Brazil Court Rules Barring Lula Da Silva From Presidential Election – Reports
Sputnik – 01.09.2018
The lawyers of the jailed former Brazilian president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva have said they would appeal the ruling by a 4-1 majority of the seven-member top electoral court to the country’s Supreme Court, Reuters reported.
Lula, who served as the country’s president from 2003 through 2010, was sentenced to 9.5 years in prison last summer for allegedly accepting a luxury apartment from a construction firm in return for political favors. Lula has denied the accusations. An appeals court upheld the ruling in January and increased Lula’s jail term to 12 years and a month.
The Brazilian Workers’ Party (PT) vowed in a statement late Friday to secure Lula da Silva’s candidcay in the upcoming October’s vote.
“We will present all appeals before the courts for the recognition of the rights of Lula provided by law and international treaties ratified by Brazil… we will defend Lula in the streets, with the people,” the PT statement was quoted by AFP.
Earlier in August, the PT announced it has registered jailed ex-president Lula da Silva as its candidate in the upcoming October’s election. Papers were submitted to Brazil’s Supreme Court hours before the deadline passed.
The UN Human Rights Committee has urged Brazil to ensure that political rights of Lula were observed given that he was registered as a candidate for the upcoming presidential election. The committee also urged Brazil to refrain from hindering Lula from participating in the election until after his court appeals were completed.
However, the country’s Foreign Ministry has said that Brazilian authorities do not consider binding the UNHR recommendations regarding observance of jailed former president.
According to the recent polls, jailed ex-president Lula da Silva is one of the most popular presidential candidates, however, the new rulling of the Brazil’s electoral court questions Lula’s run in the presidential campaign.
Lula da Silva’s supporters remain, however, optimistic. The PT has launched an appeal for support on Twitter, after which a hashtag translating as “Lula on the ballot box” quickly began trending, AFP reported.
Trump Is Right About “Flipping”
By Jacob G. Hornberger | FFF | August 27, 2018
In the wake of the federal criminal conviction of former Trump official Paul Manafort and the guilty plea in federal court of former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen, the mainstream press is singing the praises of special prosecutor (and former FBI Director) Robert Mueller and the Justice Department.
In the process, Trump’s critics are condemning his denunciation of “flipping,” the process by which federal prosecutors offer a sweet deal to criminal defendants in return for testifying against a “higher-up” who the feds are also prosecuting. The press and the anti-Trumpsters say that such a practice is part of the “rule of law” and essential to the proper administration of justice.
Nothing could be further from the truth. Whatever else might be said about Trump, he is absolutely right on this point. The process of offering sweetheart deals to people in return for their “cooperation” to get someone else convicted has long been one of the most corrupt aspects of the federal criminal-justice system, especially as part of the federal government’s much-vaunted (and much-failed) war on drugs.
Suppose a federal criminal defendant contacts a prospective witness in a case and offers him $50,000 in return for his “cooperation” in his upcoming trial. The money will be paid as soon as the trial is over. The defendant makes it clear that he wants the witness to “tell the truth” but that his “cooperation” when he testifies at trial would be greatly appreciated.
What would happen if federal officials learned about that communication and offer? They would go ballistic. They would immediately secure an indictment for bribery and witness tampering.
What if the defendant says, “Oh, no, I wasn’t tampering with the witness. I specifically told him that I wanted him to tell the truth when he took the witness stand. I was just seeking his friendly ‘cooperation’ with my $50,000 offer to him.”?
It wouldn’t make a difference. Federal prosecutors would go after him with a vengeance on bribery and witness-tampering charges. And it is a virtual certainty that they would get a conviction.
There is good reason for that. The law recognizes that the money could serve as an inducement for the witness to lie. Even though the defendant tells him to “tell the truth,” the witness knows that the fifty grand is being paid to him to help the defendant get acquitted, especially since it is payable after the trial is over. The temptation to lie, in return for the money, becomes strong, which is why the law prohibits criminal defendants from engaging in this type of practice.
Suppose a federal prosecutor says to a witness, “You are facing life in prison on the charges we have brought against you. But if you ‘cooperate’ with us to get John Doe, we will adjust the charges so that the most the judge can do is send you to jail for only 5 years at most. If you are really ‘cooperative,’ we will recommend that the judge give you the lowest possible sentence, perhaps even probation. Oh, one more thing, we want to make it clear that we do want you to tell the truth.”
Do you see the problem? The temptation to please the prosecutor with “cooperation” becomes tremendous. If the witness can help secure a conviction of Doe, he stands to get a much lighter sentence for his successful “cooperation.” The inducement to commit perjury oftentimes takes over, notwithstanding the prosecutor’s admonition to the witness to “tell the truth.”
Defenders of this corrupt process say that without it, prosecutors could never get convictions. That’s pure nonsense. For one thing, prosecutors can secure a conviction against the witness and then force him to testify once his case is over. That’s because a person whose case is over is unable to rely on the Fifth Amendment to avoid testifying in the case against John Doe.
Moreover, the prosecutor can give what is called “use immunity” to the witness, which then forces him to testify in the case against Doe. Use immunity is not full immunity from prosecution. It simply means that the prosecutor cannot use the witness’s testimony against Doe to convict the witness at his trial. The prosecutor must convict him with other evidence.
But even if it means that the prosecutor is unable to secure some convictions, the question has to be asked: Do we want prosecutors securing convictions in this way? After all, there is a related question that must be asked: How many innocent people are convicted by perjured testimony from a witness who is doing his best to “cooperate” with the prosecution in the hope of getting a lighter sentence?
Given all the accolades being accorded Mueller, it is a shame that he has chosen to go down the same corrupt road that all other federal prosecutors have traveled. He didn’t have to do that. He could have led the way out of this immoral morass by taking a firm and public stand against this corrupt procedure. The fact that he has chosen instead to participate in it is a shame, to say the least.
Defining Anti-Semitism, Threatening Free Speech
By Sheldon Richman | The Libertarian Institute | August 24, 2018
In May the benign-sounding Anti-Semitism Awareness Act appeared before the U.S Congress “to provide for consideration a definition of anti-Semitism for the enforcement of Federal antidiscrimination laws concerning education programs or activities.”
No big deal? Let us see.
S. 2940 is sponsored by Republican Sen. Tim Scott and has four co-sponsors: Republican Lindsey Graham and Democrats Ron Wyden, Robert Casey, and Michael Bennet. The House sponsor of H.R. 5924 is Republican Rep. Peter Roskam, with 41 cosponsors, 30 Republicans and 11 Democrats. Both bills remain in committee. (The Senate passed a similar bill two years ago, but it never reached the House floor.)
Right off the bat, the legislation seems odd: under what Republican Party theory of limited government does Congress proposes definitions of words simply for consideration for educational purposes? And I thought Republicans don’t like federal involvement in education. We’ll see that the answer is steeped in irony: the stated purpose is to help education agencies to combat racial discrimination.
While the act is directed at education, the resulting law would reach beyond that realm because it would officially stigmatize as anti-Semitic any speech and activity, public and private, said to fall within the definition. Since this would at least chill the open marketplace of ideas, advocates of free speech should be concerned about the content of the definition and its revealing support material. We must not assume that merely because the definition is said to brand something anti-Semitic that it is actually anti-Semitic.
The act states that Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act “prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, or national origin” (not, mind you, religion) but that “both the Department of Justice and the Department of Education have properly concluded that title VI prohibits discrimination against Jews, Muslims, Sikhs, and members of other religious groups when the discrimination is based on the group’s actual or perceived shared ancestry or ethnic characteristics or when the discrimination is based on actual or perceived citizenship or residence in a country whose residents share a dominant religion or a distinct religious identity” (emphasis added). Hence, those departments have managed to shoehorn religion into a statute that does not mention religion.
The proposed definition directly comes from a 2010 State Department Fact Sheet, which in turn comes, with some modification, from the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) “working definition of Anti-Semitism.” The IHRA has 31 member countries, including the United States, and Israel.
Anti-Semitism, according to the IHRA “working definition,” is “a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of antisemitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities.”
This may seem less than helpful — history professor David Feldman, director of the Pears Institute for the Study of Antisemitism at London’s Birkbeck, University, calls it “bewilderingly imprecise — so the IHRA furnished examples (couched in conditional terms such as could and might and to be interpreted by “taking into account the overall context”). And here the problems continue. Writing in the Guardian, Feldman, says of the 11 examples: “Seven deal with criticism of Israel. Some of the points are sensible, some are not. Crucially, there is a danger that the overall effect will place the onus on Israel’s critics to demonstrate they are not antisemitic” (emphasis added). That should be of concern.
Among the possible examples of anti-Semitism quoted from the IHRA document in the State Department Fact Sheet, but with some modification, are:
+ Accusing Jews as a people of being responsible for real or imagined wrongdoing committed by a single Jewish person or group, the state of Israel, or even for acts committed by non-Jews. [Emphasis added.]
+ Accusing Jewish citizens of being more loyal to Israel, or to the alleged priorities of Jews worldwide, than to the interest of their own nations.
+ Drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis”
+ Applying double standards by requiring of it [Israel] a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation.
+ Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, and denying Israel the right to exist.
Two things are worth pointing out here. The phrase “the state of Israel” in first example above does not appear in the IHRA list; that version says only, “Accusing Jews as a people of being responsible for real or imagined wrongdoing committed by a single Jewish person or group, or even for acts committed by non-Jews.” The IHRA does go one to say later that “manifestations might [emphasis added] include the targeting of the state of Israel, conceived as a Jewish collectivity” but immediately cautions that criticism of Israel similar to that leveled against any other country cannot be regarded as antisemitic.” The Fact Sheet, which, again, the legislation incorporates, adds, almost as an afterthought, “However, criticism of Israel similar to that leveled against any other country cannot be regarded as anti-Semitic” (italics in original).
Second, the last example differs from the similar IHRA example, which reads, “Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor” (emphasis added). I am unaware of criticism of the Fact Sheet or legislation for this key modification. A similar modification has landed the UK’s Labor Party leadership in hot water. (More below.)
As we’ll see, the inclusion of criticism of Israel in the examples is where much of the danger of this legislation lies. Indeed, Antony Lerman, former director of the Institute for Jewish Policy Research in Britain, who traces the origin and promotion of the IHRA document to the American Jewish Committee and the Simon Wiesenthal Center, both of which routinely conflate criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism, says it was designed to “equate criticisms of Israel with hatred of Jews.” Of course it was; today, being a good anti-anti-Semite, like being a good Jew, means little more than being unswervingly pro-Israel and pro-Israeli repression of Palestinians.
By way of additional background and contrast, the legislation cites a 2010 U.S. Department of Education “Dear Colleague” letter on religious bigotry to state and local educational agencies stating that they “must take prompt and effective steps reasonably calculated to end the harassment, eliminate any hostile environment, and its effects, and prevent the harassment from recurring.” However, the legislation states that letter “did not provide guidance on current manifestations of anti-Semitism, including discriminatory anti-Semitic conduct that is couched as anti-Israel or anti-Zionist” (emphasis added). That’s right: the Education Department did not mention Israel or Zionism in its letter about combating anti-Semitism. So the authors of the legislation seek to “correct” that “shortcoming.”
The legislation goes to state that “anti-Semitism, and harassment on the basis of actual or perceived shared ancestry or ethnic characteristics with a religious group, remains a persistent, disturbing problem in elementary and secondary schools and on college campuses.”
Is that so? It doesn’t ring true. The Pew Research Center “finds that when it comes to religion, Americans generally express more positive feelings toward various religious groups [including Jews] today than they did just a few years ago. Asked to rate a variety of groups on a ‘feeling thermometer’ ranging from 0 to 100, U.S. adults give nearly all groups warmer ratings than they did in a June 2014 Pew Research Center survey.” For all age groups, atheists and Muslims rank far below Jews. (In another survey, Muslims ranked below atheists.) For Americans 30 years and up, Jews rank at or near the top, and the score has risen since 2014. For Americans 18-29, Jews rank just below top-ranking Buddhists, Catholics, and Hindus. No religious group scored more than 69 “degrees” except for, among people 65 and older, Mainline Protestants, Jews, and Catholics, who scored in the 70s. Where’s the widespread anti-Semitism?
And where’s the evidence of growing anti-Semitism on college campuses? The legislation “finds” that “students from a range of diverse backgrounds, including Jewish, Arab Muslim, and Sikh students, are being threatened, harassed, or intimidated in their schools,” but it would be interesting to see the groups broken out. One suspects the atmosphere on campus is more hostile to Arab and Muslim professors and students than to Jews. (See examples here and here.) And we cannot discount the likelihood that criticism of Israel is simply interpreted as criticism of Jews qua Jews. Indeed, the lead author of the IHRA definition, Kenneth Stern, said last year in congressional testimony that it is untrue that “antisemitism on campus is an epidemic. Far from it. There are thousands of campuses in the United States, and in very few is antisemitism – or anti-Israel animus – an issue.”
Anti-Semitism exists, of course, but it’s clearly confined to the fringes of American society. It is so disreputable that people have shied away from criticizing Israel for fear of being accused of Jew-hatred, which can destroy careers and friendships. The legislation seems designed to reinforce that fear, which fortunately has been fading in recent years, especially among younger people, in light of Israel’s periodic military assaults on the essentially defenseless people of Gaza. Every so often the word goes out that anti-Semitism is on the rise, but it’s hard not to notice that those alarms follow the broad international criticism of Israeli systematic brutality against Palestinians resisting the 51-year occupation of their property. As Norman Finkelstein, who monitors this phenomenon closely, writes, “Whenever Israel commits another atrocity, its propagandists stage a revival of the ‘New Anti-Semitism’ extravaganza to deflect or squelch global condemnation.” (See Finkelstein’s book Beyond Chutzpah: On the Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History.)
I won’t try to define anti-Semitism; let’s just go with Stephen Sedley’s definition: “Shorn of philosophical and political refinements, anti-Semitism is hostility towards Jews as Jews.” I’ll only add that it has something to do with seeing all Jews as members of a malignant and world-controlling racial or ethnic entity, with each member being responsible for any wrongdoing, real or imagined, by any other Jew. This is rank collectivism that no liberal individualist will accept. We must note the irony, however, that many Jews themselves believe that all Jews without exception constitute a genetic entity, though this is patently absurd. Jews are of many races, ethnicities, nationalities, and cultures and until a couple of hundred years into the Common Era, Judaism was a proselytizing religion with many successes at converting whole kingdoms, nations, and tribes. In other words, many Jews today are descendants of people who converted to Judaism, sometimes unwillingly, and who never were in the Land of Israel.
Note further the irony of the legislation’s condemnation of those who conflate all Jews with the state of Israel. Israel’s recently passed Nation-State Law declares that the “land of Israel is the historical homeland of the Jewish people.” That includes all Jews no matter where they were born, where they live now, or whether they ever set foot in Israel. In other words, the government of Israel claims to speak for all Jews, which is an affront to any Jew who does not wish to be spoken for by a foreign government or who no longer regards himself as a Jew. (If the Jewish people are not a racial or ethnic entity but a diverse religious group, one can, like Spinoza, stop being a Jew.) It would be wrong for anyone to presume that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks for or acts on behalf of American, British, French, and other non-Israeli Jews, but that is what Israel’s Basic Law claims. (Former Meet the Press host David Gregory once addressed Netanyahu on the air as the “leader of the Jewish people.)
And this claim, which predates the Nation-State Law, is what has given rise to the (dual) loyalty suspicion. So we have yet another irony in The Anti-Semitism Awareness Act’s condemnation of statements “accusing Jewish citizens of being more loyal to Israel, or to the alleged priorities of Jews worldwide, than to the interest of their own nations.” A great way to dispose of the loyalty issue would be for Israel and its supporters to stop pretending it represents all Jews (and former Jews) everywhere.
As noted, the legislation says that “denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, and denying Israel the right to exist” is anti-Semitic. But what about denying the Jewish people the right to self-determination on land taken from its rightful owners, as Jewish and non-Jewish anti-Zionists have long denied? And when will Congress get around to condemning those who deny the right of Palestinians to self-determination? The Nation-State law says that the “right to exercise national self-determination in the State of Israel is unique to the Jewish people.” So Palestinians are lesser people than Jews? What’s the word for that attitude?
The condemnation of people who “apply[] double standards by requiring of it [Israel] a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation” is also filled with problems. The first is that Israel’s unconditional defenders themselves are guilty of applying a double standard. If any national group treated another group the way the Zionists and Israelis have treated the Palestinians, they would have been condemned by liberal-minded Jewish Americans along with most other Americans. Second, where is the double standard in the criticism of Israel? Name another country that occupies other people’s land, recognizes no rights in the occupied population, systematically discriminates against 25 percent of its “citizens,” gets billion in military aid every year from American taxpayers, has a highly influential lobby ready to smear any critic, claims to be the most moral military in world, and insists it’s the only democracy in its region? When we have another country like that we’ll see if Israel’s critics apply a double standard.
The example of anti-Semitism allegedly found in “drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis” is also worth examination. Is it really the case that Israel’s rulers are incapable of acting like Nazis, even when it seizes Palestinians, including children, in the dark of night, holds them indefinitely without charge; tortures them; shoots them or break their bones when they protest their oppression peacefully; requires internal travel permits; maintains military checkpoints; bars them from much of the land and Jewish-only roads; and destroys homes as collective punishment or to clear land for use by Jews only? What’s the theory underlying that claim? Do the oppressed never become oppressors?
And here’s another question: are Jews who make that comparison also anti-Semites? The fact is that Jews have repeatedly made that comparison, for example, the late Hajo Meyer, a Holocaust survivor, and Yair Golan, the former deputy chief of the general staff of the Israel Defense Force. Indeed, in 1948 Albert Einstein, Hannah Arendt, and other Jews sent a letter to the New York Times expressing concern over the emergence of the Israeli “‘Freedom Party’ (Tnuat Haherut), a political party closely akin in its organization, methods, political philosophy and social appeal to the Nazi and Fascist parties. It was formed out of the membership and following of the former Irgun Zvai Leumi, a terrorist, right-wing, chauvinist organization in Palestine.” That party and the Irgun were led by Menachem Begin, who became prime minister of Israel in the 1970s. The party merged with Netanyahu’s Likud party in 1988.
Yet one more question: if neither Jews nor non-Jews may liken Israeli policies against the Palestinians to some Nazi policies, why are Israelis and their supporters allowed to claim that any and all perceived adversaries (Nasser, Saddam Hussein, Qaddafi, and Ahmadinejad and the Iranian ayatollahs, for example) are reincarnations of Adolf Hitler?
Since Jews as well as non-Jews often commit the “offenses” specified by the IHRA, maybe the congressional legislation should have been called the Anti-Semitism and Jewish Self-Hatred Awareness Act. Or perhaps only men and women with Jewish mothers are to be permitted to do what is forbidden to others. That would be odd view indeed.
No, the Israeli regime does not operate death camps, but it does things that resemble what the Nazi and other totalitarian regimes did to Jews and other groups. Gaza, where the more-than-decade-old Israeli blockade causes two million Palestinians, half of them children, to be undernourished and forced to drink polluted water, has been called a concentration camp and a ghetto by Jews.
Real anti-Semitism is ugly and execrable. And that’s why diluting the concept with extraneous elements is what’s really dangerous. Sure, some of Israel’s critics could be anti-Semites, but some of Israel’s biggest fans are too. I would be suspicious of anyone who was eager to pack my bags and shuffle me off to Tel Aviv. There simply are no reasonable grounds for a presumption of anti-Semitism about opponents of Israel, certainly not in people of good faith. Conflating anti-Semitism even with foundational criticism of Israel makes anti-Semitism seem not so bad in some people’s eyes. As Antony Lerman wrote, “Rather than make it easier to identify antisemitism, the promotion of the ‘working definition’ and the entrenchment of the concept of the ‘new antisemitism’ have so extended the range of expressions of what can be regarded as antisemitic that the word antisemitism has come close to losing all meaning.”
Why would anyone want to encourage that outcome? Lerman also points out that “if … only ‘antisemities’ would dissociate themselves from the ‘working definition,’ this places a significant number of highly respected Jewish and non-Jewish academics working in the field of antisemitism research in the dock.”
Those who continue to lobby for this conflation are unwittingly pursuing an evil course even on their own terms — unless they intend such an outcome. (Real or imagined anti-Semitism can be useful in deterring Jewish assimilation and disillusionment with Israel.) Moreover, they are encouraging organizations that harass students and teachers sympathetic to the Palestinians’ plight. Free speech and inquiry must be protected. As the ACLU said about the legislation:
The overbroad definition of anti-Semitism in this bill risks incorrectly equating constitutionally protected criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism, making it likely that free speech will be chilled on campuses. The examples incorporated into the bill’s definition of anti-Semitism include actions and statements critical of Israel, including many constitutionally protected statements. As a result, the proposed legislation is likely to chill the speech of students, faculty, and other members campus communities around the country, and is unnecessary to enforce federal prohibitions on harassment in education as such protections already exist under federal law.
As the ACLU letter opposing the legislation notes, even the lead author of the definition, Kenneth Stern, a self-described Zionist, “has himself opposed application of this definition to campus speech.” In a 2016 op-ed opposing South Carolina’s adoption of the definition, Stern wrote,
It is really an attempt to create a speech code about Israel. It is an unnecessary law which will hurt Jewish students and the academy…. It was never intended as a vehicle to monitor or suppress speech on campus. But that’s what some right-wing Jewish groups and individuals behind this legislation seek…
[The legislation advocates’] intent is clear: to have the state define a line where political speech about Israel is classified as anti-Semitic, and chilled if not suppressed….
If the definition becomes law, campus administrators will fear lawsuits when outside groups complain about anti-Israel expression, and the leadership of the university doesn’t punish, stop or denounce it….
[I]f the anti-Semitism definition is enshrined into law, what professor will want to walk into this minefield, fearful that the selection of certain texts or the expression of certain opinions will put his or her university’s funding in jeopardy?
Indeed, if certain expressions about Israel are officially defined as anti-Semitic, pro-Israel Jewish students will be further marginalized, having gained the reputation for suppressing, rather than answering, speech they don’t like.
In 2017 testimony before the House Judiciary Committee, Stern elaborated:
The proponents of the legislation have made a business model of seeking out speech they believe transgresses the Department of State Definition. They will hunt for such instances and then press administrators to either suppress or condemn such statements, threatening Title VI cases if they don’t act, with the added weight of a Congressionally-endorsed, campus-focused definition behind them…. Armed with a congressional determination that effectively says campus anti-Zionism is antisemitism, … professors will correctly see themselves at risk when they ask their students to read and digest materials deemed anti-Zionist, whether the writings of leading 20th century Jewish thinkers who were skeptical of Zionism, such as Hannah Arendt and Martin Buber, or of contemporary Palestinians. Professors do not get combat pay. It will be safer and wiser for them to teach about Jews in the shtetl than Jews in modern Israel, and Zionism as a concept from the late 19th century, rather than how it plays out today…. My fear is, if we … enshrine this definition into law, outside groups will try and suppress – rather than answer – political speech they don’t like. The academy, Jewish students, and faculty teaching about Jewish issues, will all suffer.
The definition has also been faulted, as Lerman put it, for its “go-it-alone exceptionalism as the way of managing heightened fears of antisemitism, rather than pursuing open-hearted collaboration with other minority groups to fight the resurgent racism that blights society.”
If the Anti-Semitism Awareness Act passes and is signed into law, it would threaten free speech in the academy and beyond, notwithstanding it obligatory “Nothing in this Act shall be construed to diminish or infringe upon any right protected under the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States.”
Moreover, it will make political campaigns even less meaningful than they are now. As it is, American politicians are afraid to defend the Palestinians against Israel or to question the huge annual military appropriation that enables the brutality; candidates have much to lose both in campaign contributions and reputation. Those who slip, like Bernie Sanders, Cory Booker, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, will have hell to pay and will likely be more careful in the future. (Sanders has had his ups as well as downs.) The UK Labor Party and its leader, the life-long anti-racist Jeremy Corbyn, are learning the same lesson.
We must hope that things do not get as bad in the US as they are in the UK, where a hysterical smear campaign against Israel’s critics has conjured up the term “political anti-Semitism targeting Israel” (in contrast to “racial antisemitism targeting Jews”) and alarm in some quarters about the alleged “existential threat to Jewish life in this country [Great Britain] that would be posed by a Jeremy Corbyn-led government.” The Labor Party’s National Executive Committee has been accused of Jew-hatred because its new code of conduct on anti-Semitism allegedly failed to incorporate the entire IHRA definition of anti-Semitism — hence, its apparent cowardly retreat. Jonathan Freedland of the Guardian tweeted, “So Labour have rejected a definition of antisemitism accepted by UK, Scottish and Welsh govts, 124 local authorities, gov’ts around the world and most Jews.”
Note the authority Freedland, like others, vests in the now-holy IHRA definition — as though it were an amendment to the tablets allegedly handed down at Mount Sinai.
But Lerman shows that Freedland’s charge is utter rubbish; the executive committee’s code explicitly incorporates and quotes the definition, but the authors modified some of the IHRA’s examples and (like the State Department’s Fact Sheet) removed from another the phrase “claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor.”
But can it be anti-Semitic to call Israel a racist endeavor when leading Israeli intellectuals such as historian Benny Morris acknowledge that ridding Palestine of the indigenous Palestinians — that is, ethnic cleansing — was intrinsic to Zionism?
Lerman also shows, as already noted, that by its own word choices, the IHRA suggests that its illustrations may or may not qualify as examples of anti-Semitism depending on the context. Lerman notes that defenders of the definition make opposing claims — that the examples both are and are not part of the definition — depending on which position is convenient at the time.
Clearly, the Labor Party leadership stands accused of anti-Semitism purely for adopting a code of conduct that distinguishes anti-Semitism from criticism of Israel.
Is this sort of smear campaign that is in store for members of Congress who vote against the Anti-Semitism Awareness Act?
UN Committee Vice President: Decision on Lula’s Political Rights is ‘Legally Binding’
Former Brazilian President and current presidential candidate Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva. | Photo: Prensa Latina
teleSUR | August 24, 2018
Sarah Cleveland, vice-president of the UN Human Rights Commission, has condemned statements made by Brazilian officials following the UN’s determination that the state should “take all necessary measures” to allow Brazilian presidential candidate Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva to “exercise his political rights” as a candidate in the October presidential elections.
Speaking in an interview with swissinfo.ch Cleveland said the measures put forward by the Committee are “legally binding.”
“The precautionary measures issued are not recommendations, they are legally binding and impose an international legal obligation on Brazil to fulfill them,” she said.
Cleveland went on to say that the Geneva-based commission “has no interest in the results of the elections, only in the right of everyone to participate.”
But warned that “failure to comply with the precautionary measures would mean that Brazil would be violating” international treaties to which it is a signatory.
The UN Human Rights Commission issued the decision on August 17, even though Lula remains in prison on alleged corruption charges, events that many legal experts and observers attribute to lawfare and a salacious mainstream media campaign.
The ruling includes recommendations on the former head of state’s right to participate in media events and debates, as well as convene with members of his Workers’ Party. The committee also said Lula should not be prevented from participating in the elections until all of his legal appeals have been exhausted, per Brazil’s Constitution.
Brazil’s Workers’ Party (PT) hailed the decision made by the UN.
“It’s impossible to hide the violations practiced in Brazil by sectors of the judicial system, in cooperation with Globo (Brazil’s largest media conglomerate), the mainstream media and the coup government from the rest of the world. Either comply with the United Nations decision or put Brazil on the list of lawless, undemocratic nations,” PT president, Gleisi Hoffmann, said in a public statement.
Brazil’s most extensive public survey and research organization, Datafolha, has revealed that Lula’s lead in the presidential race has jumped to 39 percent of likely voters, 20 points ahead of his closest rival, Rio de Janeiro congressman Jair Bolsonaro.
Lula has topped every 2018 electoral poll conducted by Vox Populi, Ibope, Datafolha, Data Poder 360, Instituto Parana, the National Confederation of Transportation/MDA and Ipsos. His two terms in office were marked by a slew of social programs, lifting millions of Brazilians out of poverty and removing the country from the United Nations World Hunger Map. He left office with a record approval rating of 83 percent in 2011, according to Datafolha.
UK Labour self-destructs under ‘anti-Semitism’ onslaught
Einstein’s famous quote, which most have never heard of. Now you know why.
By Stuart Littlewood | Veterans Today | August 22, 2018
The ‘anti-Semitism’ rumpus engulfing Jeremy Corbyn and tearing the Labour Party apart comes at the very moment when the country needs an alert and dynamic Opposition to May’s shambolic administration. The campaign, so obviously orchestrated by powerful pro-Israel interest groups to bring down Corbyn, threatens to derail all prospect of worthwhile change at the next election, which could be called anytime given the chaos over Brexit. This would be a calamity not just for Labour but the whole country.
The distraction is such a blot on the political landscape and so disruptive that Corbyn must neutralise it without giving ground. The question is how.
Clarity please – who are the Semites?
What is the argument about? It’s the S-word, ‘Semitism’. At least, that’s the cover-story. The real issue, as many realise, is something deeper. But let’s stick with ‘anti-Semitism’, which is the weapon. It is stupid to go to war without asking questions. So who exactly are the Semites? They may not be who they seem, or who we’re told they are. So let us first deal with the cover story, anti-Semitism, by setting up a learned panel to review the research by Shlomo Sand, Arthur Koestler, Johns Hopkins University and others, turn the S-word inside out, shake it all about, and establish (if that’s possible) who is, and who is not Semitic enough to be offended by certain remarks.
For example, DNA research by Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and published by the Oxford University Press in 2012 on behalf of the Society of Molecular Biology and Evolution, found that the Khazarian Hypothesis is scientifically correct, meaning that most Jews are Khazars.
The Khazarians were never in ancient Israel. They converted to Talmudic Judaism in the 8th Century. Even if you believe the myth that God gave the land to the Israelites, He certainly didn’t give it to the Khazarians. Russian and East European Jews like the thug Lieberman, Israel’s defence minister, and countless others who flooded into the Holy Land intending to kick the Palestinians out, have no biblical or ancestral claim to the land.
Probably no more than 2% of Jews in Israel are actually Israelites, according to the findings. So most of those living today who claim to be Jews are not descended from the ancient Israelites at all. Palestinians, who are indigenous to the Holy Land, are the real Semites.
Of course, there’s no rush by Israelis or their admirers to acknowledge this.
Has the Johns Hopkins study been refuted? If they and others who came to the same conclusion have got it right, the whole anti-Semitism thing becomes an upside-down nonsense – a hoax – in which the anti-Semites are actually the racist Israeli regime and its Zionist stooges who stalk the corridors of power and have been oppressing the Palestinians for decades with impunity.
Until the topic is thoroughly aired and we have clarity, all anti-Semitism allegations ought to be withdrawn. And no organisation, let alone the Labour Party, should import any definition of anti-Semitism onto its rulebook without looking into the basics.
In the meantime, yes, Jeremy Corbyn needs to dislodge the anti-Jew morons and racist crackpots, of which there are many in all parties. He should also disband Labour Friends of Israel, an aggressive mouthpiece for a foreign terror regime that has no place in British politics.
Job done – Israel’s stooges now in control and doing the dirty work
Meanwhile the concerted fear-mongering by the Zionist Inquisition and browbeating by Jewish community leaders seems to have worked. As I write, Jeremy Corbyn is touring Scotland talking about important things like his ‘Build it in Britain’ plan to regenerate Scottish industry. But the media are gloating over a story involving a former Scottish Labour MP being suspended by his local constituency party and publicly shamed for alleged anti-Semitic remarks – on the strength of just one complaint apparently.
Furthermore the local party executive, in a statement, have already found him guilty. iNews and other media outlets report Renfrewshire North and West Constituency Labour Party Executive Committee as saying: “We fully condemn the anti-Semitic comments expressed by Jim Sheridan, and it is right that he is subject to a full investigation by the Labour Party…. The views expressed by Jim Sheridan in no way reflect the views of the members of the Labour Party in the Renfrewshire North and West constituency…. [His] comments are in direct conflict with the Labour Party’s values of anti-racism, equality and solidarity.”
That’s before he’s had a chance to defend himself.
Cllr Sheridan had tweeted: “For almost all my adult life I have had the utmost respect and empathy for the Jewish community and their historic suffering. No longer, due to what they and their Blairite plotters are doing to my party and the long suffering people of Britain who need a radical Labour government.”
Bearing in mind that the Jewish Leadership Council and the Board of Deputies claim to represent the Jewish community in the UK and have been instrumental in the damaging anti-Semitism campaign against Labour and Corbyn, it is difficult to see anything objectionable in Cllr Sheridan’s remark. But it amounts to a flogging offence, it seems, in the minds of some Labour officials.
Cllr Sheridan said he was restricted from making comment at this stage but told me, as a matter of fact: “I haven’t had a hearing yet or a date for that to happen. You may wish to know that I visited Auschwitz along with a group of schoolchildren and fellow MPs and saw at first hand the horrors and felt the pain and anguish the Jewish prisoners must have felt. Also, in all the years as an MP I signed the annual Holocaust remembrance book in the House of Commons.”
Does that sound like an ‘anti-Semite’ speaking?
In Renfrewshire they seem hell-bent on destroying the Labour Party’s credibility without any further help from the Israel lobby. It is a vivid example of self-harm by brainwashed twits from within. If the press story is to be believed, somebody makes an allegation, the accused is immediately suspended, publicly shamed and possibly has his reputation damaged irreparably without being heard and before the allegation is substantiated. The accused is gagged from making public comment while the local party executive committee feel free to pass judgement and prejudice the whole matter by declaring to the world that the accused is guilty and stating that nobody else in the local party shares his views. ‘Due process’ is conspicuously absent from the proceedings and party officials in Renfrewshire seem to think it’s OK to issue a statement condemning the accused when he hasn’t been told when his side of the story will be heard and by whom.
It’s medieval.
And last month another Scottish Labour councillor, Mary Bain Lockhart of West Fife, was suspended voicing suspicion that Israeli spies might be plotting to get rid of Jeremy Corbyn as Labour leader after three Jewish newspapers published a joint front page warning that a Corbyn-led government would pose an “existential threat to Jewish life in this country”.
She wrote on social media: “If the purpose is to generate opposition to anti-semitism, it has backfired spectacularly. If it is to get rid of Jeremy Corbyn as Labour Leader, it is unlikely to succeed, and is a shameless piece of cynical opportunism. And if it is a Mossad assisted campaign to prevent the election of a Labour Government pledged to recognise Palestine as a State, it is unacceptable interference in the democracy of Britain.”
She added: “Israel is a racist State. And since the Palestinians are also Semites, it is an anti-Semitic State.”
Those paying attention will remember, back in January 2017, revelations that a senior political officer at the Israeli embassy in London, Shai Masot, had been plotting with stooges among British MPs and other maggots in the political woodwork to “take down” senior government figures including Boris Johnson’s deputy at the Foreign Office, Sir Alan Duncan. It should have resulted in the ambassador himself, Mark Regev, a vile propagandist, a master of disinformation and a former personal spokesman for the Zionist regime’s prime minister Netanyahu, also being kicked out. But he was let off the hook. Regev is still here exercising his shifty talents and oiling his links to Mossad.
Masot’s hostile scheming was captured and revealed by an Al Jazeera undercover investigation and not, as one would have wished, by Britain’s own security services and press. “The UK has a strong relationship with Israel and we consider the matter closed,” said the British government. The Speaker of the House of Commons John Bercow, who is Jewish, also declined to investigate.
So Cllr Lockhart is entitled to be suspicious. Nevertheless a complaint about her remarks was lodged by former Labour MP Thomas Docherty. It was Docherty who wrote to the Culture Secretary in 2015 urging a debate to ban Hitler’s Mein Kampf, a best seller on Amazon, arguing that it was “too offensive to be made available”.
And Paul Masterton, the Tory MP for East Renfrewshire, complained that, given how “offensive” Cllr Lockhart’s comments were, the Scottish Labour leader Richard Leonard had been too slow to act and should have spoken out against her behaviour immediately. “Instead we have continued silence from him and a failure to prove to the Jewish community that he and his party are taking this issue seriously. It’s clear to the vast majority of people that Mary Lockhart is no longer fit to hold office, and Scottish Labour must understand that a suspension doesn’t go far enough.”
What the media didn’t tell us is that Mr Masterton is chairman of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on British Jews which is funded, supported and administered by The Board of Deputies of British Jews which, along with the Jewish Leadership Council and others is heavily implicated in picking a fight with Corbyn and trying to ram the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism, unedited, down Labour’s throat.
The IHRA definition, which has been allowed to consume Labour when the Party has better things to do, seems to be having its intended effect. It is obvious that many members still haven’t read the two caveats proposed by the Home Office Select Committee and the legal criticism by Hugh Tomlinson QC and Sir Stephen Sedley. Had they done so, more would insist on it being drastically modified or rejected altogether.
Being Pro-Palestinian Doesn’t Make Jeremy Corbyn an Anti-Semite
By As’ad AbuKhalil | Consortium News | August 22, 2018
In the last few decades, public opinion in the West has shifted from the early, post- World War II period. Support for Israel has declined while support for the Palestinians has increased. This shift has been particularly pronounced among youth, especially those who are liberals or leftists.
The view was much different when Israel established its occupation of Palestine in 1948. But Israel has committed too many massacres and perpetrated too many invasions to maintain the status quo. Its war crimes have been televised too often for the world not to notice and popular opinion not to change. Mainstream print media no longer can control the narrative and mold the coverage of Israel and its offenses like it once did.
Still, while the base of the Socialist Party in France or the Labour Party in the United Kingdom has shifted in a more pro-Palestinian direction, much of the leadership of those parties continues to uphold Israeli dogmas. These are the same dogmas which all ruling parties of Europe and the U.S. and its establishment media have adhered to since the occupation began.
The U.S. is a prime example. Although the Democratic base has become more sympathetic to the Palestinians (and less supportive of Israel), the leadership of the Democratic Party has not wavered in its support for military and economic aid to Israel and for its unconditional support for Israeli wars and invasions with the mantra that “Israel has a right to defend itself.” This fact remains as true with Bernie Sanders as it is does with Nancy Pelosi and Hillary Clinton.
Defining Anti-Semitism
Corbyn: Accused
British Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn is the exception. Unlike Francois Hollande of France, Corbyn represents the progressive, youthful base of the his party on domestic and foreign policies.
His political rise poses a real problem for Israel. Therefore Tel Aviv’s latest target is Corbyn. Israel finds his stance worrisome because if he were to be elected prime minister, a real possibility, his views could influence a major shift in the foreign policies of other European ruling parties.
Various attempts therefore have been made to malign Corbyn and misconstrue his statements as racist. Corbyn obliged by giving a long interview to an Israeli publication in which he declared support for the occupation state.
But the more he gave in, the more the pressure increased. No matter what he had to say, it was not enough, and the accusation of anti-Semitism has been hurled in his face at an increasingly frenzied pace.
Corbyn’s repeated denunciations of anti-Semitism haven’t been sufficient because this is not really about anti-Semitism and its repugnance. The beef that British Zionists (and other Zionists especially in Israel) have with Corbyn is with his views on Palestine. He was asked to accept—without hesitation or equivocation—an Israeli definition of anti-Semitism, which was provided by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA).
Insistence on accepting this definition is an attempt to force Corbyn to tailor his statements and beliefs on the Arab-Israeli question to the Israeli position. The Israeli establishment wants to prevent grass-roots views on Palestine among British progressives from being reflected in the stances of party leaders.
The “working” definition of the IHRA in many ways is quite accurate: “Antisemitism is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of antisemitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities.” This statement is indisputable and sums up the various forms of hatred of Jewish people.
Exaggerating Jewish power in society and believing in a global Jewish conspiracy (or promoting grotesque fakes, such as the Protocols of the Elders of Zion) are also manifestations of anti-Semitism. These ideas are not included in the IHRA definition (although some examples in the document later cover those forms).
Other examples the IHRA cites—such as “calling for, aiding, or justifying the killing or harming of Jews in the name of a radical ideology or an extremist religion”—cannot be debated. These vile sentiments are anti-Semitic and indeed represent a repugnant form of hatred. Of course anti-Semitism includes “accusing Jews as a people of being responsible for real or imagined wrongdoing committed by a single Jewish person or group.” (This same blanket denouncement of a group of people applies to Islamophobia today, incidentally.)
Prejudice vs. Propaganda
The IHRA’s definition of anti-Semitism falters in its “guiding” examples and “illustrations” of anti-Semitism. In this regard, political considerations have been inserted into the definition. Combatting anti-Semitism always is—or should be—a humanitarian concern that goes beyond any political consideration. However, the IHRA reveals a political agenda: “Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor.”
This is where we enter into the realm of Israeli propaganda. If one is to declare support for the rights of all religious groups to self-determination except the Jewish people, that would be anti-Semitism. But not every denial of religious rights of self-determination is anti-Semitic. What if one is opposed to the rights of self-determination for all religious groups without exception because one believes that the right of self-determination should be a political, and not religious, right?
Self-determination is tied to nationalist attachment to a piece of land. One has to ensure that a right of self-determination of one people does not impede or obstruct the right of self-determination of another people on the same piece of land. Maxime Rodinson, the French historian and sociologist, once observed, sarcastically, that there is no reason for one to oppose the establishment of a Jewish state, say, on the moon.
To support the right of Jews to self-determination when this self-determination has become bound up with Palestine—and only Palestine, when it wasn’t before the First Zionist Congress in 1897—is to deprive the native population of Palestine from their own right to self-determination.
Opposing the right of self-determination to Jews is not anti-Semitic if one is a) concerned about the right of the native population who were the original inhabitants of the lands or b) opposed to religious rights of self-determination as a matter of secular principle. If I am opposed to Muslim right of self-determination in California, can that be considered Islamophobic, if we follow the same Israeli logic?
As far as declaring Israel a racist state, that is hardly anti-Semitic. Remember, a majority of nations (75 to 35) in the world voted in the General Assembly of the United Nations in November 1975 (long before the U.S. imposed its will on the U.N. after the demise of the Soviet bloc) for the “Zionism-is-racism” resolution (which then was repealed in 1991). That is not in itself anti-Semitic.
Similarly, to accuse the Iranian regime or the Saudi regime of sexism or of repression is not Islamophobic. To criticize a state, or even to work for the dismantlement of its political institution, is not an act of hostility against the people of the state, even if that state—be it Israel, Saudi Arabia or Iran—may speak on behalf of the entire members of a particular religion in the world. (Just last week, the Saudi regime adopted the Israeli playbook and declared that any criticism of the regime is an insult to Islam and to Muslims).
Laws and practices in Israel are racist. Labeling them as such does not malign all Jewish people because all Jewish people should not be held responsible for the actions and crimes of the state of Israel. just as criticizing the misogyny of the Saudi regime is not Islamophobic. (There are, of course, critics of Israel who are anti-Semitic just as there are critics of Saudi Arabia or Iran who are Islamophobic, but the criticism in itself is not necessarily a form of prejudice).
On the contrary, to blame all Jews around the world collectively for the crimes and racism of Israel is anti-Semitism. And the Alliance concedes this last point, although it does not fit with the last example provided above.
Weaponizing the Holocaust
In recent years, Israel has resorted to classic manipulation tactics, perfected over decades, that conflate legitimate criticism about Israel with anti-Semitism. From early on in the history of Israeli immigration to Palestine, Israel attributed Palestinian opposition to its virtual invasion of Palestine to anti-Semitism—as if Palestinians would have been less opposed if Christians, Buddhist, or even other Muslims, were the ones taking over their homeland.
That Israel’s establishment took place in the wake of the horrors of the Holocaust made it easier for the Israeli occupation state to present the takeover of Palestine as a tribute to Holocaust victims. Palestine was not the only place where a haven for Jewish refugees could be found. The takeover treated the native inhabitants of Palestine as though they didn’t exist.
Successive Palestinian and Arab leaders resisting this takeover have been compared to Adolf Hitler. Amos Oz and Elie Wiesel never hesitated to equate the Palestinian national movement with Nazism. Benjamin Netanyahu recently decided to absolve Hitler of responsibility for the Holocaust and to instead blame Haj Amin Husseini, the grand mufti of Jerusalem from 1921-1948, for the designs and execution of Nazi war crimes. The more Israel finds itself in an untenable position, given the changes in world public opinion in favor of Palestinians and their rights, the more Israel and Israelis worldwide invoke the memory of the Holocaust and anti-Semitism to silence critics.
The question of comparing Israeli policies and actions with those of the Nazis is not a simple one. There is indeed a uniqueness to the horrors of the Holocaust that require special respect for its victims. To throw around the word “rape” in situations where there is no rape, is offensive to victims of rape. Similarly, one should not use the word “holocaust” casually because it connotes one of the worst crimes of the last century.
Husseini: Worst than Hitler, says Netanyahu
But Israelis can’t have it both ways. If the reason for their rejection of a comparison between Israel and the Nazi regime is out of respect for the victims of the Holocaust, then why did most—if not all—Israeli organizations (in the U.S. and elsewhere) popularize the comparison between the Syrian regime and the Nazi regime over the last few years of the Syrian war? Why do Israelis compare the Palestinian national movement to Nazism?
The Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C. took a leading role in the propaganda production about Syria. Shouldn’t that be considered anti-Semitic, if a comparison between Israel and the Nazi regime is anti-Semitic? Either we reject any analogy between the Nazi regime and any other regime regardless of how criminal it is, or we accept it as part of the propaganda of war. Israelis can’t ban others from what they themselves permit themselves to do.
True Lies and False Virtue
Propaganda is how Israel still manages to find new and different ways to silence debate and ostracize dissent. Israel has campaigned to deny tenure to professors who are critical of its abuses (see Norman Finkelstein, Joseph Massad, Steven Salaita and others). Israelis say the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement should be legally banned and have lobbied state governments in the United States to ban boycotting Israel, which the ACLU among others see as a violation of the First Amendment. Israel has also launched an app that directs users to make negative social media comments. In general, Israel wants to impose a rigid uniformity of discourse and terms about the Arab-Israeli conflict.
Israelis fight—and kill—Arabs all over the world (Israel has not been shy about murdering Arab scientists, and U.S. media casually report on those assassinations without comments or repudiation). Arabs and non-Arabs cannot speak and write uncensored thoughts about the Arab-Israeli conflict without risking severe repression from the Israeli occupation state, including censorship on social media.
The war on Corbyn is a prominent part of Israel’s war on free speech in the U.K. and elsewhere.
Corbyn and other politicians should be expected to never resort to anti-Semitic expressions. But so far only evidence of his pro-Palestinian statements have been found and that should never be confused with the scourge of genuine anti-Semitism.
As’ad AbuKhalil is a Lebanese-American professor of political science at California State University, Stanislaus. He is the author of the Historical Dictionary of Lebanon (1998), Bin Laden, Islam and America’s New “War on Terrorism” (2002), and The Battle for Saudi Arabia (2004). He also runs the popular blog The Angry Arab News Service.
CIA-Backed Firm Tipped Off Facebook to ‘Inauthentic’ Accounts
Sputnik – August 22, 2018
Facebook removed 652 pages, groups and accounts on Tuesday for “coordinated inauthentic behavior” after it was tipped off to the accounts by FireEye, a cybersecurity firm bankrolled by the Central Intelligence Agency.
The company has attributed the operators of the newly removed accounts to the usual scapegoats: Russia and Iran.
“These were distinct campaigns, and we have not identified any links or coordination between them,” the company said.
Twitter quickly followed suit. “Working with our industry peers today, we have suspended 284 accounts from Twitter for engaging in coordinated manipulation,” Twitter said in a Tuesday statement. “Based on our existing analysis, it appears many of these accounts originated from Iran.”
“The thing that strikes me the most is that it’s so convenient, that all of these pages that Facebook has been taking down and that Twitter has been limiting, are all somehow related — or they say they’re related — to governments or movements or news sources that aren’t very friendly to the United States or that the United States government wants to overthrow,” web developer and technologist Chris Garaffa told Radio Sputnik’s By Any Means Necessary.
“Russia. Iran. TeleSur. Venezuela Analysis. There was a Haitian liberation page that was taken down last week on Facebook as well.”
“You don’t see any German pages, you don’t see any British pages coming down, even if they are doing some sort of sketchy activity,” Garaffa added.
According to Facebook’s head of Cybersecurity Policy, Nathaniel Gleicher, the social media giant got a tip from FireEye, a cybersecurity firm that has received venture capital funding by the CIA since 2009. In a statement, the CIA’s investment arm said it will maintain a “strategic partnership” with FireEye, calling it a “critical addition to our strategic investment portfolio for security technologies.”
The CIA’s venture capital arm is known as In-Q-Tel, which describes itself as a “not-for-profit strategic investor” on its website.
The company was one of the few cyber firms to forensically analyze the alleged hack of the Democratic National Committee. A spokesman for the firm told Defense One that the hackers “wanted experts and policymakers to know that Russia is behind it.”
In March 2017, FireEye CEO Kevin Mandia, a former Air Force cyber crimes investigator, told the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence that the company was able to attribute the blame to Russia based off of “deduction” and “process of elimination.”
One part of the network FireEye identified to Facebook was a page called Quest 4 Truth. According to Gleicher, it “claims to be an independent Iranian media organization, but is in fact linked to Press TV, an English-language news network affiliated with Iranian state media.”
“We’re still investigating, and we have shared what we know with the US and UK governments,” Gleicher wrote. “Since there are US sanctions involving Iran, we’ve also briefed the US Treasury and State Departments.”
“The social media companies are by and large American companies, and they want to be in favor with the US government,” Garaffa told By Any Means Necessary hosts Eugene Puryear and Sean Blackmon. “They will do the bidding of the US government when it comes to data collection [and] when it comes to taking down pages that are not acceptable.”
“It’s a huge PR weapon that the American government has that almost no one else does,” he added.
The investigation came in three parts, according to Facebook. The first netted 74 Facebook pages, 70 accounts, three groups and 76 accounts on Instagram, which is owned by Facebook. Some $6,000 was spent on ads on the platforms, and three events were created.
The second stage included 12 Facebook pages, 66 Facebook accounts and nine Instagram accounts. No money was spent on advertising, and none of the pages had associated events.
The third part of the investigation found 168 Facebook pages, 140 Facebook accounts and 31 Instagram accounts; 25 events were created, and more than $6,000 was spent on ads.
According to Facebook, many of the pages masqueraded as news organizations. Some real news organizations have reported that the accounts were seeking to influence the US midterm elections, but in reality, Facebook just said one of the account groups was discovered as the company stepped up investigation efforts ahead of the midterms.
“Finally, we’ve removed pages, groups and accounts that can be linked to sources the US government has previously identified as Russian military intelligence services,” the company said. “This more recent activity focused on politics in Syria and Ukraine. For example, they are associated with Inside Syria Media Center, which the Atlantic Council and other organizations have identified for covertly spreading pro-Russian and pro-Assad content.”
Facebook has partnered with the Digital Forensics Research Lab to combat so-called fake news. It’s worth noting DFL is an arm of the neoconservative Atlantic Council think tank, which is primarily funded by NATO, Gulf monarchies and the US defense industry.
“The shuttering of progressive media amidst the ‘fake news’ and Russiagate hysteria is what activists been warning all along — tech companies, working in concert with think tanks stacked with CIA officials and defense contractors, shouldn’t have the power to curate our reality to make those already rendered invisible even more obsolete,” Abby Martin, host of “The Empire Files” on TeleSur English, told Sputnik News after Facebook temporarily unpublished the TeleSur English page. “The Empire Files” announced on Wednesday that they were forced to shut down because of US sanctions.
“The Atlantic Council is like a who’s who of the extremely wealthy and NATO countries and allies,” Garaffa said. Since the “content moderation” partnership, there’s been a “massive uptick in removing of any content that goes against the mass media, US propaganda line.”
“So they have this unprecedented control over the narrative and the information that we can see, and these are private companies, but ultimately because of their relationship with the state, they are serving the interests of the state, and the state is actually serving to protect these companies’ interests as well.”
Facebook’s last round of bans came on July 31. That time, the company made no attempt to publicly identify who was behind the “bad actors” on their platform, but said that activity displayed by them was consistent with previously identified activity from the allegedly Kremlin-run troll farm the Internet Research Agency.
That ban included 32 pages and accounts and the main counter-protest to the Unite the Right 2.0 rally held in Washington, DC on August 12 — the one-year anniversary to the deadly Charlottesville, Virginia, protest. One of the six administrators on the account supposedly displayed inauthentic activity. The other five were totally legitimate, the company admitted.
The bans on Tuesday follow a long line of similar ones issued by the company since the 2016 election. The company banned 470 supposedly fake Russian accounts in September 2017; then, on April 3, Facebook banned 70 Facebook accounts, 65 Instagram accounts and 138 Facebook pages allegedly controlled by the Internet Research Agency.
Garaffa underscored the power social media giants wield, as they’re relied on “much more now than most people did on television or newspaper news, because the stream is always on. You’re not picking up the morning edition of the paper, you’re looking at what happened in the last five minutes.”
US Inmates Strike to End ‘Prison Industrial Slave Complex’
Sputnik – August 22, 2018
Prisoners in 17 US states are striking on Tuesday, August 21, on the anniversary of the death of Black Panther prison organizer George Jackson. Inmates are engaging in work stoppages and hunger strikes, among other methods, in a bid to push for better conditions, more rights and an end to prison slavery.
The strike will continue until September 9, the anniversary of the 1971 uprising at Attica Correctional Facility in New York.
A prisoner who helped organize the strike told Sputnik News in April that they’re looking to dismantle the “prison industrial slave complex.” He is incarcerated at Lee Correctional Facility in South Carolina, which saw the deadliest event in US prison history in the past 25 years on April 15. Seven people were killed and more than 20 were injured during the revolt. The strike is meant to protest that violence, as well as poor living conditions in US prisons and the practice of slave labor there.
The 13th Amendment to the United States Constitution abolished slavery — at least that’s what most Americans think. In reality, it forbade “slavery [and] involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime.”
That means that in effect, slavery is an ongoing phenomenon in America. Prisoners make all kinds of goods, typically for a rate spanning between zero and a few dollars a day. License plates, textiles, Starbucks coffee cups and many consumer products of are made, at a subsidized rate, often for large corporations, by prisoners. California’s detained workforce has more than 2,000 inmates battling wildfires, including almost 60 minors. They’re making $3 a day as they risk their lives, yet are also forbidden from joining fire departments after their release.
Karen Smith of the Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee (IWOC), a group formed in 2014 “as a result of the prison organizing that’s been going on since 2010,” by formerly incarcerated members of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) union, spoke with Sputnik News on the eve of the strike.
“It became apparent to the IWW that this struggle that incarcerated, working-class brothers and sisters were engaged in was our struggle, and needed a cohesive group to address its needs and to organize alongside them,” she said.
Groups including IWOC, the Free Alabama Movement, Jailhouse Lawyers Speak and Fire Inside have been working with prisoners to organize the strike, which forced all 11 prisons run by the New Mexico Department of Corrections into lockdown Tuesday afternoon.
At the Hyde Correctional Institution in North Carolina, three prisoners were designated as strike organizers and are “facing threats of administrative repression,” IWOC said in a statement.
“Retaliation comes in the form of physical abuse, restricted movement, getting sentenced to solitary confinement — getting your status changed; here in Florida it’s called ‘closed management,” Smith told Sputnik. “Many people who were at the forefront of the prisoner resistance movement here in Florida were labelled a ‘security threat group’ and placed in closed management,” she said before the strike.
“Some of them have been set up with knives and cellphones placed in their belongings, or near them in their dorm, and now are placed in closed management for a year and a half, meaning solitary confinement. Restricted commissary. Phone calls, maybe once a week. They only get to shower at very limited times. And they get taken out one hour a day, if that even happens. I get tons of reports that that doesn’t happen. Or, they go to a slightly larger cage, or a small yard, for an hour before they get put back into confinement. People have lost their visitation [rights]; I’ve lost my visitation rights. People’s personal property is taken, which is, you know, huge when all you have is the photos of your family — the case that you might be in the middle of working on, which so many incarcerated people are — fighting for the freedom.”
Prisoners have 10 demands in 2018. The first and foremost is an improvement to conditions in prisons so that they “recognize the humanity of imprisoned men and women. “Prisoners are tired of the conditions that are breeding violence. Prisoners are tired of the conditions that are breeding hopelessness, and at the end of the day we feel this system, it needs to be changed,” the prisoner at Lee told Sputnik News.
He began by noting the “restrictions” placed on prisoners and the “collective punishment” prison officials hand down over individual infractions. He bemoaned that prisoners are “being warehoused” with “no movement.”
“All they see of their former lives,” Smith said, “is the sky.”
“To get outside and to have sunshine and fresh air, that is a minimal human right,” she said. “And movement already being restricted to a dorm, or a nine by seven cell, for a year and a half, that does immeasurable damage to a person. It also feeds into the dehumanization that the system relies on: breaking people down, separating them from each other, isolating them. People who are already marginalized, already isolated in a lot of ways.”
When it comes to criminals, “it’s easy to sweep their needs aside.”
Americans consider them “less than, this sort of subhuman status that criminals have in our society. The fact that there’s so many of them, people with felony convictions, I think now it can’t be ignored. This label, ‘criminal,’ has been used to oppress and exploit people since the dawn of this country and before that, definitely since the end of slavery in our country,” Smith told Sputnik News.
The strike also calls for the rescinding of three pieces of legislation passed in the 1980s and 1990s that prisoners say rob them of proper channels to address their grievances and prohibit them from ever receiving rehabilitation and parole, thereby making them “sentenced to death by incarceration.” The inmate Sputnik News spoke with said that part of what’s causing tensions in prisons is people being handed “forever sentences” over petty offenses.
Another listed demand calls for an end to “racial overcharging, over-sentencing and parole denials,” noting that black people convicted of crimes against white victims are particularly targeted this way, especially “in southern states.” Other demands call for more rehabilitation services and voting rights.
“Work stoppages are just one of the forms of direct action that prisoners engage in; the others being boycotts, sit-ins, hunger strikes. I think work strikes — it’s a commodity that incarcerated people have access to. They’re forced to work. So it’s a leverage. The prison system relies on them for it to run,” Smith said.
“One of the things we decided, is that part of this is to be work stoppages. What we know is that we have to figure out how to economically impact the system; we’ve got to that point,” the incarcerated man said.
Prisoners are refusing to make telephone calls, which come at huge financial costs, and foregoing use of the commissary, which helps them eat enough food in the face of small portions served by the cafeteria. Prisoners complain of being extorted by commissary prices. According to prison reporter Brian Sonenstein of Shadowproof, a can of soup can cost more than $15.
“We feel that economic boycott, which is why we call for boycott as well through our strike, is more than enough and sufficient to make a serious statement. Usually during the month of August prisoners in certain states and counties already start boycotting anyways; it’s just not publicized a lot,” the prisoner at Lee said. “A lot of prisoners are refusing the little luxuries that we usually have here. We start to forsake those things. So this is one reason we definitely wanted to do it, because we feel like it’s the next right step to take, the next right step to get prisons into the mindframe of stop spending, stop letting these people exploit our families, our friends and even ourselves. Stop exploiting us, because our money, our family, is what keeps the system going. It’s all based on dollars. Everything at the end of the day is based on money. I wish I could say it was based on restorative justice, but it’s not. It’s based on money.”
He added that boycotts “build up the collective struggle.”
The uprising at Lee, the inmate there told Sputnik News, came after 10 days of things reaching a boiling point. “Bad food, bad attitudes from the officers, bad attitudes from the occupants, no movement. They’re constantly taking from us, constantly locking us down — these are the things that began to fill the atmosphere,” he said.
According to the inmate, the violence broke out after guards set up a “gladiator match” between inmates. Guards “watched the bodies pile up” from behind a fence, he said. As he understands it, it’s “policy” in South Carolina.
Similar reports from Oklahoma of guards setting up a “gladiator school” have also surfaced recently, Sputnik News reported.
“With the gang situation, in Florida, we see them shipping people to camps in order to stir conflict to ‘take care’ of people,” Smith told Sputnik News.
Traci Fant of the prison advocacy group Freedom Fighters Upstate South Carolina told local media that since the uprising, inmates at Lee “can’t urinate or defecate in the toilet, because they have to drink the toilet water.” One video posted to Facebook by the group shows inmates inside Lee complaining of the smell of urine and feces, and trash cluttering the hallways.
“At Florida State prison, which is right up the road where our death row is housed, prisoners in several wings in the confinement dorms, which are two-man cells, their toilets are controlled by a flush button that is on the wall at the end of their unit, which the officer has control of, and they use it as a punishment,” Smith said. “They will not flush the toilets, and people are sitting their own feces and urine with hundred-degree temperatures in Florida for days.”
In May, South Carolina officials responded to the uprising by instituting a drone surveillance system. The drones, equipped with night vision and heat-sensing capabilities, add to the already expensive security infrastructure, which includes two guard towers — constructed in part by inmates — at a cost of $237,000. It’s difficult to understand why the drones are viewed as necessary at Lee, as the prison already had a $2.2 million camera system, also with night vision and heat sensing tech, that covers the entire prison.
“The response to that tragedy that left seven dead and so many injured was to ramp up technology to interrupt cell phone signals,” Smith said. “That’s their response to that tragedy; that’s what they see as wrong with that situation: not the deaths, not the violence. That’s status quo in the prison system. It’s the fact that word got out about it.”
Smith noted the discrepancy in spending further: “You can’t get food that is decent or even unspoiled, yet they have those rods for prisoners to walk around that will go off if there’s a cellphone within distance. Major technology that’s interrupting communication [is paid for], yet aspirin is their entire healthcare system at most.”
She called on people to support the strike by spreading the word and contacting prison officials to complain. Currently, IWOC is holding call-in campaigns to do just that. “We need to change our culture,” she said, “Here in Florida, we have a whole unique beast that we’re fighting, where prison guards are actual Ku Klux Klan members, and it’s not criminal for guards to boil people alive — those are what our headlines look like down here.”
“Without outside support, the inside movement dies,” she said. “They don’t have a chance, because nobody is paying attention, and if we don’t take it upon ourselves to pay attention and to contribute to the narrative — and the narrative is being shaped solely by prison administrators, and the people who profit off of prisoners. That narrative has been sold to use for decades, and it’s time that we take it over and have it represent the actual needs of the people.”
The strike follows a long line of similar protests in prisons. In January and February, prisoners in Florida went on strike in a move called Operation PUSH. In 2016, prisoners went on strike in 24 states on September 9.
“The prison resistance movement has been around forever; since — I always like to say — since the Africans came off the slave boats here, the prison resistance movement has been around. It only solidified with the 13th Amendment of the United States Constitution,” the prisoner at Lee said. “There has been a fighting element in the prisons ever since then. There’s been strikes and boycotts.”
“We all consider it part of a budding movement that’s continuing on until — in my viewpoint, we’re looking for abolition at the end of the day,” he said. “Prisoners are tired of the conditions that are breeding violence. Prisoners are tired of the conditions that are breeding hopelessness, and at the end of the day, we feel this system, it need to be changed.”
Battlefield America: The Ongoing War on the American People
By John W. Whitehead | The Rutherford Institute | August 21, 2018
Police in a small Georgia town tasered a 5-foot-2, 87-year-old woman who was using a kitchen knife to cut dandelions for use in a recipe. Police claim they had no choice but to taser the old woman, who does not speak English but was smiling at police to indicate she was friendly, because she failed to comply with orders to put down the knife.
In Alabama, police first tasered then shot and killed an unarmed man who refused to show his driver’s license after attempting to turn in a stray dog he’d found to the local dog shelter. The man’s girlfriend and their three children, all under the age of 10, witnessed the shooting.
In New York, Customs and Border Protection officers have come under fire for subjecting female travelers (including minors) to random body searches that include strip searches while menstruating, genital probing, and forced pelvic exams, X-rays and intravenous drugs at area hospitals.
These are not isolated incidents.
These cases are legion.
This is what a state of undeclared martial law looks like, when you can be arrested, tasered, shot, brutalized and in some cases killed merely for not complying with a government agent’s order or not complying fast enough.
This isn’t just happening in crime-ridden inner cities.
It’s happening all across the country.
America has been locked down.
This is what it’s like to be a citizen of the American police state.
This is what it’s like to be an enemy combatant in your own country.
This is what it feels like to be a conquered people.
This is what it feels like to be an occupied nation.
This is what it feels like to live in fear of armed men crashing through your door in the middle of the night, or to be accused of doing something you never even knew was a crime, or to be watched all the time, your movements tracked, your motives questioned.
This is what it feels like to have your homeland transformed into a battlefield.
“We the people” have now come full circle, from being held captive by the British police state to being held captive by the American police state.
Where we went wrong was in allowing ourselves to become enthralled with and then held hostage by a military empire in bondage to a corporate state (the very definition of fascism).
Unfortunately, we now find ourselves scrambling for a foothold as our once rock-solid constitutional foundation crumbles beneath us. And no longer can we rely on the president, Congress, the courts, or the police to protect us from wrongdoing.
Indeed, the president, Congress, the courts, and the police have come to embody all that is wrong with America.
Certainly, the Constitution’s safeguards against police abuse means nothing when government agents can crash through your door, terrorize your children, shoot your dogs, and jail you on any number of trumped of charges, and you have little say in the matter.
There is no end to the government’s unmitigated gall in riding roughshod over the rights of the citizenry, whether in matters of excessive police powers, militarized police, domestic training drills, SWAT team raids, surveillance, property rights, overcriminalization, roadside strip searches, profit-driven fines and prison sentences, etc.
The president can now direct the military to detain, arrest and secretly execute American citizens. These are the powers of an imperial dictator, not an elected official bound by the rule of law. This mantle is worn by whomever occupies the Oval Office now and in the future.
A representative government means nothing when the average citizen has little to no access to their elected officials, while corporate lobbyists enjoy a revolving door relationship with everyone from the President on down. Indeed, while members of Congress hardly work for the taxpayer, they work hard at being wooed by corporations, which spend more to lobby our elected representatives than we spend on their collective salaries.
As for the courts, they have long since ceased being courts of justice. Instead, they have become courts of order, largely marching in lockstep with the government’s dictates, all the while helping to increase the largesse of government coffers. It’s called for-profit justice, and it runs the gamut of all manner of financial incentives in which the courts become cash cows for communities looking to make an extra buck.
As for the rest—the schools, the churches, private businesses, service providers, nonprofits and your fellow citizens—many are also marching in lockstep with the police state.
This is what is commonly referred to as community policing.
After all, the police can’t be everywhere. So how do you police a nation when your population outnumbers your army of soldiers? How do you carry out surveillance on a nation when there aren’t enough cameras, let alone viewers, to monitor every square inch of the country 24/7? How do you not only track but analyze the transactions, interactions and movements of every person within the United States?
The answer is simpler than it seems: You persuade the citizenry to be your eyes and ears.
It’s a brilliant ploy, with the added bonus that while the citizenry remains focused on and distrustful of each other, they’re incapable of focusing on more definable threats that fall closer to home—namely, the government and its militarized police.
Now it may be that we have nothing to worry about.
Perhaps the government really does have our best interests at heart.
Perhaps covert domestic military training drills really are just benign exercises to make sure our military is prepared for any contingency.
Then again, while I don’t believe in worrying over nothing, there can be no denying that we’re being accustomed to life in a military state.
The malls may be open for business, the baseball stadiums may be packed, and the news anchors may be twittering nonsense about the latest celebrity foofa, but those are just distractions from what is really taking place: the transformation of America into a war zone.
As I document in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, if it looks like a battlefield (armored tanks on the streets, militarized police in metro stations, surveillance cameras everywhere), sounds like a battlefield (SWAT team raids nightly, sound cannons to break up large assemblies of citizens), and acts like a battlefield (police shooting first and asking questions later, intimidation tactics, and involuntary detentions), it’s a battlefield.
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Not Hamas-Israeli conflict: The Palestinian cause belongs to the world
By Ramzy Baroud | MEMO | October 15, 2023
This, in his thinking, could only mean one thing: “Never before has Israel stood more honored and revered by the nations of the world.”
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