusal is an excessive punishment that will limit debate on a key foreign policy issue. It will also inevitably be perceived by the usual suspects as anti-Semitic since the only ones who would be excluded would be some Zionists, but they miss the point, which is that the current system does not in any way permit the review of a range of points of view on the Middle East since it is monopolized by Jews and friends of Israel. And there is a precedent. Not so long ago the U.S. State Department had an informal policy that discouraged the selection of Jewish ambassadors for Israel. The intent was to prevent any conflicts of interest and also to protect the ambassadors from inappropriate pressure. There also existed a cadre of so-called Arabists who dealt with issues in the Middle East alongside Jewish officers in the State Department. In the 1950s and 1960s a concerted effort was made by Jewish organizations and Congress to weed out the Arabists and currently nearly all the working level handling of policy formulation for that region is being done by Jews.

One might assume reasonably that the concentration of decision making in the hands of a partisan group, whether Arabists or Zionists, would inevitably not be in the U.S. national interest, and so it has proven if one looks at the shambles in the arc from Afghanistan over to Lebanon.

The following description of how the process actually works comes from Ben Rhodes, who is himself half-Jewish, and it describes the decision making on the Middle East during the administration of President Barack Obama where Rhodes served as Deputy National Security Advisor. During his time in office he observed how same 10 to 20 individuals who invariably took the position of the Israeli government were in on discussions of Middle East policy but if anyone in the White House paid attention to Arab-American or peace groups, they could “get in trouble.”

Rhodes observed that “You meet more with outside, organized constituency groups on Israel than any other foreign policy issue. I’d actually go as far to say that… as a senior White House official working on national security… the number of people you meet from the organized pro Israel community equals all the other meetings that you might do with kind of diaspora or constituency groups on all the other issues. It’s that degree of dwarfing. I’m pretty confident that’s consistent across [presidential] administrations…

“You just have this incredibly organized pro-Israel community that is very accustomed to having access in the White House, in Congress, at the State Department. It’s taken for granted, as given, that that’s the way things are going to be done… I remember looking around the situation room on a meeting on the Israel Palestine issue and every single one of us in the meeting was Jewish or of Jewish origin like me…”

The United States has many interests in the Near East, but if every move is seen through the optic of Israel the inevitable results will not be beneficial to Americans. So, if recusal, either voluntary or forced, is employed to obtain a better mix of opinion on policy options it can only beneficial. And it will also ipso facto loosen the overweening influence that successive Israeli governments have exercised over U.S. presidents and Congress.

Preventing individuals holding two passports from obtaining sensitive government jobs would also be a highly desirable step but it will be hard to execute in practice as the Israeli government does not make available lists of American citizens who have also taken up Israeli citizenship. Holding two passports was, in fact, illegal in the United States up until 1964. New citizens were required to turn in old passports and swear loyalty to the United States. Retention of former citizenship could be punished by the loss of the American citizenship.

Numerous online lists of dual Israeli-Americans in government circulate on the internet, but it is clear from the content that most of the compilations are speculative. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer describes himself as the “shomer” or protector of Israel in the Senate and appears on such lists. So too does former Congressman Tom Lantos, described as holocaust survivor and very active in his support of Israel. And then there is former Senator Frank Lautenberg was often described as the “Senator from Israel” and Senator Arlen Specter from Pennsylvania who tried to cover up the Jewish source of the enriched uranium that Israel stole to construct its nuclear weapon.

Protecting Israel sometimes includes bending the rules. Lautenberg, for example, was responsible for the “Lautenberg amendment” of 1990 which brought many thousands of Russian Jews into the United States as refugees, even though they were not in any danger and were therefore ineligible for that status. As refugees, they received significant taxpayer provided housing, subsistence and educational benefits.

One might also include Rahm Emanuel, former White House Chief of Staff and mayor of Chicago, who reportedly served as a volunteer in the Israeli Army, and Doug Feith, who caused so much mischief from his perch at the Pentagon in the lead-up to the Iraq War. Feith had a law office in Jerusalem, suggesting that he might have obtained Israeli citizenship. Obama Ambassador to Israel Daniel Shapiro chose to live in Israel after his term in office ended and wound up working for an Israeli national security think tank. He quite likely obtained Israeli citizenship and never registered under the Foreign Agents Registration Act, as required by law. Both he and Emanuel are reportedly being considered by President Biden for major ambassadorial assignments.

But in reality, few in Congress and in the federal government bureaucracy are likely to have actual Israeli citizenship even if they regularly exhibit what amounts to “dual loyalty” sympathy for the Jewish state. Nevertheless, Jews who are Zionists are vastly overrepresented in all government agencies that have anything at all to do with the Middle East.

That said, there was one individual dual national who truly stood out when it came to serving Israeli interests from inside the United States government. She might be worthy of the nickname “Queen of Sanctions” because she was the Department of the Treasury’s Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence (OTFI), who handed the punishment out and had her hand on the throttle to crank the pain up. She is our own, unfortunately, and also Israel’s own Sigal Pearl Mandelker, and it is wonderful to be able to say that she finally resigned in late 2019!

Mandelker was born in Israel and largely educated in the United States. She is predictably a lawyer. She has never stated how many citizenships she holds while repeated inquiries as to whether she retains her Israeli citizenship have been ignored by the Treasury Department. It is not clear how she managed to obtain a security clearance given her evident affinity to a foreign country. The position that she held until October 2019 was created in 2004 by George W. Bush and is something of a “no Gentiles need apply” fiefdom. Its officials travel regularly on the taxpayer’s dime to Israel for consultations and also collaborate with pro-Israel organizations like the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP) and the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies (FDD). Mandelker’s predecessor was Adam Szubin and he was preceded by David Cohen and, before that, by the office’s founder Stuart Levey, who is currently Group Legal Manager and Group Managing Director for global bank HSBC. Since its creation, OFTI has not surprisingly focused on what might be described as Israel’s enemies, most notably among them being Iran.

During her time in office, Mandelker, who predictably claims to be the child of “holocaust survivors,” was clear about her role, citing her personal and business relationship with “our great partner, Israel.” Referring to her office’s imposed sanctions on Iran, she has said that “Bad actors need money to do bad things. That is why we have this massive sanctions regime … Every time we apply that pressure, that crunch on them, we deny them the ability to get that kind of revenue, we make the world a safer place.”

So the answer is pretty clearly that there are Israelis and/or dual nationals working for the federal government and possibly also ensconced in the Congress. Refusing them clearances so they would not wind up in policy making jobs would be a good step forward, particularly if it is combined with recusal from policy planning for obvious partisan representatives of organizations dedicated to protecting Israel.

As a final observation, one might only suggest three additional bastions of “Israel-first” think that need to be assailed to permit any rational discussion of an appropriate U.S. role in the Middle East. They are the deeply flawed accepted holocaust narrative, which is used to grant Israelis and Jews special exemption due to their status as perpetual victims; the cynical use of the label anti-Semitism to silence critics; and the still undisclosed role of Israel in 9/11, which has never been adequately addressed. For more information, I would refer the reader to Norman Finkelstein’s The Holocaust Industry, Ron Unz’s American Pravda piece on Mossad Assassinations and Justin Raimondo’s book on 9/11 The Terror Enigma. They are all major areas of inquiry on which some new information has developed and are worthy of separate articles in the future.

Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is https://councilforthenationalinterest.org address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is inform@cnionline.org

March 2, 2021 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Wars for Israel | , , | 2 Comments

Wither Cuomo and the GOP Establishment

By William Stroock | March 2, 2021

In November of 2019, several disgruntled GOP operatives launched the anti-Trump Lincoln Project. The organizations’ directors included Steve Schmidt, director of John McCain’s 2008 Presidential Campaign, Reed Galen, another McCain advisor, Rick Wilson, a GOP political consultant, and John Weaver an advisor to former Republican Ohio governor John Kasich. The group has raised more than $90 million, about a third of which they spent on political television and internet ads, with much of the rest going to their own political consulting firms.

The Lincoln Project has long been popular with the Dems and the media; its directors are regulars on powerhouse morning political shows like Morning Joe. Late last January, The American Conservative reported that John Weaver used his position within the organization to sexually harass and groom young men. Further reporting by The Associated Press showed that Weaver’s actions were an open secret within The Lincoln Project. The rest of the Lincoln Project’s leadership had been informed of Weaver’s behavior in writing last June and members knew of the problem as early as March. John Weaver has resigned as has Steve Schmidt. So far, the Lincoln Project is bravely soldiering on.

As is Andrew Cuomo, Governor of New York. Cuomo had once been hailed as ‘America’s Governor’ for his handling of the COVID-19 crisis. He won a television Emmy Award for his daily news conferences and published a book extolling his leadership. But a report issued by State Attorney General Letitia James says Cuomo’s administration misrepresented the number of deaths caused by the governor’s policy of putting COVID-19 patients in nursing homes. The Cuomo Administration claimed 8,711 died in nursing homes. But the Attorney General’s report says the true number is over 13,000. Melissa De Rossa, the governor’s secretary, confirmed on a conference call with state Democrats that Cuomo’s administration covered up the true number of COVID-19 related nursing home deaths.

Conservatives and the bereaved have long slammed Cuomo’s nursing home policy, but the issue did not gain traction in the media until now. Cuomo has attacked and berated his critics. State Assemblyman Ron Kim, long a critic of the governor’s nursing home policy, says Cuomo constantly called and verbally harassed him and promised to destroy him. “You have not seen my wrath”, the governor told Kim, “You will be destroyed.” Kim told Cuomo all further communications had to go through his personal attorney. NYC Mayor Bill De Blasio said that kind of bullying behavior is pretty normal for Governor Cuomo.

Sexual harassment may also be normal for the governor. Two young women have come forward and claimed Cuomo made sexual advances toward them with all the tact and charm of a 15-year-old. More will likely follow. Cuomo has called for an independent review of the allegations, but Attorney General James insists she should oversee any investigation. Late Sunday night, Cuomo issued a statement saying, ‘I now understand that my interactions may have been insensitive or too personal and that some of my comments, given my position, made others feel in ways I never intended.’ Because a 63-year-old man does not understand he should not make clumsy and lewd sexual advances at women the same age as his daughters. These last few days local news is leading off with Cuomo’s twin scandals, so the governor is definitely in trouble.

While the Democrats got the knives out for Cuomo, the American Conservative Union hosted its annual Conservative Political Action Conference in Orlando, Florida. For decades, CPAC has been an important gathering of Republicans and conservatives of all stripes. This year, the GOP Establishment has no place at CPAC. Florida Representative Matt Goetz slammed the establishment and his House colleague and conference chair Liz Cheney, who voted to impeach Donald Trump, ‘Speaking of people who ought to lose primaries… if Liz Cheney were on this stage today, she’d get booed off of it,’ Goetz told the assembled.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is often mentioned as a possible presidential candidate in 2024. DeSantis is just as combative as Trump, but lower key. Trumpism without Trump, some say of DeSantis. The governor touched on several issues important to conservative voters; COVID-19 lockdowns, school openings, Big Tech censorship and election integrity. He touted the state’s openness in comparison to closed states. ‘Florida got it right, and the lockdown states, got it wrong,’ DeSatnis declared. He slammed the ‘failed’ Republican Establishment, open borders and military adventurism and even paid tribute to the late Rush Limbaugh.

South Dakota governor Kristi Noem is another rising start within the GOP. Last summer she hosted a pro-American rally with President Trump at Mount Rushmore. This year she gave a 20 plus minute speech on conservative principles and her sate’s handling of COVID-19. Noem touted the fact that at no time did she order a quarantine or require masks. Noem related, ‘Now Dr. Faucci, he told me that on my worst day I’d have 10,000 patients in the hospital. On our worst day, we had a little over 600. I don’t know if you agree with me, but Dr. Fauci is wrong a lot.’ The crowd roared.

President Trump’s Sunday afternoon speech was the highlight of the CPAC gathering. He brought red meat for rabid CPAC attendees. Trump slammed Biden, ‘In just one short month we went from America first to America last.’ Trump’s speech was a long stemwinder typical of the man. ‘I am not starting a new party’ he said unequivocally. Who knows? I may even decide to beat them for a third time, ok?’

Last week Senator Rick Scott of Florida, who has won three tough, close races in his home state and chairs the Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee said, ‘The Democratic Party, it is a socialist party now, so the Republicans’ civil war is actually cancelled.’ Scott is certainly a member of the loathed Establishment but sees things other members don’t. With the Lincoln Project imploding, calls form the House caucus for Liz Cheney’s resignation renewed, and the Trump wing of the party rocking in Orlando, the Establishment has already lost.

March 2, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Corruption | , | 1 Comment