The recently published report by an Israeli judge concluding that Israel is not in fact occupying the Palestinian territories – despite a well-established international consensus to the contrary – has provoked mostly incredulity or mirth in Israel and abroad.
Leftwing websites in Israel used comically captioned photographs to highlight Justice Edmond Levy’s preposterous finding. One shows an Israeli soldier pressing the barrel of a rifle to the forehead of a Palestinian pinned to the ground, saying: “You see – I told you there’s no occupation.”
Even Binyamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, seemed a little discomfited by the coverage last week. He was handed the report more than a fortnight earlier but was apparently reluctant to make it public.
Downplaying the Levy report’s significance may prove unwise, however. If Netanyahu is embarrassed, it is only because of the timing of the report’s publication rather than its substance.
It was, after all, the Israeli prime minister himself who established the committee earlier this year to assess the legality of the Jewish settlers’ “outposts”, ostensibly unauthorised by the government, that have spread like wild seeds across the West Bank.
He hand-picked its three members, all diehard supporters of the settlements, and received the verdict he expected – that the settlements are legal. Certainly, Levy’s opinion should have come as no surprise. In 2005 he was the only Supreme Court judge to oppose the government’s decision to withdraw the settlers from Gaza.
Legal commentators too have been dismissive of the report. They have concentrated more on Levy’s dubious reasoning than on the report’s political significance.
They have noted that Theodor Meron, the foreign ministry’s legal adviser in 1967, expressly warned the government in the wake of the Six-Day War that settling civilians in the newly seized territory was a violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention.
Experts have also pointed to the difficulties Israel will face if it adopts Levy’s position.
Under international law, Israel’s rule in the West Bank and Gaza is considered “belligerent occupation” and, therefore, its actions must be justified by military necessity only. If there is no occupation, Israel has no military grounds to hold on to the territories. In that case, it must either return the land to the Palestinians, and move out the settlers, or defy international law by annexing the territories, as it did earlier with East Jerusalem, and establish a state of Greater Israel.
Annexation, however, poses its own dangers. Israel must either offer the Palestinians citizenship and wait for a non-Jewish majority to emerge in Greater Israel; or deny them citizenship and face pariah status as an apartheid state.
Just such concerns were raised on Sunday by 40 Jewish leaders in the United States, who called on Netanyahu to reject Levy’s “legal maneuverings” that, they said, threatened Israel’s “future as a Jewish and democratic state”.
But from Israel’s point of view, there may, in fact, be a way out of this conundrum.
In a 2003 interview, one of the other Levy committee members, Alan Baker, a settler who advised the foreign ministry for many years, explained Israel’s heterodox interpretation of the Oslo accords, signed a decade earlier.
The agreements were not, as most assumed, the basis for the creation of a Palestinian state in the territories, but a route to establish the legitimacy of the settlements. “We are no longer an occupying power, but we are instead present in the territories with their [the Palestinians’] consent and subject to the outcome of negotiations.”
On this view, the Oslo accords redesignated the 62 per cent of the West Bank assigned to Israel’s control – so-called Area C – from “occupied” to “disputed” territory. That explains why every Israeli administration since the mid-1990s has indulged in an orgy of settlement-building there.
According to Jeff Halper, head of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions, the Levy report is preparing the legal ground for Israel’s annexation of Area C. His disquiet is shared by others.
Recent European Union reports have used unprecedented language to criticise Israel for the “forced transfer” – diplomat-speak for ethnic cleansing – of Palestinians out of Area C into the West Bank’s cities, which fall under Palestinian control.
The EU notes that the numbers of Palestinians in Area C has shrunk dramatically under Israeli rule to fewer than 150,000, or no more than 6 per cent of the Palestinian population of the West Bank. Settlers now outnumber Palestinians more than two-to-one in Area C.
Israel could annex nearly two-thirds of the West Bank and still safely confer citizenship on Palestinians there. Adding 150,000 to the existing 1.5 million Palestinian citizens of Israel, a fifth of the population, would not erode the Jewish majority’s dominance.
If Netanyahu is hesitant, it is only because the time is not yet ripe for implementation. But over the weekend, there were indications of Israel’s next moves to strengthen its hold on Area C.
It was reported that Israel’s immigration police, which have been traditionally restricted to operating inside Israel, have been authorised to enter the West Bank and expel foreign activists. The new powers were on show the same day as foreigners, including a New York Times reporter, were arrested at one of the regular protests against the separation wall being built on Palestinian land. Such demonstrations are the chief expression of resistance to Israel’s takeover of Palestinian territory in Area C.
And on Sunday it emerged that Israel had begun a campaign against OCHA, the UN agency that focuses on humanitarian harm done to Palestinians from Israeli military and settlement activity, most of it in Area C. Israel has demanded details of where OCHA’s staff work and what projects it is planning, and is threatening to withdraw staff visas, apparently in the hope of limiting its activities in Area C.
There is a problem, nonetheless. If Israel takes Area C, it needs someone else responsible for the other 38 per cent of the West Bank – little more than 8 per cent of historic Palestine – to “fill the vacuum”, as Israeli commentators phrased it last week.
The obvious candidate is the Palestinian Authority, the Ramallah government-in-waiting led by Mahmoud Abbas. Its police forces already act as a security contractor for Israel, keeping in check Palestinians in the parts of the West Bank outside Area C. Also, as a recipient of endless international aid, the PA usefully removes the financial burden of the occupation from Israel.
But the PA’s weakness is evident on all fronts: it has lost credibility with ordinary Palestinians, it is impotent in international forums, and it is mired in financial crisis. In the long term, it looks doomed.
For the time being, though, Israel seems keen to keep the PA in place. Last month, for example, it was revealed that Israel had tried – even if unsuccessfully – to bail out the PA by requesting a $100 million loan from the International Monetary Fund on the PA’s behalf.
If the PA refuses to, or cannot, take on these remaining fragments of the West Bank, Israel may simply opt to turn back the clock and once again cultivate weak and isolated local leaders for each Palestinian city.
The question is whether the international community can first be made to swallow Levy’s absurd conclusion.
~
Jonathan Cook won the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. His website is http://www.jkcook.net.
Israel has a law that requires police and security officials to record their interrogations of suspects who are charged with crimes carrying a sentence of ten years or more. That sounds great, right? Just the way a democracy should work. But hold on. There’s a hole in the law big enough to drive a Mack truck through. Both the police and Shin Bet are exempt from this law as far as security detainees are concerned. In other words, in order to allow security personnel to use whatever means they wish, the Knesset permits them to have no recordings that might offer evidence of widely reported abuse and torture used against such prisoners.
The exemption was due to expire recently after it had initially been extended first for five years, then another four. But never fear, we won’t abandon our boys doing the dirty work on our behalf in the cells of Shabak. So the Knesset will extend the exemption for another three years, doing its duty on behalf of the secret police.
In the special circumstances of security investigations, which involve the fight against extremist, well-organized terror groups, documenting interrogations is liable to damage in a very real way the quality of security investigations, and thus the ability to deter terror threats.
Not a word about damaging the quality of Israeli democracy since it’s taken a back seat to security from almost day one of the existence of the State.
The Shin Bet chief of investigations, who was present at the Knesset deliberation, wove this nice fairy tale for the assembled solons:
Shin Bet investigations are overseen and documented from the beginning to the end [note he doesn’t say how they’re documented, in what form, etc.]. We’re not talking about damaging anyone’s human rights, but rather protecting our methods. The exemption is necessary so that our enemies don’t learn our investigative methods.
So get this, Shin Bet interrogations are the equivalent of work product and mustn’t be revealed because to do so would allow Israel’s enemies to learn how it ‘persuades’ prisoners to give it the information it demands. Presumably, that would enable terror groups to prepare their cadre for such interrogations in order to withstand them. Not a word about the possibility that such recordings would reveal the nasty quasi-criminal enterprise that the security agencies conduct on behalf of the State. Lest you think the previous sentence was hyperbolic, go back and read this post about a provoked prison riot which the prison security service put down with brutal force, ending with the murder of a prisoner who wasn’t even engaging in protest. Now, recall that the commander who oversaw this exercise wasn’t disciplined or even investigated. In fact, he was promoted for doing his job so well.
Israeli human rights NGOs dutifully raised their voices (Hebrew) in opposition. But they were drowned out by the swelling chorus of support for any and all methods used to beat confessions and information out of detainees. Here are some of their wise, but unheeded words:
The need for recording security interrogations is greater because of the need for certainty that a confession is valid and because of the critical importance of ensuring that the investigation was conducted properly, preventing the use of improper methods. Prisoner populations are the most likely to be exposed to the danger of degrading or inhumane conditions, including the use of physical or emotional violence up to and including outright torture. Recording interrogations can aid greatly in determining the credibility of complaints of improper acts. It can supply objective specific documentation regarding the conduct of an investigation, either supporting or refuting the charges of the detainees.
Like voices crying out in the wilderness. They speak but there is no one to hear. In fact, the existence of the NGOs, though an inconvenience for the authorities, allows them to tell the world: we are a democracy; look at how our NGOs freely criticize us; what more can you ask of us?
There are those who’ve questioned my contention here that security prisoners like Dirar Abusisi, Ameer Makhoul, Mustafa Dirani, and others have been tortured during their interrogations. They’ve done this despite the fact that defense lawyers have described in detail the sleep deprivation, loud noises, being tied to a chair for long periods, anal penetration, and worse. Now, I’ll throw it back in their face: if you’re confident there is no such abuse, protest the lack of documentation of the interrogations. If you don’t then you’re little more than a hypocrite because the video or audio tape would prove your claim. Without it, you have nothing, not a leg to stand on.
Any of you American’s out there reading this, don’t get any big ideas about how superior our legal system is to Israel’s (though given the horrid record of the Obama administration it’s hard to see how anyone would believe this). Remember the videotapes of brutal waterboarding by CIA inquisitors that were destroyed when word began to leak out that they existed? Remember Jose Rodriguez, the CIA officer who destroyed them, who wasn’t even investigated, let alone punished for obstruction of justice?
We are no better than Israel in this, which is what makes it all the more tragic.
A case adjudicated in the Jerusalem municipal court recently illustrates the total lack of equal justice for Palestinians. It also demonstrates how the Israeli press often elides details from the English version of its news reports which are condemnatory of Jewish Israeli society.
A Jerusalem teenager, identified only as “A,” was given an astonishingly short 8- year sentence after a plea bargain for the stabbing death of an Arab man, Hussam Rawidi, in what was a brutal and apparently unprovoked attack. The charge was reduced from “murder” to” killing (manslaughter)” which enabled the court to impose the lenient sentence. The crime occurred on February 11, 2011. Rawidi was 24-years-old when he was killed.
According to the Israeli daily newspaper, Ha’aretz:
“The incident took place in the center of Jerusalem, on a Friday night. The defendant and three of his friends, residents of Jerusalem, Beit-El and Itamar, heard Rawidi talking with his friend Murad Jelani in Arabic. A friend of the defendant’s began voicing racist remarks toward the two.
“In its ruling, the court said that at the time, the defendant was not aware of the racist remarks made by his friend. However, he joined the quarrel after seeing his friend beating the two.
Judge Zvi Segal said that, ‘At some point, the young man pulled out a barber’s razor blade and assaulted the deceased, causing a deep cut in his face, from the ear to his cheek.’ It also states that while Rawidi was bleeding to death, two of the friends also began beating Rawidi.”
Two friends of “A” were apprehended by police when they returned to the stabbing scene and attempted to remove evidence of the crime. (Hebrew report only.)
Two of the defendant’s friends were convicted of causing a severe injury, as part of a deal reached with the prosecution, and were sentenced to six months of community service. It is not clear from the reports if these two were also the youths who attempted to conceal the crime or what is the disposition of the case of the third friend of “A.” All the perpetrators’ names did not appear in the report, but the names of both victims were given.
In addition to the prison term, the defendant was ordered to pay a sum of 5000 shekels (approx. 1200 US dollars) to the family of the victim. This sum was described by Ha’aretz as miniscule. (Hebrew report only).
The father of the victim, Hussain Rawidi, told the newspaper, “This is not worth anything, that he serves eight years for what he did…. Those are the courts, I can’t do anything. He murdered my son just because he is an Arab.” (Hebrew only)
Yariv Oppenheimer, the director of Peace Now, said, “If the perpetrator was an Arab and the victim was Jewish, the sentence would have been life. Only in Israeli courts, the life of an Arab is worth no more than 5000 shekels. The prosecution must appeal the sentence.” (Hebrew only)
Again in the Hebrew version only, the paper provides this instructive comparison. “In similar cases the judgment was far harsher. In 2009, Eric Karp was murdered on a Tel Aviv beach by Arab youths. These attackers were also convicted of killing [as opposed to murder, IG] but they were sentenced to a 26-year prison term and forced to compensate the family in the amount of 300,000 shekels.”
– Ira Glunts is a secular American Jew who opposes the Israeli occupation and oppression of the Palestinian people. He lives in Madison, NY; and with his wife owns and operates a used and rare book business. Mr. Glunts first lived in Israel in 1972-3, where he taught English and physical education in a small rural school in the Negev.
Sources:
– Hasson, Nir, “Jewish teen sentenced to 8 years in jail for killing Arab in Jerusalem,” Ha’aretz, July 12, 2012 (English)
– Hasson, Nir, “5000 shekel compensation to the family of an Arab who was stabbed to death by a Jew,” Ha’aretz, July 12, 2012 (Hebrew)
On July 7, Bahraini people took to the streets in several towns and villages to stage anti-government rallies and express their anger at the US for meddling with their country´s internal affairs. Bahrain hosts the US Fifth Fleet, which patrols the Persian Gulf and Arabian Sea, and is among the Persian Gulf countries that receive weapons and military systems from the United States.
For more than one year now, demonstrations have been taking place day after day across Bahrain against the brutal regime of King Hamad Al-Khalifa. Dozens of protesters have been killed since the revolution started. The Bahraini police and army killed at least thirty people during the mass demonstrations of this year to demand political and social rights.
Over 1,000 people have been detained and many of them have been tortured. Thousands of public sector workers have been fired for allegedly taking part in protests against the regime.
Recently, a military tribunal in Manama sentenced twenty doctors to prison terms of up to 15 years. The doctors faced shameful charges, including hiding weapons in hospitals, “occupying a hospital,” and acting to overthrow the regime. No credible evidence against the doctors was presented in the court and they suffered abuse and torture in prison and were denied full access to their lawyers.
US weapons for Bahrain
The US has been for a long time the major supplier of weapons to the Bahraini regime. A TomDispatch analysis of the Pentagon documents showed that “since the 1990s, the United States has transferred large quantities of military material, ranging from trucks and aircraft to machine-gun parts and millions of rounds of live ammunition, to Bahrain´s security forces”.
According to data from the Defense Security Cooperation Agency, the US has sent Bahrain dozens of tanks, armoured personnel carriers, and helicopter gunships. The US has also supplied the Bahrain Army with thousands of .38 caliber pistols and millions of rounds of ammunition, including .50 caliber ammunition for sniper rifles, machine guns etc. In 2010, Washington sold over $200 million worth of weapons to Bahrain, up from $88 million in 2009.
Despite all the above-mentioned violations of human rights, the US Defense Department recently agreed to provide the Bahraini government with another $53 million worth of weapons, the first provision since the revolution began. The resumption of military sales took place shortly after a visit to Washington by Bahrain Crown Prince Salman Hamid al-Khalifa. There, he met Vice President Joe Biden, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Defense Secretary Leon Panetta.
According to ForeignPolicy.com’s The Cable Blog, the US-Bahraini arms deal includes six harbor patrol boats, communications equipment for Bahrain’s US-made air-defense system, ground-based radars, air-to-air-missile systems, Seahawk helicopters, parts for F-16 fighter engines, Cobra helicopters, and night-vision equipment.
The agreement also includes 44 armored vehicles of the type used to crush the demonstrations. It is noteworthy to point out that US weapons have been used by Bahraini security forces for cracking down on pro-democracy protesters since last year.
Senator Patrick Leahy (D – VT) has criticized the resumption of arms to Bahrain. Although he claimed to be pleased because no tear gas will be included in this sale, Leahy thinks that the deal still sends “the wrong message.” Brian Dooley, director of the Washington-based charity Human Rights First, also condemned the arms sale as a “reward” for the Bahraini dictatorial regime.
No matter how the US Administration tries to sell its decision, it will be seen as a clear support for the Al-Khalifa dictatorship. “‘You really should be nicer to the people you are oppressing; oh, by the way, here are the weapons you were expecting’ is what Manama will hear from Washington”, complained Mohammed al-Maskati, a Bahraini human rights activist: “It is a direct message that we support the authorities and we don’t support democracy in Bahrain, we don’t support protestors in Bahrain.”
According to a recent report by Julian Barnes and Adam Entous in the Wall Street Journal, the US has positioned itself against democracy in Bahrain. “Starting with Bahrain, the administration has moved a few notches toward emphasizing stability over majority rule,” according to a US official quoted by the Journal. “Everybody realized that Bahrain was just too important to fail.” This means that the US Administration is directly working against democracy and freedom in Bahrain.
In order to cover this reality, American officials have been using a rhetorical and hypocritical language. They have often called for “restraint” on both sides, Bahraini pro-democracy protesters and the dictatorial regime which is killing Bahraini people. A recent State Department statement praised Bahrain for its “reforms” and urged more. It also condemned the civilian protesters for their “violence” against police and demanded that they “refrain from incitement.”
The deputy chief of mission at the US Embassy in Manama, Stephanie Williams, has visited the injured Bahraini security forces, who took part in the crackdown on Bahraini protesters. The main opposition group in Bahrain, Al Wefaq, issued a statement, censuring the visit claiming that it “indicates that Washington ignores the suppression campaign led by the Bahraini government against peaceful popular protests”.
Therefore, Bahraini people now consider that the US government is partly responsible for the tyranny under which people have been suffering for a very long time. This will likely produce anger and hatred toward the United States. Echoing this reality, a recent New York Times article was titled: “As Hopes for Reform Fade in Bahrain, Protestors Turn Anger on United States.”
According to the article, “For months, the protests have aimed at the ruling monarchy, but recently they have focused on a new target…. the young protestors added a new demand, written on a placard in English, so the Americans might see: “USA Stop arming the killers.”
Canadian Senator Lt. Gen. Roméo A. Dallaire, (Ret’d) has issued an open petition to Israel-Firster Stephen Harper’s Public Safety Minister Vic Toews to bring former Canadian child soldier, Omar Khadr, from America’s notorious Guantánamo Bay concentration camp to Canada.
“The case of Omar Khadr – a Canadian citizen and former child soldier – is a stain upon our society and shows a blatant disregard for Canada’s obligations under international law,” says Roméo A. Dallaire.
Omar Khadr, who turns 26 this year – was captured in 2002 by America’s Afghan collaborators, Northern Alliance warlords, for killing a US army medic while visiting his parents’ family in Afghanistan at the age of 15. He was first kept at the US detention facility at the Bagram air base in Afghanistan before being transfered to Guantánamo Bay. Omar was tried as “a terrorist” and not a juvenile prisoner, by a military commission conceived by Israel-Firster former vice-president Dick Cheney and his Zionist advisers.
Omar was sentenced to 40 year in jail via a kangroo trail which was unrelated to any other form of US justice or the Optional Protocol to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child – which specifically recognizes “the special needs of those children who are particularly vulnerable to recruitment or use in hostilities,” and requires its signatories to promote “the physical and psychosocial rehabilitation and social reintegration of children who are victims of armed conflict.”
Both the US and Canada are signatory to the Optional Protocol. The way Omar has been tortured, humiliated and kept in isolation at Guantánamo Bay for the last ten years and the way Ottawa has abdicated its responsibilities towards him – should be a source of shame for the moral citizens of both countries.
A declassified report prepared by US Department of Defense (DoD) deputy inspector-general in September 2009 – admitted that detainees in custody of the US military were interrogated while drugged with powerful antipsychotic and other medications that “could impair an individual’s ability to provide accurate information“.
Omar’s defense lawyers have asked the federal court to force Vic Toews to make decision as to whether Khadr can return to Canada to serve his remaining sentence.
Just days ago, Marine Col. Jeffrey Colwell, chief defense counsel for military commissions openly chastised Canada for crippling US efforts to enter into plea agreements: If the US “can’t carry through on their end of the bargain, it has a chilling effect on the willingness of others to plead. There was an expectation by all parties involved that Khadr was going to be home last fall. It’s July, and he’s not.”
The pro-Israeli groups have turned Khadr’s case into an Islamophobiawar. For example, the Toronto book launch of Omar Khadr, Oh Canada was met by threats of violence and a demonstration by the the Jewish Defense League, a Jewish militant group which is declared a terrorist group by FBI and known for violence at Canadian Campuses.
Israeli propaganda and hacker website, BlazingCatFur, put the headline: “Vic Toews, Canadian Minister of Public Safety can Block Omar Khadr’s return to Canada by refusing to sign the ‘Prisoner Transfer Agreement’.”
Vic Toews’ parents and grandparents were immigrants from Ukraine.
Tightening security screws in the US serves the ultimate goal – to implant the atmosphere of fear in the American society. It serves to raise sales of security equipment, independent journalist Charlie McGrath told RT.
The latest initiative of the US Department of Homeland Security is to develop laser-based security scanners capable of identifying any chemical substance in human body. Independent journalist Charlie McGrath sees it as a further erosion of the basic human rights in favor of Military-Industrial Complex profits.
Officials insist the scanners will be used to detect explosives at airports and border crossings. They say that if a person has nothing to hide he won’t mind subjecting to the procedure.
But some experts are prompting concern for civil liberties in America.
“There is no threat of terror, that is a canard,” states categorically the founder of Wide Awake News Charlie McGrath. He explained that as an American he has a 662,000:1 chance of winning an Olympic medal. While taking a bath he has a 685,000:1 chance of drowning in that bath. Walking outside he has a 2.3 million:1 chance of being struck dead by lightning. But the chance of being killed by a terrorist amounts to 3.2million:1 for an average person on our planet.
“What we see built out of 9/11, the Patriot Act… and every other peace of the so-called legislation protecting people is the enriching of the financial super-elite in the Security Industrial Complex,” states Charlie McGrath.
The journalist predicts that the American society will soon be under the eye of Big Brother, explaining that the declared security reasons behind governmental initiatives have no grounds whatsoever.
“All this talk of fearing Ahmadinejad coming out of every closet and from underneath of everybody’s bed is nothing but a fear tactic so that we can enrich a very few people on this planet,” McGrath proclaimed.
The reason why Americans should be concerned with the laser security scanners is that this “humiliation on steroids” is going to be paid for with the taxpayers’ money, reminds McGrath.
“Since introduction of the Patriot Act we’ve seen non-stop legislation eroding our liberties one after another,” McGrath claims. “It has come to point we’re just coming used to it. But we need to understand that with every passing piece of legislation, every piece of equipment installed every other day, we’re becoming more and more a Stasi-style police state,” he concluded.
McGrath assures that the equipment installed to be on the guard of security in airports and other public places will definitely make it into everyday life of Americans. He recalled military drones that were once made for the army and CIA operations overseas, but now are flying American skies to protect security at home.
The United States has experienced the biggest political upheaval in its recent history: the transformation of a burgeoning welfare state into a rapidly expanding, highly intrusive and deeply entrenched police state, linked to the most developed technological innovations.
The ‘Great Transformation’ occurred exclusively from above, organized by the upper echelons of the civil and military bureaucracy under the direction of the Executive and his National Security Council. The ‘Great Transformation’ was not a single event but a process of the accumulation of powers, via executive fiats, supported and approved by compliant Congressional leaders. At no time in the recent and distant past has this nation witnessed the growth of such repressive powers and the proliferation of so many policing agencies engaged in so many areas of life over such a prolonged period of time (a time of virtually no internal mass dissent). Never has the executive branch of government secured so many powers to detain, interrogate, kidnap and assassinate its own citizens without judicial restraint.
Police state dominance is evident in the enormous growth of the domestic security and military budget, the vast recruitment of security and military personnel, the accumulation of authoritarian powers curtailing individual and collective freedoms and the permeation of national cultural and civic life with the almost religious glorification of the agents and agencies of militarism and the police state as evidenced at mass sporting and entertainment events.
The drying up of resources for public welfare and services is a direct result of the dynamic growth of the police state apparatus and military empire. This could only take place through a sustained direct attack against the welfare state – in particular against public funding for programs and agencies promoting the health, education, pensions, income and housing for the middle and working class.
The Ascendancy of the Police State
Central to the rise of the police state and the consequent decline of the welfare state have been the series of imperial wars, especially in the Middle East, launched by every President from Bush (father), Clinton, Bush (son) and Obama. These wars, aimed exclusively against Muslim countries, were accompanied by a wave of repressive ‘anti-terrorist’ laws and implemented through the rapid build-up of the massive police state apparatus, known as ‘Homeland Security’.
The leading advocates and propagandists of overseas militarism against countries with large Muslim populations and the imposition of a domestic police-state have been dedicated Zionists promoting wars designed to enhance Israel’s overwhelming power in the Middle East. These American Zionists (including dual US-Israeli citizens) secured strategic positions within the US police state apparatus in order to terrify and repress activists, especially American Muslims and immigrants critical of the state of Israel.
The events of 9/11/01 served as the detonator for the biggest global military launch since WWII, and the most pervasive expansion of police state powers in the history of the United States. The bloody terror of 9/11/2001 was manipulated to institute a pre-planned agenda – transforming the US into a police state while launching a decade-long series of wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya, Somalia, Yemen and, now, Syria as well as covert proxy wars against Iran and Lebanon. The military budget exploded and government deficits ballooned while social programs and welfare were denigrated and dismantled as the ‘Global War on Terror’ swung into full gear. Programs, designed to maintain or raise living standards for millions and increase access to services for the poor and working class, fell victim to ‘9/11’.
As the wars in the Middle East took center-stage, the US economy tanked. On the domestic front vital public investment in education, infrastructure, industry and civilian innovations were slashed. Hundreds of billions of tax payer dollars flowed into the war zones, paying mercenaries (private contractors), buying off corrupt puppet regimes and providing a golden opportunity for military procurement officers and their private contractor-cronies to run up (and pocket) huge billion dollar cost overruns.
As a result, US military policy vis a vis the Middle East, military policy, which at one time had been designed to promote American imperial economic interests, now took on a life of its own: wars and sanctions against Iraq, Iran, Syria and Libya had undermined profitable oil contracts negotiated by US multi-nationals while enhancing militarism. Indeed, the Zionist-Israeli power configuration in the United States has become far more influential in directing US Middle East military policy than any combination of Big Oil – and all to the benefit of Israeli regional power.
Imperial Wars and the Demise of the Welfare State
From the end of World War II to the end of the 1970’s, the US managed to successfully combine overseas imperial wars with an expanding welfare state at home. In fact, the last major pieces of welfare legislation took place during the bloody, costly US-Indo-Chinese war, under Presidents Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon. The economic basis of welfare-militarism was the powerful industrial-technological foundations of the US war-machine and its dominance over world markets. Subsequently, the declining competitive position of the US in the world-economy and the massive relocation of US-MNC (and their jobs) overseas strained the ‘marriage’ of domestic welfare and militarism to the breaking point. Fiscal and trade deficits loomed even as the demands for welfare and unemployment payments grew in part because of the shift from stable well-paid manufacturing jobs to low paid-service work. While the global US economic position declined, its global military expansion accelerated as a result of the demise of the Communist regimes in the USSR and Eastern Europe and the incorporation of the new regimes of the former Eastern bloc into the US-dominated NATO military alliance.
The demise of the Communist states led to the end of competing global welfare systems and allowed capitalists and the imperial state to slash welfare to fund their massive global military expansion. There was virtually no opposition from labor: the gradual conversion of Western trade unions into highly authoritarian organizations run by self-perpetuating millionaire ‘leaders’ and the reduction of trade union membership from 30% of the work force in 1950 to less than 11% by 2012 (with over 91% of private sector workers without any representation) meant that American workers have been powerless to organize strikes to protect their jobs, let alone apply political pressure in defense of public programs and welfare.
Militarism was on the ascendency when President Jimmy Carter launched his multi-billion dollar ‘secret war’ against the pro-Soviet regime in Afghanistan and President Ronald Reagan initiated a series of ‘proxy wars’ throughout Central America and Southern Africa and sent the US Marines into the tiny island of Grenada. Reagan oversaw the escalation of military spending boasting that he would ‘bankrupt’ the Soviet Union with a new ‘arms race’. President George Bush, Sr. invaded Panama and then Iraq, the first of many US invasions in the Middle East. President Bill Clinton accelerated the military thrust, along the way slashing public welfare in favor of ‘private workfare’, bombing and destroying Yugoslavia, bombing and starving Iraq while establishing colonial enclaves in Northern Iraq and expanding the US military presence in Somalia and the Persian Gulf.
The constraints on US militarism imposed by the massive popular anti-Vietnam War movement and the US military defeat by the Vietnamese Communists, were gradually eroded, as successful short term wars (like Grenada and Panama) undermined the Vietnam Syndrome –public opposition to militarism. This prepared the American public for incremental militarism while chipping away at the welfare system.
If Reagan and Bush built the foundation for the new militarism, Bill Clinton provided three decisive elements: together with Vice-President Al Gore, Clinton legitimized the war on welfarism, stigmatizing public assistance and mobilized support from religious and political leaders in the black community and the AFL-CIO. Secondly, Clinton was key to the ‘financialization’ of the US economy, by de-regulating the financial system (repealing the Glass-Steagal Act of 1933) and appointing Wall Street financiers at the helm of national economic policy. Thirdly, Clinton appointed leading Zionists to the key foreign policy positions related to the Middle East, allowing them to insert Israel’s military view of reality into strategic decision-making in Washington. Clinton put in place the first series of repressive police state ‘anti-terrorist’ legislation and expanded the national prison system. In sum, Bill Clinton’s Middle East war policies, his ‘financialization’ of the US economy, his ‘war on terror’, his Zionist orientation towards the Arab world and, above all, his own ideological anti-welfarism led directly to Bush Junior’s full scale conversion of the welfare state into the police state .
Exploiting the trauma of 9/11, the Bush and later the Obama regimes nearly tripled the military budget and launched serial wars against Arab states. The military budget rose from $359 billion in 2000, to $544 billion in 2004 and escalated to $903 billion in 2012. Military expenditures financed major foreign military occupations and colonial administrations in Iraq and Afghanistan, border wars in Pakistan and US Special Forces covert operations (including kidnappings and assassinations) in Yemen, Somalia, Iran and seventy-five other countries world-wide.
Meanwhile financial speculation ran rampant, budget deficits ballooned, living standards plunged, international trade deficits reached record levels and public debt doubled in fewer than eight years. Multiple imperial wars dragged on without end; the costs of these wars multiplied while the financial bubble burst. The contradiction between domestic welfare and militarism exploded. Finally, the massive roll back of basic social programs for all Americans topped the Presidential and legislative agenda.
Previous ‘untouchable programs’ like Social Security, Medicare, the US Post Office, public sector employment, services to the poor, elderly and handicapped and food stamps were all put on the butcher’s block. At the same time the federal government increased its funding of private military and police contractors (mercenaries) overseas and extended the scope and depth of US Special Forces clandestine operations. Bush-Obama vastly increased spending for the military and espionage agents in support of wildly unpopular, brutal collaborator regimes in Pakistan and Yemen. They funded and armed foreign mercenaries in Libya, Syria, Iran, and Somalia. By the first decade of the new century it had become clear that imperial militarism and domestic welfarism were in a zero sum game: as imperial wars multiplied, domestic programs were slashed.
The severity and depth of the cuts to popular domestic welfare programs were only in part the result of imperial wars; equally important was the huge increase in the funding for personnel and surveillance technology for the burgeoning police state at home.
The Origins of the Conversion of the Welfare State to the Police State
The precipitous decline of the welfare state and the dismantling of social services, public education and access to affordable health care for the working and middle classes cannot be explained by the demise of organized labor, nor is it due to the ‘right-turn’ of the Democratic Party. Two other deep structural changes loom large as fundamental to the process: the transformation of the US economy from a competitive manufacturing economy into a ‘FIRE’ (finance, insurance and real estate) economy; and secondly, the rise of a vast police legal-political-administrative state apparatus engaged in permanent ‘internal warfare’ at home, designed to sustain and complement permanent imperial warfare abroad.
Agencies and personnel of the police state expanded dramatically during the first decade of the new century. The police state penetrated telecommunications systems, patrolled and controlled transport outlets; dominated judicial procedures and oversaw the major ‘news outlets’, academic and professional associations. The expanded police state covertly and overtly entered the private lives of tens of millions of Americans.
The loss to taxpayers in terms of citizen rights and the welfare state has been staggering.
As the biggest and most intrusive component of the police state apparatus, christened ‘Homeland Security’, grew exponentially, the budget and agencies providing welfare and public services, health, education and unemployment shrank. Tens of thousands of domestic spies have been hired and costly intrusive spyware has been purchased with tax-payer money, while hundreds of thousands of teachers and public health and social welfare professionals have lost their jobs.
The Department of Homeland Security (as of the end of 2011) is composed of approximately 388,000 employees, including both federal and contracted agents. Between 2011-2013 the DHS budget of $173 billion has faced no serious cuts. Homeland Security’s rapid expansion occurred at the expense of Health and Human Services, education and the Social Security Administration, which currently face large scale ‘retrenchment’.
Among the top officials, appointed by the Bush, Jr. Administration to key positions in the police state apparatus, there are two who have been the most influential in setting policy: Michael Chertoff and Michael Mukasey.
Michael Chertoff headed the Criminal Division of the Justice Department (from 2001 – 2003). During that time he was responsible for the arbitrary arrest of thousands of US citizens and immigrants of Muslim and South Asian heritage, who were held incommunicado without charge and subject to physical and psychological abuse – without a single resident alien or Muslim US citizen linked to 9/11. In contrast, Chertoff quickly intervened to free scores of Israeli spy suspects and 5 Israeli Mossad agents who had been witnessed filming and celebrating the destruction of the World Trade Center and were under active investigation by the FBI. More than any other official, Michael Chertoff has been the chief architect of the ‘Global War on Terror’ – co-author of the notorious ‘Patriot Act’ which trashed habeas corpus and other essential components of the US Constitution and Bill of Rights. As Secretary of Homeland Security from 2005-2009, Chertoff promoted ‘military tribunals’ and organized the vast internal spy network, which now preys on private US citizens.
Michael Mukasey, the Bush-appointed US Attorney General, was an enthusiastic defender of the Patriot Act, supporting military tribunals, torture and overseas assassinations of individuals suspected of what he called ‘Islamic terrorism’ without trial.
Both Chertoff and Mukasey are zealous Zionists with longstanding ties to Israel. Michael Chertoff was believed to hold dual US-Israeli citizenship as he launched the Administration’s domestic war on US citizens.
A cursory review of the origins and direction of the police-state apparatus and the top echelons of the global war on ‘Islamic terrorism’ – code languages for military imperialism – reveals a disproportionate number of Israel-Firsters, who placed greater importance on persecuting potential US critics of the Middle East wars for Israel than in upholding Constitutional guarantees and the Bill of Rights.
Back in ‘civilian’ life, Michael Chertoff profited greatly from the bogus ‘War on Terror’ promoting radioactive and degrading body scanning technology in airports throughout the US and Europe. He established his own security consulting firm Chertoff Groups (2009) to represent the manufacturers of surveillance body scanners. Americans can thank Michael Chertoff every time they pass through the humiliation of an airport body scan.
The fusion of the police state apparatus with the industrial-security complex and its prominent overseas links with its corporate security counterparts in the state of Israel, underscores the imperial state’s ties to the Israeli military establishment.
As the police state has grown it has created a powerful lobby of high tech surveillance industry backers and beneficiaries who push federal and state ‘security’ spending at the expense welfare programs.
The police state’s squeeze on social programs, education and welfare has a powerful ally on Wall Street, which emerged as the dominant sector of US capital in terms of access to and influence over US Treasury and its budgetary allocations.
Unlike the manufacturing sector, financial capital does not need a population of educated, healthy and productive workers. Its own ‘labor force’ is composed of a small educated elite of speculators, analysts, traders and brokers at the top and middle levels and a small army of ‘contract’ office sweepers, secretaries and menial workers at the bottom. They have their own ‘invisible’ army of domestic servants, cooks, caterers, gardeners and nannies devoid of any ‘Social Security’, health coverage and pension plans. And the financial sector has its own private networks of doctors and clinics, schools, communications systems and messengers, estates and clubs, and security agencies and body guards; it needs not an educated, skilled public sector; and it certainly does not want national wealth to support high quality public health and educational systems. It has no interest in supporting this mass of public institutions which it views as an obstacle to ‘freeing up’ vast amounts of public wealth for speculation. In other words, the dominant sector of capital has no objection to ‘Homeland Security’; indeed it shares many sentiments with the proponents of the police state and supports shrinking the welfare state. It is concerned about lowering taxes on finance capital and increasing Federal bail-out funds for Wall Street while controlling the impoverished citizenry.
Conclusion
The conversion of a welfare state to a police state is the result of militarized imperialism abroad and the ascendancy of finance capital at home, as well as the proliferation of security state agencies and related private industries and the strategic role of rightwing Zionists in top positions of the police state apparatus.
This convergence of international and domestic structural changes took hold during the 1980’s and 1990’s and then accelerated during the first decade of the 21st century. The downgrading of the vast public services of the welfare state was covered up by a massive government propaganda campaign to promote the ‘global war on terror’ together with a fabricated widespread domestic ‘terrorist threat’ involving the most hapless of suspects (including oddball Haitian millenarianists entrapped by FBI agents). The supporters and beneficiaries of the welfare state found themselves on the margins of any national debate. The mass media/regime propaganda campaign demanded and successfully secured massive increases in centralized powers of domestic policing, surveillance, provocations, disappearances and arrests. Throughout the past decade what the welfare state lost in support and funding, the police state gained. The rise of financial capital and the deregulation of the financial system crowded out any public subsidies to promote and sustain the competitiveness of the US manufacturing sector. This has led to a major break in the links between industry, labor and the welfare state. Huge tax write-offs to big business, combined with the growth in expenditures for a non-productive police state bureaucracy and the series of costly overseas wars, has caused unsustainable budget and trade deficits, which then became the pretext to further savage the welfare state.
Significant political, cultural and ideological shifts have aided the rise of the police state over the public welfare state. The success of prominent American Zionists in securing power within key media propaganda mills and obtaining appointments to critical positions in the top echelons of the police state apparatus, judiciary and in the imperial state bureaucracy (Treasury and State Department) has put Israel’s colonial interests and its own police-state apparatus at the center of US politics. The US police state has adopted Israeli-styled repression targeting US citizens and residents.
US society is now split into two sectors: the ‘winners’ linked to the expanding and lucrative financial – security complex embedded in the police state while the ‘losers’, tied to the manufacturing – welfare sector, are relegated to an increasingly marginalized ‘civil society’. The police state purges dissidents who question the ‘Israel-First doctrine’ of the US security-military apparatus. The financial sector, embedded in its own luxurious ‘cocoon’ of private services, demands the total gutting of public services directed toward the poor, working and middle classes. The public treasury has been taken over in order to finance bank bailouts, imperial wars and police state agencies while paying the bondholders of US debt.
Social Security is on target to be privatized. Pensions are to be reduced, delayed and self-financed. Food stamps, access to affordable health care and unemployment support will be slashed. The police state cannot pay for glitzy new repressive technologies, greater policing, more intrusive surveillance, arrests and prisons while financing the existing welfare state with its vast educational, health and human services and pension benefits.
In sum, there is no future for social welfare in the United States within its powerful financial-imperial-police state system. Both major political parties nurture this system, support serial wars, appeal to the financial elites and debate over the size, scope and timing for further cuts in social welfare.
The American social welfare system was a product of an earlier phase of US capitalism where US global industrial supremacy allowed for both military spending and welfare support and where US military spending was constrained by the demands of the domestic socio-economic sectors of manufacturing capital and ‘labor’. In an earlier phase Zionist influence was based on wealthy individuals and their congressional ‘lobby’ — they did not occupy key Federal policymaking positions setting the agendas for war in the Middle East and domestic police state.
Times have changed for the worse: a police state, linked to militarism and perpetual imperial wars in the Middle East has gained ascendancy and now impacts our everyday life. Underlying both the growth of the police state and the erosion of the welfare state is the rise of an inter-locking ‘financial-security power elite’, held together by a common ideology, unprecedented private wealth and the relentless drive to monopolize the public treasury to the detriment of the vast majority of Americans. A confrontation and full exposure of all the self-serving propaganda, which undergirds the power elite is an essential first step. The enormous budgets for imperial wars are the greatest threat to US welfare. The police state erodes real public services and undermines social movements. Finance capital pillages the public treasury demanding bailouts and subsidies for the banks. Israeli Firsters, in key decision-making positions, serve the interests of a foreign police state against the interests of the American people. The state of Israel is the mirror opposite of what we Americans want for ourselves and our children: a free and independent secular republic without colonial settlements, clerical racism, and destructive self-serving militarism.
Today the fight to restore the advances in citizens’ welfare established through public programs of the recent past requires that we transform an entire structure of power: true welfare reform requires a revolutionary strategy and, above all, a grass-roots mass movement breaking with the entrenched ‘two party’ regime tied to the financial- imperial- internal security system.
Even after millions rallied against the passage of SOPA/PIPA, the House is still quietly trying to pass a related bill that would give the entertainment industry more permanent, government-funded spokespeople. The Intellectual Property, Competition, and the Internet Subcommittee of the House Judiciary Committee recently held a hearing on Lamar Smith’s IP Attaché Act (PDF), a bill that increases intellectual property policing around the world. The Act would create an Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property, as well as broaden the use of IP attachés in particular U.S. embassies. (The attachés were notably present in Sec. 205 of SOPA—which was also introduced by Smith.)
The major issue with this bill—and all similar bills—is that the commissioning of people in the executive branch who are solely dedicated to “intellectual property enforcement” caters to Big Content. The IP attachés are charged with “reducing intellectual property infringement” and “advancing intellectual property rights” around the world, but not to critically engage IP complexities and limitations. From our perspective, this bill is nothing more than the government giving Hollywood traveling foot soldiers.
The presence of people with such a narrow cause as “intellectual property enforcement” fosters a single perspective in the federal government. In an environment where the deep-pocketed copyright lobby is pushing through favorable legislation on both a domestic and international level, this is the last thing we need. As Techdirt and Public Knowledge rightly state: trying to squeeze bits of SOPA past the people—the same people who rejected the bill earlier this year—is an awful idea.
A French citizen was hit in the shoulder as the Israeli army fired tear gas canisters and sound grenades in the old city of Hebron on Tuesday.
During a disturbance between between Israeli forces and Palestinians, Israeli soldiers opened fire in the al-Laban market. Witnesses said a French Woman was hit in the shoulder by a tear gas canister. As a result of the incident, Israeli forces closed the entrances to the old city.
Hebron, in the West Bank is home to 30,000 Palestinians. Parts of the old city of Hebron are under Israeli control and the Israel military presence is due in large part to the 800 illegal Israeli settlers who live there.
International activists are often targeted by the Israeli military. Salah Khawaja,Coordinator of the Popular Committee Against the Wall and Settlement reported yesterday that many international activists have informed him that they will charge Israel in international courts if Israeli authorities continue to target the international protesters and Palestinians during peaceful marches.
Egypt’s reinstated lower house, the People’s Assembly resumes its sessions only to end them in minutes, referring its own fate back to the courts, possibly staving off a serious confrontation with the military
Within just minutes of starting, Egypt’s People’s Assembly speaker Saad El-Katatni ended the first session of the reinstated legislative body.
On 15 June, Egypt’s Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) ordered the dissolution of parliament based on a High Constitutional Court (HCC) ruling which rendered parliamentary elections law unconstitutional.
By presidential decree, the newly-inaugurated President Mohamed Morsi reinstated parliament on Sunday.
The parliament session opened Tuesday at 10:20am, with El-Katatni arguing that President Mohamed Morsi had not violated the HCC’s decision by reinstating parliament.
El-Katatni declared he will refer the HCC decision to the Appeal Court, saying parliament is aware of both its rights and responsibilities.
The People’s assembly sessions will not resume until the Appeal Court gives its verdict on the standing of members of the lower and upper houses of parliament based on Article 40 of the 30 March 2011 Constitutional Declaration which was issued by the SCAF.
The decision by the reinstated Islamist-dominated People’s Assembly to refer its fate to the courts is seen as a possible compromise between the Muslim Brotherhood and the Military Council, thus staving off what looked to be a serious constitutional and political crisis.
The Muslim Brotherhood called for a million-march for Tuesday on the group’s Twitter account linked to their official website Ikhwanweb to support President Mohamed Morsi’s decree.
Leftist and liberal party MP’s, including the Egyptian Social Democratic Party, Tagammu Party, Wafd Party and Free Egyptians, boycotted the parliament session on Tuesday.
The prestigious Judge’s Club threatened on Monday to bring legal action against Morsi for “defying court orders.”
Clashes erupted outside of the People’s Assembly (lower house) as MPs deliberated for a total of 12 minutes.
The supporters of Mohamed Morsi’s presidential decree that gives parliament authority to continue its work chanted “The people and the president are one hand.”
Meanwhile, opponents of the decree chanted “Down with the leader of the Muslim Brotherhood’s rule.”
A melee broke out amidst the tension between the two sides.
Tuesday, the High Constitutional Court (HCC), Egypt’s highest judiciary body, is reviewing four cases challenging Morsi’s presidential decree.
The HCC released a statement on Monday saying it is not party to political conflicts and that its decisions are “binding on all state institutions,” in reference to its mid-June ruling on consitutionality of parliamentary elections law.
Egypt’s Supreme Constitutional Court said on Monday that all of its rulings were “binding,” in response to a presidential decree reinstating parliament after the court ruled the house invalid.
“All the rulings and decisions of the Supreme Constitutional Court are final and not subject to appeal…and are binding for all state institutions,” the court said in a statement.
The court also stressed that it was “not a part of any political conflict… but the limit of its sacred duty is the protection of the texts of the constitution.”
The court had said certain articles in the law governing parliamentary elections were invalid, annulling the Islamist-led house.
President Mohammed Mursi had on Sunday annulled the decision, putting himself on a collision course with the judiciary and the military that enforced the ruling when it was in power.
Parliamentary Speaker Saad al-Katatni announced that the body’s next meeting would be on Tuesday, but that is likely to be delayed following the court ruling.
Activists have accused the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) of organizing a coup to increase their power.
The differing rulings of Mursi and the court illustrate the divides between SCAF and the president as Egypt negotiates its path towards democracy.
JUBA – The Chairperson of South Sudan’s Civil Society Alliance, Deng Athuai, who is a prominent anti-corruption and human rights activist, was found by the side of a road in Juba on Saturday tied in a sack and severely beaten, according to military sources.
A military intelligence source told Sudan Tribune that Athuai was found “crying inside sack along the road side” between Kabur-tit and Gumba forest by the South Sudan security services.
Athuai is reported to have been taken to the Juba Teaching Hospital and is in a “coma”, according to a nurse who did not wish to be named.
“Athuai is suffering for internal wounds in his stomach, head, eye, feet and throat”, the nurse told Sudan Tribune.
The executive director of the Civil Society Alliance, Biel Boutros Biel told South Sudan Radio on Friday that Athuai had disappeared after leaving his residence at the Beach Hotel in Juba on Wednesday.
Boutros, who heads the South Sudan Human Rights Advocacy Association (SSHRAA), said that he suspected that his colleague, who has been instrumental in anti-corruption campaigning and other issues, had been kidnapped. He refused to speculate over who could be responsible.
Athuai was among the activists that marched to South Sudan’s parliament demanding the government publish the names of the officials alleged to have stolen a total of $4 billion since 2005.
South Sudan celebrates it’s first year as an independent nation on Monday 9 July, having voted to secede from Sudan after decades of civil war. Greater human rights, better governance, freedom of expression and association were among the causes the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A) stated as it’s aims during the 1983-2005 conflict.
The SPLA is now South Sudan’s official army, while the SPLM is the country’s ruling party. Corruption, human rights abuses and insecurity are some of the major internal issues facing the young nation.
South Sudan’s President Salva Kiir wrote to 75 senior officials on 3 May asking them to return stolen money.
“We fought for freedom, justice and equality,” President ’Kiir’s letter reads. “Yet, once we got to power, we forgot what we fought for and began to enrich ourselves at the expense of our people.”
Human Rights Watch and other groups are taking the opportunity of South Sudan’s first independence anniversary to urge the SPLM to mark the occasion by freeing all unlawfully detained prisoners, guaranteeing freedom of speech, and accelerating ratification of key international human rights treaties.
Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and others of called on Juba to take steps to ensure that security forces are held accountable for human rights abuses.
Major General Mac Paul, the deputy director of military intelligence for South Sudan, told Sudan Tribune that he did not know what had happened to Athuai.
By Tony Cartalucci – New Eastern Outlook – 29.11.2017
The United States Air Force’s 59th Medical Wing’s molecular biology branch recently was revealed to have been collecting specifically Russian RNA and synovial (connective) tissue samples, prompting fears in Russia of a possible US directed ethnic-specific bioweapons program. … continue
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