UK Government Caught Surveilling Social Media of Teaching Assistants and Librarians
By Christina Maas | Reclaim The Net | October 23, 2023
A startling revelation indicates that the UK government has substantially amplified its surveillance of the online activity of educators. Ranging from leading education experts to teaching assistants and librarians earning modest salaries, the magnifying glass of surveillance closely monitors posts critiquing education policies. The discovery was made by The Observer, revealing that the Department for Education is keeping extensive records of such posts, something that we’ve previously covered.
This revelation highlights the burning issues of free speech and censorship, causing widespread disquiet among the educational community. The surveillance of educators’ online activity portrays a scenario where dissent or criticism of government policy is not only surveilled but also cataloged, potentially affecting the educators’ professional careers.
Educators across the UK have demonstrated a wave of shock and anger in response to the discovery. Many have submitted Subject Access Requests [SARs], a Right to Access provision within the General Data Protection Regulation, requiring the Department of Education to disclose the information it holds under their names. These educators found file lengths spanning up to 60 pages, documenting their tweets and comments opposing the government’s policies and criticizing the schools inspectorate, Ofsted.
Nikki Cleveland, a higher-level teaching assistant and primary school librarian, was astounded to find that even her tweets concerning issues such as inadequate funding for school libraries and criticisms of Ofsted had been flagged and stored by the Department. Her discovery has only raised her cynicism towards the government and the Department of Education, questioning their apathy towards the challenges schools face daily.
This disturbing surveillance operation extends to more than just educators. Jon Biddle, a primary school teacher and English lead, reported that “dozens of other teachers” he knew had also discovered their accounts were under scrutiny. The scope and depth of this surveillance has led to growing skepticism about the Department’s priorities and resource allocation.
Cases have also surfaced of the Department attempting to silence voices critical of government policy. Early years specialists Ruth Swailes and Aaron Bradbury have previously faced attempts from the Department to cancel their conference due to their earlier critiques. Similarly, Dr. Mine Conkbayir, a renowned early childhood author, was allegedly threatened with funding withdrawal for a conference she was scheduled to keynote, due to her criticisms. As she recounts, the Department also attempted to curtail her talk duration and verify her speech contents, pulling the strings of academic dialogue.
In response to these revelations, the Department has chosen to remain largely opaque, stating that it would not be appropriate to comment on individual cases.
Genocide Unfolding
By Craig Murray | October 23, 2023
Tonight has been the most violent bombardment of Gaza so far, notably concentrated on precisely the areas into which Israel ordered the population to evacuate. I find it almost impossible to believe that this genocide is under way with the active support of almost all western governments.
I want to look at two questions – what will happen internationally, and what is happening in western societies.
Israel plainly is on the course of further escalation and intends to kill many thousands more Palestinians. More than 2,000 Palestinian children alone have now been killed by Israeli aerial attack in the last fortnight.
Gaza has no defence from bombs and missiles, and there is no military reason why Israel cannot keep this up for months and simply rely upon aerial massacre. We are perhaps within a week of thirst, starvation and disease killing even more people per day than bombardment.
The population of Gaza are simply defenceless. Only international intervention can stop Israel from doing whatever it wishes, and those countries which have influence with Israel are actively abetting and encouraging the genocide.
The question is, what is Israel’s aim? Do they intend to reduce the Gaza Strip still further, annexing half or more of it? Will starvation and horror enable the international community to force Egypt to accept the expulsion of the population of Gaza into the Sinai Desert as a “humanitarian” move?
That appears to be the end game: expulsion of population and territorial expansion into Gaza. That would require a ground invasion, but probably not until after even more intense aerial bombardment to eliminate all resistance. This territorial ambition of course accords with the violent expansion of illegal settlement in the West Bank which is currently under way, with the world paying almost no attention. It is very hard indeed to comprehend the passivity of Fatah and Mahmoud Abbas at the moment.
Netanyahu’s political stock within Israel is so low, that the only way he can recover is by making a major step towards the complete genocide of the Palestinian people and the achievement of Greater Israel Netanyahu now knows that there is no violence against Palestinians so extreme that the western political elite will not support it under the mantra of “Israel’s right to self-defence”.
I do not see any salvation for Gaza coming from Hezbollah. If Hezbollah were to employ their vaunted missile strike capabilities, the moment to do it would be now when the Israeli armour is drawn up in massive parks outside Gaza, a perfect target even for longer range missiles of limited accuracy. Once dispersed into Gaza the armour would be far harder for Hezbollah to hit at range.
Hezbollah is even better equipped now to fight a defensive war in Lebanon than it was when it defeated the Israeli advance in 2006. But it is not configured or equipped to fight an aggressive ground war into Israel, which would be a disaster. It also has to worry about hostile militias in its rear. If Hezbollah can provoke an Israeli incursion into Southern Lebanon, that would enable it to inflict substantial casualties, but Israel is not going to do that in a way that detracts from its capabilities in Gaza.
Iran has greatly improved its diplomatic position in the last year. The Chinese-brokered lessening of hostility with Saudi Arabia has potential to revolutionise Middle Eastern politics, and the benefits of this will not lightly be laid aside by Tehran. Iran had also made real progress with the Biden administration in overcoming the blind hostility of the Trump years.
Iran has no desire to throw away these gains. That is why it seems to me extremely improbable that Iran had endorsed the 7 October attacks by Hamas. Iran is now restraining Hezbollah. But there are limits to the patience of Iran. The extraordinary truth is that Iran is probably the only state under discussion here with a genuine humanitarian concern for the lives of Palestinians. If the genocide unfolds as horribly as I anticipate, Iran can be pushed too far.
That said, I offer just a cautionary footnote that Saudi Arabia is not, under MBS, quite the reliable US/Israeli puppet it has historically been. I do not have much time for MBS, as you know, but his high opinion of the importance of the Al Saud and their leadership role among arabs, makes him a different proposition to his predecessor.
Saudi Arabia has leverage. The Biden administration has gone all in on regional domination, sending two aircraft carrier groups into a situation which should it escalate, could send oil prices to highest-ever levels, with Russia blocked from the market. Biden is risking a huge gas price hike in an election year.
Biden’s calculation, or that of his security services, is that nobody can or will intervene to save the Palestinians. They judge the genocide as containable. That is an extraordinary gamble.
There has been an extraordinary amount of vitriol aimed at Qatar by pro-Israel commentators, for hosting the Hamas office and leadership. This is extraordinarily ignorant.
Qatar hosts Hamas, just as Qatar hosted the Taliban Information Office, at the direct request of the United States. It provides a means of dialogue between the United States and Hamas (exactly as it did with the Taliban) both at deniable level, and through third parties, including of course the government of Qatar. Thus when Blinken arrived in Qatar one day and the Iranian foreign minister the next, these were in fact “proximity talks” involving Hamas.
How do I know? Well, at Julian’s request, I visited Qatar about five years ago to discuss whether Julian, and Wikileaks, might potentially relocate to Qatar, which Julian had described as “the new Switzerland” in terms of being a neutral diplomatic venue.
It was explained to me by the Qataris, at a very senior level, that Qatar hosted the Taliban Information Office and Hamas because the United States government had asked them to do so. Qatar hosted a major US military base and depended on US support against a Saudi takeover. If I could generate a request from then President Trump for Qatar to host Wikileaks, then they would do so. Otherwise, no.
So I know what I am talking about.
One tiny but good result of this brokering in Qatar was the release of two American national hostages. British diplomats have told me that discussions in Qatar have so far held back the Israeli ground offensive, but I am not convinced that Israel really wished to do this yet. They are having sadistic fun shooting children in a barrel.
Qatar has also been the origin of deals allowing in a tiny amount of aid to Gaza, but this is so small as to be almost irrelevant. It is performative humanitarianism by the West.
I have frequently praised China for the fact that their economic dominance has been unaccompanied by any aggressive desire for world hegemony, but this also has its downside. China sees no benefit in assisting the Palestinians in practice. Hopeful reports of China sending warships refer simply to pre-planned exercises, largely in the Gulf. That China is carrying out such joint exercises with Gulf states is indeed part of a long term increasing of influence, but is not relevant to the immediate reality.
Russia of course has its hands full in Ukraine. It is allowing its Syrian bases to be used as a conduit following increased Israeli bombing of Syrian airports, but there is not a great deal more that it can do. Erdoğan is genuinely furious at what is happening in Gaza, but Turkey is struggling to find any way to apply pressure, barring linkage to Ukraine shipping issues (which Erdoğan is considering).
That is a very rough and ready tour d’horizon, but the net effect is that I see no current hope for averting the atrocity which is unfolding before our horrified eyes.
Most of our eyes are indeed horrified. The gap between the western political and media elites and their people on this issue is simply enormous. Western leaders have not only failed to restrain Israel, they have almost unanimously egged Netanyahu on, with the continued repetition of the phrase “Israel’s right to self-defence” as justification for the mass bombing, removal and starvation of an entire civilian population.
The western leadership glee in vetoing every attempt at a ceasefire resolution at the UN is astonishing.
Massive demonstrations have been taking place across Europe against this unspeakable massacre, and the knee-jerk reaction of politicians at their isolation from public opinion has been to try to make such shows of dissent illegal. In the UK people have been arrested for displaying Palestinian flags. In Germany pro-Palestinian demonstrations have been entirely banned. Something similar has been attempted in France, with predictable failure.
I have myself attended pro-Palestinian demonstrations in three different countries, and the most striking thing on each occasion was the strong support of passers-by, and the number of people spontaneously coming out to join the demo as it passed.
A wave of racism has been unleashed in the UK and elsewhere. I am astonished by the Islamophobia and racial hatred released online, with no apparent comeback. UK Ministers claim to be alarmed at the “terrorist sympathies” of pro-Palestinian demonstrators, yet it is perfectly legal to call for Palestinians to be exterminated, to compare them to different types of animal and vermin, and suggest they should be driven into the sea. That does not horrify ministers at all.
I am personally now subject to a police investigation for “terrorism” merely for suggesting that the Palestinians too have a right to self-defence and may offer armed resistance to genocide – a right they enjoy beyond doubt in international law. Remember, Israel has formally declared war. Is it the position in British law that the only belief it is legal to hold and express, is that in this war the Palestinians must simply line up quietly to be killed?
The step change in western authoritarianism is likely to be met by blowback.
After 20 years, we had finally come through the vicious cycle of the “War on Terror”, where terrorism, repression and institutionalised Islamophobia all boosted each other across the western world. Outrage at the appalling genocide in Gaza is very likely to result in isolated incidences of, also appalling, Islamist-inspired violence in Western countries, including the UK, particularly because of the UK’s military support of Israel.
That consequential terrorism in itself will be cited by the political elite as justifying their stance. And so the vicious cycle will restart. This will of course be welcome to the agents of the security state, whose power, budgets and prestige will be boosted. Once again we have to be on the lookout for radicalisation and real terrorism, but also for agent-provocateur-led terrorism and for false flag terrorism.
If we descend back into that nightmare again, the direct cause will be elite support for the genocide of the Palestinian people and the Islamophobic narrative. The major cause of terrorism here is Israel, the terrorist apartheid state.
Israel’s Biblical Psychopathy
BY LAURENT GUYÉNOT • UNZ REVIEW • OCTOBER 22, 2023
I am tired of reading that Netanyahu is a psychopath. He most certainly is not. I see no reason to consider him, or any other Israeli leader, as psychopaths in the psychiatric sense. They have a collective psychopathy, which is a very different thing.
The difference is the same as between a personal neurosis and a collective neurosis. According to Freud, religion (and he meant christianity) is a collective neurosis. Freud did not mean that religious people are neurotic. On the contrary, he observed that their collective neurosis tends to immunize religious people from personal neurosis.[1] I do not subscribe to Freud’s theory, I just need his backing to introduce my own theory: Zionists, even the most bloodthirsty of them, are not individual psychopaths; many of them are loving and even self-sacrificing persons within their own community. Rather, they are the vectors of a collective psychopathy, which means a special way (we may call it inhuman) by which they collectively see and interact with other human communities.
This is a crucial point, without which we can never understand Israel. Calling their leaders psychopaths is not helpful. What we need is to recognize Israel as a collective psychopath, and study the origin of this unique national character. It is a matter of survival for the world, just as it is a matter of survival for any group to recognize the psychopath among them and understand his patterns of thinking and of behavior.
What Is a Psychopath?
Psychopathy is a syndrome of psychological traits classified among the personality disorders. Canadian psychologist Robert Hare, in the wake of Hervey Cleckley’s The Mask of Sanity (1941), has defined its diagnostic criteria on the basis of a cognitive model that is now widely adopted, though some psychiatrists prefer the term “sociopathy” because it really has to do with the inability to socialize in a genuine way.[2] In an effort to get everyone to agree, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual on Mental Disorders has suggested “antisocial personality disorder”; but the term “psychopathy” is still the most popular, and for that reason alone, I will adopt it.
The most characteristic trait of the psychopath is a complete absence of empathy and, as a result, of moral inhibition in harming others, combined with a thirst for power. Psychopathy also shares some traits with narcissism: psychopaths have a grand vision of their own importance. In their minds, everything is owed to them because they are exceptional. They are never wrong, and failures are always the fault of others.
Truth is of no value to the psychopath; truth is whatever is convenient for him at any given moment. He is a pathological liar, but he is hardly aware of it. Lying is so natural to him that the question of his “sincerity” is almost irrelevant: the psychopath beats the lie detector.
The psychopath feels only very superficial emotions and has no real feelings for anyone; but he has developed a great ability to deceive. He can be charming to the point of charismatic. He is unable to empathize, but learns to simulate it. His power is his extraordinary ability to feign, trick, trap, and capture. Although he himself is immunized against guilt, he becomes a master in making others feel guilty.
Because the psychopath is unable to put himself in the shoes of anyone else, he cannot look at himself critically. Confident in any circumstance of his right, he is genuinely surprised by the grudge of his victims—and will punish them for it. If he steals someone’s property, he will regard the resentment of the despoiled as irrational hatred.
Although the psychopath can be judged raving mad, he is not insane in the medical sense, since he does not suffer—psychopaths don’t visit psychiatrists unless forced to. In a certain sense, the psychopath is over-adjusted to social life, if the purpose of social life is to get by individually. That is why the real mystery, from a Darwinian point of view, is not the existence of psychopaths, but their low proportion in the population.
The most optimistic low-end estimate in the Western population is 1 percent. They should not be confused with the proverbial 1 percent who own half the world’s wealth, although a study among senior executives of large companies has shown that psychopathic traits are widespread among them.[3]
Israel as a Psychopathic State
The fact that Jews are today disproportionately represented among the elite (they form half of American billionaires, while representing only 2.4% of the population),[4] does not mean either that psychopathy is more prevalent among Jews. In a way, quite the opposite is the case: Jews demonstrate among themselves a high degree of empathy, or at least solidarity, often to the point of self-sacrifice. But the selective nature of this empathy suggests that it is addressed less to the humanity of others than to their Jewishness.
In fact, Jews tend to confuse Jewishness and humanity. So what is good for the Jews must necessarily be good for humanity. Conversely, a crime against the Jews is a “crime against humanity,” a concept they created in 1945. Confusing Jewishness with humanity is a sign of collective narcissism, but when it comes to regarding non-Jews as less than human, it becomes a sign of collective psychopathy.
Collectively, Jews consider themselves innocent of the charges brought against them. That is why Zionist pioneer Leo Pinsker, a medical doctor, regarded Judeophobia as “a psychic aberration. As a psychic aberration it is hereditary, and as a disease transmitted for two thousand years it is incurable.” By way of consequence, the Jews are “the people chosen for universal hatred” (even atheist Jews cannot help defining Jewishness as chosenness).[5]
Israel, the Jewish State, is the psychopath among nations. It acts towards other nations in the way a psychopath acts towards his fellow men. “Only psychiatrists can explain Israel’s behavior,” wrote Israeli journalist Gideon Levy in Haaretz in 2010. However, his diagnosis, including “paranoia, schizophrenia and megalomania,”[6] is mistaken. Considering Israel’s absolute self-righteousness, dehumanization of the Palestinians, and its extraordinary capacity to lie and manipulate, we are dealing with a psychopath.
By drawing a parallel between psychopathy and the attitude of Israel, I do not blame Israelis or Jews as individuals. They are part of this collective psychopathy only to the extent of their submission to the national ideology. We can make a comparison with another sort of collective entity. In The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power, Joel Bakan noted that large companies behave like psychopaths, insensitive to the suffering of those they crush in their pursuit of profit: “Corporate behavior is very similar to that of a psychopath.”[7] My analysis of Israel is based on the same reasoning. Except that Israel is much more dangerous than any giant company (even Pfizer), because the ideology that causes its personality disorder is much more insane than the liberal, social-darwinian ideology that rules the Stock Market. Israel’s ideology is biblical.
The Biblical Virus
Israel’s collective psychopathy is not genetic, it is cultural, but it was formed in very ancient times, and so it is embedded in the ancestral subconscious (whatever that is): it ultimately comes from the jealous god invented by the Levites to control the starving tribes they set out to conquer in Palestine some three thousand years ago. By birth, Israel is the nation of the psychopathic god.
Yahweh, “the god of Israel,” is an angry and lonely volcano god who manifests toward all other gods an implacable hatred, and ends up considering them as non-gods, him being, in fact, the only true god. This very clearly characterizes him as a psychopath among gods. By contrast, for the Egyptians, according to German Egyptologist Jan Assmann, “the gods are social beings,” and harmony between them guarantees harmony in the cosmos.[8] There was, moreover, a degree of translatability between the pantheons of various civilizations. But Yahweh taught the Hebrews contempt for the deities of their neighbors—making them, in the eyes of these neighbors, a threat to the cosmic and social order. Yahweh is essentially, says Assmann, a theoclastic god: “You must completely destroy all the places where the nations you dispossess have served their gods, on high mountains, on hills, under any spreading tree; you must tear down their altars, smash their sacred stones, burn their sacred poles, hack to bits the statues of their gods and obliterate their name from that place” (Deuteronomy 12:2-3).
Yahweh may be a character of fiction, but his hold on the Jewish mind is nevertheless real. “To appeal to a crazy, violent father, and for three thousand years, that is what it is to be a crazy Jew!”[9] said Smilesburger in Philip Roth’s Operation Shylock. Jews have been taught by Yahweh to keep strictly separate from other people. Food prohibitions serve to prevent all socialization outside the tribe: “I shall set you apart from all these peoples, for you to be mine” (Leviticus 20:26).
The nature of the covenant is not moral. The sole criterion for approval by Yahweh is obedience to his arbitrary laws and commands. To slaughter treacherously hundreds of prophets of Baal is good, because it is the will of Yahweh (1Kings 18). To show mercy to the king of the Amalekites is bad, because when Yahweh says, “kill everyone,” he means “everyone” (1Samuel 15). In the biblical historiography, the fate of the Jewish people depends on them following Yahweh’s orders, no matter how insane. As well said by Kevin MacDonald:
The idea that Jewish suffering results from Jews straying from their own law occurs almost like a constant drumbeat throughout the Tanakh—a constant reminder that the persecution of Jews is not the result of their own behavior vis-à-vis Gentiles but rather the result of their behavior vis-à-vis God.[10]
If the Jews follow Yahweh’s command of alienating themselves from the rest of humankind, in return, Yahweh promises to make them rule over humankind: “follow his ways, keep his statutes, his commandments, his customs, and listen to his voice,” and Yahweh “will raise you higher than every other nation he has made”; “You will make many nations your subjects, yet you will be subject to none” (Deuteronomy 26:17-19 and 28:12). This sounds very much, actually, like the pact Satan proposed to Jesus: “the devil showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor. And he said to him, ‘I will give you all these, if you fall at my feet and do me homage.’” (Matthew 4:8-9).
If Israel follows scrupulously the Law, Yahweh promises to submit all nations to the domination of Israel, and destroy those that resist. “Kings will fall prostrate before you, faces to the ground, and lick the dust at your feet,” whereas “the nation and kingdom that will not serve you will perish” (Isaiah 49:23 and 60:12). Nations must either recognize Israel’s sovereignty, or be destroyed. Yahweh told Israel that he has identified “seven nations greater and stronger than yourself,” that “you must put under the curse of destruction,” and not “show them any pity.” As for their kings, “you will blot out their names under heaven” (Deuteronomy 7:1-2, 24).
The war code of Deuteronomy 20 commands to exterminate “any living thing” in the conquered cities of Canaan. In practice, the rule is extended to all people who resist the Israelites in their conquest. It was applied by Moses to the Midianites, although in this case Yahweh allowed his warriors to keep the young virgin girls (Numbers 31). It was applied by Joshua to the Canaanite city of Jericho, where the Israelites “enforced the curse of destruction on everyone in the city: men and women, young and old, including the oxen, the sheep and the donkeys, slaughtering them all” (Joshua 6:21). In the city of Ai, the inhabitants were all slaughtered, twelve thousand of them, “until not one was left alive and none to flee. … When Israel had finished killing all the inhabitants of Ai in the open ground, and in the desert where they had pursued them, and when every single one had fallen to the sword, all Israel returned to Ai and slaughtered its remaining population.” Women were not spared. “For booty, Israel took only the cattle and the spoils of this town” (Joshua 8:22-27). Then came the turns of the cities of Makkedah, Libnah, Lachish, Eglon, Hebron, Debir, and Hazor. In the whole land, Joshua “left not one survivor and put every living thing under the curse of destruction, as Yahweh, god of Israel, had commanded” (10:40).
As wrote Avigail Abarbanel in “Why I left the Cult,” the Zionist conquerors of Palestine “have been following quite closely the biblical dictate to Joshua to just walk in and take everything. … For a supposedly non-religious movement it’s extraordinary how closely Zionism … has followed the Bible.”[11] Kim Chernin, another Israeli dissident, wrote in “The Seven Pillars of Jewish Denial”: “I can’t count the number of times I read the story of Joshua as a tale of our people coming into their rightful possession of their promised land without stopping to say to myself, ‘but this is a history of rape, plunder, slaughter, invasion, and destruction of other peoples.’”[12]
Yahweh offers only two possible paths to Israel: domination of other nations, if Israel keeps Yahweh’s covenant of separateness, or annihilation by these same nations, if Israel breaks the covenant:
“if you make friends with the remnant of these nations still living beside you, if you intermarry with them, if you mix with them and they with you, then know for certain that Yahweh your god will stop dispossessing these nations before you, and for you they will be a snare, a pitfall, thorns in your sides and thistles in your eyes, until you vanish from this fine country given you by Yahweh your god.” (Joshua 23:12-14)
Dispossess others or be dispossessed, dominate or be exterminated: Israel cannot think beyond that alternative.
Zionism is Biblical
What has it got to do with Zionism, you ask? Isn’t Zionism a secular ideology? I think it is high time to dispel this misunderstanding. Zionism is a product of Jewishness, and Jewishness is rooted in the Hebrew Bible, the Tanakh. Whether he has read it or not, whether he judges it historical or mythical, every Jew ultimately bases his Jewishness on the Bible—or whatever he knows about the Bible. Jewishness is the internalization of the psychopathic god. It makes little difference whether Jews define their Jewishness in religious terms or in ethnic terms. From a religious viewpoint, the Bible preserves the memory and the essence of the Covenant with God, whereas from a secular viewpoint, the Bible is the foundational narrative of the Jewish people, and the pattern by which Jews interpret their whole subsequent history (the Dispersion, the Holocaust, the rebirth of Israel, and so on).
It is true that Theodor Herzl, the prophet of political Zionism, did not draw his inspiration from the Bible. Yet he termed his ideology Zionism, using a biblical name of Jerusalem. As for post-Herzl Zionists, and for the actual founders of the modern State of Israel, they were steeped in the Bible. “The Bible is our mandate,” declared Chaim Weizmann in 1919, and in 1948 he offered Truman a Torah scroll for his recognition of Israel. Thus begins the Declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel:
ERETZ-ISRAEL [(Hebrew) – the Land of Israel, Palestine] was the birthplace of the Jewish people. Here their spiritual, religious and political identity was shaped. Here they first attained to statehood, created cultural values of national and universal significance and gave to the world the eternal Book of Books.
There is no question that the State of Israel was founded on the biblical claim.
David Ben-Gurion, the author of this document and the father of the nation, had a biblical vision of the Jewish people. To him, according to his biographer Dan Kurzman, the rebirth of Israel in 1948 “paralleled the Exodus from Egypt, the conquest of the land by Joshua, the Maccabean revolt.” Ben-Gurion had never been to a synagogue, and ate pork for breakfast, yet he was steeped in biblical history. “There can be no worthwhile political or military education about Israel without profound knowledge of the Bible,” he used to say.[13] Tom Segev writes in his more recent biography:
He sponsored a Bible study class in his home and promoted two concepts to characterize the State of Israel’s moral character and its destiny and duty to itself and the world: the first was “chosen people,” a term coming from the covenant between God and the people of Israel (Exodus 19:5-6); the second was the Jewish people’s commitment to the principles of justice and peace that make it a “light to the nations,” in the spirit of the prophets (Isaiah 49:6). He frequently spoke and wrote about these concepts.[14]
Ben-Gurion’s biblical mindset became more and more apparent as he grew older. Consider for example the fact that, while he was begging Kennedy to let his people have the Bomb because the Egyptians wanted to exterminate them (as they had under Moses), he prophesied in the magazine Look (January 16, 1962) that within twenty-five years, Jerusalem “will be the seat of the Supreme Court of Mankind, to settle all controversies among the federated continents, as prophesied by Isaiah.”[15] Ben-Gurion was not crazy, he was simply thinking biblically.
Almost every Israeli leader of Ben-Gurion’s generation and the next shared share the same biblical mindset. Moshe Dayan, the military hero of the 1967 Six-Day War, justified his annexation of new territory in a book titled Living with the Bible (1978). Naftali Bennett, while Israeli minister of Education, has also justified the annexation of the West Bank by the Bible.[16] Zionists can find in the Bible all the justifications they need: for Gaza, they have Judges 1:18-19: “And Judah took Gaza with its territory … Now Yahweh was with Judah, and they took possession of the hill country.” There are now overt Bible freaks in the Israeli government, like the Minister of National Security Itamar Ben-Gvir, who shoot Bible quotes every day. “God gave the land of Israel to the Jewish people” is the alpha and the omega of Zionism, not just for Israelis, but for the Christians who, since 1917, have supported the Jewish claim and support Israel today.
Even more than Ben-Gurion, Benjamin Netanyahu thinks biblically, and it is also getting clearer and clearer as he gets older. He also knows Christians cannot seriously argue against the biblical claim. On March 3, 2015, he dramatized in front of the American Congress his phobia of Iran by referring to the biblical book of Esther:
We’re an ancient people. In our nearly 4,000 years of history, many have tried repeatedly to destroy the Jewish people. Tomorrow night, on the Jewish holiday of Purim, we’ll read the book of Esther. We’ll read of a powerful Persian viceroy named Haman, who plotted to destroy the Jewish people some 2,500 years ago. But a courageous Jewish woman, Queen Esther, exposed the plot and gave the Jewish people the right to defend themselves against their enemies. The plot was foiled. Our people were saved. Today the Jewish people face another attempt by yet another Persian potentate to destroy us.[17]
Netanyahu scheduled his address on the eve of Purim, which celebrates the happy end of the Book of Esther—the slaughter of 75,000 Persian men, women and children. In 2019, Netanyahu’s pronounced these words during a tour of the West Bank, “I believe in the book of books and I read it as a call to action that every generation must do what it can to ensure the eternity of Israel.” The Bible occupies such a large part of his brain that he wants to put a Bible on the Moon!
So please stop calling Netanyahu a psychopath. Or at least, call him a biblical psychopath, a worshipper of the psychopathic god. And while you are there, learn to see the Hebrew Bible for what it is: “a conspiracy against the rest of the world,” as said H. G. Wells. In the books of the Bible, “you have the conspiracy plain and clear, … an aggressive and vindictive conspiracy. … It is not tolerance but stupidity to shut our eyes to their quality.”[18]
Notes
[1] Freud developed this theory in three books: Totem and Taboo, Civilization and Its Discontents and The Future of an Illusion.
[2] Robert Hare, Without Conscience: The Disturbing World of the Psychopaths Among Us, The Guilford Press, 1993.
[3] Paul Babiak and Robert Hare, Snakes in Suits: When Psychopaths Go to Work, HarperCollins, 2007.
[4] Benjamin Ginsberg, The Fatal Embrace: Jews and the State, University of Chicago Press, 1993; J.J. Goldberg, Jewish Power: Inside the American Jewish Establishment, Basic Books , 1997.
[5] Leon Pinsker, Auto-Emancipation: An Appeal to His People by a Russian Jew, 1882 , on www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Zionism/pinsker.html
[6] Gideon Levy, “Only psychiatrists can explain Israel’s behavior,” Haaretz, January 10, 2010, www.haaretz.com/print-edition/opinion/only-psychiatrists-can-explain-israel-s-behavior-1.261115
[7] Joel Bakan, The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power, Free Press, 2005. Watch also the documentary of the same title.
[8] Jan Assmann, Of God and Gods: Egypt, Israel, and the Rise of Monotheism, University of Wisconsin Press, 2008, p. 47.
[9] Philip Roth, Operation Shylock: A Confession, Simon & Schuster, 1993, p. 110.
[10] Kevin MacDonald, Separation and Its Discontents: Toward an Evolutionary Theory of Anti-Semitism, Praeger, 1998, kindle 2013, kindle l. 6187–89.
[11] Avigail Abarbanel, “Why I left the Cult,” Oct 8, 2016, on https://mondoweiss.net/author/avigail/
[12] Kim Chernin, “The Seven Pillars of Jewish Denial,” Tikkun, Sept. 2002, quoted in Kevin MacDonald, Cultural Insurrections: Essays on Western Civilization, Jewish Influence, and Anti-Semitism, Occidental Press, 2007, pp. 27-28.
[13] Dan Kurzman, Ben-Gurion, Prophet of Fire, Touchstone, 1983, pp. 17–18, 22, 26–28.
[14] Tom Segev, A State at Any Cost: The Life of David Ben-Gurion, Apollo, 2019, kindle l. 286.
[15] David Ben-Gurion and Amram Ducovny, David Ben-Gurion, In His Own Words, Fleet Press Corp., 1969, p. 116.
[16] “Israeli minister: The Bible says West Bank is ours” on www.youtube.com/watch?v=Png17wB_omA
[17] “The Complete Transcript of Netanyahu’s Address to Congress,” on www.washing tonpost.com.
[18] Herbert George Wells, The Fate of Homo Sapiens, 1939 (archive.org), p. 128.
British site reveals Israel’s history of ‘lying’
Palestine Information Center – October 23, 2023
LONDON – The Middle East Eye has revealed, in a new report published this week, Israel’s history of making false claims after it blamed the attack on Gaza’s al-Ahli Arab hospital on Pales tinian Islamic Jihad.
Last Tuesday, close to 500 Palestinians were killed at al-Ahli Arab hospital in Gaza City.
Alex MacDonald wrote that In the aftermath of the destruction, a blame game has begun. The Palestinian Ministry of Health said the hospital had been targeted by an Israeli air strike.
Hananya Naftali, a digital aide to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, tweeted initially that the “Israeli Air Force struck a Hamas terrorist base inside a hospital in Gaza. A multiple number of terrorists are dead.”
Naftali then changed his story, calling the explosion “mysterious” and saying it was “either a failed rocket” or “something that was done on purpose in order to get international support”.
When Israel responded officially, it denied responsibility for the attack and attempted to pin the blame on a misfired rocket launched by the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) group.
A number of previous incidents have tarnished the Israeli army’s reputation for misinformation.
Perhaps the most notorious example in recent years was the killing of Palestinian journalist Shireen Abu Akleh.
Abu Akleh, who was also a US citizen, was shot dead by Israeli forces on 11 May 2022 while covering an Israeli military operation in Jenin in the occupied West Bank. Her colleague Ali al-Samoudi was also shot and injured.
Israel first accused Palestinian gunmen of shooting her, but then conceded there was a “high possibility that Abu Akleh was accidentally hit by IDF (Israeli army) gunfire that was fired toward suspects identified as armed Palestinian gunmen”.
The Israeli military advocate general’s office said it would not open an investigation into any soldiers involved in the incident, as “there is no suspicion that a criminal offence was committed”.
Another example was the death of 12-year-old Muhammad al-Durrah in 2000, one of the pivotal events of the Second Intifada (2000-2005).
Footage of the boy cowering with his father in the middle of gunfire and then slumping down dead sparked international outrage and remains an iconic image of Israel’s repression of Palestinians.
Although the Israelis initially accepted responsibility for his death – and claimed he was being used as a human shield – they later retracted this in 2005.
Claims and counter-claims were thrown back and forth, with some claiming that France 2, which initially broadcast the footage, had staged the incident. The company issued a number of successful defamation lawsuits in response.
Gaza death toll from Israeli airstrikes climbs to 5,087: Health Ministry
An injured woman cries near a lifeless body after Israeli airstrikes hit Ridwan neighborhood of Gaza City, Gaza on October 23, 2023. [Ali Jadallah – Anadolu Agency]
MEMO | October 23, 2023
The Palestinian death toll from ongoing Israeli airstrikes on the Gaza Strip has climbed to 5,087, the Health Ministry in the blockaded enclave said on Monday, Anadolu Agency reports.
The fatalities include 2,055 children, 1,119 women and 217 elders, Ministry spokesman, Ashraf Al-Qudra, told a news conference in Gaza City.
He said 15,273 people were also injured in the Israeli attacks.
The Israeli occupation committed 23 massacres in the past 24 hours that left 436 people dead, including 182 children, Al-Qudra also said.
The Health Ministry has, so far, received reports about 1,500 people, including 830 children, who are still trapped under the rubble.
The conflict in Gaza, which has been under Israeli bombardment and a blockade since 7 October, began when Hamas initiated Operation Al-Aqsa Flood, a multi-pronged surprise attack that included a barrage of rocket launches and infiltrations into Israel by land, sea and air. It said the incursion was in retaliation for the storming of Al-Aqsa Mosque and growing violence by Israeli settlers against Palestinians.
The Israeli military then launched Operation Swords of Iron against Hamas targets in the Gaza Strip.
More than 1,400 Israelis have been killed in Hamas attacks since 7 October, according to Israeli authorities.
US Treasury Deficit Doubles as Biden Bankrolls Multiple Foreign Conflicts
By James Tweedie – Sputnik – 23.10.2023
The US is going further into the red with as it arms its client states for a series of conflicts. Sergio Rossi, professor of macroeconomics and monetary economics at the University of Fribourg, Switzerland, said the strategies to avoid a default would only prove to be a “time-bomb.”
US President Joe Biden’s appeal for cash to arm Ukraine and Israel could meet resistance from Congress thanks to the runaway federal budget.
Treasury department figures released late last week showed the government deficit had hit almost £1.7 trillion, up from £1.37 trillion a year earlier, a 23 percent increase in the public debt — although lower than the $2.78 trillion left by the COVID-19 pandemic in 2021.
The news was worse than it sounded however. The 2022 deficit included the budget for Biden’s student loan repayment program, money that was never spent as the Supreme Court struck it down. The treasury then claimed those unspent public funds as a “saving” in 2023 — meaning the true deficit doubled from $1 trillion in 2022 to $2 trillion this year.
That news came a day before Biden asked Congress for a $106 billion emergency foreign military aid budget. The lion’s share, $61.4 billion, is earmarked for Washington’s proxy conflict with Russia in Ukraine, while another $14.3 billion is to arm Israel for its latest attempt to destroy the Hamas movement in the besieged Gaza Strip.
That request dwarfs the $77 billion in arms and cash gifted to the Kiev regime since the start of Russia’s de-Nazification operation in February 2022.
Economist Sergio Rossi told Sputnik that the mounting deficit would make it harder for Biden to persuade Congress to approve his $100 billion budget request for more arms to Ukraine and Israel “in light of the problematic economic situation and outlook for the US stakeholders, namely, households, firms, and a variety of financial institutions.”
“Usually, when the domestic economic situation worsens, these stakeholders and their political supporters reduce the volume of foreign aid, to focus on supporting their own national economy first of all,” Rossi said.
He said the funding the conflict in Ukraine — while preparing for a Pacific showdown with China over Taiwan — had already put too much strain on Washington’s finances before the Palestinian Hamas movement launched a surprise attack into southern Israel.
“The US government cannot continue financing two military conflicts, particularly if the latter will continue without any foreseeable peaceful agreement before long,” Rossi stressed. “There are already signs that the political consensus for such a financial support is diminishing across the US economy, notably where both the labour and the product markets are in a difficult situation for a number of middle-class workers and several small or medium-sized firms.”
The state of the US economy was “worrying,” he said, and the outlook for the next two years was “even worse,” thanks to “global macroeconomic issues related to different geopolitical problems.”
The “mushroom” of ensuing inflation has badly affected consumer purchasing power. “As a result, firms’ investment is discouraged, both because of this inflationary pressure and the Fed’s repeated increases in the policy rates of interest.”
“The US economy is even closer to a recession than it was one year ago,” Rossi warned, although “there is no potential risk of a default of the US federal government.”
He pointed out that Congress could simply raise the public debt ceiling and the US Federal Reserve could buy up government bonds as an effective loan.
“This, however, is a time bomb that eventually can burst, particularly once some viable and credible alternative to the US dollar will emerge across the global economy,” Rossi said. “The BRICS community could provide such an alternative in a not-too-distant future.”
The Damage Israel Does
Constitutional rights and genuine national interests are ignored as governments surrender to Jewish power
BY PHILIP GIRALDI • UNZ REVIEW • OCTOBER 23, 2023
There are numerous one-liners like “wag-the-dog” that constitute a long running joke about how Israel exploits Jewish power in the United States to limit and control Washington’s options in foreign policy as well as in many other aspects of international interaction. This has been accomplished by a cleverly executed neoconservative takeover of the foreign policy instruments of both major parties based on a series of nonexistent “threats” coupled with media control and billions of dollars in political donations that have bought the numerous politicians willing to be bought, which clearly constitutes a majority of Congress.
President Joe Biden and those who surround him are all about Israel and many of them are Jewish. His Secretary of the Treasury Janice Yellen claims that the US “can afford” two wars simultaneously and the Chuck Schumer led Senate has voted unanimously 97-0 pledging full and unconditional support for the Jewish state. Biden’s somewhat pathetic fifteen-minute speech last week justifying throwing another $105 billion of deficit spending at Ukraine and Israel could have been written by a neocon scribe in its attempt to demonstrate that the US is threatened by developments in those two countries. It is not, even Biden knows that, and his assertions were as hollow as the rhetoric used to support the false premise. My favorite argument being made by the president was that “American leadership holds the world together….and is necessary to keep freedom alive in both the Middle East and Eastern Europe… Hamas and Putin represent different threats, but they share this in common: They both want to completely annihilate a neighboring democracy.” As it turns out, Biden was wrong on every point. Opinion polls suggest that the world overwhelmingly sees the United States as the most disruptive and dangerous nation on the planet, so Biden’s unwillingness or inability to discern that he is presiding over the death throes of America’s global leadership is particularly troubling. And Joe even fails to realize that Russia is more democratic by most measures than is Ukraine, which is consistently rated as the most corrupt country in the world, while Israel is not a democracy at all unless one is a Jew.
Biden was certainly motivated to speak to the American public in prime time, only the second time he has done so, by his overriding concern to express and obtain absolutely total support for Israel no matter what it does. He is willing to lie, cheat and steal for Israel. In the wake of the devastating October 17th blast at al-Ahli Baptist Hospital, a Christian-run medical complex in central Gaza City, which killed at least 500 people and injured hundreds more, he immediately jumped on the protect-Israel bandwagon and declared that Israel had not done it, which is far from being demonstrated and is being hotly disputed by eyewitnesses and forensic specialists. Ukraine is a secondary issue but it too is a war supported overwhelmingly by international Jewry for various reasons, most notably visceral hatred of Russia.
Nevertheless, the control by the Israel Lobby aside, one is at a loss to understand the actual rationale behind the recent trips to Israel in the wake of the Gaza uprising made by Secretary of State Antony Blinken and “they beheaded the babies” Joe Biden since the United States has no genuine national interest that compels it to get involved in either war, even less so in Gaza where Israel has been indisputably the source of nearly all the trouble. Lest anyone be confused over what signal was being sent, two US aircraft carrier strike groups were also dispatched to the Eastern Mediterranean together with orders to prepare to deploy 2,000 Marines, suggesting that Washington was itself preparing for war. And the Muslim world, convulsed by what it is seeing happen to Gaza, is also heeding a call to arms. As of last Friday there have been seven separate drone and rocket attacks on US military bases in Iraq and Syria. Journalist Caitlin Johnstone has neatly summarized the legitimate rage on the ground in Palestine that the White House and Congress make no attempt to appreciate: “The status quo in Israel has been one of continually escalating violence, tyranny and abuse for generations… Stand on someone’s face for long enough and one day it will surprise you if he eventually bites your foot. You might even feel like you were the victim, because that’s just what you’d gotten used to.”
Blinken, citing his ancestors and the holocaust, presented himself as a Jew to his Israeli audience, which meant that no further justification was required as he totally rolled over to comply with the Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s interpretation of what had taken place on October 7th. Reports suggest that Blinken had initially sensibly supported a cease-fire on social media just after the Hamas attack, writing that he would be “encourage[ing] Turkey’s advocacy for a cease-fire and the release of all hostages by Hamas immediately.” Presumably under pressure from Biden and the Israel Lobby, he then deleted that and wrote, “Israel has the right to defend itself, rescue any hostages, and protect its citizens.” The State Department got the message and circulated instructions to staffers to not use the terms “de-escalation/ceasefire,” “end to violence/bloodshed” and “restoring calm” in regard to the Gaza/Israel situation, giving Netanyahu a free hand to do whatever he would choose to do.
Blinken was thus converted to fully support massive and indiscriminate Israeli retaliation against the civilian population, a war crime, and his reward was being stiffed by the Saudi Crown Prince, forced to wait in attendance all night before being allowed a short and non-productive audience. Biden outdid his colleague in being completely stonewalled by Saudi, Jordanian, Egyptian, Iraqi and Palestinian heads of state and government, which leads to the question “What did Biden seek to achieve apart from demonstrating that the United States was owned by Israel which is committing a war crime by its collective punishment of Gaza? Did he think the Arab and Muslim states would react positively to a developing massacre of the Gazans, which he specifically supported?”
So why were Biden and Blinken so willfully ignorant as to be unable to appreciate that they were bearing a message that could only succeed in infuriating their hosts? Israel, after all, is by law a Jewish state which not only does not provide equal rights to the non-Jewish citizens and residents, it also has a government that has senior officials and some leading religious figures describing Palestinian Arabs as something less than human or even “animals” and who, in some cases, openly consider it perfectly acceptable to exterminate them. It is the same government with a different cast of characters that has been stealing, killing and inflicting a host of war crimes and crimes against humanity on its captive and largely helpless Palestinian Christian and Muslim minority for the past 76 years.
Biden’s nice package of $105 billion, which will likely sail through Congress because it is “for Israel,” will include $14 billion for Netanyahu to buy some new heavy ordnance to exterminate the Palestinians, which guarantees that the Muslim world will hate the United States for the foreseeable future. The money is also funding the war in Ukraine for the next year and arming Taiwan with some shiny new weapons to ward off China. Ironically, a new CBS/YouGov poll finds that most Americans don’t want the US providing Israel with weapons and supplies in this war, but, of course ordinary voters are never asked their opinion when the White House chooses to demonstrate “American exceptionalism” towards the country that it loves beyond all others. Oh, and the bill will also include some cash to “fortify” America’s Mexican border, a sweetener that runs completely contrary to what Biden has been doing for the past three years. All this will be piled on to the United States government debt which, at just short of $33 trillion, is considered to be unsustainable and weighs in at $350,230 for every American family. And it is all being done for no good reason whatsoever in terms of genuine American interests, and probably illegally too as proxy wars run by the Executive Branch would seem to go against the Constitution’s separation of powers as well as the time constraints in the War Powers Act of 1973. Congressman Michael McCaul from Texas, the Israel firster fanatic who heads the House Foreign Affairs Committee, is currently pushing legislation that would provide an in-advance authorization to go to war on Iran and on Lebanon if Hezbollah were to come in to support the Gazans when Netanyahu starts his potentially genocidal ground attack. Another Congressional clown, Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina is already calling for an attack on Iran under the presumption that it assisted the Gazans.
Fortunately for all of us who care for such issues as life and death, some cracks are appearing in the wall surrounding total subservience to Israel and its interest. Some even suspect that the “US-based Middle East system,” which mandates blind support for Israel, has become so abusive that the public is becoming reluctant to support it. Indeed, public opinion polls suggest that support for the Palestinians is increasing while that for Israel is growing weaker as atrocities against the Arabs multiply with Israel new ultra-conservative government. The resignation letter of senior State Department official Josh Paul, who recently quit over the Biden administration’s position on the Gaza War, makes for interesting reading. Paul described the Hamas attack as a “monstrosity of monstrosities” but continued: “This Administration’s response – and much of Congress’ as well – is an impulsive reaction built on confirmation bias, political convenience, intellectual bankruptcy and bureaucratic inertia. Decades of the same approach have shown that security for peace leads to neither security nor peace, The fact is that blind support for one side is destructive in the long term to the interests of the people on both sides.”
Paul was responding to the latest arms package being rushed through congress for Israel, which he described as “shortsighted, destructive and unjust,” and the US veto early last week of a Russian proposal in the UN Security Council to call for a ceasefire. The US permanent representative to the UN Linda Thomas Greenfield submitted the veto and then erupted with “By failing to condemn Hamas, Russia is giving cover to a terrorist group that brutalizes innocent civilians. It is outrageous, it is hypocritical, and it is indefensible.” She is the hypocrite in that she obviously does not recognize or does not care that Israel’s record is far worse than Russia’s in “brutalizing innocent civilians” for the past 76 years.
There are also other reports of general “discomfort” and dismay among civil servants over what is happening vis-à-vis the US role in Gaza out of concern for Israel not being urged to show restraint and the White House lack of any genuine concern over the developing humanitarian crisis. It also appears that several of the few Muslim federal government officials have been removed from positions having anything to do with Middle East policy. The US media likewise has been transferring many of its Muslim journalists who were on the ground in Gaza and elsewhere in the Middle East for fear that they will actually try to tell the truth about what is going on and who is doing what to whom.
On a next to last final note, it has often been noted that the first victim of war is truth. The US government in its various guises has been lashing out at social media and other sites that have been making available material that can be construed as favorable to Gaza. So far, they have been less than successful, but the efforts persist and could lead to legislation. Also, there have been the usual claims regarding “antisemitism” which can be exploited in “hate crimes” prosecutions as well as the existing legislation in 35 states that protect Israel with potential criminal and civil penalties as well denial of jobs and services to applicants who are critics of the Jewish state’s behavior. In Israel itself, al-Jazeera journalists have now been detained and expelled as a consequence of legislation criminalizing the activity of journalists who report “facts” that are not approved by the Israeli government.
But some of the most bizarre lashing out by the Israel lobby and its friends is taking place in the United States. In Florida the state Attorney General has told prosecutors to “exercise zero tolerance” when dealing with the “anti-Jewish hate crimes” engaged in by college students who have been demonstrating in support of the Gazans. At Harvard, major donors who are mostly Jewish have cut off donations to the university due to its tolerance of pro-Gazan student demonstrators. A so called “conservative group” Accuracy in Media headed by one Adam Guillette, who is Jewish, has led the response to a coalition of more than 30 Harvard student groups that posted an open letter on the night of the Hamas attack, citing Israel as “entirely responsible” for the violence that killed more than 1,400 people, mostly civilians. The letter was posted on social media and did not include the names of the individual students in the groups. But within days, students connected to those groups were being identified together with their personal information, all of which was posted online. Families back home were threatened while presumed Harvard alumni businessmen and executives demanded a list of the student names to ban their hiring. And a truck with a digital billboard paid for by Accuracy in Media circled Harvard Square, flashing student photos and names, under the headline, “Harvard’s Leading Antisemites.” The students now have to deal with “people’s lives being ruined, people’s careers being ruined, people’s fellowships being ruined” because they opposed a certainly controversial war being fought. Guillette said his organization’s next move, which has already started, is to create online domains using the students’ first and last names to create sites identifying them as antisemites. Guillette boasted that “I think it’s incredibly important for people to know who the antisemites are on their campus and in their community.”
And on a final note, if you have wondered where the money is coming from to fund Israel’s wars and crimes beyond what Joe Biden and his buddies are willing to hand them, there is an interesting story out of Georgia. Republican Governor Brian Kemp has ordered his state treasurer to use tax revenues to purchase $10 million in Israel Bonds. The bonehead then issued a statement: “Israel is one of Georgia’s strongest allies and greatest friends, and our support for its people as they endure horrific attacks from terrorists is unwavering. Purchasing these bonds is just the latest expression of that support.” It is not clear if the purchase is completely legal and someone should have advised the governor that buying Israel bonds is in the nature of a gift as they lack liquidity and are generally regarded as a terrible investment. So it is a rip-off of the Georgia taxpayer. I wonder if anyone will notice!
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 councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is inform@cnionline.org.
German MP announces formation of new anti-establishment party
RT | October 23, 2023
Germany will have a new left-wing political grouping in 2024 after prominent Left Party MP Sahra Wagenknecht announced the formation of her own party. Its platform will include the normalization of relations with Russia and a peace-oriented foreign policy.
Wagenknecht broke the news during a press conference in Berlin on Monday, saying she and fellow Left Party defectors had “decided to establish a new party.” Explaining the need for a new political force, she argued that things “can’t continue like this” or Germans “will probably not recognize our country in ten years.”
The politician plans for the new party to run candidates in regional elections in the eastern regions of Saxony, Thuringia and Brandenburg, as well as in the European Parliament election next year.
A fresh poll commissioned by Bild am Sonntag indicated that some 27% of Germans would not rule out voting for Wagenknecht’s new political force.
Until the party’s official formation at the start of 2024, Wagenknecht and nine other Bundestag colleagues who resigned from the Left Party said they wished to keep their current seats. Party leadership has, however, already indicated that the defectors could lose their mandates much earlier. In September, Wagenknecht hinted at her plans to branch out, claiming that many Germans felt that none of the existing political forces represented their views.
Not long after that, the “Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance – for reason and justice” was registered with the aim of laying the groundwork for the establishment of a new party. The politician clarified that the Left Party had, in her opinion, become increasingly irrelevant. She also blasted Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s government on Monday as the “worst government in the history of the federal republic.”
Wagenknecht said she would seek to preserve Germany’s “economic strengths” as well as work toward more social justice. With respect to foreign policy, Berlin should switch to diplomacy rather than weapons deliveries when dealing with conflicts, the politician insisted.
She has been a vocal critic of Scholz’s policies toward Moscow over the Ukraine conflict, arguing that the current approach risks leading to a global, and potentially nuclear conflict. Berlin, according to Wagenknecht, should assume the role of a peacemaker.
Commenting previously on the EU’s anti-Russia sanctions, the politician has repeatedly claimed that the punitive measures are doing more harm to the German economy than to the Russian one, and thus should be lifted.
Wagenknecht is also a prominent critic of the European Union’s “elite project” and NATO, and argues for more independence for national states.
Ex-Pakistani PM charged amid US interference scandal
RT | October 23, 2023
A special court in Pakistan formally charged former Prime Minister Imran Khan and his then-foreign minister on Monday with breaching state secrecy laws. The charges stem from their alleged conspiracy to reveal what Khan characterized as US interference in orchestrating his removal by political opponents last year.
Special Court Judge Abual Hasnat Zulqarnain lodged indictments against Khan and Shah Mahmood Qureshi concerning the so-called ‘cipher case.’ The allegations revolve around their purported unlawful retention and public disclosure of a classified document, which Khan’s side is said to have had the necessary cipher to decode. Pakistani media reports suggest that additional individuals, including Khan’s aide Muhammad Azam Khan and former Federal Minister Asad Umar, may also face charges in the ongoing investigation.
The document in question is a diplomatic cable sent by then-Pakistani Ambassador to the US Asad Majeed Khan after his March 2022 meeting with two senior US Department of State officials, including Assistant Secretary of State for the Bureau of South and Central Asian Affairs Donald Lu.
Various media sources, including The Intercept, reported that Lu criticized Imran Khan for adopting an “aggressively neutral position” on the Ukraine conflict that erupted in late February of the same year. Unlike the United States and its European allies, the Pakistani prime minister refrained from siding with Kiev.
Instead, he conducted a scheduled visit to Moscow and declared during a rally that Pakistanis were not “slaves” to Washington, defying Western criticisms.
The US official reportedly discussed the no-confidence vote against Khan, which he was facing in parliament at the time. If it were to succeed, “all will be forgiven in Washington,” Lu was quoted as telling the ambassador, while if Khan stayed in power, Islamabad would supposedly face “isolation.”
The US government denied that anything said by Lu during the meeting amounted to taking a position on who should be in power in Pakistan.
Khan was ousted about a month after the meeting and has since been charged with a number of crimes, including some related to terrorism and corruption. He has claimed that his political opponents seek to bar him from the upcoming parliamentary elections with Washington’s blessing. Notably, after Khan’s downfall, US-Pakistani relations experienced a period of thawing.
Islamabad received an unexpected windfall this July when the International Monetary Fund extended a $3 billion bailout. The Intercept claimed that the US backed the rescue in exchange for Pakistan agreeing to supply munitions worth $900 million to Ukraine. The Pakistani government has denied the reported arms sale ever taking place.
Pro-neutrality party wins Swiss election
RT | October 23, 2023
The Swiss People’s Party (SVP), which campaigned on a pro-neutrality and anti-immigration platform, emerged as the main winner in Switzerland’s general election on Sunday, garnering 28.6% of the vote.
Amid the ongoing Ukraine conflict, some politicians and officials in the country had been calling for closer alignment with NATO and the abandonment of strict neutrality.
The result represented an increase of three percentage points from the SVP’s showing in 2019. The Social Democrats trailed behind with 18%, with several other parties receiving less than 15% each. The Green Party appears to have been the main loser with a little over 9% – almost four percentage points less than in the previous election.
The right-wing SVP thus gained nine seats in the 200-seat National Council, bringing the number of its representatives to 62.
The SVP has been the most popular political force in Switzerland over the past two decades, but the result on Sunday is among its best on record.
The party wants to restrict immigration to keep the country’s population under a threshold of 10 million, citing overstretched infrastructure and a lack of housing.
The SVP also insists that Switzerland should remain neutral despite recent geopolitical tensions in Europe.
Back in August, a policy document released by the Swiss Army detailed plans to step up its military cooperation with NATO “as much as possible.” Swiss military leaders advocated bringing the army’s operations in line with NATO doctrine, as well as joining the EU’s Permanent Structured Cooperation (PESCO) defense framework and its European Sky Shield Initiative.
These measures were necessary due to the Ukraine conflict, the report said, claiming that an “epoch of peace in Europe is coming to an end.”
Switzerland has maintained a policy of neutrality since 1815, and did not take sides in either of the two world wars. Since the start of the conflict in Ukraine, the country has imposed sanctions on Russia, taking its cue from the EU, and sent economic aid to Kiev, but has refused to supply weapons or allow other countries to send Swiss arms or ammunition to Ukraine.
However, some members of the Swiss government have been calling for the relaxation of this long-standing foreign policy. The Swiss People’s Party and the Social Democratic Party have been critical of such suggestions.
Speaking to the Russian media back in February, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said Russia no longer viewed Switzerland as neutral after it joined the “West’s illegal unilateral sanctions.” The diplomat noted that this move disqualified Bern as a potential mediator in the conflict.
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Noam Chomsky, Kevin Barrett and Academic Freedom
The Kevin Barrett-Chomsky Dispute in Historical Perspective – Ninth part of the series titled “9/11 and the Zionist Question”
By Prof. Tony Hall | American Herald Tribune | August 7, 2016
Noam Chomsky has been much worse than hypocritical in the role he has chosen for himself in the study of 9/11. Chomsky treats the subject of 9/11 as if he’s some sort of master of analysis on the subject of what happened. He presents his conclusions without showing the due diligence of going through the relevant primary and secondary sources in a balanced and scholarly fashion. The primary sources Chomsky chooses to disregard include passenger lists, video and photographic evidence in the public domain, eyewitness accounts, original news coverage on the day of 9/11 and the like. … continue
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