Financial analysis of major toll road systems finds substantial diversion of revenue to third parties.
Of the billions of dollars collected at toll booths around the country, nearly half of the money goes to overhead costs, profit for the private companies involved and other uses that have nothing to do with the road itself. That is the finding of a financial audit released last week by the American Transportation Research Institute (ATRI), which conducted the analysis on behalf of the trucking industry. The report examined financial records for major toll road networks that together collected $14.7 billion in revenue in 2018.
“The findings indicate that the 21 major tolling systems analyzed collect revenue in excess of the actual direct costs of operations and interest expense, with nearly 50 percent of toll revenue diverted to other uses,” the report concluded. “This excess revenue is diverted in a number of ways based upon the individual agency or state that supervises the toll entity. The magnitude of diversion and the lack of standard practice with regard to revenue diversion speaks to the disjointed control under which toll entities operate.”
The roads covered in the report represent 82 percent of all tolls collected in the country. The full nationwide toll network generates an estimated $18 billion in revenue each year. Of that revenue, 15.8 cents on every dollar goes to the cost of collecting the toll itself. Another 26.8 percent goes to the cost of interest and 20.5 percent is diverted to non-road use such as transit, undermining the “user pays” argument used by tolling advocates.
The report found tolls tend to increase far in excess of the rate of inflation — up 72 percent over the last ten years, compared to the consumer price index the went up 16.9 percent in the same period. The data show the number of individual transactions at each toll road only went up 28 percent, while traffic volume increased 2.4 percent. Toll roads received $1.1 billion in taxpayer subsidies.
The report noted that by comparison the cost of collecting the federal fuels tax was just 0.2 percent of the revenue collected. While some have argued that gas tax revenue is no longer viable because this income source is on the decline, the latest federal statistics show Americans used 147 billion gallons of gas in 2018 — an all-time high. Preliminary data for 2019 show gas tax revenue rising for an eighth straight year.
The saga of pedophile procurer to the rich and famous Jeffrey Epstein continues to enthrall, even if the Department of Justice appears to have no interest in learning the details of what appears to be a major Israeli spy operation. There have been a number of new developments in the past several weeks, confirming that Epstein had been a longtime Israeli intelligence asset targeting prominent Americans while also suggesting that he was murdered in his prison cell in New York rather than a suicide.
Of interest to many following the story with the apparent exception of the FBI, a former Israeli intelligence officer has written a book describing how Epstein and his partner in crime Ghislaine Maxwell were blackmailing prominent politicians on behalf of Israel’s foreign intelligence service Mossad. According to Ari Ben-Menashe, the two had been working directly for the Israeli government since the 1980s and their operation, which was funded by Mossad and also by prominent American Jews, was a classic “honey-trap” which used underage girls as bait to attract well-known politicians from around the world, a list that included Prince Andrew and Bill Clinton. The politicians would then be photographed and video recorded when they were in bed with the girls.
Ben-Menashe’s soon-to-be-released book Epstein: Dead Men Tell No Tales describes how Epstein was introduced to Maxwell originally by her father, Robert, a Czech-born British media tycoon, who was also a long-term Israeli agent. After his death, he was given a state funeral by Israel in which six serving and former heads of Israeli intelligence listened while Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir eulogized: “He has done more for Israel than can today be said.”
Ben-Menashe was Robert Maxwell’s agent handler, meaning that he was the government intelligence officer who actually met with the high-level spy. Through Maxwell, Epstein also met prominent Israelis, including Ehud Barak, prime minister from 1999-2001, who had a business relationship with the American financier and occasionally visited the Epstein mansion in New York City.
To be sure Ben-Menashe, has something of a peculiar personal history due to his Mossad connection and he wants to sell his book, but no one has stated that he is wrong on his facts, even though his claims are largely unsubstantiated. And one might also add that last year’s hidden camera undercover exposés of Israeli agents working clandestinely to bring down unfriendly politicians and government officials in both Britain and the United States suggests that Israel is particularly aggressive in its influence operations.
One would have thought that the alleged ongoing investigation of Epstein would include a questioning of possible victims of the blackmail, to include Clinton, but there is no suggestion from anyone that that has actually taken place. And what about Ghislaine Maxwell, who was certainly complicit in the crimes against the girls who were used as well as regarding those who were later blackmailed?
Ghislaine, like Clinton, has never been asked to answer any questions about what she and Epstein were up to, though there is a Reuters report that she is being “investigated.” She has meanwhile been spotted in Los Angeles sipping a coffee at an open-air café. Most recently, the Jewish Telegraph Agency reports that “Ghislaine Maxwell, a British socialite who has been accused of helping late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, is reportedly hiding out in Israel.”
A New York Post article confirms that Ghislaine sometimes travels to Britain on her UK passport but that she is currently in Israel “where her powerful contacts have provided her with safe houses and protection. Ghislaine is protected. . . . They would trade information about the powerful people caught in his net—caught at Epstein’s house.” Apart from her status as a Mossad asset and the protection it provides, generally speaking, Israel will not extradite any Jew who has been charged with a crime in another country, which is why so many Russian-Jewish organized crime figures have taken Israeli citizenship. So Ghislaine is unlikely ever to appear in an American courtroom.
And then there is the increased uncertainty about how Epstein died in jail. The authorities continue to claim it was suicide but one has to wonder how he managed to kill himself, if that is indeed the case, as he was reportedly on suicide watch at the prison and he should have been stripped of any clothing or cell furnishings that would have been usable to that end. So he is dead, but did he do it himself or was he helped? There are many prominent individuals and powerful government agencies that will be very pleased that he is gone, as most of his secrets will have gone to the grave with him.
There was certainly a warning that something might happen. Two weeks before his death, he was reportedly found unconscious in his jail cell with marks around his neck. It was suggested that he might have tried to kill himself or, alternatively, had been beaten up by another inmate. There was also considerable speculation that some aggrieved part of the Deep State was trying to assassinate him to silence him.
The recent release of a post-mortem in the jail as well as autopsy photos of Epstein on “60 Minutes” combined with the revelation that procedures in the prison were irregular have reopened the controversy over exactly how the convicted pedophile died with at least one more prominent pathologist saying that the images indicate that he was murdered, not a suicide.
The photos were reviewed by Dr. Michael Baden, a forensic pathologist and a former New York City medical examiner, who claimed that the evidence indicates that Epstein didn’t take his own life. Baden had been a witness at the original four-hour autopsy, and it was his judgement that the photos confirm that the fractures sustained by Epstein don’t suggest suicide. He also observed that the noose made from a bed sheet included in the photos of the autopsy report doesn’t appear to match the wound on Epstein’s throat because it would have created a wider “furrow mark.”
Baden also said, “There were fractures of the left, the right, thyroid cartilage and the left hyoid bone. I have never seen three fractures like this in a suicidal hanging. Sometimes there’s a fracture of the hyoid bone or a fracture of the thyroid cartilage. And going over a thousand jail hangings, suicides in the New York City state prisons over the past 40-50 years, no one had three fractures.”
Per Newsweek’s reporting of Dr. Baden’s analysis. “He also wondered why Epstein would fashion a noose out of bed linen when his cell contained a long electrical cord attached to a sleep apnea machine, [saying] ‘There were other wires and cords present that it would’ve been easy to use to hang oneself within a few minutes. . . . The forensic evidence released so far, including autopsy, point much more to murder and strangulation than the suicide and suicidal hanging.’”
And then there is always the big question which remains unanswered or even unasked. Conclusive evidence that Epstein was an Israeli intelligence agent might well be derived from the former U.S. Attorney in Miami Alexander Acosta’s comments when being later cleared by the Trump transition team. He was asked, “Is the Epstein case going to cause a problem [for confirmation hearings]? . . . Acosta testified that he’d had just one meeting on the Epstein case. He’d cut the non-prosecution deal with one of Epstein’s attorneys because he had ‘been told’ to back off, that Epstein was above his pay grade. ‘I was told Epstein belonged to intelligence and to leave it alone.’”
And then there is also the continuing mystery around Epstein’s possession of a genuine Austrian passport. How did he get it? Austrian passports are highly desirable in intelligence circles because the country is neutral and its holders can travel just about everywhere without a visa.
Much of the new Senate report about ‘Russian meddling’ in the 2016 election consists of Obama administration officials covering their posteriors – but is also unwittingly revealing about its (false) premises, sources and methods.
A day after its members voted along party lines in the impeachment trial of President Donald Trump, Republicans and Democrats on the Senate Intelligence Committee joined forces to publish yet another fan-fiction in the ‘Russian meddling in 2016 US presidential election’ saga, this time focusing on the Obama administration’s responses.
The problem obvious right from the start is that the committee presupposes the existence of said meddling, citing the intelligence community assessment commissioned by Obama and Mueller indictments as evidence rather than unproven assertions. The “geopolitical context” of events in the report is a perfect example of how rotten assumptions and circular reasoning lead to garbage conclusions.
That said, there are a few revelations in the report that deserve attention. First of all, even while the entire section on page 11 is redacted, a footnote left up reveals that the first to raise the alarm about “Russian meddling” was John Brennan, CIA director at the time. In what must be a remarkable coincidence, he has since become an outspoken TV and Twitter pundit, specializing in accusing President Trump and Republican senators of treason.
Brennan is the one that briefed the congressional “Gang of Eight” over the course of August 2016 – starting with House Democrats Nancy Pelosi and Adam Schiff, then Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid. The Republicans were all briefed “individually” on September 6, along with Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-California) who sat on the Intel Committee. No notes about any of the meetings exist, of course.
Three weeks later, on September 22, Feinstein and Schiff issued a statement that they both “concluded that Russian intelligence agencies are making a serious and concerted effort to influence the US election” (p. 33). The report does not record the administration’s reaction to Schiff and Feinstein getting ahead of the White House, which was supposedly still hoping to address the whole thing with a bipartisan statement.
Schiff then went on to become the leading figure in the Democrats’ efforts to impeach Trump – first citing “Russian collusion” then latching on to the Ukraine phone call.
The report also reveals that the Democratic National Committee (DNC) colluded with the Washington Post to publish the story on June 14, 2016 about the “hacking” of their network (p.5). That is supposedly the first time anyone in the Obama administration found out about the DNC “hack.” This DNC behavior – running to the media before informing the government, which was run by Democrats! – ought to raise eyebrows, but the committee just moves on.
Here is another gem: The official ODNI-DHS statement about “Russian interference” was published at 3:30 PM on October 7, 2016 – a Friday, when news tends to get buried. Exactly 33 minutes later, the Post (them again!) publishes the Access Hollywood tape, intended to be the “October surprise” that sinks Trump’s candidacy. About half an hour later, WikiLeaks drops the first batch of emails from Clinton’s campaign manager John Podesta. The rest is history.
Speaking of WikiLeaks, the section pertaining to them is entirely redacted in the Senate report. Earlier, the committee concluded that WikiLeaks was a “Russian cutout” – again, an assertion without evidence.
Keep in mind that this is the same committee whose understanding of “Russia’s social media-predicated attack against our democracy” was “significantly informed” by, among others, New Knowledge – the very outfit that masterminded an entirely fake ‘Russian meddling’ disinformation campaign during the 2017 special election for the US Senate in Alabama.
Another thing that stands out in the report is how the Obama administration perceived the whole affair. Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and UN Ambassador Samantha Power both compared it to secret meetings prior to the raid on Osama bin Laden, while Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates described it as “very cloak and dagger” (p.13).
Secretary of State John Kerry even wrote a memo proposing a sequel to the Warren Commission (which investigated the JFK assassination) to tackle Russian “attempts” at interference (p.42). Instead, Obama chose to create the handpicked working group that would produce the infamous Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA).
Curiously, the report does not mention at all the FBI’s efforts to spy on the Trump campaign, using FISA warrants predicated on the Clinton-commissioned dossier compiled by British spy Christopher Steele. One would think it ought to, given that it’s a very specific “response” to alleged Russian meddling. Perhaps that’s somewhere in the redacted parts?
In all seriousness, by now it should be intuitively obvious to even the most casual observer that “Russian meddling” has been a lie all along, foisted on the American people by political operatives and hyper-partisan spies, and that its use in an attempt to de-legitimize a presidency may have done more actual harm to US institutions and the political system than anything any external actor could have hoped to achieve.
That the Senate Intel Committee insists on flogging this particular dead horse even after the impeachment hoax fell on its face suggests that the phantom “Russian” menace is still being used to pursue some other sinister political objective.
Nebojsa Malic is a Serbian-American journalist, blogger and translator, who wrote a regular column for Antiwar.com from 2000 to 2015, and is now senior writer at RT. Follow him on Twitter @NebojsaMalic
Amid the ongoing Israeli efforts to normalize ties with African countries, Tel Aviv has been intensifying its diplomatic relations with Sudan and Morocco over the last week.
On February 4, Israeli media reported that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had been lobbying the United States to recognize Moroccan sovereignty over the occupied Western Sahara region, in exchange for a normalization of ties with Rabat.
Although the two countries have no official diplomatic relations, “contacts between Netanyahu and the Moroccans started getting more serious after a secret meeting with Moroccan Foreign Minister Nasser Bourita on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in September 2018,” according to American news website Axios.
Meanwhile, Sudan had agreed to allow flights to Israel to cross its airspace, Reuters news agency reported Wednesday.
This comes two days after Sudan’s top military official Abdel Fattah al-Burhan held a surprise meeting with Netanyahu in Uganda.
Burhan currently serves as the head of Sudan’s Sovereign Council, a transitional ruling body made up of civilian and military figures.
The visit stirred controversy in the African country, generating tensions between the military and civilian groups, with Sudan’s Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok declaring that “all decisions related to Sudan’s foreign affairs “should be made” exclusively by his Cabinet”, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported.
Defiant, the Sudanese military responded with a statement Wednesday in which it described the meeting as being in “the highest interests of national security and of Sudan.”
Sudan’s military spokesman Amer Mohamed al-Hassan told Al Jazeera that “Sudan has not announced full normalization (with Israel), but it is exchanging interests”.
“From Uganda, Netanyahu declared that Israel and Sudan were working towards normalizing relations.” Haaretz also reported. “For Israel, it was a major diplomatic breakthrough with a Muslim-majority African state.”
“The continent’s rapprochement with Israel is unfortunate, because, for decades, Africa has stood as a vanguard against all racist ideologies, including Zionism – the ideology behind Israel’s establishment on the ruins of Palestine,” wrote Palestinian journalist and editor of The Palestine Chronicle Ramzy Baroud.
“If Africa succumbs to Israeli enticement and pressure to fully embrace the Zionist state, the Palestinian people would lose a treasured partner in their struggle for freedom and human rights,” Baroud added.
Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas continues to provide proof of his worthlessness when it comes to political decision-making. If the US “continues” with the so-called deal of the century, Abbas has threatened only the possibility of a full boycott.
The US “peace plan”, which enhances Israel’s strategies for forcibly displacing Palestinians and rendering them refugees while taking away their right to be recognised as such, is not enough for the PA to implement its threats, dependent as it is upon security coordination with the occupation for its existence and function. In May 2014, Abbas described security coordination with Israel as “sacred”, despite policy differences with the Israeli government.
This coordination facilitated the targeting of dissenting Palestinians and resistance activists. In 2014, security coordination with Israel during Operation Brother’s Keeper resulted in the re-arrest of 50 former Palestinian prisoners who had been released in the Gilad Shalit exchange deal. One of the most appalling security coordination deals involved the PA in the killing of Palestinian activist and writer Basel Al-Araj in March 2017.
Yet other logistics are dependent upon security coordination, including the movement of goods and people. The PA’s political existence depends upon security coordination, while the Palestinian people bear the brunt of the violence associated with its surveillance.
Abbas’s periodic threats to cease such coordination cannot be taken seriously. As far as quashing Palestinian political dissent and resistance, the agreement with Israel is the best that the coloniser and collaborator can get. In terms of political engagement, security coordination provides the PA with the much-needed funds to sustain its existence. The premise of state-building, albeit illusory, provides the backdrop for such funding to continue, as does the two-state compromise, also illusory.
The international community’s response to US President Donald Trump’s plan announced last week was not a complete rejection. Leaving just a slight possibility that the world might find common ground over the two-state designation by the US isolates the PA more than ever. Its constant bleating to the UN and the EU to salvage the two-state imposition upon which international consensus has been reached will not save the PA’s diplomatic endeavours now. As far as the international community is concerned, the PA is even more coerced into retaining security coordination. There is common ground between the US and the international community in this, despite the previous hype attempting to pit one side against the other for the sole purpose of extending the two-state diplomacy further.
Abbas will not be taken seriously this time (if he ever was). If anything, his empty threats will bring further ridicule upon the PA, exposing its lack of autonomy. While the dynamics of Trump’s plan are indeed a threat to the PA, especially when considering the previous action undertaken by the US to isolate it diplomatically, Abbas faces a greater threat to his power if security coordination is ended permanently. The bottom line is that the PA will risk losing what remains of Palestinian land in order to maintain the façade of its “authority. After all, it has developed a notorious reputation for granting concessions to the occupation, but it will not jeopardise the crumbs of power thrown to it by Israel and the international community.
The documentary was produced by French investigative journalist Olivier Berruyer, founder of popular anti-corruption and economics blog Les Crises.
In this third episode, we publish several important testimonials, through exceptional exclusive interviews. You will thus discover the revelations of several personalities, such as the Director of the Ukrainian Action Centre against Corruption, but also a former Prosecutor General of Ukraine, a former Ukrainian diplomat, and other famous specialists on Ukraine… We are particularly grateful to Oleksandr Onyschenko for the importance of his testimony. This oligarch, a former member of parliament, was a close associate of Petro Poroshenko, whose mission included corrupting Ukrainian elected officials. Disgusted by these mafia practices, he repented by becoming a whistleblower. Since our interview, he has been arrested in Germany, where he is awaiting an extradition judgment – Interpol having refused to prosecute him since 2016…
A former US congresswoman has been registered as a foreign agent for the United Arab Emirates (UAE) to lobby US officials regarding “export controls and sanctions, and foreign and defense policies.”
Ileana Ros-Lehtinen’s registration comes as the United Arab Emirates has managed so far to stave off US congressional restrictions on arms sales over its controversial role in the deadly Saudi war on Yemen.
The former chairwoman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee was registered as lobbyist to represent Abu Dhabi earlier this month.
She will “provide outreach to US government officials and counsel on policy issues,” according to a Justice Department filing.
According to the document, she will also be counseling officials on “human rights, trade policies, foreign media registration, and strengthening trilateral relations and regional security.”
Ros-Lehtinen, who is known as a pro-Israel hawk on Iran and Latin America, has passed her one-year cooling-off period for retired lawmakers and became eligible to lobby her former colleagues.
She was registered on Jan. 21 by US lobby firm — Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld — which is one of over a dozen lobbying firms the UAE has under contract, according to al-Monitor.
Akin Gump, which has been lobbying for Abu Dhabi since 2007, campaigned last year for more US sanctions against Iran, the UAE’s role in Saudi Arabia’s war on Yemen and arms sale.
The United Arab Emirates has been among the major buyers of US weapons, clinching a $1.8-billion arms deal with Washington last year.
Many countries, including Denmark, Finland, Germany and Belgium, have suspended arms exports to UAE either upon court orders or receiving evidence that the weapons were indeed used against civilians in Yemen.
According to a December 2018 report by the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (ACLED), a nonprofit conflict-research organization, the Saudi war has claimed the lives of more than 60,000 Yemenis since March 2015.
The war has also taken a heavy toll on the Arab country’s infrastructure, destroying hospitals, schools, and factories. The UN says more than 24 million Yemenis are in dire need of humanitarian aid, including 10 million suffering from extreme levels of hunger.
Ukraine’s National Anti-Corruption Bureau has opened a probe against former president, Petro Poroshenko, who is suspected of abuse of power, embezzlement “on a grand scale” and allegedly stealing US aid funds.
The case against the ex-president was opened following a complaint by a group of Ukrainian MPs and the nation’s High Anti-Corruption Court demanding the authorities investigate embezzlement and misappropriation of the foreign financial aid at the time of Poroshenko’s term in office, a Ukrainian MP Renat Kuzmin said in a Facebook post.
Kuzmin, a member of the Opposition Platform – For Live party, also published the anti-corruption bureau’s documents, confirming that the case against Poroshenko had been launched. The papers state that the former president and some “unknown people” from his administration are suspected of embezzling “on a grand scale,” subsequent legalization of criminally obtained funds, and abuse of power.
The MP himself said that the investigation would look into the misappropriation of funds provided to Ukraine in the form of international aid, including by the administration of the former US President Barack Obama.
Poroshenko did not react directly to the accusations against him. Instead, his lawyer told the media that the ex-president plans to file as many as 14 lawsuits seeking moral compensation from Ukraine’s National Bureau of Investigations, the anti-corruption bureau and the police. His lawyer also denounced the investigation against his client as political persecution instigated by the administration of the current president, Volodymyr Zelensky.
The news comes just months after Poroshenko’s ally, Kiev mayor and three-time world boxing champion Vitali Klitschko was also accused of embezzlement and even treason by the anti-corruption bureau.
An oligarch candy-maker, who supported the Maidan coup in 2014, Poroshenko came to power in Ukraine just months after the ousting of President Viktor Yanukovich as the nation was quickly plunging into the abyss of a post-coup crisis. During his presidency, he repeatedly played the nationalist card and used Moscow as a boogeyman to raise support while his achievements in the field of economics and the fight against corruption, which still plagued Ukraine years after the Maidan, were far less impressive.
Eventually, he suffered a crushing defeat at the hands of former comedian Zelensky in the runoff at the presidential elections last year.
One of the few growth industries in Donald Trump’s United States is the protection of Jewish citizens and their property from a largely contrived wave of anti-Semitism that is allegedly sweeping the nation. Even while potentially catastrophic developments in the Middle East continue to unfold, the threat of anti-Semitism continues to dominate much of the news cycle in the mainstream media.
There are a number of things that all Americans should know about the anti-Semitism hysteria. First of all, the extent to which there is actual anti-Semitism and the back story to many of the incidents has been deliberately distorted or even ignored by the press and by the government at all levels. Anti-Semitism is hatred of Jews for either their religion or their ethnicity, but many of the so-called anti-Semitic incidents are actually related to the policies advanced by the state of Israel. Organizations like the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), which have a vested interest in keeping the number of anti-Semitic incidents high, deliberately conflate the two issues in their reports.
In its 2018 report, ADL reported “1,879 acts,” in the United States during the course of the year. It is not a particularly large number given the size and population of the U.S. and also with respect to what is included. There were certainly some physical attacks, including two shooting incidents at synagogues in Pittsburgh and Poway, but most of the incidents were much less kinetic, including shouting and name calling on university campuses between groups supportive of and opposed to Israel’s repression of the Palestinians.
Politicians, the media, and Jewish leaders have all blamed much of the alleged violent anti-Semitism on “white supremacists,” but any examination of the actual incidents does not support that view. Anyone who has any knowledge of the so-called white groups is aware that they are little more than a fringe movement within a fringe movement. Most of the physical attacks on Jews actually are carried out by blacks and most of those attacks are based on aggressive behavior by the largely Hasidic Jewish communities in New York City and surrounding areas. Hasidic Jews are relatively easy to identify as targets because of their distinctive attire, but the tension between the black community, which is being displaced by gentrifying and hostile Hasidic communities, is the root cause of the problem, not religion or race.
Indeed, the whole story of Hasidic community growth and its impact on some established neighborhoods has been pretty much ignored by the mainstream press. Hasidic activities in Brooklyn, in Jersey City, in New York ex-urb Bloomingburg and Lakewood and Toms River, New Jersey are deplorable, and attempts by local communities to fight back are regularly met with claims that the locals are anti-Semites. Hasidim routinely register their homes as places of worship to avoid property taxes, making other local residents pay for police and fire services as well as maintenance of infrastructure. When sufficient Hasidim become residents to get elected to the public school board, they divert the funding of state provided education to support their own private schools. As Hasidim get married within their community and do not register with the state, the women routinely file as single mothers to get public childcare subsidy checks. The men often do not work at all so they can study the Talmud so they are able to engage in wholesale welfare fraud, claiming poverty, to get food stamps, social security, and other money services.
Hasidim also do not consider the judicial system applicable to themselves. They have private courts that have served to hide criminals including even child molesters in their community. Once they achieve a certain presence in a town or city neighborhood, they buy up buildings and force long-term residents out. They ignore building codes and zoning to bring in co-religionists with their large families, and, once established, they create enclaves that are hostile to outsiders.
That has been the source of much of the tension with blacks in New York City and Jersey City as well as with suburban and rural whites north of New York City and in Lakewood and Toms River, New Jersey.
A final source of anti-Semitism incidents is Jews themselves who, for various reasons, either lie or fabricate tales of their persecution. In a recent incident, a Jewish student set a fire in a dormitory at Yeshiva University. In other incidents, bomb threats and graffiti were attributed to “white supremacists” but later determined to have been done by young Jewish males.
No matter how one regards the anti-Semitism issue, there is one thing for sure, and that is that 2020 will cost non-Jewish taxpayers a lot of money. There will be considerable money in the pipeline for Jewish groups to establish and maintain security for their buildings and other facilities with the federal government not surprisingly leading the charge. On Dec. 31, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), who is Jewish and regards himself as the protector of Israel in the Senate, said he would introduce legislation to quadruple the Department of Homeland Security’s annual Nonprofit Security Grant Program. It would make available $360 million. The grant program is already completely corrupted through the kind offices of folks like Schumer and serves essentially as a free handout to Jewish organizations. Over 90% of the money disbursed annually now goes to Jewish recipients for security and infrastructure upgrades, a percentage that will surely continue.
There is a certain irony in all of the tax money going to protect the wealthiest and most politically powerful demographic in the United States, but that is how politics works in Washington and also at the state and local level. Police resources in New York and other cities will now be redirected to concentrate on Jewish neighborhoods and synagogues. Rockland County in New York state is going one step farther, paying for a private security force dedicated to protecting Jews and their property.
Schumer will also increase funding for a program that pays for Department of Justice experts to train state and local officials in investigating and prosecuting hate crimes while Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) has introduced a bill that would for the first time both define attacks on Jews as domestic terrorism while also at the same time making domestic terrorism a federal crime.
And there also will be increased pressure to make holocaust education mandatory in public schools. Currently, 12 states require holocaust instruction in their public school curricula, though that includes five of the six biggest states. A bipartisan bill would provide money for school districts to develop and improve their own curricula with the ultimate objective of making such education mandatory through the United States.
The response of government to the alleged wave of anti-Semitism is understandable given the political power of the Jewish community. But it is inappropriate for the state to commit scarce resources to pressure groups when students get into shouting matches at a university or religious extremists seek to carve out enclaves for themselves at the expense of an existing community. That is where government has to step back, and it also should avoid the usual remedy of throwing money at the problem. The money belongs to the American taxpayers and this is one instance where it should stay safely in their pockets.
Philip Giraldi is a former CIA counter-terrorism specialist and military intelligence officer and a columnist and television commentator. He is also the executive director of the Council for the National Interest.
I recently described an organized campaign against a medical journal that published research over the objections of anti-meat activists. After the Annals of Internal Medicine refused to halt publication, the US Federal Trade Commission was urged to intervene. So was the Philadelphia district attorney’s office.
Do we really want to live in a world in which medical journals are afraid to publish certain conclusions because activists will sic the authorities on them? Does it really need to be said that, once government officials and the courts start second-guessing medical journals, free speech and honest scholarship are as good as dead?
So who, precisely, tried to get this research retracted before it saw the light of day? Who arrogantly wanted to extinguish the public’s right to hear that the evidence linking meat consumption and poor health is quite weak?
A lot of people who should know better. People associated with prestigious institutions.
Let’s start with David L. Katz, of Yale University. In a bizarre newspaper column Katz implies the journal is guilty of “information terrorism.” In his universe, this isn’t a matter of different researchers examining the same evidence and coming to different conclusions. It’s a matter of anyone-who-disagrees-with-me-has-nefarious-motives. It’s how-dare-you-challenge-the-prevailing-consensus!
Katz is the founder/director of the True Health Initiative. That organization describes itself as a “voice of reason and consensus.” It claims to be “fighting fake facts” and “combating false doubts” via an “evidence-based” approach. Shutting down competing perspectives is not the voice of reason. It’s the voice of authoritarianism.
Neal Barnard, of George Washington University’s School of Medicine, heads the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine. It was his organization that appealed to the Trade Commission and then to the district attorney.
Other signatories to the letter urging the journal to halt publication include Frank Hu, JoAnn E. Manson, Eric Rimm, Meir Stampfer, and Walter Willett. All of these people are associated with Harvard’s School of Public Health. That entity has a party line where meat is concerned. It’s difficult to imagine a researcher with an alternative perspective surviving there long. I wrote about Willett’s vegetarian climate change activism last year.
These are the other individuals who took the highly unusual step of trying to influence the editorial decisions of a respected medical journal:
As in any political battle, truth has been one of the major casualties of the impeachment proceedings against President Donald J. Trump.
While the Democratic impeachment managers have accused Trump repeatedly of dishonesty – often with good reason – they themselves have twisted the truth to serve their own political agenda.
Impeachment manager Adam Schiff, for example, claimed that “more than 15,000 Ukrainians have died fighting Russian forces and their proxies” and that the military aid [which Trump subverted] was for “such essentials as sniper rifles, rocket propelled grenade launchers, radar… and other support for the war effort.”
While the military aid may have assisted the war effort, Schiff’s comments are misleading because the majority of those killed have been Eastern Ukrainians who died at the hands of the Ukrainian military that the U.S. has armed – not the Russians.
The UN Monitoring Mission on Human Rights determined that of the approximately 13,000 people killed between April 2014 and December 2018, 3,300 of the victims were civilians, 4,000 were Ukrainian military and 5,500 “Russian-backed armed militants.”
Thus, according to Schiff, Russia is responsible for killing 5,500 of its own men!
Human Rights Watch found that the Ukrainian military actually caused many of the civilian deaths by “us[ing] explosive weapons with wide-area effect in populated areas, including near school buildings, in violation of international humanitarian law.”
But this doesn’t fit with Schiff’s alarmist views about Russia, which are straight out of the 1950s McCarthy era.
At the hearings, Schiff frequently referenced the danger of “Russian expansion” and its efforts to “remake the map of Europe” and quoted a witness who stated that “the U.S. aids Ukraine and her people so that they can fight Russia over there, and we don’t have to fight Russia here.”
Sounding like Ronald Reagan or any one of the most hawkish of cold warriors, this assessment has no basis in reality.
Among other things, it ignores that Russia under Putin was the first country to offer sympathy to the U.S. following the 9/11 terrorist attacks and has repeatedly pushed for better diplomatic relations.
Schiff’s misinformation extends to his defense of Joe Biden.
In his opening statement, Schiff claimed that Biden never wanted the “corrupt prosecutor removed in order to stop an investigation into Burisma Holdings, on whose board Biden’s son Hunter sat.”
However, Biden has been filmed in a speech before the Council on Foreign Relations bragging about his efforts to blackmail the Ukrainian government by threatening to withhold a $1 billion loan if that prosecutor, Viktor Shokin, was not removed.
Shokin had never actually been censured or indicted for corruption, although his successor, Yuriy Lutsenko was.
The latter settled the case with Burisma and its chief executive Mykola Zlochevsky by allowing it to pay a $7 million fine when the company stood accused of evading $40 million in taxes – a clear victory for Burisma.
Lutsenko did not even have a law degree and has been characterized by Ukrainian officials as a crooked political appointee of Ukraine’s former Prime-Minister Petro Poroshenko, whom Biden had cultivated close ties with.
Schiff and other Democratic Impeachment Managers such as Sylvia Garcia of Texas claimed that under Shokin the investigation against Burisma had lain “dormant.”
However, Shokin told ABC News in an interview – which was conveniently never aired – that this was not true and that the case was proceeding prior to his removal in February 2016.
The Ukraine-Gate saga has commanded a huge amount of attention and contributed to the rising fame of Schiff who has been praised in some circles for his magnificent performance.
By spreading misleading or outright false information about Russia and Ukraine, and drumming up anti-Russian sentiment, the consequences of the hearings, however, could be even more damaging then the Trump presidency.
While US lawmakers and media pundits are busy discussing Donald Trump’s impeachment process, the Clinton Foundation’s alleged misdeeds, including its supposed role in the Uranium One deal, remain neglected, says Wall Street analyst Charles Ortel, referring to a mid-January public interview with an FBI whistleblower.
On 15 January, FBI whistleblower Nate Cain told OAN’s investigative journalist Richard Pollock that he possesses classified documents implicating former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the Clinton Foundation with regard to the Uranium One deal. However, he added that he would never release them unless he receives approval from the appropriate federal authorities.
According to Cain, who joined the FBI in 2016, he overheard major concerns voiced by top brass FBI officials who purportedly came across damning evidence about the Clinton Foundation’s role in the Uranium One deal. The whistleblower said that having reviewed the materials, he had been sure that the Clintons would be indicted.
However, the case was apparently swept under the rug after then-FBI chief James Comey recommended no criminal charges for Hillary Clinton’s mishandling of classified emails in 2016.
Being a protected whistleblower under US law, Cain delivered 450 pages of documents concerning the deal to Inspector General Michael E. Horowitz in June 2018. However, in November, 16 FBI agents raided Cain’s Maryland home, accused him of possessing “stolen federal property” and ignored his argument about whistleblower protection, as The Daily Callerrevealed on 29 November 2018.
Uranium One Case Remains Undeservingly Neglected
According to Charles Ortel, a Wall Street analyst and investigative journalist who has been looking into the Clinton Foundation’s alleged fraud for the past few years, the Uranium One issue still remains undeservedly neglected both by the American authorities and media pundits.
“It strikes me that President Trump needs to make sure that his senior team finally addresses long-unanswered questions concerning Uranium One anyway,” he underscores.
In his interview with OAN, Cain asserted that former FBI chief James Comey had been aware about the agency’s concerns with regard to the deal. One might ask how this happened that the former agency’s boss “overlooked” the supposed “damning evidence”.
“This question needs to be considered alongside questions about others who tried to inform James Comey concerning suspected mishandling by Hillary Clinton of classified information,” the Wall Street analyst notes.
He recalls that Cain wasn’t the only one whistleblower who stepped forward to shed light on the Clinton Foundation’s alleged role in the uranium deal: another one was William Campbell and his claims “to date, do not seem to have been considered carefully enough”, according to the analyst.
On 7 February 2018, Republican and Democratic staff from the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, and House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence interviewed Campbell. However, the summary of the interview released on 8 March 2018 said that Campbell “provided no evidence” of alleged quid pro quo involving Hillary Clinton or the Clinton Foundation in arranging and approving the Uranium One deal.
“It certainly seems as if Comey was determined not to examine core issues involving mishandling – one imagines that one reason for this could be that numerous senior Obama administration officials might be implicated in potential wrongdoing, and that these officials were determined and remain determined not to let the truth out in advance of the pivotal election of 2016 and the looming one this year,” Ortel suggests.
The Wall Street analyst presumes that it was no coincidence that the Uranium One case was buried when Comey announced that he would not recommend charging Hillary Clinton over mishandling classified government emails.
“I do not believe in coincidences when it comes to this matter,” Ortel says. “More likely, President Obama’s Justice Department had made decisions to bottle up Comey’s ‘investigation’ and remained ‘all-in’ to support Hillary Clinton through the 2016 election contest.”
Whistleblowers & Double Standard Approach
The Wall Street analyst also emphasises the apparent double standard approach exercised by the FBI and DoJ towards Cain, Campbell and the unnamed whistleblower whose complaint to IG Michael K. Atkinson became the trigger for the impeachment process against Donald Trump.
According to Ortel, one can hardly “reconcile the protection given to the whistleblower who even now cannot be named (in theory) with the aggressive tactics allegedly taken by elements within the US government against Campbell and Cain”.
“It certainly seems to me that the aggressive handling of the ‘impeachment case’ by Democrats in the House and Senate and mainstream media stands in stark contrast to the lack of interest by too many in understanding what really has been going in and around the Clinton Foundation, including with Uranium One and other projects where Clinton donors, and possibly the Clinton family, may have derived personal benefits in projects where US government approvals and/or financial support were involved,” the investigative journalist concludes.
The controversy over the Uranium One deal, which envisaged a partial sale of Canadian company Uranium One to Tenex, a subsidiary of Russia’s nuclear company Rosatom which was approved by the Obama administration in 2011, erupted ahead of the 2016 elections. In his 5 May 2015 book, “Clinton Cash” American author Peter Schweitzer wrote that at the time the uranium deal was arranged, former US President Bill Clinton received thousands in speaking fees in Russia; the Clinton Foundation got substantive donations from firms interested in the deal; while then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton oversaw the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States. However, Hillary Clinton and Obama administration officials denied the accusations, insisting that neither Russians nor the foundation’s sponsors had been involved in any wrongdoing and that at the time there was no security reason to axe the deal.
In my last article, I covered the left-wing scholar Michael Parenti- who passed away at the age of 92 this week- and his prophetic writings on the Ukraine proxy war in 2014.
Parenti’s writings on the Israel lobby and the greater Israel project were equally prophetic.
In his 2007 book “Contrary Notions” Parenti called out “Israel First” Neo-cons and Israel’s role in the Iraq war, and predicted to a tee the future Israeli/American wars in the Middle East in service of Greater Israel and the ethnic cleansing of Palestine.
In a section of the book aptly titled “Israel First”, Parenti wrote… continue
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