Making Excuses for Russiagate
By Daniel Lazare | Consortium News | May 18, 2018
The best evidence that Russia-gate is sinking beneath the waves is the way those pushing the pseudo-scandal are now busily covering their tracks. The Guardian complains that “as the inquiry has expanded and dominated the news agenda over the last year, the real issues of people’s lives are in danger of being drowned out by obsessive cable television coverage of the Russia investigation” – as if the Guardian’s own coverage hasn’t been every bit as obsessive as anything CNN has come up with.
The Washington Post, second to none when it comes to painting Putin as a real-life Lord Voldemort, now says that Special counsel Robert Mueller “faces a particular challenge maintaining the confidence of the citizenry” as his investigation enters its second year – although it’s sticking to its guns that the problem is not the inquiry itself, but “the regular attacks he faces from President Trump, who has decried the probe as a ‘witch hunt.’”
And then there’s the New York Times, which this week devoted a 3,600-word front-page article to explain why the FBI had no choice but to launch an investigation into Trump’s alleged Russian links and how, if anything, the inquiry wasn’t aggressive enough. As the article puts it, “Interviews with a dozen current and former government officials and a review of documents show that the FBI was even more circumspect in that case than has been previously known.”
It’s Nobody’s Fault
The result is a late-breaking media chorus to the effect that it’s not the fault of the FBI that the investigation has dragged on with so little to show for it; it’s not the fault of Mueller either, and, most of all, it’s not the fault of the corporate press, even though it’s done little over the last two years than scream about Russia. It’s not anyone’s fault, evidently, but simply how the system works.
This is nonsense, and the gaping holes in the Times article show why.
The piece, written by Matt Apuzzo, Adam Goldman, and Nicholas Fandos and entitled “Code Name Crossfire Hurricane: The Secret Origins of the Trump Investigation,” is pretty much like everything else the Times has written on the subject, i.e. biased, misleading, and incomplete. Its main argument is that the FBI had no option but to step in because four Trump campaign aides had “obvious or suspected Russian ties.”
‘At Putin’s Arm’
One was Michael Flynn, who would briefly serve as Donald Trump’s national security adviser and who, according to the Times, “was paid $45,000 by the Russian government’s media arm for a 2015 speech and dined at the arm of the Russian president, Vladimir V. Putin.” Another was Paul Manafort, who briefly served as Trump’s campaign chairman and was a source of concern because he had “lobbied for pro-Russia interests in Ukraine and worked with an associate who has been identified as having connections to Russian intelligence.” A third was Carter Page, a Trump foreign-policy adviser who “was well known to the FBI” because “[h]e had previously been recruited by Russian spies and was suspected of meeting one in Moscow during the campaign.” The fourth was George Papadopoulos, a “young and inexperienced campaign aide whose wine-fueled conversation with the Australian ambassador set off the investigation. Before hacked Democratic emails appeared online, he had seemed to know that Russia had political dirt on Mrs. Clinton.”
Seems incriminating, eh? But in each case the connection was more tenuous than the Times lets on. Flynn, for example, didn’t dine “at the arm of the Russian president” at a now-famous December 2015 Moscow banquet honoring the Russian media outlet RT. He was merely at a table at which Putin happened to sit down for “maybe five minutes, maybe twenty, tops,” according to Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein who was just a few chairs away. No words were exchanged, Stein says, and “[n]obody introduced anybody to anybody. There was no translator. The Russians spoke Russian. The four people who spoke English spoke English.”
The Manafort associate with the supposed Russian intelligence links turns out to be a Russian-Ukrainian translator named Konstantin Kilimnik who studied English at a Soviet military school and who vehemently denies any such connection. It seems that the Ukrainian authorities did investigate the allegations at one point but declined to press charges. So the connection is unproven.
Page Was No Spy
The same goes for Carter Page, who was not “recruited” by Russian intelligence, but, rather, approached by what he thought were Russian trade representatives at a January 2013 energy symposium in New York. When the FBI informed him five or six months later that it believed the men were intelligence agents, Page appears to have cooperated fully based on a federal indictment filed with the Southern District of New York. Thus, Page was not a spy but a government informant as ex-federal prosecutor Andrew C. McCarthy has pointed out – in other words, a good guy, as the Times would undoubtedly see it, helping the catch a couple of baddies.
As for Papadopoulos, who the Times suggests somehow got advance word that WikiLeaks was about to dump a treasure trove of Hillary Clinton emails, the article fails to mention that at the time the conversation with the Australian ambassador took place, the Clinton communications in the news were the 30,000 State Department emails that she had improperly stored on her private computer. These were the emails that “the American people are sick and tired of hearing about,” as Bernie Sanders put it. Instead of spilling the beans about a data breach yet to come, it’s more likely that Papadopoulos was referring to emails that were already in the news – a possibility the Times fails to discuss.
FBI ‘Perplexed’
One could go on. But not only does the Times article get the details wrong, it paints the big picture in misleading tones as well. It says that the FBI was “perplexed” by such Trump antics as calling on Russia to release still more Clinton emails after WikiLeaks went public with its disclosure. The word suggests a disinterested observer who can’t figure out what’s going on. But it ignores how poisonous the atmosphere had become by that point and how everyone’s mind was seemingly made up.
By July 2016, Clinton was striking out at Trump at every opportunity about his Russian ties – not because they were true, but because a candidate who had struggled to come up with a winning slogan had at last come across an issue that seemed to resonate with her fan base. Consequently, an intelligence report that Russia was responsible for hacking the Democratic National Committee “was a godsend,” wrote Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes in Shattered, their best-selling account of the Clinton campaign, because it was “hard evidence upon which Hillary could start to really build the case that Trump was actually in league with Moscow.”
Not only did Clinton believe this, but her followers did as well, as did the corporate media and, evidently, the FBI. This is the takeaway from text messages that FBI counterintelligence chief Peter Strzok exchanged with FBI staff attorney Lisa Page.
Andrew McCarthy, who has done a masterful job of reconstructing the sequence, notes that in late July 2016, Page mentioned an article she had come across on a liberal web site discussing Trump’s alleged Russia ties. Strzok texted back that he’s “partial to any women sending articles about nasty the Russians are.” Page replied that the Russians “are probably the worst. Very little I finding redeeming about this. Even in history. Couple of good writers and artists I guess.” Strzok heartily agreed: “f***ing conniving cheating savages. At statecraft, athletics, you name it. I’m glad I’m on Team USA.”
The F’ing Russian ‘Savages’
This is the institutional bias that the Times doesn’t dare mention. An agency whose top officials believe that “f***ing conniving cheating savages” are breaking down the door is one that is fairly guaranteed to construe evidence in the most negative, anti-Russian way possible while ignoring anything to the contrary. So what if Carter Page had cooperated with the FBI? What’s important is that he had had contact with Russian intelligence at all, which was enough to render him suspicious in the bureau’s eyes. Ditto Konstantin Kilimnik. So what if the Ukrainian authorities had declined to press charges? The fact that they had even looked was damning enough.
The FBI thus made the classic methodological error of allowing its investigation to be contaminated by its preconceived beliefs. Objectivity fell by the wayside. The Times says that Christopher Steele, the ex-MI6 agent whose infamous, DNC and Clinton camp paid-for opposition research dossier turned “golden showers” into a household term, struck the FBI as “highly credible” because he had “helped agents unravel complicated cases” in the past. Perhaps. But the real reason is that he told agents what they wanted to hear, which is that the “Russian regime has been cultivating, supporting and assisting TRUMP for at least 5 years” with the “[a]im, endorsed by PUTIN, … [of] encourage[ing] splits and divisions in [the] western alliance.” (which can be construed as a shrewd defensive move against a Western alliance massing troops on Russian borders.)
What else would one expect of people as “nasty” as these? In fact, the Steele dossier should have caused alarm bells to go off. How could Putin have possibly known five years before that Trump would be a viable presidential candidate? Why would high-level Kremlin officials share inside information with an ex-intelligence official thousands of miles away? Why would the dossier declare on one page that the Kremlin has offered Trump “various lucrative real estate development business deals” but then say on another that Trump’s efforts to drum up business had gone nowhere and that he therefore “had had to settle for the use of extensive sexual services there from local prostitutes rather than business success”? Given that the dossier was little more than “oppo research” commissioned and funded by the Democratic National Committee and the Clinton campaign, why was it worthy of consideration at all?
The Rush to Believe
But all such questions disappeared amid the general rush to believe. The Times is right that the FBI slow-walked the investigation until Election Day. This is because agents assumed that Trump would lose and that therefore there was no need to rush. But when he didn’t, the mood turned to one of panic and fury.
Without offering a shred of evidence, the FBI, CIA, NSA, and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper issued a formal assessment on Jan. 6, 2017, that “Putin ordered an influence campaign in 2016 aimed at the US presidential election … [in order] to undermine public faith in the US democratic process, denigrate Secretary Clinton, and harm her electability and potential presidency.”
The New Yorker reports that an ex-aide to John McCain hoped to persuade the senator to use the Steele dossier to force Trump to resign even before taking office. (The ex-aide denies that this was the case.)
When FBI Director James Comey personally confronted Trump with news of the dossier two weeks prior to inauguration, the Times says he “feared making this conversation a ‘J. Edgar Hoover-type situation,’ with the FBI presenting embarrassing information “to lord over a president-elect.”
But that is precisely what happened. When someone – most likely CIA Director John Brennan, now a commentator with NBC News – leaked word of the meeting and Buzzfeed published the dossier four days later, the corporate media went wild. Trump was gravely wounded, while Adam Schiff, Democratic point man on the House Intelligence Committee, would subsequently trumpet the Steele dossier as the unvarnished truth. According to the Times account, Trump was unpersuaded by Comey’s assurances that he was there to help. “Hours earlier,” the paper says, “… he debuted what would quickly become a favorite phrase: ‘This is a political witch hunt.’”
The Times clearly regards the idea as preposterous on its face. But while Trump is wrong about many things, on this one subject he happens to be right. The press, the intelligence community, and the Democrats have all gone off the deep end in search of a Russia connection that doesn’t exist. They misled their readers, they made fools of themselves, and they committed a crime against journalism. And now they’re trying to dodge the blame.
Daniel Lazare is the author of The Frozen Republic: How the Constitution Is Paralyzing Democracy (Harcourt Brace, 1996) and other books about American politics.
Rights group: Israel arrested 500 Palestinians over Facebook posts
Reporting Israeli crimes against Palestinians is considered by Israeli judiciary incitement of terror.
Days of Palestine | May 9, 2018
Palestinian Prisoners’ Centre (PPC) said yesterday that Israel had arrested 500 Palestinians, including women and children, as a result of their social media posts, Al-Resalah newspaper reported.
PPC spokesman Riyadh Al-Ashqar said that the Israeli occupation began arresting Palestinians because of their social media posts following the start of the Jerusalem Intifada claiming such uploads incite terror against Israel.
Israel is using its recently formed “Cyber Unit” to monitor Palestinian social media posts, the centre said.
This unit, Al-Ashqar said, classifies any post that glorifies Palestinian martyrs, discloses Israeli crimes, supports resistance or mentions the words and phrases including “martyr” and “intifada” as “incitement of terror”.
In the recent years, Al-Ashqar said, Israeli occupation courts have issued hundreds of sentences against Palestinians on the ground of incitement on social media.
The sentences ranged between months and years in prison, house arrests or bans from using social media platforms and mobile phones. The terms were handed down to men, women and children.
CIA Memo: Brazil’s Dictator Geisel Authorized Extrajudicial Executions
Ernesto Geisel, President of Brazil, hosts a State Dinner for Jimmy Carter and Rosalynn Carter. March 29, 1978 | Photo: U.S. National Archives and Records Administration
teleSUR | May 13, 2018
A declassified memo from the U.S. Department of State revealed that Brazilian dictator Ernesto Geisel (1974-1979) approved summary executions of “dangerous subversive” people personally, continuing with the extrajudicial methods of his predecessors.
The document was made public back in 2015, but it wasn’t until a few days ago that Matias Spektor, an international relations professor at the Getulio Vargas Foundation (FGV) and a columnist at Brazilian newspaper Folha, found it as part of his research work and posted it on social media, along with a picture of Geisel and Joao Baptista Figueiredo, who later became his successor.
The document narrates a meeting between President Geisel, General Milton Tavares de Souza and General Confucio Danton de Paula Avelino, respectively outgoing and incoming chiefs of the Army Intelligence Center (CIE), along with Figueiredo, who at that time was Chief of the National Intelligence Service (SNI).
“This is the most disturbing document I’ve read in 20 years of research: Just after being sworn in, Geisel authorized the continuation of the regime’s killing policies, but it requires the Army Intelligence Center previous authorization from the Planalto Palace.”
General Milton briefed Geisel about the role of the Army Intelligence Center (CIE) against “the internal subversive target” during the presidency of Emilio Garrastazu Medici, and said that “extrajudicial methods should continue to be employed against dangerous subversives.”
He also informed Geisel that about 104 people falling under this category had been executed by the CIE in the previous year. Figueiredo supported this policy and urged Geisel to continue with it.
According to the memo, Geisel “commented on the seriousness and potentially prejudicial aspects of this policy,” and said he wanted to think about it over the weekend. He decided to go along with it, but to limit the executions to “only dangerous subversives,” and required the CIE to consult Figueiredo for approval before any execution.
The entire CIE would then be under Figueiredo’s control, blurring the line between the CIE and the SNI.
“I didn’t know Geisel had given the Planalto Palace the responsibility over summary execution decision. The government’s leadership was not only aware of the executions but also ordered them. That’s impressive, unheard of,” said Spektor.
The memo was sent by William Colby, who was then Director of Central Intelligence Agency, to then U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, who also played a key role in promoting military coups against democratically elected governments in Latin America, under the subject “Decision by Brazilian President Ernesto Geisel To Continue the Summary Execution of Dangerous Subversives Under Certain Conditions” and dated April 11, 1974.
First and second paragraphs of the document (7 and 12 and a half lines) are still classified.
After the documents were picked up by Spektor, the Brazilian army stated that any classified documents that could prove Colby’s allegations of the events had been destroyed as it was stipulated by the laws of that period.
Protecting Israel Is Their Full-Time Job
Time to question the loyalty of some legislators and judges
Philip Giraldi • Unz Review • May 8, 2018
I have a number of times discussed how the U.S. and other governments have legislated and otherwise promoted Jewish and Israeli interests in ways that most people would find unacceptable if they were aware of what exactly has been going on. Here in the United States, special Medicare coverage and immigration status have been granted, often concealed in other legislation, to benefit holocaust survivors and Russian Jews seeking to emigrate. State legislatures and the U.S. Congress have meanwhile been working hard to pass legislation that blocks and even criminalizes the non-violent Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) protests against Israeli behavior while universities have been banning anti-Israel demonstrators and groups on campus because they apparently are offensive to the sensitivities of some Jewish students.
The latest outrage against the First Amendment comes from South Carolina, the home state of the arch-Zionist poseur and United Nations Ambassador extraordinary Nikki Haley. A new hate speech law was inserted in the state’s recently approved annual budget. The legislation borrows from the U.S. State Department definition of anti-Semitism, which proscribes speech that “demonizes” or applies “double standards” to Israel “by requiring of it a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation” as anti-Semitic.
While the State Department definition is a guideline, South Carolina’s specific inclusion of it in legislation makes explicit that criticism of Israel as hate speech can be subject to criminal penalties. It also is binding on all the state’s universities and educational institutions.
The law was promoted by Alan Clemmons, a Mormon legislator who has led numerous delegations to Israel and who has been described as “Israel’s biggest supporter in a U.S. state legislature.”
Supporters of the Bill of Rights have been universally opposed to the bill, but pro-Israel groups have praised the initiative and are expecting a “new wave” of legislation all across the United States blocking any criticism of the self-described Jewish State. The Brandeis Center has enthused
“This bill gives South Carolina the tools to protect Jewish students’ and all South Carolina students’ right to a learning environment free of unlawful discrimination. We are hoping this momentous step will result in another national wave to, once and for all, begin defeating rising anti-Semitism.”
Other states will undoubtedly follow the South Carolina lead, so it would appear that any criticism of Israel will become illegal in the public square if the many friends of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have their way. And they generally do get what they want from the federal level all the way down to the states and local communities, so be prepared.
Israel also is regularly exploiting the American legal system to punish countries that it has defined as its enemies. Its government sponsored lawfare organization called Shurat Hadin has initiated a number of lawsuits in U.S. courts to punish Palestinians and Iranians. Ironically, it is currently seeking to demonstrate that Hamas is committing war crimes in Gaza, where Israel has been using army snipers to kill unarmed demonstrators.
Other lawsuits filed on behalf of mostly Jewish Americans in U.S. courts seeking compensation from Iranians and Palestinians are also pending, with the tribunals in Manhattan particularly prone to being sympathetic to the plaintiffs. Last week, at the Federal Court for the Southern District of Manhattan, Judge George Daniels issued a default judgment relating to his 2011 determination that Iran and Hezbollah materially and directly supported al-Qaeda in the 9/11 attacks and are legally responsible for damages to the hundreds of family members of victims who are named in the case. The judge ordered Iran to pay $6 billion in compensation – “$12,500,000 per spouse, $8,500,000 per parent, $8,500,000 per child, and $4,250,000 per sibling” to the families and estates of the deceased. A 4.96 annual interest rate will also be applied to the amount, starting from September 11, 2001 to the date of the judgement.”
Normally foreign governments have what is referred to as sovereign immunity which prevents their being sued, but that all changed in the U.S. with the passage of the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act (JASTA) of 2016, which permitted individual lawsuits in any federal court involving any government’s alleged participation in international acts of “terrorism.” This has resulted in a series of multi-billion-dollar lawsuits against Iran, the Palestinians and also Saudi Arabia. Many of the lawsuits have Israeli citizens as plaintiffs, suing in American courts.
Though the lawsuit claimed, and Judge Daniels agreed, that Tehran had supported the 9/11 hijackers with training and other assistance, most authorities would question that judgement. Many would consider it to be ludicrous as Iranian Shi’ites were considered to be kill-on-sight heretics by al-Qaeda. The idea that Iran was somehow involved in 9/11 is in reality a ridiculous Israel Lobby contrivance that was first floated in 2015 by ex-CIA Director James Woolsey, a renowned Zionist stooge and conspiracy theorist who is viewed by many as not completely in possession of all his marbles.
Indeed, it is far more plausible that Israel was involved in 9/11 than was Iran. Israel operated a massive spying operation directed against Arabs in the U.S. and several of its intelligence officers were seen in Jersey City to be filming themselves while dancing and cavorting in delight as the twin towers went down, suggesting some prior knowledge.
But, of course, no one would be allowed to sue Israel in an American court. The 9/11 Commission failed to examine the case against Israel even though it allegedly sought to compile a “full and complete account of the circumstances surrounding” the attacks, but it did investigate the possible ties to Iran. It found the only evidence of any Iranian support to consist of certain 9/11 hijackers travelling through Iran on their way to Afghanistan without having their passports stamped.
In his Farewell Address President George Washington warned that
“… a passionate attachment of one nation for another produces a variety of evils. Sympathy for the favorite nation, facilitating the illusion of an imaginary common interest in cases where no real common interest exists, and infusing into one the enmities of the other, betrays the former into a participation in the quarrels and wars of the latter without adequate inducement or justification. It leads also to concessions to the favorite nation of privileges denied to others which is apt doubly to injure the nation making the concessions; by unnecessarily parting with what ought to have been retained, and by exciting jealousy, ill-will, and a disposition to retaliate, in the parties from whom equal privileges are withheld. And it gives to ambitious, corrupted, or deluded citizens (who devote themselves to the favorite nation), facility to betray or sacrifice the interests of their own country, without odium, sometimes even with popularity; gilding, with the appearances of a virtuous sense of obligation, a commendable deference for public opinion, or a laudable zeal for public good, the base or foolish compliances of ambition, corruption, or infatuation. As avenues to foreign influence in innumerable ways, such attachments are particularly alarming to the truly enlightened and independent patriot.”
If one believes that deference to the special foreign interest of one powerful and wealthy segment of the population is appropriate in a democracy then I suppose the Jewish/Israeli pander has to be considered acceptable. I happen to believe that, as our first president so clearly articulated, it is not, particularly as much of the concession that Jews are somehow to be treated differently than the rest of the community due to their alleged victimhood contributes to a criticism-free ride for an Israel which is eagerly seeking a new war in the Middle East. It would be a war that the United States would inevitably get pulled into by Israel’s friends in Congress and the media. It would also be catastrophic for all parties involved and it all starts with the belief that Israel should somehow be protected and its enemies punished while also being exempt from being made accountable for its actions.
Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is www.councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is inform@cnionline.org.
How Voting Works in Venezuela
teleSUR | May 6, 2018
Venezuela’s election process has been lauded by numerous organizations and observers not only for its high turnout, but also for the transparency and checks involved in the voting and scrutiny.
Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter said: “Of the 92 elections that we’ve monitored, I would say that the election process in Venezuela is the best in the world.”
Below are all the elements involved in the vote.
Requirements and Eligibility
Venezuelans who are 18 years of age or older are eligible to vote in an election, after registering.
Venezuelans living abroad are also eligible to vote, after meeting these requirements.
Article 63 of the constitution says: ‘Suffrage is a right. It is exercised through free, universal, direct and secret ballots. The law will guarantee the principle of individuality of suffrage and proportional representation.’
Security and Guarantees
Venezuela’s elections utilize the latest in secure voting technology to ensure that each vote is counted fairly and cannot be tampered with. It was the first in the world to use voting machines that print a receipt so that each voter can confirm their vote with a physical copy.
Beginning in 2012, Venezuela’s elections used biometric authentication to activate the voting machine.
The current voting machines in use are the Smartmatic Auditable Election System (SAES) by Smartmatic, which are 100 percent auditable at each stage.
The final vote count is confirmed with the physical vouchers that voters put in the receipt box, and then transmitted electronically through a network isolated from the internet and any computer to assure that no interference can assure.
The vote will be witnessed and audited by international and national political observers, technicians and political organizations. The National Electoral Council has invited the United Nations and the Caribbean Community (Caricom) to send representatives to observe the process.
Voting
These are the five steps involved in voting in Venezuela:
1. When arriving at a poll, voters are directed the voting table that corresponds to them. At the table, there is a list with voters’ identification card numbers to allow a person to confirm their table.
2. The voter then goes to that table to present the document that confirms their identity. The voter then places their index finger or thumb on a fingerprint scanning device.
3. Once their identity is verified, the voting machine will unlock so that the voter can choose the option of their preference. Once selected, the choice can be changed up until the ‘vote’ button is changed.
In case there is any doubt about the voting process, the election official explains the steps involved.
After selecting their preferred option, the voter should press the ‘vote’ button. The machine then prints a receipt of the vote for the voter to read and confirm.
4. The voter then deposits this receipt in the corresponding ballot box.
5. Finally, the voter signs and places their fingerprint in the elections roll to confirm that they have voted, and have a finger marked with indelible ink.
Poll Closing and Tally Scrutinization
Polls are closed at a polling station only after everyone in line to vote has voted.
Once tally scrutinization on the machine finishes, a random paper ballot audit announced where the machines to be audited are randomly selected drawing numbers, and the machine’s serial number is recorded. The paper ballot box corresponding to the machine is also selected and opened and the results for each candidate are openly counted.
This is compared and audited with the original tally printed from the electronic results, and any anomaly or discrepancy is recorded in the audit report.
The original audit report is signed by election poll staff and observers from each party present, then sealed and handed to the military for delivery to the CNE.
Copies of the report are handed over to the representatives of the two highest vote getters.
Better not Protest Israel’s birthday in America
By Eve Mykytyn | May 4, 2018
One more proof, if one were needed, that protesting Israel in the United States can be a perilous activity. Last Friday, Zionists groups organized a rave in Washington Square Park in NYC to celebrate Israel’s 70th Anniversary. (the rave post dated Israel’s independence day due to permit issues)
Protestors gathered nearby with the goal of reminding Zionists that their rave celebrated “the racism and the apartheid that is Zionism,” as NYU student Sheelan Mirza said.
“The ideology of Zionism is antithetical to Palestinian liberation,” remarked SJP President Khalid Abu Dawa. The protestors chanted, “Displacing lives is ’48, there’s nothing here to celebrate,” referencing the Nakba, the mass expulsion of Palestinians from their land.
A member of Students for Justice in Palestine was arrested after burning an Israeli flag, and another student was arrested when he crossed into the rave as the rave was ending, grabbed the microphone and yelled, “Free Palestine.”
These arrests were met with an unusually harsh response for student protestors, both students were held at a local precinct until 10:30 pm and then jailed overnight in Manhattan criminal court.
The next morning at their arraignments, the students were charged with a variety of harsh and seemingly inapplicable charges. The student arrested for burning the flag was charged with second-degree reckless endangerment (creating a substantial risk of physical injury to another) and resisting arrest. Each charge carries a substantial potential fine and the possibility of a year in jail.
The student who grabbed the microphone was charged with disorderly conduct, robbery in the second degree (a felony with a penalty of up to 15 years in prison) assault in the third degree and criminal mischief in the third degree. SEE for definitions and penalties.
The following video shows the protestor grabbing the microphone and his arrest. While the protestor might have disturbed the rave, this hardly looks like the commission of a serious felony. No one was hurt. Despite their relatively mild actions, both students have court dates in June for very serious charges that can follow them for life.
The Israel celebrants were more sanguine and apparently felt free to instruct the protestors. NYU sophomore and Realize Israel board member Bryan Buch said his organization is open to discussion, but the rave is not the place for it. Buch commented, “When you have a birthday, you don’t go out and you say, ‘Oh, you remember when you did that? You just say congratulations.” Of course, if you are mourning the Nakba, congratulations may not be the correct term for noting successful ethnic cleansing. In fact, Israel’s birthday party seems a uniquely appropriate place to remind Israel’s supporters of the human costs of their celebration.
Realize Israel president Adela Cojab compared the Israeli anniversary to the Fourth of July. “Every single country has their (sic) own nuances, …. but let’s say a Fourth of July barbecue isn’t the place to discuss it.” Just a reminder to Ms Cojab, Israel’s nuances are not yet America’s, nor is its independence day July 4th and even during America’s fourth of July celebrations one is still entitled to criticize America and even burn its flag.
Israel convicts Palestinian poet of incitement
Press TV – May 4, 2018
An Israeli court has convicted a renowned Arab poet of using her poems to provoke violence against the Tel Aviv regime’s military forces.
Dareen Tatour, who has been under extended house arrest since January 2016, was charged on Thursday in connection with three posts that she made on social media during a wave of attacks on Israeli soldiers which began in 2015.
In the indictment, Israeli prosecutors said they made the decision based on one specific poem — “Resist My People, Resist” — which was posted on Facebook, and three other posts that Tatour made, calling on Palestinian people to rise up to protect the al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem al-Quds.
The poem includes such lines as, “I will not succumb to the ‘peaceful solution,’ Never lower my flags, Until I evict them from my land.”
She also wrote in the poem, “Resist the settler’s robbery, And follow the caravan of martyrs.” This is a reference to Israel’s illegal settlement activities in the occupied Palestinian lands.
The indictment further claimed that the poem’s “content, its exposure and the circumstances of its publication created a real possibility that acts of violence or terrorism will be committed.”
Following her indictment, Israeli newspapers quoted Tatour as saying, “My trial ripped off the masks.”
“The court said I am convicted of terrorism. If that’s my terrorism, I give the world a terrorism of love,” she added.
The case has drawn international attention after Israel initially arrested Tatour in 2015 and then put the 36-year-old poet under house arrest.
Describing her arrest as a violation of freedom of expression for a poet, more than 150 literary figures, including authors Alice Walker and Naomi Klein, have so far called for her immediate release.
Member of Israeli Parliament, Ahmad Tibi, who is with the Joint (Arab) List at the Knesset, also condemned the court’s verdict, saying Tatour has received the conviction only because she was Arab.
“Dareen Tatour was found guilty solely because she is an Arab,” he tweeted. “[Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu, rabbis, and right-wing politicians continue to incite freely solely because they are Jewish.”
Living in an Orwellian Dystopia
By Gilad Atzmon | May 3, 2018
It is puzzling to witness the speed and ferocity with which Britain is deteriorating into an Orwellian nightmare.
The Evening Standard reported yesterday that “a London council worker has been suspended after being caught claiming Zionists ‘collaborated’ with the Nazis.”
Apparently Stan Keable was removed from his duties as an environmental enforcement officer for Hammersmith & Fulham Council after saying, “The Nazis were anti-Semitic. The problem I’ve got is the Zionist government at the time collaborated with them. They accepted the ideas that Jews are not acceptable here.”
Keable made the comments, shared in a clip on Twitter, at a pro-Corbyn demonstration outside the Parliament. I guess that in Britain 2018 you can lose your job simply for expressing an opinion.
It seems that some British Jews are disturbed by parts of their history. They try to suppress any speech about the Haavara Agreement. Former London mayor Ken Livingstone was suspended from the Labour Party for mentioning that collaboration between Hitler and Zionism. And disturbingly, in the Labour Party’s discussion of Livingstone’s case the party general secretary, Iain McNicol, “made it clear in a letter to the former mayor that the case against him was not about the historical facts, but whether his conduct was ‘grossly detrimental’ to the party…” *
The Transfer (Haavara) Agreement between the Nazi regime and the Palestine Zionist leadership is an accepted historical fact. In his superb book, Final Solution, the British Jewish Historian David Cesarani examines the agreement and he quotes German Zionist voices that approved of the Nazi regime and even welcomed the Nuremberg Racial Laws because they pushed for segregation. But evidentiary truth is not a defence in Britain 2018. I guess this disregard for truth is just another symptom of our removal from the Athenian ethos.
Conservative MP for Chelsea & Fulham, Greg Hands, said: “I am shocked someone expressing hateful opinions could have a job meeting vulnerable tenants. The council leader should launch an inquiry into whether there are others of his ilk in the council.”
I can’t see a drop of hatefulness in Keable’s comment. But I would like to advise the conservative MP and other ignorant Tories that while the Haavara Agreement was signed as an attempt to save German Jews, the Conservative Government here in Britain did little for German Jews and other Jewish refugees.
Mike Katz, of the Jewish Labour Movement, said: “To try to twist the history of the Nazis to fit an anti-Zionist narrative is offensive.” It may be offensive but the Haavara Agreement and the collaboration between Zionist organisations and Nazi officials from 1933 till the end of the war are part of Jewish history and political terrorism will not wipe out that history.
When contacted by the Standard, Mr Keable said: “I am sorry for any offence I may have caused. But the Nazi regime and the Zionist Federation of Germany collaborated, through the Haavara agreement, in the emigration of some 60,000 Jews to Palestine between 1933 and 1939.” He said he did not insinuate that Jews collaborated with the Nazis.
South Carolina’s New Hate Speech Law Outlaws Criticism of the Israeli Occupation
Discussing the military occupation of the West Bank, a reality recognized even by Israel’s Supreme Court, would be considered anti-Semitic under the new South Carolina law.
By Whitney Webb | Mint Press News | May 1, 2018
COLUMBIA, SOUTH CAROLINA — The state of South Carolina will become the first state in the nation to legislate a definition of anti-Semitism that considers certain criticisms of the Israeli government to be hate speech. The language, which was inserted into the state’s recently passed $8 billion budget, offers a much more vague definition of anti-Semitism that some suggest specifically targets the presence of the global boycott, divestment and sanctions, or BDS, movement on state college campuses. The law requires that all state institutions, including state universities, apply the revised definition when deciding whether an act violates anti-discrimination policies.
Once it is reconciled with an appropriations bill previously passed by the state House, the measure will become law and take effect this July. However, the law will last only until the next budget is passed, meaning that the new legal definition of anti-Semitism must be renewed on a yearly basis unless new legislation making the language permanent is passed in the future.
The new definition uses the State Department’s current definition of anti-Semitism as its template — defining speech that “demonizes” or applies “double standards” to Israel “by requiring of it a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation” as anti-Semitic.
However, the State Department’s definition was never intended to be used as an enforcement tool, and concern has subsequently been raised that South Carolina colleges may now move to criminalize conventional and factual criticism of Israel under the new, vague definition of anti-Semitism.
Such concern is well-founded, in part because the bill’s sponsor, State Rep. Alan Clemmons (R-Myrtle Beach), previously called the pro-Israel lobby J-Street “anti-Semitic” for referring to Israel’s presence in Palestine’s West Bank as an “occupation.” Thus, in Clemmons’ view, discussing the military occupation of the West Bank, a reality recognized even by Israel’s Supreme Court, would be considered anti-Semitic under the new South Carolina law.
Clemmons, a Mormon who has previously hosted state delegations to Israel, also considers the non-violent Palestinian rights movement Boycott, Divest, Sanctions (BDS) to be motivated by anti-Semitism and has been called “Israel’s biggest supporter in a U.S. state legislature.”
Honored to have visited with @realDonaldTrump @FLOTUS @netanyahu & @sara_netanyahu. #USA & #Israel are partners of light in a dark world! pic.twitter.com/SbWKEnJVVB
— Alan Clemmons (@RepAlanClemmons) June 28, 2017
In addition to the views of the bill’s sponsor, Kenneth Stern, the author of the State Department’s definition of anti-Semitism upon which the new South Carolina law is based, has vehemently opposed codifying into law the definition he wrote, asserting that applying that definition to colleges “is a direct affront to academic freedom” as well as “unconstitutional and unwise.”
In regards to the South Carolina Law, Stern stated that it “is really an attempt to create a speech code about Israel,” adding that it is also “an unnecessary law that will hurt Jewish students and the academy.”
Other groups, such as the Center for Constitutional Rights, have raised similar concerns, stating that “this vague and overbroad re-definition conflates political criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism, infringing on constitutionally protected speech.”
Pro-Israel groups, in contrast, praised the law’s wording. The Brandeis Center, for instance, stated:
This bill gives South Carolina the tools to protect Jewish students’ and all South Carolina students’ right to a learning environment free of unlawful discrimination. We are hoping this momentous step will result in another national wave to, once and for all, begin defeating rising anti-Semitism.”
First clashes in a coming national battle?
The Brandeis Center’s allusion to a “national wave” aimed at legally conflating criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism may be closer to reality than previously thought. Indeed, if Kenneth Marcus, Trump’s nominee to serve as the next Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights at the Department of Education, is confirmed in the coming months, the newly passed South Carolina law is likely to be repeated across the country.
Marcus, who once boasted of instilling “fear” into BDS activists and considers any demonstration of solidarity with Palestine as anti-Semitic, has long desired the post, as he sees it as a way to shut down BDS at the national level. As Marcus himself has noted, changing the legal definition of anti-Semitism to include criticism of the Israeli state is a critical part of silencing BDS groups on U.S. college campuses.
Ultimately, the bill comes at a critical time for pro-Israel partisans seeking to curb the recent success of BDS at universities across the U.S. Indeed, just a week after the new South Carolina law was passed, the students at one of the country’s most Jewish colleges – Barnard College in New York – overwhelmingly supported a referendum asking its school’s administration to boycott, divest and sanction Israel for its violations of international law in Palestine. Such victories are apparently considered so dangerous by Israel’s right-wing and its U.S. equivalents that they have sought to restrict freedom of speech on college campuses nationwide in order to prevent them in the future.
In 2015, South Carolina became the first of at least 22 states to prohibit state agencies or institutions from contracting with any vendor participating in a boycott of Israel. A hub of the slaveholding South in the U.S., South Carolina is a deeply conservative state with strong ties to Christian evangelicals, but a relatively small Jewish population of roughly 20,000 — dwarfed by a state like Illinois with more than 300,000 Jews.
Whitney Webb is a staff writer for MintPress News and a contributor to Ben Swann’s Truth in Media. Her work has appeared on Global Research, the Ron Paul Institute and 21st Century Wire, among others. She has also made radio and TV appearances on RT and Sputnik. She currently lives with her family in southern Chile.
Featured Video
Pediatrician shares 30 yrs of insight on vaccinating vs. not vaccinating children
or go to
Aletho News Archives – Video-Images
Book Excerpt
Biden’s Closed Circle on Russia
An excerpt from ‘The Great Betrayal’
By James W. Carden | The Realist Review | June 14, 2026
Joe Biden’s presidency may ultimately come to be seen as a cautionary tale. Here was a president who showed little interest in entertaining arguments that might have contradicted his most deeply held assumptions.[1] And there were precious few within the upper ranks of the administration who might have attempted to do so, after all, only policy hands and political operatives who had come up through the ranks of the Clinton and Obama administrations or had longstanding ties to the citadels of the foreign policy community were invited into the fold. … continue
Blog Roll
Aletho News- Terms of Iran-US MoU revealed: Bloomberg
- A California Pediatrician Shares 30 Years of Insight on Vaccinating vs. Not Vaccinating Children
- What Is Defensive Medicine?
- CDC Awards Pfizer $1.24 Billion for COVID Vaccines for Kids and Adults
- Historic blow to South Korea’s military intelligence agency
- Russian frigate fires warning shots in English Channel
- Radio Free Europe, the Cold War ‘Weapon’ Congress Still Funds
- UN: Israel continues to violate Lebanon airspace in defiance of Iran-US MoU
- Araghchi: Israeli occupation of Lebanese land a violation of MoU
- Hezbollah fighters confront intruding Israeli forces in southern Lebanon
- If Americans Knew
- Pro-Israel Donors Power Last-Minute Surge of Espaillat Spending
- “They Stole Our Home and Our Life”: Israel Permanently Displaces Syrians in Quneitra
- Massie Recognizes USS Liberty Attack. Here’s Why That Matters
- The blatant racism and cruelty that define Israel’s settler movement
- Israeli army ‘murdered child’ in Gaza and then dumped body on a roadside
- The Forward’s Hit Piece on Thomas Massie and USS Liberty Veterans
- Israel’s former defense minister compares settler ideology to Nazism
- The Pro-Israel Lobby’s Quiet Cash Shuffle
- Trinity Broadcasting Network (TBN) Propagandizes for Israel’s Wars
- A grim milestone: Gaza’s death toll surpasses 73,000 – Daily Update
- No Tricks Zone
- Beyond The Pitch: Why FIFA’s World Cup Is One Of Humanity’s Best Investments
- Climate Alarmists Now Using Natural Phenomena To Support Their Claims
- New Study: Significant CO2 Fluxes From Non-Volcanic Sources Are Largely Neglected In Carbon Budgets
- Women Climate Scientists Being Harassed, Insulted By Skeptics, Claims Berkeley Earth Researcher
- Germany’s Longterm Spring Climate Data Show “No Climate Trend”
- New Study: Solar Photovoltaic, Wind Power Fail To Meet Annual Energy Demands 62% Of The Time
- Germany’s Die Welt: “Too Much Is Too Much” … Green Energies Are Cannabalizing Each Other!
- Germany’s Ecological Holocaust… Once Fairy Tale Forests Getting Cleared For Wind Turbines
- A Grand Solar Minimum Has Arrived…Global Cooling Of At Least 1°C Is Expected By The 2030s, 2040s
- European “Expert Commission” Urges COVID-19-Like Global Climate State Of Energency!
Aletho News 