Moscow Urges CNN Host to Take Honest Interview with Aleppo Boy
Fars News Agency | June 8, 2017
The Russian Foreign Ministry’s spokeswoman Maria Zakharova on Thursday invited CNN host Christiane Amanpour to visit Syria to make an honest interview with the Syrian boy from Aleppo known as the “symbol of Aleppo suffering.”
The RT broadcaster released a two-part interview with Omran Daqneesh’s father Mohammad Kheir Daqneesh on Tuesday and Wednesday. The interview revealed that the White Helmets volunteers had manipulated injured Omran into being photographed instead of offering immediate help and later threatened his father after he went into hiding to prevent any more unwanted media exposure, Sputnik reported.
Amanpour in her October interview with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov showed the photograph of Daqneesh shot in August, saying that it illustrated “a crime against humanity.”
“I’d like to say that if Amanpour started this story, I mean so publicly, coming to Moscow and being determined enough to print out the photograph and show it to Sergei Lavrov, maybe she has enough bravery, journalistic professional ethics and simple humane conscience to finish it? And do that by going to Aleppo, finding the family of the boy and taking a truly honest interview, not a set up one as they at CNN know, but an honest interview with the boy,” Zakharova said.
August’s footage showed the boy injured and covered in ashes after being rescued from an attack in the militant-controlled Karm al-Qaterji neighborhood. Syrian anti-government forces accused Moscow of conducting an airstrike on the neighborhood, while Russian Defense Ministry’s spokesman Maj. Gen. Igor Konashenkov denied Western media reports of Russia’s alleged role in the strike as the residential neighborhood is directly adjacent to the Russian humanitarian operation corridors for the safe exit of local residents.
Konashenkov previously stated that the nature of damage shown by Western media during Omran’s rescue demonstrates that if the strike did take place, it could not have come from aircraft munitions, but a mine or a gas cylinder, heavily used by terrorists in Syria. The Russian defense ministry’s spokesman accused the media of committing a “moral crime” in the “cynical hype” of the volunteers’ footage for their “formulaic propaganda material.”
Israel’s Liberty Attack Did Not Begin or End in 1967
USS Liberty Before Israeli Attack
By Free Palestine Movement | Dissident Voice | June 8, 2017
On June 8th, 1967, with cold-blooded mass murder as the objective, Israeli warplanes and warships made every effort to sink the USS Liberty, a mostly unarmed US intelligence vessel off the coast of Gaza, and to kill all 294 on board. Thanks only to the heroism of the Liberty crew and possibly a Soviet vessel’s offer of assistance (refused), the attack was called off before completion, although the attackers had plenty of reason to think that the sea would do the rest of the job for them.
Twice, US warplanes from the US Sixth Fleet responded to distress calls from the Liberty, only to be recalled by direct order of the White House and the US Department of Defense. In retrospect, it is clear that Lyndon Johnson and Robert McNamara in turn got their orders from the Israel Lobby and the Israeli leadership. 34 were killed and 174 wounded, with many permanently disabled.
USS Liberty Following Israeli Attack (US Navy Photo)
The subsequent coverup, the suppression of investigation, the falsification of evidence, the manipulation of history and the denial of justice to loyal US servicemen on board is now well documented and readily available to all who wish to see (which many do not). Nevertheless, the attack continues to this day, with Israeli and US resources devoted to maintaining a variety of false and often conflicting narratives to hide the truth.
Of course, Israel’s attack on liberty itself goes far beyond this one incident, however outrageous, arrogant, blatant and hideous it may be. Israel owes its very existence to Plan D, a detailed and carefully prepared military strategy for depopulating Palestine of its non-immigrant Palestinian population and replacing it with immigrants in order to create a majority (and ultimately exclusive) Jewish state, according to a racist agenda. Since late 1947 (and even before) and up to the present, Palestinians have had, and are still having, many Liberty incidents, without benefit of a Sixth Fleet, recalled or not. It is clearly Israel’s intention to continue until there are no Palestinians left in Palestine.
Liberty assaults are continuing in the US and other powerful countries, as well, as Israel and its Zionist interests in these countries wield sufficient power on their governments to bend military and political power to their ends. Thus it is no accident that US and western countries’ might has been used to destroy Israel’s potential enemies and rivals in the region, such as Iraq, Libya and Syria, and to bring to heel others, such as Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and the Gulf monarchies. The people of half the world are paying the price for Israel’s ambitions, not least in countries like the US, whose military budgets swallow funds for infrastructure, health, and education, and create an ongoing supply of shattered veterans who are neglected by the very government they served.
But millions of people have also been killed and tens of millions made refugees in the wars for Israel, for the purpose of weakening Israel’s enemies, enabling Israel’s capture of territory, the ongoing ethnic cleansing of populations that Israel considers undesirable, and confiscation of resources. By allying itself with the most destructive elements in the US and other countries it wishes to influence and manipulate, Israel is able to multiply its destructive capability far beyond its own borders.
We are all Palestinians. Israel is crushing us all, robbing us of our resources, our livelihood and our liberty. Fifty years on, let us remember and honor the crew of the USS Liberty, who paid a high price for liberty, never receiving proper remuneration. Let us also remind ourselves that we continue to pay this price.
Free Palestine Movement is an accredited NGO of the United Nations whose purpose is to defend and advocate for the human rights of all Palestinians, and in particular the right of access to all of Palestine. Visit Free Palestine Movement’s website.
ISIS Was “Allegedly” Behind the London Bridge Attacks, Who Is Behind ISIS?
By Michel Chossudovsky | Global Research | June 6, 2017
London’s tabloids have gone into high gear with vivid descriptions of the attacks and the tragic loss of life. Seven killed and 48 wounded.
“ISIS has claimed responsibility for the depraved attack in London Bridge as chilling video shows three jihadis calmly strolling past a pub while in the midst of the van and knife rampage that killed seven and critically injured 21.” ( The Sun, June 5, 2017)
ISIS has claimed responsibility, Is there a pattern?
Without exception, Al Qaeda or ISIS were allegedly behind the Paris, Brussels, Berlin, Manchester and London Bridge terror attacks, which served to spearhead a wave of Islamophobia across Western Europe, while also providing a pretext for the introduction of drastic police state measures:
“The twisted killers are seen calmly walking through Borough Market moments before they launched a stabbing attack on pubgoers while shouting “this is for Allah”, having already driven a van into crowds.” The Sun, June 5, 2017)
The statement of Prime Minister May (three days before the UK elections) points in the direction of an organized hate campaign against Muslims:
[The Manchester and London attacks] …are bound together by the single, evil ideology of Islamist extremism that preaches hatred, sows division, and promotes sectarianism. It is an ideology that claims our Western values of freedom, democracy and human rights are incompatible with the religion of Islam. It is an ideology that is a perversion of Islam and a perversion of the truth.
… It will only be defeated when we turn people’s minds away from this violence – and make them understand that our values – pluralistic, British values – are superior to anything offered by the preachers and supporters of hate. (emphasis added),
“Perversion of the Truth”? Lies, fabrications, omissions. What the British media in chorus fails to mention is that both ISIS and Al Qaeda are creations of US intelligence, recruited, trained and financed by the US and its allies including Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey, Israel and Jordan.
The Islamic State (ISIS) was originally an Al Qaeda affiliated entity created by US intelligence with the support of Britain’s MI6, Israel’s Mossad, Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and Saudi Arabia’s General Intelligence Presidency (GIP), Ri’āsat Al-Istikhbārāt Al-’Āmah ( رئاسة الاستخبارات العامة).
The origins of Al Qaeda date back to the Soviet-Afghan war. The Koranic schools in Afghanistan used to train Al Qaeda recruits were financed by the CIA, using textbooks published by the University of Nebraska. That’s where the “evil ideology of Islamist extremism” referred to by PM May originated: The “Global War on Terrorism” is a lie, “Islamic terrorism” is a product of US foreign policy which claims to be spreading “Western civilization”:
… the United States spent millions of dollars to supply Afghan schoolchildren with textbooks filled with violent images and militant Islamic teachings, part of covert attempts to spur resistance to the Soviet occupation.
The primers, which were filled with talk of jihad and featured drawings of guns, bullets, soldiers and mines, have served since then as the Afghan school system’s core curriculum. Even the Taliban used the American-produced books,..
Picture above is translated as follows: “Jihad – Often many different wars and conflicts arise among people, which cause material damages and loss of human life. If these wars and disputes occur among people for the sake of community, nation, territory, or even because of verbal differences, and for the sake of progress…”
This page is from a third-grade language arts textbook dating from the mujahidin period. A copy of the book was purchased new in Kabul in May 2000.
… Published in the dominant Afghan languages of Dari and Pashtun, the textbooks were developed in the early 1980s under an AID grant to the University of Nebraska -Omaha and its Center for Afghanistan Studies. The agency spent $ 51 million on the university’s education programs in Afghanistan from 1984 to 1994.” (Washington Post, 23 March 2002)
The ISIS is a terrorist paramilitary entity created by US intelligence. It has nothing to do with the tenets of Islam. The ISIS and Al Qaeda terrorists are the foot soldiers of the Western military alliance in Syria who are fighting a secular government. While America claims to be targeting the ISIS, in reality it is protecting the ISIS.
Britain’s Role in the “War on Terrorism”
There is evidence that British SAS Special Forces were dispatched to Syria in 2011 to integrate the ranks of the so-called moderate Al Qaeda rebels. Special Forces often hired through a private mercenary company on contract to NATO or the Pentagon were embedded within most paramilitary rebel formations, According to Elite UK Forces (the website of the SAS)
Reports from late November last year [2011] state that British Special forces have met up with members of the Free Syrian Army (FSA), the armed wing of the Syrian National Council. The apparent goal of this initial contact was to establish the rebel forces’ strength and to pave the way for any future training operations.
More recent reports have stated that British and French Special Forces have been actively training members of the FSA, from a base in Turkey. Some reports indicate that training is also taking place in locations in Libya and Northern Lebanon. British MI6 operatives and UKSF (SAS/SBS) personnel have reportedly been training the rebels in urban warfare as well as supplying them with arms and equipment. US CIA operatives and special forces are believed to be providing communications assistance to the rebels.
British MI6 were actively involved, collaborating with the CIA:
As the unrest and killings escalate in the troubled Arab state, agents from MI6 and the CIA are already in Syria assessing the situation, a security official has revealed.
Special forces are also talking to Syrian dissident soldiers [Al Qaeda].
They want to know about weapons and communications kit rebel forces will need if the Government decides to help.
“MI6 and the CIA are in Syria to infiltrate[rebel ranks] and get at the truth,” said the well-placed source.
“We have SAS and SBS not far away who want to know what is happening and are finding out what kit dissident soldiers [Al Qaeda] need.” Syria will be bloodiest yet, Daily Star, January 1, 2012 (emphasis added)
The air campaign launched by Obama in 2014, which had the full support of the United Kingdom, was intent upon destroying Syria and Iraq rather than “going after the terrorists”. There is ample evidence that the Islamic State is protected by the US-led coalition.
The inflow and delivery of weapons and supplies are coordinated by the Pentagon in liaison with America’s allies.
US military aid is channelled to Al Qaeda as well as to ISIS-Daesh.
The US has also used the illegal weapons market to channel vast amounts of weapons and military hardware to the Syrian “rebels”.
The State sponsors of ISIS-Al Qaeda are now heralded as the victims of ISIS-Al Qaeda, an absurd proposition. Those who are funded and supported by Western intelligence services are now said to be fighting back.
The ISIS nonetheless has a certain degree of independence in relation to its State sponsors. That is the nature of what is called an “intelligence asset”. But an “intelligence asset” is always on the radar of the intelligence services.
The British government through its intelligence services is known to have covertly supported several Al Qaeda affiliated entities including the Libya Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) which was linked to the Manchester bombings.
The “Liberation” of Tripoli was carried out by “former” members of the Libya Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), which is affiliated to Al Qaeda. These “former” Al Qaeda affiliated brigades constituted the backbone of the “pro-democracy” rebellion, which was supported by NATO.
Within the ranks of the LIFG rebels, US Navy SEALS, British SAS and French legionnaires disguised in civilian rebel garb, were reported to be behind major operations directed against key government buildings including Gadhafi’s Bab al-Aziziya compound in central Tripoli.
“Highly-trained [British Special Forces] units, known as ‘Smash’ teams for their prowess and destructive ability, have carried out secret reconnaissance missions to provide up-to-date information on the Libyan armed forces.” (SAS ‘Smash’ squads on the ground in Libya to mark targets for coalition jets, Daily Mirror, March 21, 2011)
And in the wake of NATO’s war Libya, these pro-democracy LIFG Al Qaeda affiliates have joined the ranks of the ISIS.
Washington’s Regime Change for Syria: Install the Islamic State
It is worth noting that the release of the Hillary Clinton email archive as well as leaked Pentagon documents confirm that the US and its allies are supportive of ISIS.
Moreover, a 7-page Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) document dated August of 2012, points to US complicity in supporting the creation of an Islamic State.(Excerpt below)
Concluding Remarks
Despite the evidence, it is very difficult for people to accept the fact that their own government is supporting terrorism.
Most people will dispel this as an impossibility. But it is the forbidden truth.
The established consensus is that the role of a government is to protect its people. That myth has to be sustained.
The media’s role is to ensure that the truth does not trickle down to the broader public.
If that were to occur, the legitimacy of Western heads of State and heads of government would collapse like a house of cards.
The governments of the countries whose citizens are the victims of terror attacks are supporting ISIS-Daesh through their intelligence services.
Copyright © Prof Michel Chossudovsky, Global Research, 2017
Voters are Fired Up for Single Payer Creating Dilemma for Democrats
By Margaret Flowers – Health Over Profit – June 5, 2017
On Sunday, June 4, the same day that Our Revolution, a Democratic Party group that arose from the Bernie Sanders presidential campaign, organized rallies and die-ins to highlight the number of people dying in the United States due to lack of access to health care, the New York Times published an article, “The Single Payer Party? Democrats Shift Left on Health Care,” prominently on the front page and above the fold.
The article quotes RoseAnn DeMoro, head of National Nurses United, saying, “There is a cultural shift. Health care is now seen as something everyone deserves. It’s like a national light went off.” Minnesota Congressman Rick Nolan was also quoted, saying that rank and file Democrats “are energized in a way I have not witnessed in a long, long time.” Nolan is correct in stating that following the Democrat’s large loss in 2016, the party needs “a more boldly ‘aspirational’ health care platform.”
Democratic Party voters have been strong supporters of single payer health care for a long time. Polls have consistently shown that super-majorities of Democratic Party voters want single payer, but Democratic Party candidates keep telling them that they can’t have it. The Democratic Party has refused to add Medicare for All to its healthcare platform despite resolutions introduced by single payer advocates. Even the Congressional Progressive Caucus refuses to include single payer health care in their “People’s Budget.”
In 2009, with a Democratic President and majorities in the House and Senate, single payer health care was off the table. Instead, the “public option” was used to divide the Democratic Party voters and convince them that they were asking for too much. Democrats were told that the public option would be more politically feasible and would create a “back door” to single payer. Many were fooled. And the joke was on them because even the public option, which I call the “Profiteer’s Option,” was never meant to be in the final legislation.
While the New York Times wrongly blames the liberal and centrist Democrats for not supporting a public option, it was actually the White House and Democratic Party leadership that kept it out of the final bill. In December of 2009, public pressure was working to convince the Senate to include a public option in its healthcare bill. That’s when leadership stepped in to stop them. Glenn Greenwald writes:
I’ve argued since August that the evidence was clear that the White House had privately negotiated away the public option and didn’t want it, even as the President claimed publicly (and repeatedly) that he did. … it is the excuse Democrats fraudulently invoke, using what I called the Rotating Villain tactic (it’s now Durbin’s turn), to refuse to pass what they claim they support but are politically afraid to pass, or which they actually oppose (sorry, we’d so love to do this, but gosh darn it, we just can’t get 60 votes). If only 50 votes were required, they’d just find ways to ensure they lacked 50. Both of those are merely theories insusceptible to conclusive proof, but if I had the power to create the most compelling evidence for those theories that I could dream up, it would be hard to surpass what Democrats are doing now with regard to the public option. They’re actually whipping against the public option. Could this sham be any more transparent?
I was present at the Center for American Progress in March of 2009 when Senator Max Baucus stated that the public option was a bargaining chip being used to convince private health insurers to accept more regulations. It was Baucus’ staffer, Liz Fowler, a former senior vice president for one of the largest private insurance corporations, WellPoint, who wrote the framework for the Affordable Care Act and shepherded it through Congress. The scam was revealed early and though progressive groups knew it, they were complicit in the scam because they accepted being controlled and silenced by the White House.
Jim Messina, a former Baucus chief of staff, was hired by the White House to be “the enforcer” for President Obama’s agenda. Ari Berman described the situation in this enlightening article:
The administration deputized Messina as the top liaison to the Common Purpose Project. The coveted invite-only, off-the-record Tuesday meetings at the Capitol Hilton became the premier forum where the administration briefed leading progressive groups, including organizations like the AFL-CIO, MoveOn, Planned Parenthood and the Center for American Progress, on its legislative and political strategy. Theoretically, the meetings were supposed to provide a candid back-and-forth between outside groups and administration officials, but Messina tightly controlled the discussions and dictated the terms of debate (Jane Hamsher of Firedoglake memorably dubbed this the “veal pen”). “Common Purpose didn’t make a move without talking to Jim,” says one progressive strategist. During the healthcare fight, Messina used his influence to try to stifle any criticism of Baucus or lobbying by progressive groups that was out of sync with the administration’s agenda, according to Common Purpose participants. “Messina wouldn’t tolerate us trying to lobby to improve the bill,” says Richard Kirsch, former national campaign manager for Health Care for America Now (HCAN), the major coalition of progressive groups backing reform. Kirsch recalled being told by a White House insider that when asked what the administration’s “inside/outside strategy” was for passing healthcare reform, Messina replied, “There is no outside strategy.”
The inside strategy pursued by Messina, relying on industry lobbyists and senior legislators to advance the bill, was directly counter to the promise of the 2008 Obama campaign, which talked endlessly about mobilizing grassroots support to bring fundamental change to Washington. But that wasn’t Messina’s style—instead, he spearheaded the administration’s deals with doctors, hospitals and drug companies, particularly the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA), one of the most egregious aspects of the bill. “They cared more about their relationship with the healthcare industry than anyone else,” says one former HCAN staffer. “It was shocking to see. To me, that was the scariest part of it, because this White House had ridden in on a white horse and said, ‘We’re not going to do this anymore.’” When they were negotiating special deals with industry, Messina and Baucus chief of staff Jon Selib were also pushing major healthcare companies and trade associations to pour millions of dollars into TV ads defending the bill.
This was the Democratic Party’s deal with the devil. They rejected their voter base and went with the donor class to create and market a health law, the so-called Affordable Care Act, that protected the profits of the medical-industrial complex, and it backfired. In the 2010 election, 63 Democratic incumbents lost their seats in Congress and the party has been in decline ever since with a record low number of elected officials nationally. On issue after issue, the Democratic Party betrayed its base and voters finally gave up, choosing either to vote for other parties or not vote at all.
The question now is whether the Democrats will change.
So far, despite the title of the New York Times article, the answer is no. Although there is widespread voter support for single payer, Nancy Pelosi says the party is not going there and is funneling advocates’ energy to the state level, even though state single payer systems are not possible without federal legislation. At the national level, Democrats are paying lip service to Medicare for All: “We need to get there eventually but right now our task is to fix the ACA” is the current talking point.
The reality is that the political currents have shifted. The public is not going along with the con. People want solutions to the healthcare crisis, not more tinkering with the current failed healthcare system. Across the country, the message is clear that the public supports National Improved Medicare for All. And whichever political party in power embraces this will see a surge in popularity.
Our task as advocates for National Improved Medicare for All is to stay fired up – continue to speak out about Medicare for All, write about it in local papers, meet with members of Congress, organize in our communities and run for office. We must be clear and uncompromising in our demand for National Improved Medicare for All to create a visible tsunami of support that will wake our legislators up.
When the people lead, the legislators will follow.
Russia-gate’s Mythical ‘Heroes’
By Coleen Rowley | Consortium News | June 6, 2017
Mainstream commentators display amnesia when they describe former FBI Directors Robert Mueller and James Comey as stellar and credible law enforcement figures. Perhaps if they included J. Edgar Hoover, such fulsome praise could be put into proper perspective.
Robert Mueller with President George W. Bush
July 5, 2001 – (White House photo)
Although these Hoover successors, now occupying center stage in the investigation of President Trump, have been hailed for their impeccable character by much of Official Washington, the truth is, as top law enforcement officials of the George W. Bush Administration (Mueller as FBI Director and James Comey as Deputy Attorney General), both presided over post-9/11 cover-ups and secret abuses of the Constitution, enabled Bush-Cheney fabrications used to launch wrongful wars, and exhibited plain vanilla incompetence.
TIME Magazine would probably have not called my own disclosures a “bombshell memo” to the Joint Intelligence Committee Inquiry in May 2002 if it had not been for Mueller’s having so misled everyone after 9/11. Although he bore no personal responsibility for intelligence failures before the attack, since he only became FBI Director a week before, Mueller denied or downplayed the significance of warnings that had poured in yet were all ignored or mishandled during the Spring and Summer of 2001.
Bush Administration officials had circled the wagons and refused to publicly own up to what the 9/11 Commission eventually concluded, “that the system had been blinking red.” Failures to read, share or act upon important intelligence, which a FBI agent witness termed “criminal negligence” in later trial testimony, were therefore not fixed in a timely manner. (Some failures were never fixed at all.)
Worse, Bush and Cheney used that post 9/11 period of obfuscation to “roll out” their misbegotten “war on terror,” which only served to exponentially increase worldwide terrorism.
Unfulfilled Promise
I wanted to believe Director Mueller when he expressed some regret in our personal meeting the night before we both testified to the Senate Judiciary Committee. He told me he was seeking improvements and that I should not hesitate to contact him if I ever witnessed a similar situation to what was behind the FBI’s pre 9/11 failures.
A few months later, when it appeared he was acceding to Bush-Cheney’s ginning up intelligence to launch the unjustified, counterproductive and illegal war on Iraq, I took Mueller up on his offer, emailing him my concerns in late February 2003. Mueller knew, for instance, that Vice President Dick Cheney’s claims connecting 9/11 to Iraq were bogus yet he remained quiet. He also never responded to my email.
Beyond ignoring politicized intelligence, Mueller bent to other political pressures. In the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, Mueller directed the “post 9/11 round-up” of about 1,000 immigrants who mostly happened to be in the wrong place (the New York City area) at the wrong time. FBI Headquarters encouraged more and more detentions for what seemed to be essentially P.R. purposes. Field offices were required to report daily the number of detentions in order to supply grist for FBI press releases about FBI “progress” in fighting terrorism. Consequently, some of the detainees were brutalized and jailed for up to a year despite the fact that none turned out to be terrorists.
A History of Failure
Long before he became FBI Director, serious questions existed about Mueller’s role as Acting U.S. Attorney in Boston in effectively enabling decades of corruption and covering up of the FBI’s illicit deals with mobster Whitey Bulger and other “top echelon” informants who committed numerous murders and crimes. When the truth was finally uncovered through intrepid investigative reporting and persistent, honest judges, U.S. taxpayers footed a $100 million court award to the four men framed for murders committed by (the FBI-operated) Bulger gang.
Current media applause omits the fact that former FBI Director Mueller was the top official in charge of the Anthrax terror fiasco investigation into those 2001 murders, which targeted an innocent man (Steven Hatfill) whose lawsuit eventually forced the FBI to pay $5 million in compensation. Mueller’s FBI was also severely criticized by Department of Justice Inspector Generals finding the FBI overstepped the law improperly serving hundreds of thousands of “national security letters” to obtain private (and irrelevant) metadata on citizens, and for infiltrating nonviolent anti-war groups under the guise of investigating “terrorism.”
For his part, Deputy Attorney General James Comey, too, went along with the abuses of Bush and Cheney after 9/11 and signed off on a number of highly illegal programs including warrantless surveillance of Americans and torture of captives. Comey also defended the Bush Administration’s three-year-long detention of an American citizen without charges or right to counsel.
Up to the March 2004 night in Attorney General John Ashcroft’s hospital room, both Comey and Mueller were complicit with implementing a form of martial law, perpetrated via secret Office of Legal Counsel memos mainly written by John Yoo and predicated upon Yoo’s singular theories of absolute “imperial” or “war presidency” powers, and requiring Ashcroft every 90 days to renew certification of a “state of emergency.”
The Comey/Mueller Myth
What’s not well understood is that Comey’s and Mueller’s joint intervention to stop Bush’s men from forcing the sick Attorney General to sign the certification that night was a short-lived moment. A few days later, they all simply went back to the drawing board to draft new legal loopholes to continue the same (unconstitutional) surveillance of Americans.
The mythology of this episode, repeated endlessly throughout the press, is that Comey and Mueller did something significant and lasting in that hospital room. They didn’t. Only the legal rationale for their unconstitutional actions was tweaked.
Mueller was even okay with the CIA conducting torture programs after his own agents warned against participation. Agents were simply instructed not to document such torture, and any “war crimes files” were made to disappear. Not only did “collect it all” surveillance and torture programs continue, but Mueller’s (and then Comey’s) FBI later worked to prosecute NSA and CIA whistleblowers who revealed these illegalities.
Neither Comey nor Mueller — who are reported to be “joined at the hip” — deserve their current lionization among politicians and mainstream media. Instead of Jimmy Stewart-like “G-men” with reputations for principled integrity, the two close confidants and collaborators merely proved themselves, along with former CIA Director George “Slam Dunk” Tenet, reliably politicized sycophants, enmeshing themselves in a series of wrongful abuses of power along with official incompetence.
It seems clear that based on his history and close “partnership” with Comey, called “one of the closest working relationships the top ranks of the Justice Department have ever seen,” Mueller was chosen as Special Counsel not because he has integrity but because he will do what the powerful want him to do.
Mueller didn’t speak the truth about a war he knew to be unjustified. He didn’t speak out against torture. He didn’t speak out against unconstitutional surveillance. And he didn’t tell the truth about 9/11. He is just “their man.”
Coleen Rowley, a retired FBI special agent and division legal counsel whose May 2002 memo to then-FBI Director Robert Mueller exposed some of the FBI’s pre-9/11 failures, was named one of TIME magazine’s “Persons of the Year” in 2002. Her 2003 letter to Robert Mueller in opposition to launching the Iraq War is archived in full text on the NYT and her 2013 op-ed entitled “Questions for the FBI Nominee” was published on the day of James Comey’s confirmation hearing. This piece will also be cross-posted on Rowley’s Huffington Post page.)
Relevant links:
http://content.time.com/time/covers/0,16641,20020603,00.html
http://govinfo.library.unt.edu/911/report/911Report_Ch8.pdf
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/05/politics/full-text-of-fbi-agents-letter-to-director-mueller.html
https://oig.justice.gov/special/0306/full.pdf
https://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/18/us/immigrants-suit-over-detention-after-9-11-is-revived.html
http://www.ocregister.com/2017/05/21/comey-mueller-bungled-big-anthrax-case-together/
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/government_programs-jan-june07-patriotact_03-09/
http://abcnews.go.com/TheLaw/DOJ/story?id=4444329
https://www.aclu.org/news/fbi-counterterrorism-unit-spies-peaceful-faith-based-protest-group
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/09/opinion/questions-for-the-fbi-nominee.html
http://www.newsweek.com/ali-soufan-breaks-his-silence-77243
Latest Russia-hacking ‘revelation’ only exposes more ‘garbage’ US journalism
RT | June 6, 2017
A report, allegedly based on leaks within the NSA, once again lacks underlying raw intelligence, yet reporters from The Intercept ran with it anyway, Brian Becker from the anti-war ANSWER Coalition told RT.
The US National Security Agency has arrested a former contractor after she allegedly leaked classified defense material.
A Department of Justice statement said Reality Leigh Winner had a complaint filed against her after stealing a document and supplying it to a news outlet.
Some Western media have already linked the arrest to a newly published article by The Intercept about alleged Russian hacking.
The report by The Intercept alleges Russia carried out at least one cyberattack against the US during the 2016 election. Like other so-called intelligence, it does not provide any concrete evidence. Nor does it name the source of the information it based the article on.
RT: “The Intercept” has published a highly classified report by NSA stating that Russian military intelligence executed a cyberattack on at least one US voting software supplier just days before the US presidential election. Do you think the report is credible?
Brian Becker: The article in The Intercept has to be read carefully, and I would say with a giant grain of salt. I actually think it is very shoddy journalism. Why would the NSA or NSA contractors, who have spared no effort to generate an anti-Russia witch hunt over the last year, release this document to The Intercept ? Why not The New York Times, why not The Washington Post, why not CNN? The Intercept is one of the few websites that has some audience in the US that has had critical thinking from Glenn Greenwald and others who have doubted the veracity of the assertions. The report shows that the report from the NSA – again, which was given by someone working with the NSA to The Intercept for some reason – lacks all underlying raw intelligence. So we have again the formulation ‘a high degree of confidence’ and then mixing and matching as if the NSA, which has made this revelation available to The Intercept, found out that Russia was hacking American voting machines on the eve of the election. But again with no connectivity to trying to get Donald Trump elected, and yet that is what the article summarizes in its conclusion. It’s shoddy journalism; I would say it is garbage journalism and it is based on nothing with underlying intelligence. Again, why would the NSA, FBI, and CIA have been waging a war for the past year to convince the American people that Russia is taking over America, why would they release this document to The Intercept ?
There are a number of things that are peculiar here. One of them is the circumstance of the arrest of this contractor so quickly after this item appeared in The Intercept. But on The Intercept article itself, it is a little odd: this is the first article that appears to be pointed toward any kind of compromise of the actual election system, as opposed to releasing information that maybe prejudicial to Hillary Clinton’s campaign that came from the DNC, which has been the allegation thus far. Also it seems odd it would be sent to some place like The Intercept rather than the usual vehicles for leaked information, like The Washington Post or The New York Times. – former US diplomat Jim Jatras
RT: Although it’s supposedly the most detailed US report yet on claimed Russian interference in the election, it doesn’t actually show the raw intelligence. Are we ever going to see the actual hard evidence?
BB: No one actually knows what the Russian intelligence agencies hacked or didn’t hack. We don’t know. We do know that during the past year when this has become the dominant narrative within the mainstream media, the dominant call by the Democratic Party elites, the primary allegation explaining why they lost the election, when we see all of this, and we realize even up to today, even with this article, not one piece of hard evidence backing it up. Wouldn’t there be some hard evidence now, after all of this time showing the raw intelligence underlying the report? For some reason, the NSA wanted to use this liberal website in order to give them a top classified document again without any real facts or evidence contained therein.
Some people are touting this as the first counter-attack from the Trump administration to this tyranny of leaks that has been going on here in Washington. I certainly don’t see it as that. If we look at other leaks, like ones concerning General Flynn, or Comey’s conversations with Trump or the meeting of Trump and Lavrov, again, these went to the prestige media, New York Times and The Washington Post. Nobody has been nailed for any of those leaks. Those are things coming from within the deep state itself. Here is a 25-year old contractor, who doesn’t seem to be the kind of vehicle for this we are talking about, and she gets nailed right from the top on a very questionable report. This just happened today, but it almost seems like a provocation of some sort. – former US diplomat Jim Jatras
RT: Even if the hacking took place, why does the NSA insist the Russian government made the interference? Couldn’t random hackers have done it with “patriotic leanings”?
BB: Because we are in the midst of a witch hunt. After WWII, and after the breakup of the US-British-Soviet military alliance that defeated fascism, the US media and the intelligence agencies, like CIA, like FBI, later now the NSA, joined to generate a witch hunt against anyone associated with the Soviet Union and thus Russia. We see the same thing happening today. There are no facts, there is no evidence, but there is a hysteria being created. The intelligence agencies, which have overthrown other countries’ governments if they win elections that the Americans don’t prefer, who have intervened in other countries’ governments, who have carried out assassination programs now are saying we are the champions and the defenders of American democracy from the great menace to American democracy which is posed by the Kremlin. This is political; it is actually pure politics.
Read more:
DOJ charges govt contractor with leaking top secret material to The Intercept
Timing is everything
Xymphora | June 6, 2017
“Barely an hour after a news organization published an article about a Top Secret National Security Agency document on Russian hacking, the Justice Department announced charges against a 25-year-old government contractor who a senior federal official says was the leaker of the document.”
In other words, they were sitting around waiting for publication (with foreknowledge, somehow), essentially part of a conspiracy with the Intercept to make a big anti-Trump PR splash (timed to fall between the Putin interview and the Comey testimony). Of course, no effort whatsoever to prevent the spilling of secrets. This speedy arrest stands in marked contrast to the big zero of arrests of all the other anti-Trump leakers.
It is hilarious how the Intercept describes the methods that the Russians used to attempt to gain control of American elections – with, as usual, no proof, just ‘analysis’ (see, generally, the excellent “The Big Fat Compendium Of Russiagate Debunkery”, as good as it gets while maintaining a respectable shyness about real root khauses) – without troubling itself to consider the issue that anybody could have done this, and could do it in the future. It is really an indictment of the entire non-paper-ballot system.
You have to read well into the piece to see that the alleged attack was not against the voting process itself, but voter registration. Why would the Russians go to all this effort to attack a relatively unimportant part of the process? Why waste effort and potential exposure (which would allow countermeasures to be taken) when they might have decided to attack the integrity of the vote casting to actually alter results? A lot of the Intercept article is spent dodging around these obvious questions.
It is the Republicans who are famous for using voter registration for vote suppression.
Remember Omran in Syria’s Aleppo?
Al-Manar | June 6, 2017
Remember the five-year-old boy whose bloodied and dusty image went viral on media outlets and social media last year?
Omran Daqneesh, whose photo made a CNN presenter weep on air, and whose photo was taken from a pocket of a Swiss Journalist in front of President Bashar Assad, in a bid to blame his government for “killing civilians in Aleppo”.
Today, a new footage of Omran has emerged. However this time a new story is being told, by Omran’s father.
In a video broadcast on Syrian TV, Omran’s father told TV presenter Kinana Alloush that he and his family did not get out of Aleppo, stressing that he did not consider himself and his family targeted by the Syrian army.
Moreover, the father revealed that Takfiri terrorists brought his son to the hospital “just to film him, in order to use him for their propaganda.”
He said that he did not hear a plane above his house before the alleged strike last August and said he rejected offers to leave Syria by parties wishing to damage the reputation of the country’s army.
Omran’s father said that he changed his son’s name and his hairstyle to evade individuals who threatened to kidnap him, noting that the insurgents intimidated him.
Below is a video of Omran aired on Press TV:
This boy seems to be fine and happy in the liberated Aleppo pic.twitter.com/0b9qmQqA1I
— Press TV (@PressTV) June 6, 2017
‘The BBC Has Betrayed Its Own Rules Of Impartiality’: Yemen, Saudi Arabia And The General Election
Media Lens – June 5, 2017
A key function of BBC propaganda is to present the perspective of ‘the West’ on the wars and conflicts of the world. Thus, in a recent online report, BBC News once again gave prominence to the Pentagon propaganda version of yet more US killings in Yemen. The headline stated:
US forces kill seven al-Qaeda militants in Yemen, says Pentagon
Seven ‘militants’ killed is the stark message. A veneer of ‘impartiality’ is provided by the weasel words, ‘says Pentagon’. BBC News then notes blandly, and without quotation marks:
The primary objective of the operation was to gather intelligence.
Nowhere in the short article was there any attempt to provide an alternative view of who had been killed and why. Were they really all ‘militants’? How is a ‘militant’ distinguished from a ‘civilian’, or from a soldier defending his country against foreign invaders? There was not even a cautious statement to the effect that the Pentagon’s claims could not be verified, as one might expect of responsible journalism.
Instead, we have to turn to Reprieve, an international human rights organisation founded in 1999 by the British lawyer Clive Stafford Smith. The group reports that five of the ‘militants’ were civilians, including a partially blind 70-year-old man who was shot when he tried to greet the US Navy Seals, mistaking them for guests arriving in his village.
But their civilians are mere ‘collateral damage’ in war. Since January 2017, the US has launched 90 or more drone strikes in Yemen, killing around 100 people, according to the Bureau of Investigative Journalism. This death toll includes 25 civilians, among whom were 10 children, killed in the village of al Ghayil in the Yemeni highlands during a US raid that was described by President Trump as ‘highly successful’.
Mentions of such atrocities were notable by their absence in ‘mainstream’ media coverage of Trump’s recent trip to Saudi Arabia where he signed trade deals worth around $350 billion. This included an arms deal of $110 billion which the White House described as ‘the single biggest in US history.’ It would not do for the corporate media, including BBC News, to dwell on the implications for Yemen where at least 10,000 people have been killed since the start of the Saudi-led bombing campaign in 2015. 14 million Yemenis, more than half the population, are facing hunger with the Saudis deliberately targeting food production.
The World Health Organisation recently warned of the rising numbers of deaths in Yemen due to cholera, saying that it was ‘unprecedented’. Save the Children says that at the current rate, more than 65,000 cases of cholera are expected by the end of June. The cholera outbreak could well become ‘a full blown-epidemic’. Moreover:
The upsurge comes as the health system, sanitation facilities and civil infrastructure have reached breaking point because of the ongoing war.
As US investigative journalist Gareth Porter observes via Twitter:
World leaders are silent as #Yemen faces horrible cholera epidemic linked to #Saudi War & famine. Politics as usual.
Iona Craig, formerly a Yemen-based correspondent for The Times, notes that ‘more than 58 hospitals now have been bombed by the coalition airstrikes, and people just do not have access to medical care in a way that they did before the war.’ As if the bombing was not already brutal, Saudi Arabia has imposed a cruel blockade on Yemen that is delaying, or even preventing, vital commodities from getting into the country. Grant Pritchard, interim country director for Save the Children in Yemen, says:
These delays are killing children. Our teams are dealing with outbreaks of cholera, and children suffering from diarrhoea, measles, malaria and malnutrition.
With the right medicines these are all completely treatable — but the Saudi-led coalition is stopping them getting in. They are turning aid and commercial supplies into weapons of war.
As one doctor at the Republic teaching hospital in Sanaa commented:
We are unable to get medical supplies. Anaesthetics. Medicines for kidneys. There are babies dying in incubators because we can’t get supplies to treat them.
The doctor estimated that 25 people were dying every day at the hospital because of the blockade. He continued:
They call it natural death. But it’s not. If we had the medicines they wouldn’t be dead.
I consider them killed as if they were killed by an air strike, because if we had the medicines they would still be alive.
None of this grim reality was deemed relevant to Trump’s signing of the massive new arms deal with Saudi Arabia. BBC News focused instead on inanities such as Trump ‘to soften his rhetoric’, ‘joins Saudi sword dance’ and ‘no scarf for Melania’. But then, it is standard practice for the BBC to absolve the West of any blame for the Yemen war and humanitarian disaster.
British historian Mark Curtis poses a vital question that journalists fear to raise, not least those at the BBC: is there, in effect, collusion between the BBC and UK arms manufacturer BAE Systems not to report on UK support for the Saudi bombing of Yemen, and not to make it an election issue? Curtis also notes that the BBC has not published any online article about UK arms being sold to the Saudis for use in Yemen since as far back as January. This, he says, is ‘misinforming the public, a disgrace’. He also rightly points out that the BAE Systems Chairman, Sir Roger Carr, was also Vice-Chair of the BBC Trust until April 2017 (when the Trust was wound up at the end of its 10-year tenure). The BBC Trust’s role was to ensure the BBC lived up to its statutory obligations to the public, including news ‘balance’ and ‘impartiality’. How could Sir Roger’s dual role not suggest a major potential conflict of interest?
On the wider issue of ‘mainstream’ media coverage of foreign policy, the political journalist Peter Oborne notes that:
Needless to say, the British media (and in particular the BBC, which has a constitutional duty to ensure fair play during general elections) has practically ignored Corbyn’s foreign policy manifesto.
Oborne writes that the manifesto:
is radical and morally courageous.
He explains that, pre-Corbyn:
Foreign policy on both sides was literally identical. The leadership of both Labour and the Conservatives backed the wars in Iraq, Libya and Afghanistan, the alliance with Saudi Arabia and the Sunni states in the Gulf.
London did what it was told by Washington. […] This cross-party consensus has been smashed, thanks to Jeremy Corbyn, the current Labour leader. Whatever one thinks of Corbyn’s political views (and I disagree with many of them), British democracy owes him a colossal debt of gratitude for restoring genuine political debate to Britain.
And of course his extremely brave and radical decision to break with the foreign policy analysis of Blair and his successors explains why he is viewed with such hatred and contempt across so much of the media and within the Westminster political establishment.
But, as Oborne notes, this important change has not been fairly represented in media coverage. In particular, on Yemen and Saudi Arabia:
It is deeply upsetting that the BBC has betrayed its own rules of impartiality and ignored Corbyn’s brave stand on this issue.
We challenged Andrew Roy, the BBC News Foreign Editor, to respond to Oborne’s observations. He ignored us (here and here). Roy’s silence is especially noteworthy given that he had once promised:
If there is a considered detailed complaint to something we’ve done, I will always respond to it personally.
Perhaps Oborne’s challenge to the BBC was not deemed sufficiently ‘considered’ or ‘detailed’ by the senior BBC News editor. Likewise, our own challenges over many years in numerous media alerts addressing BBC foreign coverage have been ignored or, at best, brushed away.
It was noteworthy that Corbyn’s considered response to the most recent terrorist attack in London was selectively reported, arguably censored, by BBC News. Corbyn said:
We need to have some difficult conversations, starting with Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states that have funded and fuelled extremist ideology.
It is no good Theresa May suppressing a report into the foreign funding of terrorist groups. We have to get serious about cutting off the funding to these terror networks, including Isis here and in the Middle East.
Sky News broadcast Corbyn’s comments, but they do not appear to have been covered by BBC News. Certainly, as far as we can see, there is no mention of them in their ‘Live’ blog on the London attack or in Laura Kuenssberg’s analysis, ‘Election 2017: Impact of London terror attack on campaign’. And nothing about the Saudi link with terrorism appears in the BBC’s online report on Corbyn’s speech, focusing instead on the issue of May’s cuts to police numbers while Home Secretary. Even this issue alone, if properly and fully addressed by the media, should be a resigning matter for May as Prime Minister. Responding to the London attacks, Peter Kirkham, a former Senior Investigating Officer with the Metropolitan police, accused the government of lying over police numbers on UK streets. And a serving firearms officer says that:
The Government is wrong to claim police cuts have nothing to do with recent attacks.
Despite her denials, Theresa May’s cuts to police numbers have made attacks like London and Manchester much more likely.
Kuenssberg’s piece included passing mention of ‘the Tories’ record on squeezing money for the police’. But she gave no figures showing a reduction in the number of armed police; crucial statistics which she could have easily found from the Home Office.
Mark Curtis gives a damning assessment of BBC reporting on foreign affairs, particularly during the general election campaign. Noting first that:
One aspect of a free and fair election is “nonpartisan” coverage by state media.
He continues:
Yet BBC reporting on Britain’s foreign policy is simply amplifying state priorities and burying its complicity in human rights abuses. The BBC is unable to report even that Britain is at war – in Yemen, where the UK is arming the Saudis to conduct mass bombing, having supplied them with aircraft and £1 billion worth of bombs, while training their pilots.
Curtis then provides some telling statistics:
From 4 April to 15 May, the BBC website carried only 10 articles on Yemen but 97 on Syria: focusing on the crimes of an official enemy rather than our own. Almost no BBC articles on Yemen mention British arms exports. Theresa May’s government is complicit in mass civilian deaths in Yemen and pushing millions of people to the brink of starvation; that this is not an election issue is a stupendous propaganda achievement.
Indeed, our newspaper database searches reveal that, since the election was called on April 18, there has been no significant journalistic scrutiny of May’s support of Saudi Arabia’s bombing campaign in Yemen. The subject was even deemed radioactive during a public meeting in Rye, Sussex, when Amber Rudd, standing for re-election, appeared to shut down discussion of arms sales to Saudi Arabia. Electoral candidate Nicholas Wilson explains what happened:
At a hustings in Rye on 3 June, where I am standing as an independent anti-corruption parliamentary candidate, a question was asked about law & order. Home Secretary Amber Rudd, in answering it referred to the Manchester terrorist attack. I took up the theme and referred to UK arms sales to Saudi Arabia & HSBC business there. She spoke to and handed a note to the chairman who removed the mic from me.
The footage of this shameful censorship deserves to be widely seen. If a similar event had happened in Russia or North Korea, it would have received intensive media scrutiny here. Once again, we note the arms connection with the BBC through BAE Systems Chairman, Sir Roger Carr. Wilson has also pointed out a potential conflict of interest between HSBC and the BBC through Rona Fairhead who was a non-executive director of HSBC while serving as Chair of the BBC Trust.
These links, and Theresa May’s support for the Saudi regime, have gone essentially unexamined by the BBC. And yet, when BBC political editor Laura Kuenssberg responded to Corbyn’s manifesto launch, her subtle use of insidious language betrayed an inherent bias against Corbyn and his policies on foreign affairs. She wrote: ‘rather than scramble to cover up his past views for fear they would be unpopular’, he would ‘double down… proudly’. Kuenssberg’s use of pejorative language – ‘scramble’, ‘cover up’, ‘unpopular’ – delivered a powerful negative spin against Corbyn policies that, in fact, as Oborne argues, are hugely to his credit.
When has Kuenssberg ever pressed May over her appalling voting record on Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria and Yemen? In fact, there is no need for May to ‘scramble’ to ‘cover up’ her past views. Why not? Because the ‘mainstream’ media rarely, if ever, seriously challenge her about being consistently and disastrously wrong in her foreign policy choices; not least, on decisions to go to war.
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Are There 50,000 ‘Israeli-born’ Individuals Living in the UK?
By Professor David Miller | August 18, 2026
Recent disclosures by the Zionist regime show that some 2,069 British nationals were serving in the IDF as of March 2025, according to Freedom of Information (FoI) requests submitted to the occupation forces (1,686 dual British-Israeli, plus 383 multinational). We cannot tell from the figures how many of these were already settler colonists and intend to stay in the colony, and how many will return or have returned to the UK. Presumably, those returning to the UK will number far fewer than 2,000, since many are known to have become permanently residents of the colony.
Additionally, the IDF figures only provide a snapshot, and do not tell us how many have served in the Jewish supremacist military either before or after March 2025. One way into the question of how many genocidaires are living in Britain is to ask how many current British residents were born in the Zionist colony. There is data on that, as we shall see. … continue
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