‘Venezuelan Bomb Plot’ a Figment of FBI’s–and US Media’s–Imagination
By Jim Naureckas | FAIR | February 2, 2015
All these headlines are wrong:
Ex-Los Alamos Scientist Gets 5 Years in Venezuelan Nuclear Bomb Plot
– NBC News (1/28/15)US Nuclear Scientist Who Offered to Help Venezuela Build Nuclear Bombs Gets 60 Months
– Washington Post (1/29/15)Ex-Los Alamos Scientist Heard Offering to Design Bomb Directed at NYC for Venezuela
– CBS New York (1/28/15)Ex-Los Alamos Scientist Accused of Offering to Make Venezuela a Nuclear Weapon to Be Sentenced
– Minneapolis Star Tribune (1/28/15)Scientist Sentenced After Offering to Build Nuclear Weapons for Venezuela, Bomb Targeting New York
– Syracuse Post-Standard (1/28/15)
What’s wrong is that there was no “Venezuelan nuclear bomb plot,” and the scientist in question, Pedro Leonardo Mascheroni, didn’t offer Venezuela anything. What Mascheroni was convicted of was telling undercover FBI agents, who were pretending to work for Venezuela, that he could give them nuclear weapons secrets. In real life, Venezuela had nothing to do with it.
The distinction is critical because accurate headlines would not leave casual readers with the impression that Venezuela was interested in getting a nuclear bomb, or in trying to nuke New York. From the point of view of the US government, no doubt, that misimpression is a feature and not a bug.
Al-Qaeda, Saudi Arabia and Israel
By Robert Parry | Consortium News | February 4, 2015
The disclosure that convicted al-Qaeda operative Zacarias Moussaoui has identified leading members of the Saudi government as financers of the terrorist network potentially reshapes how Americans will perceive events in the Middle East and creates a risk for Israel’s Likud government which has forged an unlikely alliance with some of these same Saudis.
According to a story in the New York Times on Wednesday, Moussaoui said in a prison deposition that he was directed in 1998 or 1999 by Qaeda leaders in Afghanistan to create a digital database of the group’s donors and that the list included Prince Turki al-Faisal, then Saudi intelligence chief; Prince Bandar bin Sultan, longtime Saudi ambassador to the United States; Prince al-Waleed bin Talal, a prominent billionaire investor; and many leading clerics.
Prince Bandar bin Sultan, then Saudi ambassador to the United States, meeting with President George W. Bush in Crawford, Texas. (White House photo)
“Sheikh Osama wanted to keep a record who give money,” Moussaoui said in imperfect English — “who is to be listened to or who contributed to the jihad.”
Although Moussaoui’s credibility came under immediate attack from the Saudi kingdom, his assertions mesh with accounts from members of the U.S. Congress who have seen a secret portion of the 9/11 report that addresses alleged Saudi support for al-Qaeda.
Further complicating the predicament for Saudi Arabia is that, more recently, Saudi and other Persian Gulf oil sheikdoms have been identified as backers of Sunni militants fighting in Syria to overthrow the largely secular regime of President Bashar al-Assad. The major rebel force benefiting from this support is al-Nusra Front, al-Qaeda’s affiliate in Syria.
In other words, the Saudis appear to have continued a covert relationship with al-Qaeda-connected jihadists to the present day.
The Israeli Exposure
And, like the Saudis, the Israelis have sided with the Sunni militants in Syria because the Israelis share the Saudi view that Iran and the so-called “Shiite crescent” – reaching from Tehran and Baghdad to Damascus and Beirut – is the greatest threat to their interests in the Middle East.
That shared concern has pushed Israel and Saudi Arabia into a de facto alliance, though the collaboration between Jerusalem and Riyadh has been mostly kept out of the public eye. Still, it has occasionally peeked out from under the covers as the two governments deploy their complementary assets – Saudi oil and money and Israeli political and media clout – in areas where they have mutual interests.
In recent years, these historic enemies have cooperated in their joint disdain for the Muslim Brotherhood government in Egypt (which was overthrown in 2013), in seeking the ouster of the Assad regime in Syria, and in pressing for a more hostile U.S. posture toward Iran.
Israel and Saudi Arabia also have collaborated in efforts to put the squeeze on Russia’s President Vladimir Putin, who is deemed a key supporter of both Iran and Syria. The Saudis have used their power over oil production to drive down prices and hurt Russia’s economy, while U.S. neoconservatives – who share Israel’s geopolitical world view – were at the forefront of the coup that ousted Ukraine’s pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych in 2014.
The behind-the-scenes Israeli-Saudi alliance has put the two governments – uncomfortably at times – on the side of Sunni jihadists battling Shiite influence in Syria, Lebanon and even Iraq. On Jan. 18, 2015, for instance, Israel attacked Lebanese-Iranian advisers assisting Assad’s government in Syria, killing several members of Hezbollah and an Iranian general. These military advisors were engaged in operations against al-Qaeda’s Nusra Front.
Meanwhile, Israel has refrained from attacking Nusra Front militants who have seized Syrian territory near the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. One source familiar with U.S. intelligence information on Syria told me that Israel has a “non-aggression pact” with these Nusra forces.
An Odd Alliance
Israel’s odd-couple alliances with Sunni interests have evolved over the past several years, as Israel and Saudi Arabia emerged as strange bedfellows in the geopolitical struggle against Shiite-ruled Iran and its allies in Iraq, Syria and southern Lebanon. In Syria, for instance, senior Israelis have made clear they would prefer Sunni extremists to prevail in the civil war rather than Assad, who is an Alawite, a branch of Shiite Islam.
In September 2013, Israel’s Ambassador to the United States Michael Oren, then a close adviser to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, told the Jerusalem Post that Israel favored the Sunni extremists over Assad.
“The greatest danger to Israel is by the strategic arc that extends from Tehran, to Damascus to Beirut. And we saw the Assad regime as the keystone in that arc,” Oren told the Jerusalem Post in an interview. “We always wanted Bashar Assad to go, we always preferred the bad guys who weren’t backed by Iran to the bad guys who were backed by Iran.” He said this was the case even if the “bad guys” were affiliated with al-Qaeda.
And, in June 2014, speaking as a former ambassador at an Aspen Institute conference, Oren expanded on his position, saying Israel would even prefer a victory by the brutal Islamic State over continuation of the Iranian-backed Assad in Syria. “From Israel’s perspective, if there’s got to be an evil that’s got to prevail, let the Sunni evil prevail,” Oren said.
Skepticism and Doubt
In August 2013, when I first reported on the growing relationship between Israel and Saudi Arabia in an article entitled “The Saudi-Israeli Superpower,” the story was met with much skepticism. But, increasingly, this secret alliance has gone public.
On Oct. 1, 2013, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu hinted at it in his United Nations General Assembly speech, which was largely devoted to excoriating Iran over its nuclear program and threatening a unilateral Israeli military strike.
Amid the bellicosity, Netanyahu dropped in a largely missed clue about the evolving power relationships in the Middle East, saying: “The dangers of a nuclear-armed Iran and the emergence of other threats in our region have led many of our Arab neighbors to recognize, finally recognize, that Israel is not their enemy. And this affords us the opportunity to overcome the historic animosities and build new relationships, new friendships, new hopes.”
The next day, Israel’s Channel 2 TV news reported that senior Israeli security officials had met with a high-level Gulf state counterpart in Jerusalem, believed to be Prince Bandar, the former Saudi ambassador to the United States who was then head of Saudi intelligence.
The reality of this unlikely alliance has now even reached the mainstream U.S. media. For instance, Time magazine correspondent Joe Klein described the new coziness in an article in the Jan. 19, 2015 issue.
He wrote: “On May 26, 2014, an unprecedented public conversation took place in Brussels. Two former high-ranking spymasters of Israel and Saudi Arabia – Amos Yadlin and Prince Turki al-Faisal – sat together for more than an hour, talking regional politics in a conversation moderated by the Washington Post’s David Ignatius.
“They disagreed on some things, like the exact nature of an Israel-Palestine peace settlement, and agreed on others: the severity of the Iranian nuclear threat, the need to support the new military government in Egypt, the demand for concerted international action in Syria. The most striking statement came from Prince Turki. He said the Arabs had ‘crossed the Rubicon’ and ‘don’t want to fight Israel anymore.’”
Though Klein detected only the bright side of this détente, there was a dark side as well, as referenced in Moussaoui’s deposition, which identified Prince Turki as one of al-Qaeda’s backers. Perhaps even more unsettling was his listing of Prince Bandar, who had long presented himself as a U.S. friend, so close to the Bush Family that he was nicknamed “Bandar Bush.”
Moussaoui claimed that he discussed a plan to shoot down Air Force One with a Stinger missile with a staff member at the Saudi Embassy in Washington, at a time when Bandar was the ambassador to the United States.
According to the New York Times article by Scott Shane, Moussaoui said he was assigned to “find a location where it may be suitable to launch a Stinger attack and then, after, be able to escape,” but that he was arrested on Aug. 16, 2001, before he could carry out the reconnaissance mission.
The thought of anyone in the Saudi embassy, then under the control of “Bandar Bush,” scheming with al-Qaeda to shoot down George W. Bush’s Air Force One is shocking, if true. The notion would have been considered unthinkable even after the 9/11 attacks, which involved 15 Saudis among the 19 hijackers.
After those terror attacks which killed nearly 3,000 Americans, Bandar went to the White House and persuaded Bush to arrange for the rapid extraction of bin Laden’s family members and other Saudis in the United States. Bush agreed to help get those Saudi nationals out on the first flights allowed back into the air.
Bandar’s intervention undercut the FBI’s chance to learn more about the ties between Osama bin Laden and the 9/11 perpetrators by giving FBI agents only time for cursory interviews with the departing Saudis.
Bandar himself was close to the bin Laden family and acknowledged having met Osama bin Laden in the context of bin Laden thanking Bandar for his help financing the jihad project in Afghanistan during the 1980s. “I was not impressed, to be honest with you,” Bandar told CNN’s Larry King about bin Laden. “I thought he was simple and very quiet guy.”
The Saudi government claimed to have broken ties with bin Laden in the early 1990s when he began targeting the United States because President George H.W. Bush had stationed U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia, but – if Moussaoui is telling the truth – al-Qaeda would have still counted Bandar among its supporters in the late 1990s.
Bandar and Putin
Bandar’s possible links to Sunni terrorism also emerged in 2013 during a confrontation between Bandar and Putin over what Putin viewed as Bandar’s crude threat to unleash Chechen terrorists against the Sochi Winter Olympics if Putin did not reduce his support for the Syrian government.
According to a leaked diplomatic account of a July 31, 2013 meeting in Moscow, Bandar informed Putin that Saudi Arabia had strong influence over Chechen extremists who had carried out numerous terrorist attacks against Russian targets and who had since deployed to join the fight against the Assad regime in Syria.
As Bandar called for a Russian shift toward the Saudi position on Syria, he reportedly offered guarantees of protection from Chechen terror attacks on the Olympics. “I can give you a guarantee to protect the Winter Olympics in the city of Sochi on the Black Sea next year,” Bandar reportedly said. “The Chechen groups that threaten the security of the games are controlled by us.”
Putin responded, “We know that you have supported the Chechen terrorist groups for a decade. And that support, which you have frankly talked about just now, is completely incompatible with the common objectives of fighting global terrorism.”
Bandar’s Mafia-like threat toward the Sochi games – a version of “nice Olympics you got here, it’d be a shame if something terrible happened to it” – failed to intimidate Putin, who continued to support Assad.
Less than a month later, an incident in Syria almost forced President Barack Obama’s hand in launching U.S. air strikes against Assad’s military, which would have possibly opened the path for the Nusra Front or the Islamic State to capture Damascus and take control of Syria. On Aug. 21, 2013, a mysterious sarin attack outside Damascus killed hundreds and, in the U.S. media, the incident was immediately blamed on the Assad regime.
American neocons and their allied “liberal interventionists” demanded that Obama launch retaliatory air strikes even though some U.S. intelligence analysts doubted that Assad’s forces were responsible and suspected that the attack was carried out by extremist rebels trying to pull the U.S. military into the civil war on their side.
Yet, pushed by the neocons and liberal war hawks, Obama nearly ordered a bombing campaign designed to “degrade” the Syrian military but called it off at the last minute. He then accepted Putin’s help in reaching a diplomatic solution in which Assad agreed to surrender his entire chemical weapons arsenal, while still denying any role in the sarin attack.
Later, the Assad-did-it case crumbled amid new evidence that Sunni extremists, supported by Saudi Arabia and Turkey, were the more likely perpetrators of the attack, a scenario that became increasingly persuasive as Americans learned more about the cruelty and ruthlessness of many Sunni jihadists fighting in Syria. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “The Mistaken Guns of Last August.”]
Targeting Putin
Putin’s cooperation with Obama to head off a U.S. military strike in Syria made the Russian president more of a target for the American neocons who thought they finally had reached the cusp of their long-desired “regime change” in Syria only to be blocked by Putin. By late September 2013, a leading neocon, National Endowment for Democracy President Carl Gershman, announced the goal of challenging Putin and recognizing his sore point in Ukraine.
Taking to the Washington Post’s op-ed page on Sept. 26, 2013, Gershman called Ukraine “the biggest prize” and an important step toward ultimately ousting Putin. Gershman wrote, “Ukraine’s choice to join Europe will accelerate the demise of the ideology of Russian imperialism that Putin represents. … Russians, too, face a choice, and Putin may find himself on the losing end not just in the near abroad but within Russia itself.” [See Consortiumnews.com’s “Neocons’ Ukraine-Syria-Iran Gambit.“]
However, in early 2014, Putin was obsessed with Bandar’s implicit threat of terrorism striking the Sochi Olympics, thus distracting him from the “regime change” – being pushed by NED and neocon Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Victoria Nuland – next door in Ukraine.
On Feb. 22, 2014, putschists, spearheaded by well-organized neo-Nazi militias, drove elected President Viktor Yanukovych and his government from power. Putin was caught off-guard and, in the resulting political chaos, agreed to requests from Crimean officials and voters to accept Crimea back into Russia, thus exploding his cooperative relationship with Obama.
With Putin the new pariah in Official Washington, the neocon hand also was strengthened in the Middle East where renewed pressure could be put on the “Shiite crescent” in Syria and Iran. However, in summer 2014, the Islamic State, which had splintered off from al-Qaeda and its Nusra Front, went on a rampage, invading Iraq where captured soldiers were beheaded. The Islamic State then engaged in gruesome videotaped decapitations of Western hostages inside Syria.
The Islamic State’s brutality and the threat it posed to the U.S.-backed, Shiite-dominated government of Iraq changed the political calculus. Obama felt compelled to launch airstrikes against Islamic State targets in both Iraq and Syria. American neocons tried to convince Obama to expand the Syrian strikes to hit Assad’s forces, too, but Obama realized such a plan would only benefit the Islamic State and al-Qaeda’s Nusra Front.
In effect, the neocons were showing their hand – much as Israeli Ambassador Oren had done – favoring the Sunni extremists allied with al-Qaeda over Assad’s secular regime because it was allied with Iran. Now, with Moussaoui’s deposition identifying senior Saudi officials as patrons of al-Qaeda, another veil seems to have dropped.
Complicating matters further, Moussaoui also claimed that he passed letters between Osama bin Laden and then Crown Prince Salman, who recently became king upon the death of his brother King Abdullah.
But Moussaoui’s disclosure perhaps cast the most unflattering light on Bandar, the erstwhile confidant of the Bush Family who — if Moussaoui is right — may have been playing a sinister double game.
Also facing potentially embarrassing questions is Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, especially if he goes through with his planned speech before a joint session of Congress next month, attacking Obama for being soft on Iran.
And, America’s neocons might have some explaining to do about why they have carried water not just for the Israelis but for Israel’s de facto allies in Saudi Arabia.
~
Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his latest book, America’s Stolen Narrative, either in print here or as an e-book (from Amazon and barnesandnoble.com).
Did North Korea Really Hack Sony?
By James DiEugenio | Consortium News | February 3, 2015
One of the major problems with modern American democracy is the fact that the U.S. government has a serious credibility problem. This is not new of course. In its contemporary strain, it goes back at least to 1964 when two events focused and magnified the problem. The first was the Gulf of Tonkin incident, which was used to launch the Vietnam War. The second was the issuance of the Warren Report, the widely doubted official account of John F. Kennedy’s assassination.
As Kevin Phillips demonstrated with polling results in his book Arrogant Capital, that year marked the beginning of a long decline in the public’s trust in the government’s ability to do what is right most of the time. Prior to that year, the number hovered in the mid-70 percentile. After that, the figure began to drop steeply. It bottomed out at 19 percent in 1992. (This was clearly a large factor in boosting the presidential candidacy of Ross Perot that year.) It has failed to recover in any significant way since.
Historically speaking, it’s easy to name some of the causes for this headlong slide into skepticism and disbelief: the escalation in Vietnam, the assassinations of key leaders during the 1960s, Watergate, the Iran/Contra affair, the exposure of CIA drug-running during wars in Southeast Asia and Central America.
As Nicolas JS Davies has pointed out, some more recent examples would be the false reasons for the invasion of Iraq, the dubious attribution of imminent nuclear weaponry for Iran, the attempt to accuse President Bashar al-Assad of Syria of using sarin gas against civilians, and the attempt to blame Russia for the shoot-down of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17.
As the reader can see, many of these instances involve the effort of certain reactionary members of the Executive Branch in Washington and their allies in the media to use the American military abroad. One would have thought that after the disastrous results of the Tonkin Gulf Resolution, the major media would investigate more carefully what now seems to be a recurrent pattern of ersatz attribution to provoke American intervention. But, by and large, the doubts about these events have been expressed only in the alternative media.
The final incident Davies (briefly) mentioned was last year’s computer hacking of Sony/Columbia studios, which the FBI blamed on North Korea. The ostensible reason for this cyber-attack was the upcoming release of the comedy film, The Interview, which depicted an interview by a fictional American TV personality with Kim Jong-un, the actual leader of North Korea.
This interview becomes a pretext for an assassination attempt that goes awry. But, as the movie unfolds, the interview does happen and Kim does not come off well in it. This causes him to try to kill the Americans responsible. It backfires and he is killed instead.
Perhaps no film since Oliver Stone’s JFK generated as much pre-release controversy as The Interview. But unlike Stone’s picture, which created a sensation over its contrary-to-the-Establishment view of President Kennedy’s assassination, this particular brouhaha is largely based upon the alleged cyber-attack by North Korea.
When the FBI pointed the finger at Pyongyang, Sony/Columbia decided not to release the film, citing security concerns. Both people in the film colony and in the media met that decision with much derision. Therefore, Columbia reconsidered and did a limited theatrical run for the film, combined with a large online release. Due to the massive coverage of the controversy, the latter has been a big success. In fact, it has set records in that category.
‘The Interview’ as a Movie
The movie was co-directed by Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg, who also had a hand in writing the story. Along with James Franco, Rogen also stars in the film. Rogen and Goldberg have been friends since childhood in Vancouver, Canada. Rogen’s career took off after he moved to Los Angeles and met writer-director Judd Apatow, who produced Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy and directed The 40 Year Old Virgin.
After first using Rogen in a TV series called Freaks and Geeks, Rogen starred in Apatow’s 2007 film Knocked Up. Apatow then produced two films written by Rogen and Goldberg, Pineapple Express and Superbad. Franco was also in Freaks and Geeks, and Pineapple Express with Rogen. Rogen and Goldberg then scripted The Green Hornet in 2011; they wrote and co-directed This Is the End in 2013.
Reportedly, Rogen once advised Apatow to make his work more “outrageously dirty.” [Los Angeles Times, May 13, 2007] And Apatow once said he wanted to include a penis in each of his films. [The Guardian. Aug. 26, 2008]
Well, we get those kinds of jokes in The Interview. The premise of the film revolves around Franco as a TV personality named Dave Skylark, the host of a rather lowbrow interview show titled Skylark Tonight. Rogen plays the producer-director of the program and has ambitions of doing something more socially and politically significant, a la 60 Minutes.
In one of the several unfathomable plot twists in the film, Kim likes Skylark Tonight so much that he wants to be a guest on the show and to arrange the guest spot through Rogen. But, in another hard to buy plot twist, Kim wants to arrange the interview in some sparsely populated rural area in China. (I think this segment was designed to generate laughs — which it does not.)
The visit to North Korea is now set up with a female military representative of Kim’s. Upon Rogen’s return, he and Franco celebrate and they announce the upcoming event on the air.
Now, another rather hard to believe strophe occurs. The CIA visits the two men and asks them to assassinate Kim. No specific reason is given as to why (though Kim is widely viewed in the West as a clownish and unstable dictator), or why they chose these two utter amateurs for such a daring, high-risk scheme.
The CIA wants them to kill Kim with a toxic poison attached to the palm of their hands. This strip is hidden in a pack of gum. But when they arrive in North Korea, one of their military guards takes out the pack and chews the strip. He spits it out, and in a rather unfunny follow-up, we later watch him die from the poison at a dinner.
Franco now meets Kim. The North Korean is on his best behavior and the two hit it off for a couple of days playing basketball and partying with some scantily clad girls.
Twisting the Plot
But now, another rather weird plot twist occurs. Franco wanders out of the presidential palace, going to what he thought was a grocery store nearby. He goes inside and discovers that the store is really a Potemkin village. That is, things like fruit and vegetables are really painted props.
Obviously, this scene is intended to highlight the shortage of food supplies in North Korea, but why the North Koreans would plant the store so close to the palace, why they would leave it unattended, and why they could not import real goods to stock it at this crucial time, these kinds of questions make this episode another head-scratcher. But the plot device explains why Franco turns on his new friend, Kim Jong-un.
In the meantime, Rogen has fallen for the female military attaché. It turns out she secretly hates Kim and now allies herself with the Americans. She says they cannot just kill him; they must humiliate him on TV so the Korean people will see him as a pretentious buffoon and charlatan.
So, Franco/Skylark decides to structure the interview to expose Kim. But the station technicians cut the feed. Rogen and his girlfriend then pull out firearms, touching off a bloody fight in the control room also involving Korean troops. Somehow, the amateur Americans kill all the Koreans. Franco is shot at, but he survives because he had a bulletproof vest on.
The trio manages to escape in a tank (no, I won’t explain how that happened) and are pursued by Kim and some soldiers in a helicopter. Kim orders preparations for a nuclear launch. But the tank fires a heat-seeking missile that takes out the chopper. Some CIA double agents then help Rogen and Franco escape the country.
At the end, we see Franco at a book reading about the whole affair as Rogen talks to his North Korean girlfriend via Skype. She stayed behind to democratize the country.
As the reader can see, the story is pretty much escapist, goofball fiction with a plot focused on murdering a real-life leader. But as bad as the script is, the direction by Rogen and Goldberg is even worse.
The Decline of Comedy
In 1965, before he retired from the field, illustrious film critic Dwight MacDonald wrote an essay entitled “Whatever Happened to Hollywood Comedy?” There, he lamented how low the genre had fallen from the Alpine peaks attained by the likes of Keaton, Chaplin, Lloyd and Langdon. Or even from the hills of Preston Sturges, Billy Wilder, Ernst Lubitsch and Howard Hawks.
MacDonald outlined three rules that comic films he was reviewing broke almost systematically. First, he wrote that most of the films had no appealing comic protagonists, which he felt was necessary in the genre. Second, he said they were overproduced and too Rube Goldberg-like in their construction and depiction. (Rogen and Goldberg shoot the helicopter exploding at the end in super-slow-motion.)
Finally, according to MacDonald, the sadism inherent in comedy could not be shown realistically, i.e., if the comic actually broke his back while slipping on a banana peel, that would not be funny.
Well, in the fight in the control room in The Interview, we watch as not one, but two fingers get bitten off. Apparently, no one on the set said to Rogen, “Uh Seth, is that really funny?” Rogen is an even worse director than he is an actor. And the man can’t act.
If MacDonald felt gloomy about the state of film comedy in 1965, one can imagine what he would have written in later years, which leads us to the first question about the hacking mystery: Unless the North Koreans are as imbecilic as the people depicted in the film, could they really have thought that such a frivolous production somehow imperiled the security or image of their country – and to such an extent that they went ahead and risked retaliation by hacking into a private company’s computer system?
To me, the risk simply does not equate with whatever reward was to be had. But there are other indications that the case against North Korea is not nearly as conclusive as the FBI wants us to think. President Barack Obama may have compounded the problem by announcing retaliatory sanctions on Jan. 2. Further, White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest implied there would be more of this because he called it “the U.S. government’s first action…”
The Facts of the Case
The controversy actually began to take shape last June when the North Korean ambassador to the United Nations — without seeing the movie in all of its silliness — condemned the film and urged the United States to cancel its distribution. Clearly, making light of assassinating a nation’s leader is problematic, whatever one may think of the leader, and the North Koreans made their disgust clear.
Then, on Nov. 24, 2014, Columbia discovered that its computers had been hacked. Their employees were locked out and an ugly caricature of a bright red skeleton popped up on their screens that morning. A message appeared which said, “Hacked by #GOP.” Later, personal information, e-mails and unreleased films were leaked online. The films included Still Alice, Annie and To Write Love on Her Arms.
In this context, GOP does not refer to the Republican Party but to a hacking group that calls themselves the Guardians of Peace. It’s interesting to note that although North Korea denies the attack, Guardians of Peace takes credit for it. In fact, the Guardians actually called the FBI a bunch of idiots because of the stupidity of their investigation.
As Kim Zetter pointed out in Wired, nation-states usually don’t announce themselves with images of blazing skeletons or criticize their victims for having poor cyber security, nor do they post stolen data to Pastebin, which is sort of the unofficial warehouse for heisted files on the cloud.
As Zetter writes, “These are all hallmarks of hacktivists — groups like Anonymous and LulzSec, who thrive on targeting large corporations for ideological reasons … or by hackers sympathetic to a political cause” (Wired, Dec. 17, 2014)
Cyber-security expert Marc Rogers agreed that the operation did not look like it was from a nation-state, and he criticized the FBI’s case on specific grounds, noting that because the malware was written in Korean means little, since programs exist to translate that code.
Rogers also said that whoever wrote the malware had extensive knowledge of hard-coded paths and passwords. This would suggest that whoever did the attack was somehow watching Sony/Columbia’s computer architecture for a long time or was a company insider because not only did the hackers know where certain files were located but they knew the access codes on them.
Third, Rogers wrote that when a hacker simply dumps this amount of material onto a public site, that has the earmarks of a hack job from some ideologically motivated group. There was much information North Korea could have garnered from the huge access they allegedly had. And this could have served them well in their intelligence files. Why make it public? (See Roger’s blog, “Marc’s Security Ramblings” entry dated Dec. 18, 2014)
More Skepticism
Rogers is backed up on his first point by Kurt Stammberger, senior vice-president of Norse, a company that provides computer intelligence systems and technology to both private corporations and the government.
Stammberger has been in possession of the specific malware used in the Sony hack as far back as last July, which can be secured by interested parties on the black market. His sample of the program is totally in English, not a trace of Korean.
The executive noted that specific Sony credentials, server address and digital codes and certificates were then written into the malware. As another authority in the field noted, certain malware behaves erratically. It just dives into a system, shuffles around the computer and spirals around looking for things to link to randomly. The Sony hack was more like a cruise missile.
“This stuff was incredibly targeted. That is a very strong signal that an insider was involved,” said Stammberger. (New York Post, Dec. 30, 2014) Thus, he concluded that “It’s virtually impossible to get that information unless you are an insider, were an insider, or have been working with an insider. That’s why we and so many other security professionals are convinced an insider played an important role.”
Furthering this belief is the fact that, last spring, Sony issued layoff notices to hundreds of employees. A private Facebook group made up of former Sony employees voted by a large majority that the hack was an inside job. An ex-employee said what makes this even more possible is that Sony’s security was not very tight or sophisticated, a point that was echoed by Rogers. (Dana Liebelson, Huffington Post, Jan. 6, 2015)
In fact, Norse, Stammberger’s computer-intelligence company, went even further. They named a former employee as a suspect, along with five accomplices. They did this by going through hacked personnel files and then locating a disgruntled employee online. (The Security Ledger Dec. 18, 2014)
In one message, for instance, one of Stammberger’s suspects identified as “lena” wrote :“Sony doesn’t lock their doors, physically, so we worked with other staff with similar interests to get in. I’m sorry I can’t say more, safety for our team is important.” (The Wrap, Dec. 30, 2014)
From this and other evidence, Stammberger deduces that the conspiracy was a collaboration between an employee or employees terminated early last summer and a hacking group involved in distributing pirated movies online, a group that has been pursued by Sony.
The FBI visited Norse to hear this presentation and seemed suitably impressed. But Stammberger said the FBI didn’t reveal anything from its inquiry to Norse.
Chronology Problems
What makes the whole operation even more puzzling is the fact that an e-mail was sent to Sony executives three days before the hack became public, on Nov. 21, 2014, addressed to top executives such as CEO Michael Lynton and Chairperson Amy Pascal (among others). It reads:
“Monetary compensation we want. Pay the damages, or Sony Pictures will be bombarded as a whole. You know us very well. We never wait long. You’d better behave wisely.”
Clearly, the fact that this was sent in advance indicates that whoever sent it knew what was about to happen. But the warning contains no mention, not even a hint, about censoring an about-to-be-released movie. The message appears to be pure and simple extortion, as is clearly denoted in the first sentence about money.
But what makes this piece of evidence ultimately confusing is that it was signed by “God’sApstls,” a rubric that also was in one of the malicious files used in the cyber attack. (ibid)
As Wired’s Zetter points out, it was only on Dec. 8, a week after a logjam of media stories appeared linking the attack to North Korea, that the attackers made a reference to the film in one of their announcements. And after this, the hackers made oblique terrorist threats against the film’s premiere in New York on Christmas Day.
In other words, it was after the finger-waving at North Korea had begun that “the GOP” began to explicitly link the film to the crime. To top that, as Sam Biddle noted in The Gawker on Dec. 22, the self-declared attackers — “the GOP” — then released a message declaring that Sony/Columbia had their permission to release The Interview anyway, which certainly implies that whoever did the hacking was simply bluffing about any terrorist attacks if the film were shown.
Lessons Not Learned
This points out another interesting aspect of the case, which Peter Singer, another security expert, expounded on at Motherboard. In an interview, he said: “This is not just now a case study in how not to react to cyber threats and a case study in how not to defend your networks; it’s now also a case study in how not to respond to terrorism threats.
“We have just communicated to any would-be attacker that we will do whatever they want. It’s mind-boggling to me, particularly when you compare it to real things that have actually happened. Someone killed 12 people and shot another 70 people at the opening night of Batman: The Dark Knight Rises. They kept that movie in the theater. You issue an anonymous cyber threat that you do not have the capability to carry out: We pulled a movie from 18,000 theaters.” (Sic, that number is exaggerated.)
Singer said whoever conducted the attack understood the American psyche and culture to the point of knowing that politicians like John McCain and Newt Gingrich would call it an attack of “cyber terrorism” and demand retaliation and that no one would ask: Why?
Would North Korea really commit its scarce resources and take this geopolitical risk over a witless, very bad comedy and think that a fitting retaliation would be to publicize how much money Sony executives make or that producer Scott Rudin thinks Angelina Jolie is only marginally talented?
Gauging by the U.S. overreaction, one is reminded of what Orson Welles did with a radio microphone, four actors, and some mood music in 1938 with his broadcast of H. G. Wells’ War of the Worlds.
Singer added that this image of Sony/Columbia as a frightened and intimidated victim benefits the company because it conceals the fact that it has been hacked before, going back to 2005, and more than once.
Yet, their whole computer architecture has been relatively unchanged, even though the previous hacks were not labeled as attacks from a nation-state. It’s fairly clear that Sony did not take the attacks seriously enough to do a major upgrade on their security system or to change passwords and pass codes every few months. Obviously, they could afford the financial outlay to do such things.
Obama’s Hypocrisy
On the day the FBI announced North Korea as the culprit, President Obama criticized Sony’s initial decision to pull the film from theaters. Echoing what Singer said, the President commented: “We cannot have a society in which some dictator in some place can start imposing censorship here in the USA. If somebody can intimidate folks out of releasing a satirical comedy, imagine what they’ll do when they see a documentary or political film they don’t like.”
He continued in this vein, “That’s not what we are, that’s not what America is about. I’m sympathetic that some private company was worried about liabilities. I wish they’d spoken to me first. Do not get into a pattern in which we’re intimidated by these kinds of criminal attacks.”
Obama did not seem aware of the irony, either in regards to his own participation in actual assassinations, i.e., “targeted killings” via drone attacks, or his administration’s aggressive effort to silence U.S. government whistleblowers through criminal prosecutions, examples of real censorship.
In response to Obama’s expressed disappointed that Sony had not come to him for help, Sony CEO Michael Lynton contradicted this observation the same day it was made on Dec. 19. In a statement made on CNN, the executive said, “We definitely spoke to a senior advisor in the White House … about the situation. The White House was certainly aware of the situation.”
Lynton added that Sony consulted with the State Department before the hacking to anticipate any political controversy the film could provoke. But Lynton went even further, saying Sony went to think tanks, foreign policy authorities, and the State Department “to get an understanding of whether or not there was a problem” with the film. The CEO said he was told by all that there was no problem, so they proceeded with the advertising rollout of the film.
Lynton said it really was not Sony that pulled the film from theatrical release but rather too many major exhibitors refused to show the film for fear of possible terrorist attacks. He concluded that he “had no alternative but to not proceed with the theatrical release on the 25th of December.” (Deadline, Dec. 19, 2014)
Weighing the Evidence
Of course, it is possible that these accusations against North Korea are correct. However, as of today, there is a large body of expert opinion that says the evidence so far is lacking. In fact, another expert, Robert Graham of Errata Security, was even more unimpressed than Rogers, calling the FBI’s evidence “nonsense.” (New York Post, Dec. 30, 2014)
If that is so, then the Sony hack may end up joining the long line of instances in which the U.S. government either jumped to misguided conclusions or intentionally misled the American people. Meanwhile, the real culprits escape and the real facts become harder to ascertain since the U.S. government hates to admit mistakes especially when the falsely accused have been thoroughly demonized and have few defenders.
If the truth is discovered many years down the line, the major news media usually ignores it or, in the rare case that the truth is acknowledged and accepted, it is way past the time for avoiding dangerous actions rationalized by the false allegations.
It took Professor Edwin Moise three decades to produce the definitive book on the Tonkin Gulf incident, showing that just about everything President Lyndon Johnson said about what happened there was wrong. By then, millions of Vietnamese and 58,000 Americans were dead.
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James DiEugenio is a researcher and writer on the assassination of President John F. Kennedy and other mysteries of that era. His most recent book is Reclaiming Parkland.
Netanyahu: UN Gaza probe should be ‘shelved’
MEMO | February 3, 2015
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday said that a probe by the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) into last year’s Israeli offensive against the Gaza Strip should be shelved in light of the recent resignation of inquiry commission head William Schabas.
“After the resignation of the committee chairman, who was biased against Israel, the report that was written at the behest of the UNHRC… needs to be shelved,” Netanyahu said in a statement.
The Israeli premier went so far as to slam the rights council as “an anti-Israel body, the decisions of which prove it has nothing to do with human rights.”
“This is the same council that in 2014 made more decisions against Israel than against Iran, Syria and North Korea combined,” Netanyahu asserted.
“It is Hamas, the other terrorist organizations and the terrorist regimes around us that need to be investigated, not Israel,” he added.
The Israeli government has already said it would not cooperate with the UNHRC committee formed to investigate violations committed during Israel’s onslaught on the Gaza Strip last July and August.
Israel had said that the UN council would not be objective.
The Israeli offensive left more than 2,160 Palestinians dead and some 11,000 injured – the vast majority of them civilians – while partially or completely destroying thousands of residential structures across the territory.
The onslaught, which was launched with the stated aim of ending rocket fire from the coastal enclave, finally ended with the announcement last August of an open-ended cease-fire between Israel and Palestinian resistance factions.
On Monday, Schabas, a Canadian professor of international law, reportedly resigned from his post as head of the investigation committee due to Israeli allegations of bias.
Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, for his part, hailed Schabas’ resignation, saying it was a “victory” for the self-proclaimed Jewish state.
“It is an Israeli diplomatic victory. However, it will not change the probe’s conclusions,” he said.
He added that the appointment of Schabas to investigate last year’s war against Gaza was like “appointing Cain to investigate who killed Abel.”
US Slaps Venezuelans with New Sanctions
teleSUR | February 3, 2015
The United States officially imposed new sanctions on Venezuela Monday, amid accusations from President Nicolas Maduro that Washington is trying to destabilize his country.
The new sanctions expand the number of Venezuelan government officials barred from entering the United States.
“These restrictions will also affect the immediate family members of a number of those individuals subject to visa restrictions for believed involvement in human rights abuses or for acts of public corruption,” said State Department spokesperson Jen Psaki.
Psaki continued by stating, “We will not publicly identify these individuals because of U.S. visa confidentiality laws, but we are sending a clear message that human rights abusers, those who profit from public corruption, and their families are not welcome in the United States.”
Maduro hit back at the announcement by accusing the U.S. government of hypocrisy.
“They kill black youth in the street with impunity, they persecute and have concentration camps of Central American kids. They have abducted dozens of citizens of the world under no known legal system, submitting them to torture, isolation,” he said during a speech.
Maduro has previously accused U.S. officials of plotting to topple his government.
He asked, “What human rights are they talking about?”
The new U.S. sanctions are in response to a wave of unrest that hit Venezuela in early 2014. Around 43 people died as anti-government groups took to the streets with weapons ranging from firearms to molotov cocktails and home-made bazookas to demand Maduro step down. According to an analysis of the death toll by independent media collective Venezuelanalysis, around half the casualties were government supporters, state security personnel or ordinary members of the public likely killed by anti-government groups. Venezuelan authorities have arrested opposition figures it claims masterminded the violence including Leopoldo Lopez, while also pressing charges against security personnel accused of misconduct.
However, Psaki described the opposition violence as “peaceful protests.”
“We emphasize the action we are announcing today is specific to individuals and not directed at the Venezuelan nation or its people,” she said.
However, Venezuelan foreign minister Delcy Rodriguez told private broadcaster Venevision that the U.S. and corporate media are trying to mislead the international community about Venezuela.
“All imperialist wars have been precipitated by media campaigns such as this one, giving false information that aims to provide the world with the justification for an intervention,” said Rodriguez.
Good News! US Corporations Won’t Have to Pay for Nuclear Disasters in India
By Jim Naureckas | FAIR | January 27, 2015
“US, India Move Forward on Nuclear Energy Deal” read the headline at the top of USA Today’s front page (1/26/15). Moving forward–that sounds good, doesn’t it? The subhead was “Obama makes progress on the 1st day of his 3-day visit”–making progress also generally being seen as a good thing.
Online, the headline was “Obama, India’s Modi Cite Nuclear Investment Breakthrough” (1/25/15). And who doesn’t like a “breakthrough”?
The article itself had the same positive spin, beginning with its lead:
President Obama and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said Sunday they reached “a breakthrough understanding” in freeing up US investment in nuclear energy development in India, as Obama began a three-day visit to India.
Not only is it a “breakthrough understanding,” it’s also going to be “freeing up” investment. In these word choices, USA Today is saying it wants you to know that this is good news.
But what is the news? Here’s how the paper’s Mandakini Gahlot summarizes the agreement:
Picking up from a stalled 2008 civil nuclear agreement between the two countries, the deal would allow US firms to invest in energy in India. It also resolves a dispute over US insistence on tracking fissile material it supplies to the country and over Indian liability provisions that have discouraged US firms from capitalizing on the agreement.
“Indian liability provisions”–what does that mean? The only further explanation USA Today gives is a paraphrase of the White House view that the agreement “resolves the US concerns on both tracking and liability.” In other words, it doesn’t explain much.
You get a much fuller picture from a story in the Mumbai-based newspaper Indian Express (1/26/15), which explains that the problem is with Indian law:
India’s Civil Liability for Nuclear Damage Act, 2010, has a simple purpose: to make sure that victims of a nuclear accident can get quick compensation, without having to prove the plant operator was negligent, and irrespective of who was at fault…. Section 17b of CLiNDA says the plant operators…can claim compensation from their equipment suppliers if the accident resulted as a result of “equipment or material with patent or latent defects.” And Section 46 makes both suppliers and operators liable to be sued by accident victims.
This is in conflict with the international rules that the US nuclear industry has arranged for itself when marketing its products abroad:
In the US, the law allows victims to file damages claims against operators, suppliers and designers. However, when US firms started selling abroad, they pushed for the concept of legal channeling, which left only operators liable.
These corporations–who have the political backing of the US government–have succeeded in getting international conventions to agree that “no one other than operators can be held responsible” in the event of a nuclear catastrophe. The suppliers want assurances that these international conventions, and not Indian law, will be applied in the wake of such an event.
The “breakthrough” between Obama and Modi seems to be an agreement that the law will be “tweaked” to let US corporations off the hook in case of a devastating accident. For example, suppliers of nuclear equipment could be redefined as “contractors” and therefore not be liable under Indian law.
Of course, if USA Today explained that Obama had gotten the Indian prime minister to find a loophole that would allow US corporations to avoid having to compensate victims of nuclear disasters that they contributed to, that would be harder to present as a “good news!” story.
Why Would Seahawks Coach Pete Carroll Question 9/11?
By Kevin Ryan | Dig Within | February 1, 2015
The coach of the Super Bowl winning Seattle Seahawks is in the media again as his team prepares for a second championship game. Coach Pete Carroll is getting special attention in the news because he is known to have questioned the official account of the 9/11 attacks. Even today, he is still looking for answers about those crimes, saying, “I will always be interested in the truth.”
The average football fan, whose exposure to questions about 9/11 is typically limited to snarky, ill-informed mainstream media stories, might wonder why Carroll would go there.
Here are a dozen quick reasons why everyone should seek the truth about 9/11.
- The directors of the FBI and the CIA ignored or facilitated terrorism in the years leading up to 9/11.
- Before 9/11, the nation’s leading counter-terrorism expert repeatedly notified his friends in the United Arab Emirates of top-secret U.S. plans to capture Osama bin Laden. These treasonous leaks prevented Bin Laden’s capture on at least two separate occasions.
- On 9/11, NORAD was running military exercises that mimicked the events of the day. This caused the military air defense responders to confuse the actual hijackings with the exercises.
- In the years since 9/11, we’ve been given several, distinctly different, official explanations for the failure to intercept any of the hijacked planes. The last explanation, given in The 9/11 Commission Report, requires us to believe that many U.S. Air Force officers had previously been lying in a way that made them all look very bad.
- We’ve also been given several, distinctly different, official explanations for the unprecedented destruction of the World Trade Center (WTC) towers. The last explanation is false in every way and critical evidence has been ignored to this day.
- The U.S. government now admits that the third WTC skyscraper that was destroyed on 9/11 was in free-fall. The official report for its destruction was built entirely on a computer model that we are not allowed to see.
- No changes have been made to building construction standards in response to the officially cited root causes for the WTC destruction. No existing buildings have been retrofitted to ensure that they do not fail from those alleged causes.
- On 9/11, the Secret Service did not protect the president at his well-publicized location, despite the obvious danger from terrorism.
- The 9/11 Commission claimed 63 times in its Report that it could find “no evidence” related to important aspects of the crimes.
- The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission notified the FBI of suspected 9/11 insider trading transactions. That evidence was ignored and the suspects were not even questioned by the FBI or the 9/11 Commission.
- The first alleged Al-Qaeda leader detained by the U.S., upon whose torture testimony the 9/11 Commission Report was built, is now known to have never had any relationship to Al-Qaeda at all. The 9/11 Commission vice-chairman has developed amnesia about that most important torture victim while his Report stands as the best, and perhaps only, argument in favor of a continued U.S. torture policy.
- Some of the most lucid and intelligent Americans, including Noam Chomsky, quickly feign ignorance when presented with information that contradicts the official account of 9/11.
Therefore Pete Carroll probably has good reasons to wonder what really happened on 9/11. The next question is—will football fans be able to take Carroll’s lead and move beyond the vacuous official account of 9/11? As the threat of never-ending war continues, an increasing number will answer in the affirmative.
Israeli False Flags and the Attack on Rev. Stephen Sizer
By Brandon Martinez | Non-Aligned Media | January 31, 2015
The counterfeit hoopla surrounding the Charlie Hebdo ‘free speech’ saga was further undermined this week when a prominent British vicar posted an article on Facebook linking Israel to the 9/11 attacks, for which he is now ‘under investigation.’
Stephen Sizer, a well-known reverend of Christ Church, Virginia Water, posted the Wikispooks article “9/11: Israel Did It” on Facebook and subsequently asked, “Is this [research] anti-Semitic?”
“It raises so many questions,” he added.
Sizer eventually removed the post under mounting pressure from his Diocese and Britain’s Jewish lobby, but affirmed his right to freedom of speech and inquiry.
“It is essential the public become convinced of what happened before and after 9/11,” Sizer told Jewish News Online. “Inevitably the truth will upset many people if it is shown by further investigation that the official explanations are shown to be deficient.” Suppressing discussion of Israel’s role in 9/11 will only “fuel suspicion,” the outspoken preacher stressed.
Sizer is barking up the right tree, hence the frenzied reaction from Zionists and those under their sway.
Mainstream outlets such as the BBC, The Telegraph, The Daily Mirror as well as a number of overt Zionist sources piled on the principled man of god by running identical smear stories about this manufactured ‘scandal.’ The articles in question emphasize that Sizer is ‘being investigated’ for the posting, as if it is a crime to promote an article that calls attention to Israeli false flag terrorism. The hit-pieces also prominently quote a spokesman from the Board of Deputies of British Jews, a thuggish Zionist hate-gang who have attacked Sizer as an ‘anti-Semite’ on numerous occasions. But none of the articles or the Israeli fifth columnists they champion addresses the evidence of Israel’s involvement in the 9/11 attacks.
Israel’s fingerprints do indeed appear to be all over the events of 9/11. And judging by the Zionist state’s past behaviour, it should not come as a surprise to learn that 9/11 was in some way organized by Israel’s secret agencies who have on plenty of previous occasions executed false flag attacks aimed at framing their Arab/Muslim adversaries, thereby inducing adverse reactions towards their foes from the West.
A History of Deception
At the time, Israel’s founding fathers were some of the most brutal terrorists around. Two former Israeli prime ministers, Yitzhak Shamir and Menachem Begin, were leaders of Jewish terrorist militias which waged a merciless insurgency against the indigenous Arabs of Palestine as well as the British colonial administrators of the land in the 1940s. Benjamin Netanyahu’s father, Benzion Netanyahu, was the personal secretary for Vladimir Jabotinsky, the brains behind the bellicose ‘Revisionist’ fold within the Zionist movement which formulated the ideological framework of the Zionist militant groups who eventually besieged Palestine, destroying more than 500 Arab villages and driving out a minimum of 750,000 Palestinians in a matter of two years, from 1946 to 1948.
In 1946, two years before Israel became a state, Irgun assailants carried out an attack on the King David Hotel which housed Britain’s administrative headquarters in the Mandate of Palestine. Jewish militants under the direction of Begin disguised themselves as Arabs and planted a number of bombs hidden in milk crates in the hotel’s basement, then detonated them causing a huge explosion which leveled a good chunk of the building. Ninety-one people were killed in the blast, including dozens of British personnel. “I’m glad to have been a terrorist for liberation,” said one Jewish Irgunist in a BBC documentary about the bombing. “We didn’t mind being called terrorists then,” another former Irgun militant confessed.
A competing Zionist terrorist faction, the Stern Gang (also known as Lehi), assassinated British soldiers as well as multiple foreign diplomats and mediators such as Sweden’s Count Folke Bernadotte. That group, originally headed by the Jewish supremacist Avraham Stern, even proposed a military alliance with Nazi Germany in 1941, viewing Britain as a greater roadblock to a Jewish ethno-state in Palestine than Hitler’s regime which was quite happy to expedite the re-settlement of Germany’s Jews to the Middle East.
Fast-forward to 1954 – Israel again initiates a false flag conspiracy in the region, this time in Egypt. A terrorist cell of Zionist mercenaries was discovered in Cairo and Alexandria after they tried and failed to detonate incendiary devices in British and American installations. The Israeli operatives were discovered after one of the conspirators prematurely discharged an incendiary device in his pocket, leading to his arrest and the capture of the whole cabal. The Israeli terrorists later confessed to Egyptian authorities that the provocation was planned, organized and directed by Tel Aviv. The operation was intended to stymie a burgeoning British-American-Egyptian rapport and derail ongoing negotiations between Egypt and Britain which would have seen the British relinquish control of the Suez Canal, much to Israel’s displeasure. It was later dubbed the “Lavon Affair.”
Analyst Richard H. Curtiss, writing in a 1992 article for the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, observed that Israel had in the works an identical subterfuge against Jordan the same year, wherein Israeli intelligence “conceived a plan to attack British personnel seconded to King Hussein’s government in Jordan.” “The purpose,” Curtiss explained, “was to sour relations between Britain and Jordan [as well as turn] both Jordan and Britain [against] Egypt, which would be blamed for such attacks.” Curtiss cited a 1979 book, The Untold History of Israel, by Israeli journalists Jacques Derogy and Hesi Carmel which related the story.
The Lavon Affair was not the first, nor would it be the last Israeli covert operation aimed at framing Arabs for terrorism against the West. In 1967, during the Six Day War between Israel and several Arab states, the Israeli military attacked an American surveillance ship, the USS Liberty, in international waters. Israeli warplanes and torpedo boats besieged the vessel for hours, even shooting holes in the large American flag billowing in the wind. Having scoped out the ship hours beforehand, the Israelis were well aware it was American. As a result of Israel’s heinous attack, more than 200 American sailors were dead or wounded. The motive of the blitz was to sink the Liberty, thereby preventing it from relaying messages back to Washington which could have scuttled Israeli plans to seize land from Egypt and Syria during the six-day conflict. If the ship had been successfully destroyed, Israel would have most likely attributed the attack to its Arab foes. The Israelis later captured the Sinai and Golan Heights from Egypt and Syria respectively. Unfortunately for the Israelis, the Liberty did not sink and survivors revealed Israel’s hand behind the attack.
In his books By Way of Deception and The Other Side of Deception former Mossad katsa Victor Ostrovsky revealed a litany of Israeli covert operations. One clear example of Israeli chicanery that Ostrovsky exposed was a 1986 plot codenamed ‘Operation Trojan’ which saw Mossad agents plant a transponder device on Libyan soil that relayed false coded messages making it look like the Libyan government was coordinating terrorists from their embassies worldwide to attack American targets. Simultaneously a bomb explosion rocked a Berlin nightclub frequented by US military personnel, killing two US servicemen. The Mossad deception successfully coerced a hoodwinked US President Ronald Reagan into launching air strikes on Libya, who cited the fake ‘terrorist’ transmissions emanating from a Mossad device as proof of Libyan culpability in the nightclub attack.
The Israelis are also implicated in the 1998 US embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania. An investigative report on the World Socialist Web Site entitled “Questions mount in Kenya, Tanzania bombings” detailed US/Israeli foreknowledge of the attacks. The article, authored by Martin McLaughlin, cites reports from ABC News and Haaretz which affirmed that Israeli intelligence elements caused US officials to ignore warnings of an imminent attack against the embassies. US intelligence officials looked to their Israeli colleagues to diagnose the reliability of various warnings of looming danger, but the Israelis insisted they weren’t serious, resulting in no precautions being taken to defend against an assault.
“Four months worth of tips and alert signals that the Nairobi embassy was facing a potential disastrous explosives attack were sent to Washington,” wrote Warren Hough in a report for the American newspaper The Spotlight. “But nothing was done to protect this poorly shielded facility because, on the standard operating procedure inaugurated in the Reagan era, the FBI had to turn to the Israelis for a definite evaluation of these early warnings.”
“Ignore them, it’s just another false alarm,” Mossad told their counterparts in the CIA. The imprudent Israeli advice, Hough explained in the aforesaid article, “was the key factor in persuading the U.S. to let its guard down, resulting in the loss of life of at least 250 victims including 11 Americans.”
Israel didn’t seem to believe its own counsel. According to researcher Ralph Schoenman, the first soldiers at the scene of the crime in Kenya and Tanzania “were special units of the Israeli armed forces and high level agents of the Mossad” who quickly “took control” of the bombed out sites.
Israel’s penchant for coercing America to let its guard down indicates a more sinister fraud at work, beyond an equally damning ‘let it happen’ scenario.
September 11: Israel’s ‘Hanukkah Miracle’ & the Neocons’ ‘New Pearl Harbour’
Exploiting and outright manipulating fissures between the West and the Arab/Muslim world has been a key component of Israeli strategy from the outset. And it is this artificial divide, fostered by years of Zionist subterfuges and political scheming, that lies at the core of the agenda of those truly responsible for the 9/11 attacks, the primordial affair which kick started the bogus ‘war on terror’ and endless American war-making in the Middle East.
In a September 2001 interview with the Pakistani newspaper Ummat, Osama bin Laden denied responsibility for the attacks, articulating that the real architects of 9/11 are “persons who want to make the present century as a century of conflict between Islam and Christianity so that their own civilization, nation, country, or ideology could survive.” The “civilization, nation, country, or ideology” bin Laden spoke of that prospered the most from 9/11 is undoubtedly Zionism as an ideology and Israel as a country. Israel’s pugnacious leaders made that fact abundantly clear in cavalier public statements made shortly after the disaster.
The 9/11 attacks were “good for Israel” and had the effect of “[shifting] American public opinion in our favour,” announced a jubilant Benjamin Netanyahu on two separate occasions following the attacks, as quoted in Haaretz and other Israeli papers. According to Israeli journalist Aluf Benn, Ariel Sharon and his top military-intelligence advisors had proclaimed 9/11 a ‘Hanukkah miracle’ of good fortune for Israel, “coming just as Israel was under increasing international pressure because of the ongoing conflict with the Palestinians.” The assault on the Twin Towers “placed Israel firmly on the right side of the strategic map with the U.S., and put the Arab world at a disadvantage,” Benn wrote in Haaretz. “That’s the impression left by the speeches given by Mossad chief Ephraim Halevy and National Security Council chairman Maj. Gen. Uzi Dayan, at this week’s Herzliya conference on national security.”
“Since September 11, our leaders have been euphoric,” the former Israeli intelligence chief Ami Ayalon told France’s Le Monde newspaper. “With no more international pressures on Israel, they [the Israeli leadership] think, the way is open.” Ehuk Sprinzak, a founding Dean at Israel’s Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya, reiterated the expressions of relief and delight amongst the Zionist leadership, telling the Israeli press that 9/11 was the “most important public relations act ever committed in our favour.” On the day of 9/11, Zionist commentator and Stratfor director George Friedman expressed the view that “[t]he big winner today, intended or not, is the state of Israel” because the attacks will foster a closer alliance between the US and Israel as well as lead America into “a massive covert and overt war against” the Muslim world. Even Israel’s former Mossad chief, Efraim Halevy, told a Canadian journalist that “one of the immediate results of 9/11 was clearly a very severe backlash of international approbation of Islam in general” and that Israel “obviously benefitted” from America’s response to the atrocity.
Years before 9/11, Zionists and neocons formed a number of think tanks to promote their militarist agenda in the Middle East. The most prominent one was called Project for the New American Century (PNAC), and was headed by William Kristol and Robert Kagan, two of Israel’s staunchest supporters in the US. In a September 2000 report entitled “Rebuilding America’s Defenses,” the neocons pontificated about the need for a “New Pearl Harbour” to actualize their war plans against Middle Eastern regimes, particularly that of Saddam Hussein in Iraq. Four years earlier, in 1996, several prominent American neocons, notably Richard Perle, Douglas Feith and David Wurmser, authored a strategy paper for an Israeli think tank called the ‘Study Group on a New Israeli Strategy Toward 2000.’ In their paper titled “A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm,” the cadre of pro-Israel evangelists essentially called for the overthrow of Saddam Hussein in Iraq, which was an “important Israeli strategic objective” from their perspective. The Clean Break authors stipulated that ousting Hussein was needed in order to ultimately weaken Syria, and they further expressed a desire to do away with the Iranian regime, Israel’s foremost military rival in the region.
In April 2002, PNAC neocons sought to capitalize on the 9/11 attacks to expedite their agenda of Iraq’s destruction, calling on President Bush in a written plea to “support Israel” in its “war on terrorism” by accelerating “plans for removing Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq.” Israeli citizens Perle, Feith and Wurmser effectively put their wet dreams of war into practice by entering senior policy-making positions in the US administration of George W. Bush, leading the drive for the war in Iraq alongside the Israeli fifth columnist Paul Wolfowitz who in turn was a high ranking Pentagon official under Bush. Researchers fingered Feith’s ‘Office of Special Plans’ in the Pentagon as the fountainhead of disinformation and propaganda about Iraq’s non-existent “Weapons of Mass Destruction,” a devious ploy also promoted in Neocon-Zionist literature throughout the 1990s.
And who devised the ‘war on terror’? Despite popular belief among leftists, that ominous philosophy’s birthplace was not in the dysfunctional brain of George W. Bush. Rather, it first emerged at the Jonathan Institute’s ‘Conference on International Terrorism’ held in 1979 in Jerusalem. That group was spearheaded by Israeli politicians of the Likudnik persuasion, principally Benjamin Netanyahu, who endeavored to export their propagandistic memes about ‘terrorism’ to the West, hoping Western governments would do Israel’s bidding in the region. The foundry of lies and untruths sponsored by Netanyahu and his neocon minions in Washington was ultimately calculated to delegitimize Arab/Muslim resistance to Israeli imperial expansion and aggression, hence the widespread dissemination via Zionist-owned media venues of the erroneous contention that ‘Islamic terrorism’ is a unique threat facing the West. In actual fact, the biggest perpetrators and patrons of terrorist violence in the world are the Zionists, the Americans and their allies.
Unsolved Mysteries and Unanswered Questions
Writing in his informative essay “The War on Iraq: Conceived in Israel,” Dr. Stephen Sniegoski asserts “the ‘war on terrorism’ was never intended to be a war to apprehend and punish the perpetrators of the September 11 atrocities. September 11 simply provided a pretext for government leaders to implement long-term policy plans.” Indeed, the ‘war on terror’ amounted to nothing less than a ‘war of terror’ against Israel’s opponents in the Middle East, with 9/11 serving as a very conveniently timed casus belli.
And what of Israel’s Mossad, that “ruthless and cunning” agency of terror that “has the capability to target US forces and make it look like a Palestinian/Arab act,” according to a group of US Army analysts? As the Army School of Advanced Military Studies acknowledged in the aforesaid study, Israel’s proclivity for ruthlessness and deception leads many to believe that 9/11 was yet another ‘false flag’ contrivance of the master manipulators in Tel Aviv.
What really happened on that fateful day?
There are many lingering questions about Israel’s role in the attacks. An oft-cited proof of Israeli involvement is the ‘five dancing Israelis’ incident, wherein a group of five individuals, later identified by ABC News, the Jewish Forward and FBI insiders as Mossad agents, were seen by witnesses video-taping the disaster from a New Jersey rooftop, and subsequently cheering, laughing and shouting with “joy and mockery” as 3000 innocents were suffocating in the burning Twin Towers.
The suspicious crew of Israelis were arrested on that day by the NYPD, and later questioned by the FBI about possible foreknowledge of the attacks. Considering they had shown up (with a video camera) in a very convenient spot at a very opportune time of the day, just as everything went down, and outwardly expressed signs of elation rather than fear and horror, it beggars belief to suggest they didn’t know exactly when, where and how the assaults on the Twin Towers would come to pass. In fact, FBI reports partially declassified in 2005 revealed that one of the arrested Israelis named Omer Marmari told authorities that he and his compatriots were acting in a celebratory manner because the attacks would help make the world “understand” Israel’s predicament vis-à-vis the Palestinians. “We’re Israelis. We’re not your problem. Your problems are our problems. The Palestinians are the problem,” Israeli Sivan Kurzburg told the NYPD upon his arrest. While in custody, another of the five Israelis named Oded Ellner remarked: “the United States will [now] take steps to stop terrorism in the world.” How did any of them know for sure who did 9/11 before any investigation had been conducted or how the US’s response to the attacks would benefit their country? Did they not only know when and where the attacks would occur, but also who would be blamed for it and the consequent direction of US foreign policy? That’s way more information than a group of self-professed ‘furniture movers’ should be privy to. The five Israeli suspects were eventually deported back to Israel without charge. In an article about the incident, journalist Christopher Ketcham quoted an anonymous CIA insider close to the investigation into the five Israelis who said “the decision to close down the investigation into the Israelis came from the White House” and that “[i]t was immediately assumed at CIA headquarters that this basically was going to be a cover-up so that the Israelis would not be implicated in any way in 9/11.”
And what of those 200 Israelis that Fox News reported had been arrested shortly before and after 9/11, some of whom claimed to be ‘art students’ but were in actuality Mossad spies with expertise in eavesdropping and explosives? What of the mysterious ‘truck bomb’ or ‘explosive laden van’ which was reported to have been ‘packed with explosives’ as it approached the George Washington Bridge? Why were the identities of the apprehended suspects never revealed to the public? Was it because they were Israelis and not Arabs? Is it just a coincidence that the Mossad passed along a very vague and dubious ‘warning’ to the CIA a few months before the attacks, suggesting that 200 ‘Arab terrorists’ were present on American soil and were planning a ‘major operation’? And is it not amazingly conspicuous that the Mossad linked this ‘imminent attack’ of which they had no specific information to “Osama bin Laden and Iraq,” as the UK’s Telegraph reported?
What about the ‘mural van’ that police stopped between 6th and 7th on King Street near the World Trade Center on 9/11? Surely a van with a painting depicting a plane crashing into the Twin Towers that was rented to ‘ethnic Middle Easterners’ according to a Norman Y. Mineta International Institute for Surface Transportation Policy Studies (MTI) report is worthy of scrutiny. If the ‘ethnic Middle Easterners’ behind such an obvious display of foreknowledge were Arabs or Muslims, surely the Zionist-influenced mass media would have reported it, and surely the Zionist-influenced US government would have included it in official reports. But nary a mention of the incident can be found in media or government reports concerning the attacks.
How do we explain the mysterious acquisition of the entire World Trade Center complex by shady New York businessman Larry Silverstein six weeks before the attacks? The Jewish real estate magnate who weirdly “felt a compelling urge” to own the worthless, asbestos-laden Twin Towers happens to be a rabid Zionist with innumerable connections to Zionist lobbies, most notably the Israeli Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies (IASPS) under whose auspices the Zionist neocons produced the “Clean Break” regime change manifesto. On top of that, Silverstein was a ‘personal friend’ of Benjamin Netanyahu, Ehud Barak and Ariel Sharon, and had weekly conference calls with Netanyahu. Moreover, ‘Lucky Larry’ skipped out on a routine business meeting at the top of the North Tower (the first one hit) on 9/11, claiming a ‘miraculous’ intercession by his wife who insisted he attend a ‘doctor’s appointment’ instead. Silverstein’s business partner on the murky WTC deal, Frank Lowy, is likewise an ardent Zionist Jew who fought in Israel’s ‘war of ethnic cleansing’ and chairs multiple pro-Israel think tanks in Israel itself as well as in Australia where he acts as Tel Aviv’s pro-bono ambassador.
And what of the lack of any credible evidence tying Arabs or Muslims to the attacks? What about the ‘indestructible passport’ of alleged hijacker Satam al-Suqami which miraculously escaped the cabin of the exploded plane into the North Tower, falling hundreds of feet to the ground and emerging without so much as a blemish? Why even bring a passport on a domestic flight let alone a suicide mission? What of the plethora of other eyebrow-raising FBI ‘discoveries,’ such as the inexplicable Mohammed Atta luggage filled to the brim with incriminating ‘evidence’ including Atta’s ‘al-Qaeda plans,’ Arabic-language flight training devices/videos, a Koran, etc. It is the height of credulity to believe that this luggage, which a former FBI agent told Newsday amounted to the “Rosetta stone” of the investigation, conveniently did not get loaded onto the plane and fell right into the FBI’s lap. Does that not reek of a cheesy Hollywood stage-play for the gullible public’s consumption?
What about the markedly un-Islamic theatrics of the ‘19 martyrs for Allah’ who were witnessed cavorting with strippers, taking drugs and binge drinking in bars and clubs throughout Florida and Las Vegas months before the attacks? Why would dedicated ‘jihadists’ who we are told obsessively observed Islamic laws and edicts behave in this blasphemous way shortly before a ‘martyrdom operation’? Isn’t the obvious answer that these folks weren’t real Muslims and were just pretending to be in order to create a phony ‘evidence trail’ for an equally bogus ‘al-Qaeda plot’?
Has it ever been sufficiently explained why several of the named ‘9/11 hijackers’ turned up alive and well in the Middle East, protesting their innocence, as the BBC reported? Could the fact that their passports had been lost and/or stolen in the years preceding the attacks indicate a frame-up at work? Are the CIA and Mossad not experts at stealing identities of innocent people for use on covert ops? Doesn’t Mossad have a ‘special unit’ for crafting fake passports to be used on foreign missions?
Has there ever been a credible explanation as to why most of the ‘19 hijackers’ gained entry to America through a CIA ‘fast-tracking’ VISA program run out of a US consulate in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, as J. Michael Springmann revealed?
Can we explain how America’s multi-billion dollar military, intelligence and defence apparatus, which consists of a dozen or so intelligence agencies and the most sophisticated defence and spy equipment and networks the world has ever seen, was astoundingly ‘asleep at the wheel’ and ‘unable to detect’ this plot and its rather clumsy progenitors? As the former Pakistani spy chief Hamid Gul mused with bewilderment, “a man living in a cave inside a mountain or a peasant’s hovel” was able to orchestrate 9/11 and thereby outfox the combined military might of America and its powerful allies? “I don’t believe it,” Gul retorted.
Has it ever been properly explained how shoddy pilots who never flew commercial aircraft in their lives were able to precision guide three planes into their targets without a hiccup? How could a plane enter the Pentagon’s highly-protected and watched airspace without fighter jets intercepting it? Is it not odd that whoever was at the controls of Flight 77, or whatever actually hit the Pentagon, decided to not dive into the roof of the building, which would have been a much safer and easier-to-hit target than the façade? Is it just a coincidence that the very side of the building which was hit had just been ‘recently renovated’ with blast-walls and other upgrades so that it could endure explosive impacts with minimal damage? Is it also mere happenstance that all of the Pentagon’s top brass including Donald Rumsfeld were on the opposite side of the building, safely out of harm’s way?
Can we explain how two giant skyscrapers can collapse to the ground at nearly free fall speed, hurling hundred-ton chunks of steel structure hundreds of feet horizontally, simply from the impact of planes and a few scattered fires? Has there ever been a sufficient explanation as to how gravity can pulverize into dust large portions of two 110-story buildings? How did WTC Building 7 – the 47-story high-rise that was not hit by a plane – collapse neatly and symmetrically like a controlled demolition into its own footprint at free fall speed? Does it not defy logic, common sense and even basic laws of physics that no explosives were involved in the gravity-defying collapses of these enormous structures?
These are merely a few of the hundreds of enduring questions that have haunted the US government and its apologists for years.
It is safe to say that satisfactory answers to these very valid and logical inquires will not be forthcoming. Truth cannot prevail so long as the Neocon-Zionist clique which usurped the Bush administration and instigated the calamitous ‘war of civilizations’ by way of monstrous lies and deceit is running the show in Washington and other epicenters of power that effectively dominate the world at the present time.
~
Brandon Martinez is an independent writer and journalist who has written extensively on Zionism, Israel-Palestine, American and Canadian foreign policy, war, terrorism and deception in media and politics. He is the co-founder of Non-Aligned Media (http://nonalignedmedia.com) and author of Hidden History and Grand Deceptions. Readers can contact him at martinezperspective[at]hotmail.com or visit his blog at http://martinezperspective.com.
Copyright 2015 Brandon Martinez
Climate Change ‘Hardest Hit’
ClimateChangePredictions.org
Mr Dunlop, who’s now with the Association for the study of Peak Oil and Gas, says Australia will be one of the hardest hit by a rise in global temperatures. “We’re one of the driest continents on the earth and the effects on Australia will be more severe than elsewhere.” – ABC News, May 2013
Australia’s top intelligence agency believes south-east Asia will be the region worst affected by climate change by 2030, with decreased water flows from the Himalayan glaciers triggering a ‘cascade of economic, social and political consequences’. The dire outlook was provided by the deputy director of the Office of National Assessments, Heather Smith, in a confidential discussion on the national security implications of climate change with US embassy officials. — Sydney Morning Herald, Dec 2010
The effects of climate change will impact more severely on the economy of Papua New Guinea than on any other in the Pacific, according to a new report by the Asian Development Bank. – ABC News, Nov 2013
Research reports that Bangladesh is one of the hardest hit nations by the impacts of climate change. — UK climate4classrooms.org
There seems to be consensus in the developed world that Africa will be the hardest hit or most affected region, due to anthropogenic climate change. – YouLead Collective, a young generation of climate leaders, Nov 2014
Vietnam is likely to be among the countries hardest hit by climate change, mainly through rising sea levels and changes in rainfall and temperatures. – International Food Policy Research Institute, 2010
Norway’s Minister of the Environment and International Development Erik Solheim stated today that “The Small Island Developing States are among the hardest hit by climate change.” — as reported by the Norwegian media, Nov 2011
Maldives’ economy hardest hit by climate change: Asian Development Bank. The Maldives is the most at-risk country in South Asia from climate change impacts, said the report titled ‘Assessing the costs of climate change and adaptation in South Asia.’ – Minivan News, Aug 2014
According to the latest data modelling, climate change is likely to have the strongest impact on Scandinavian countries such as Denmark, Norway and Sweden – planetearthherald.com
Bulgaria, Spain, Portugal, Italy and Greece are the countries that would be worst affected by global warming, according to a European Union report. The EC Joint Research Commission (JRC) report, released on Wednesday, takes into account four significantly sensitive factors: agriculture, river flooding, coastal systems and tourism. — Sofia News Agency, Nov 2009
The economies of southern Europe and the Mediterranean, including Malta, are forecast to suffer the most adverse effects of climate change, according to a new report drawn up by the European Environment Agency. — Primo-europe.eu, July 2010
Climate change is faster and more severe in the Arctic than in most of the rest of the world. The Arctic is warming at a rate of almost twice the global average — panda.org
China’s Poor Farmers Hit Hardest by Climate Change. Declan Conway, a University of East Anglia researcher who has studied climate change’s affect on China’s farmers, told Reuters that people in remote communities in China’s poorer regions are particularly exposed to climate hazards. — Circle Of Blue, Dec 2012
Report: Middle East, African Countries to Be Hardest Hit by Climate Change — CommonDreams, Dec 2012
Ukraine chief of staff ‘thwarts Western allegations’ by admitting no combat with Russian troops
RT | January 30, 2015
The Ukraine army’s chief of staff has admitted that Kiev troops are not engaged in combat with Russian units, thereby thwarting all Western allegations of Moscow’s “military invasion,” said Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov.
“Yesterday afternoon the Chief of the General Staff – Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine – Viktor Muzhenko officially acknowledged during a briefing for foreign military attachées that Russian troops are not involved in the fighting in the country’s southeast,” Konashenkov said on Friday.
Given the fact that Muzhenko directly supervises military operations in the southeast, “his statement is a legal fact, which thwarts numerous accusations made by NATO and Western states” concerning Russia’s alleged “military invasion” in Ukraine, the spokesman added.
The Russian Defense Ministry, however, was puzzled by a statement from Muzhenko’s subordinate, Sergey Galushko, made several hours later. According to Galushko – an employee of the Department of Information Technology – Russian troops are located in the so-called “second echelon.”
On Thursday, Muzhenko said “the Ukrainian army is not engaged in combat operations against Russian units.” He added, however, that he had information about Russian individuals fighting in the country’s east. He also said the Ukrainian army has everything it needs to drive off armed units in Donbass. His speech was aired by Ukraine’s Channel 5 television, owned by President Petro Poroshenko.
Commenting on Muzhenko’s statement, Galushko said that reporters were only allowed at the open part of the meeting. He said that later, during the closed part, the chief of general staff said that Russian units are “in the second tier.”
Muzhenko himself did not elaborate on the initial statement.
Kiev began a military assault on eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk and Lugansk regions in April 2014, after they refused to recognize the country’s new, coup-imposed authorities. According to UN estimates, more than 5,000 people have died as a result of the conflict.
READ MORE: US plays ‘instigator’s role’ in Ukraine crisis – Russian UN envoy
Since the start of Kiev’s military operation, Ukraine and Western states have repeatedly alleged that Russia has a military presence in the country’s east. Moscow has refuted those claims on multiple occasions.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov reiterated Moscow’s arguments on Wednesday, calling on those who believe the opposite to prove their point. “I say it every time: if you are so sure in stating that, confirm it with facts. But no one can or wants to provide them,” he said.
The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) said it has not registered any movement of military vehicles at the Russia-Ukraine border checkpoints it observes, according to a statement made on January 22.
‘Ukraine is pretext for US lobby to go on with sanctions against Russia’
RT | January 30, 2015
Anti-Russian sanctions are imposed as a hard neo-conservative lobby in America puts pressure on some European countries to go along with these sanctions, and to persuade other countries to do the same, journalist Neil Clark, told RT.
RT: The EU has extended individual sanctions but refrained from new economic restrictions. Why haven’t they gone further do you think?
Neil Clark: Well, it’s interesting, isn’t it? I think this reveals to us the split that there is within the EU. Because what we’ve got really, we’ve got the hard-line countries led unfortunately by Britain, countries like Poland, Lithuania and some others who really want an extension of sanctions. And then we’ve got the more realistic members, the countries that actually want to see these sanctions lifted. Of course, we remember just three weeks ago Francois Hollande, the French President, said that the EU hoped that sanctions would soon be lifted. And of course that would have caused a lot of horror among the anti-Russian camp. So I think what we saw [on Thursday] is the evidence of a real split. We haven’t had these measures that some people wanted, for example some of the more anti-Russian elements have been calling for Russia to be banned from the SWIFT banking system. And what we’ve seen is an extension of the existing sanctions so I think that this reflects the split within the EU at the moment.
RT: Russia’s been under American and European sanctions since last March. How much has it helped resolve the Ukrainian crisis?
NC: Well I think it’s very important to realize…Ukraine is really a pretext for these sanctions. What we’ve got is an anti-Russian lobby, a neo-conservative lobby in America which has for years wanted to sanction Russia. You go back to 2003 and you got neocons calling for Russia to be sanctioned. …This campaign for Russia to be sanctioned stepped up after the events in Syria in 2013 when Russia blocked a war against Syria…And then the Ukrainian situation kicked off as it were.
So I think it’s very important to realize it really that it has really nothing to do with the situation in Ukraine. These sanctions are being imposed, I’m afraid, because of a hard anti-Russian lobby in America and pressure’s been put on certain European countries that are very close to America to go along with these sanctions and to persuade other countries to go along with these sanctions.
It’s interesting, isn’t it, that when we talk about Ukraine the offenses launched by the Ukrainian government forces coincided with visits of high-ranking US officials. And I think that there would have been quite a lot of concern among this anti-Russian lobby in Washington when Francois Hollande did say three weeks ago that he would like to see sanctions lifted.And then what happens? American officials go to Ukraine and we get another offensive against the people in the East. Then the fighting there is used as a pretext for continuing on with the sanctions.
RT: There have been calls for the West to arm the Ukrainian army. Is that on the cards?
NC: It all really depends on what happens in Europe. It is actually crucial at the moment. We saw last night that vote at the Council of Europe – just how divided it was: 35 to 34. So I think there are certain countries in Europe… Poland has been called the 51st state of America, Poland is following the American line, and Britain unfortunately is. But there are other countries, Austria for example, who don’t really want to go down this road, who want to have a return to proper working relations with Russia, because Europe needs Russia. Europe needs a good working economic relationship with Russia. So it’s all a battle going on within the European Union now as to which fraction will actually prevail… So I think the hawks would love to see hard weaponry going to Ukraine, would love to see this conflict continue. But the more sensible countries in Europe want to see an end to it and get back to normal relations with Russia which is in Europe’s interest.
RT: On Wednesday two Russian bombers were detected flying over the Channel which provoked an outcry in the British media as they supposedly ‘disrupted UK aviation’, though these bombers didn’t violate other countries’ borders. What do you think about this situation?
NC: Well I think it’s very interesting, isn’t it, that this big news story happened when the EU was discussing the issue of sanctions with Russia. And I think it happened before, when we had…this debate about whether to extent or deepen sanctions, increase sanctions on Russia…And headlines that come up, you know “Russian bombers over the Channel”, but then we found out that it wasn’t exactly as it was first reported. So I think that in this anti-Russian climate we‘ve got to be careful when we look at the news headlines. There is an agenda going on, there is anti-Russian lobby in the West unfortunately which wants to keep this going and to keep more excuses and pretexts for the sanctions on Russia. So I think we have got to keep cool heads and you know look at bigger context of the stories and it seems quite interesting that every time we are getting these discussions about sanctions on Russia, that this sort of incidents seem to occur.
READ MORE:
UK fighter jets scrambled to intercept Russian bombers
EU foreign ministers extend sanctions against Russian officials, E. Ukraine rebels
EU Parliament wants to keep Russia sanctions, set ‘benchmarks’ for lifting them
Follow Neil Clark on Twitter
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From the Archives
Confronting the Threat of Ethnic Bioweapons
By Tony Cartalucci – New Eastern Outlook – 29.11.2017
The United States Air Force’s 59th Medical Wing’s molecular biology branch recently was revealed to have been collecting specifically Russian RNA and synovial (connective) tissue samples, prompting fears in Russia of a possible US directed ethnic-specific bioweapons program. … continue
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