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Europe’s oldest political prisoner, Georges Abdallah, has served 35 years

By Ramin Mazaheri – Press TV – October 19, 2019

Georges Ibrahim Abdallah, known as the “Nelson Mandela of the Arab World”, has now marked 35 years in a French prison. The pro-Palestinian resistance leader remains Europe’s longest-held political prisoner.

In 1982, during Israel’s invasion of Lebanon, Abdallah headed a group which accepted responsibility for the death of Israeli and American agents in Paris. Abdallah has refused to express regret or remorse for defending his country, which was under military occupation.

Abdallah has become an immense inspiration to leftists and anti-imperialists worldwide, despite a Western media blackout on his case.

Abdallah has been eligible for release since 1999, but Washington and Tel Aviv put pressure on France to deny him parole. His own lawyer has admitted to working for French intelligence, and his trial and parole process has been marked by obvious political manipulation.

Abdallah, described as a model prisoner, reads daily in four different languages. He writes letters of support for just causes, and he remains in regular contact with the outside.

Despite his unjust incarceration Abdallah continues to fight for Palestine and against imperialism, and many activists around the world will continue to fight for his release.

October 19, 2019 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture | , , , , | Leave a comment

Russia’s Mideast Rise, Fading of Pax Americana Presents Threats, Opportunities, Israeli Media Says

Sputnik – 18.10.2019

Earlier this week, as US troops abandoned positions in northern Syria under the de facto control of local Kurdish forces amid the Turkish onslaught, Russian peacekeeping patrols quietly began operating in Manbij, northern Syria in a bid to prevent fighting between Turkish and Syrian Army forces.

The withdrawal of US troops from northern Syria signals a waning of ‘Pax Americana’ in the Middle East, and presents both “dangers” and “opportunities” for Israel in the region, former Israeli intelligence officials, diplomats and lawmakers have told The Times of Israel.

According to Amos Yadlin, former head of the Israeli military’s Military Intelligence Directorate, “All pairs of enemies in the Middle East enjoy reasonably good ties with Russia: Saudi Arabia and Iran, Israel and the Palestinians, the Kurds and the Turks, Israel and Iran, Egypt and Turkey, and so on.” Russia, Yadlin said, is not a Middle Eastern ‘hegemon’ in the traditional sense of the term, with Israel, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Egypt sharing that title, in his view. Furthermore, he noted, Washington still has far greater forces in the Middle East than Moscow.

“The Russian success stems from their ability to use very few forces with determination and rules of engagement that only they can allow themselves, with a veto at the UN Security Council and a patriotic audience at home,” Yadlin said, without elaborating.

Former Israeli Ambassador to the US Michael Oren said he found the US disengagement in the Middle East much more concerning than Russia’s growing influence. “We have relied for the last 45 years on a Pax Americana that no longer exists. I am not saying that the US won’t come to our assistance, but we can’t be certain of it anymore,” he said. As for Russia, Oren suggested Israel should work to reach a ‘modus vivendi’ with Moscow. “It’s useless for us to pretend that Russia is going to be an ally, but we don’t have to make them enemies either,” he said.

However, Ksenia Svetlova, a former Israeli lawmaker from the Zionist Union Party, said Russia’s rise could have “very grave” implications for Tel Aviv. “We already have Russian air defence systems, the S-300, that cover the Syrian and Lebanese shores. As soon as the Russians think that it’s smart for them to operate these systems and to halt the Israeli attacks, Israel would no longer be able to deal with the extension of Iranian power in these countries,” she said, repeating Tel Aviv’s talking point about alleged growing ‘Iranian influence’ in Syria.

Russia initially deployed its air defences only at its airbase in Latakia, northwestern Syria. However, last October, following a friendly fire incident led to the loss of a Russian aircraft and the deaths of 15 Russian airmen, Moscow began deploying S-300s to Syria’s armed forces, complicating Tel Aviv’s campaign of airstrikes into Syria and leading to a reduction in its intensity.

According to Svetlova, Iran, another Israeli adversary, was also a Russian ‘strategic ally’, and “it’s not likely that Moscow will do anything to curb the Iranian influence in Syria and Lebanon.”

But Ofer Zalzberg, an analyst at the Belgium-based nonprofit International Crisis Group, believes Russia could help reduce tensions between Israel and other countries in the region. In his view, President Trump’s Syria exit would at least temporarily end “Israeli wishful thinking about the US resolving all problems militarily,” which could force Israel too to move away from military operations and turn to diplomacy and “some temporary de-facto power-sharing,” including agreements on Syria and Lebanon and perhaps even a “non-aggression pact” between Israel and Hezbollah.

The US withdrew about 1,000 troops from northeast Syria last week, thereby greenlighting a Turkish military operation Ankara says is aimed against Daesh (ISIS) terrorists and local Kurdish militants, whom Turkish authorities also classify as terrorists. Turkey’s operation brought it broad condemnation from its NATO allies, with the US slapping the country with sanctions. Late Thursday, US Vice President Mike Pence said he and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo had met with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and agreed to a ceasefire in Syria.

Amid the Turkish operation, Damascus reached an agreement with Kurdish-led militia forces in northern Syria, allowing Syrian Army forces to advance into Kurdish-controlled areas to mount a joint defence of the Syrian-Turkish border area. This week, Russian peacekeepers began patrols in the city of Manbij in eastern Aleppo province, with the mission aimed at preventing fighting between Syrian and Turkish forces.

October 18, 2019 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Militarism, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | , , , | Leave a comment

Jeffrey Epstein Again Disappears From View, but What About Mossad?

By Philip Giraldi | Strategic Culture Foundation | October 17, 2019

I have long argued that pedophile Jeffrey Epstein was clearly an intelligence agent and that he was most likely working for the Israeli external service Mossad. My belief was based on the nature of his activity, which suggested that he was able to blackmail important Americans using the sex tapes that he had been able to make at his Manhattan mansion. Put that together with the existence of his fake Austrian passport, as well as former Miami federal attorney Alexander Acosta’s comments  and it would seem that an intelligence connection is a sine qua non.

Acosta was particularly damning. When asked “Is the Epstein case going to cause a problem [for confirmation hearings]?” he replied “…that I had just one meeting on the Epstein case.” He’d cut the non-prosecution deal with one of Epstein’s attorneys because he had “been told to back off,” that Epstein was above his pay grade. “I was told Epstein belonged to intelligence and to leave it alone.”

The answers to those remaining questions about Epstein are still lacking even though he is gone, but one fears that the authorities will be disinclined to further investigate a dead man. It appears that no one in the various investigative agencies or the mainstream media has been interested in what Acosta meant, even though it would be simple enough to ask him. Who told him to back off? And how did they explain it? And then there is Epstein’s Austrian passport. Was the document fake or real, with a real name and photo substitution or alternation of both picture and name? How did he get it? Austrian passports are highly desirable in intelligence circles because the country is neutral and its holders can travel just about everywhere without a visa.

What Epstein did and how he did it was an intelligence operation in support of Mossad. There is no other viable explanation for his filming of prominent politicians and celebrities having sex with young girls. Recruiting and running American movers and shakers like Bill Clinton, with his 26 trips on the Lolita Express, former Governor Bill Richardson, or former Senator George Mitchell are precisely the types of “agents of influence” that the Mossad would seek to coerce or even blackmail into cooperation.

Other compelling evidence for a Mossad connection came from Epstein’s relationship with Ghislaine Maxwell, who reportedly served as his key procurer of young girls. Ghislaine is the daughter of Robert Maxwell, who died or possibly was assassinated in mysterious circumstances in 1991. Maxwell was an Anglo-Jewish businessman, very cosmopolitan in profile, like Epstein, a multi-millionaire who was very controversial with what were regarded as ongoing ties to Mossad. After his death, he was given a state funeral by Israel in which six serving and former heads of Israeli intelligence listened while Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir eulogized: “He has done more for Israel than can today be said.”

Israel and high-profile Jewish players also have continued to turn up like bad pennies in the Epstein case, but no one seems to be interested in pursuing that angle. Epstein clearly had contact with former Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres and Ehud Barak and Epstein patrol Les Wexner also had close ties to the Jewish state and its government.

And now, finally more evidence of the relationship has surfaced even though the mainstream media appears to have lost all interest in the subject. A recent interview given by a former high-ranking official in Israeli military intelligence has inter alia made the claim that Epstein’s sexual blackmail enterprise was from the beginning an Israel intelligence operation involving the entrapment of powerful individuals and politicians in the United States and also abroad.

In an interview with Zev Shalev, former CBS News executive producer, the retired senior executive for Israel’s Directorate of Military Intelligence, Ari Ben-Menashe, claimed not only to have first met Jeffrey Epstein and his alleged procuress, Ghislaine Maxwell, in the 1980s, but that both Epstein and Maxwell were already working with Israeli intelligence prior to that time.

Ben-Menashe, was himself involved in the notorious Iran-Contra arms deals. He claimed that he had been introduced to Jeffrey Epstein by Robert Maxwell in the mid-1980s while Maxwell’s and Ben-Menashe’s were themselves working on Iran-Contra “… he [Maxwell] wanted us to accept him [Epstein] as part of our group …. I’m not denying that we were at the time a group that it was Nick Davies [Foreign Editor of the Maxwell-Owned Daily Mirror], it was Maxwell, it was myself and our team from Israel, we were doing what we were doing.” Ben-Menashe’s account has been corroborated independently by investigative journalist Seymour Hersh, describing how Maxwell, Davies and Ben-Menashe arranged the transfer and sale of military equipment and weapons from Israel to Iran on behalf of Mossad and the CIA during that time period.

Ben-Menashe, who would have absolutely nothing to gain by lying, described how Maxwell stated during the introduction that “your Israeli bosses have already approved” of Epstein. Maxwell was involved in an major intelligence network in Israel “which included the then-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon…” and was well placed to know that of which he spoke.

Will the three simultaneous investigations currently taking place even seek to ask the right questions now that the target of the investigation is gone and the new Ben-Menashe information has surfaced? Given the high stakes in the game, quite likely there will be a cover-up both of how Epstein lived and how he died and, most importantly, whom he worked for. Unfortunately, but predictably, the media and the inside the Beltway chattering class have lost interest in the story and we the public will most likely never learn what Epstein was all about. Just another instance of Israel spying on the United States… ho hum.

October 17, 2019 Posted by | Corruption, Deception, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , , , | Leave a comment

Bedouin Mass Eviction is Part of Israel’s Efforts to Drive Palestinians off their Historic Lands

Tens of thousands are to be driven out of their homes because their numbers pose a major demographic threat to a Jewish state

By Jonathan Cook | The National | October 16, 2019

The decades-long struggle by tens of thousands of Israelis against being uprooted from their homes – some for the second or third time – should be proof enough that Israel is not the western-style liberal democracy it claims to be.

Last week 36,000 Bedouin – all of them Israeli citizens – discovered that their state is about to make them refugees in their own country, driving them into holding camps. These Israelis, it seems, are the wrong kind.

Their treatment has painful echoes of the past. In 1948, 750,000 Palestinians were expelled by the Israeli army outside the borders of the newly declared Jewish state established on their homeland – what the Palestinians call their Nakba, or catastrophe.

Israel is regularly criticised for its belligerent occupation, its relentless expansion of illegal settlements on Palestinian land and its repeated and savage military attacks, especially on Gaza.

On rare occasions, analysts also notice Israel’s systematic discrimination against the 1.8 million Palestinians whose ancestors survived the Nakba and live inside Israel, ostensibly as citizens.

But each of these abuses is dealt with in isolation, as though unrelated, rather than as different facets of an overarching project. A pattern is discernible, one driven by an ideology that dehumanises Palestinians everywhere Israel encounters them.

That ideology has a name. Zionism provides the thread that connects the past – the Nakba – with Israel’s current ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from their homes in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, the destruction of Gaza, and the state’s concerted efforts to drive Palestinian citizens of Israel out of what is left of their historic lands and into ghettos.

The logic of Zionism, even if its more naive supporters fail to grasp it, is to replace Palestinians with Jews – what Israel officially terms Judaisation.

The Palestinians’ suffering is not some unfortunate side effect of conflict. It is the very aim of Zionism: to incentivise Palestinians still in place to leave “voluntarily”, to escape further suffocation and misery.

The starkest example of this people replacement strategy is Israel’s long-standing treatment of 250,000 Bedouin who formally have citizenship.

The Bedouin are the poorest group in Israel, living in isolated communities mainly in the vast, semi-arid area of the Negev, the country’s south. Largely out of view, Israel has had a relatively free hand in its efforts to “replace” them.

That was why, for a decade after it had supposedly finished its 1948 ethnic cleansing operations and won recognition in western capitals, Israel continued secretly expelling thousands of Bedouin outside its borders, despite their claim on citizenship.

Meanwhile, other Bedouin in Israel were forced off their ancestral lands to be driven either into confined holding areas or state-planned townships that became the most deprived communities in Israel.

It is hard to cast the Bedouin, simple farmers and pastoralists, as a security threat, as was done with the Palestinians under occupation.

But Israel has a much broader definition of security than simple physical safety. Its security is premised on the maintenance of an absolute demographic dominance by Jews.

The Bedouin may be peaceable but their numbers pose a major demographic threat and their pastoral way of life obstructs the fate intended for them – penning them up tightly inside ghettos.

Most of the Bedouin have title deeds to their lands that long predate Israel’s creation. But Israel has refused to honour these claims and many tens of thousands have been criminalised by the state, their villages denied legal recognition.

For decades they have been forced to live in tin shacks or tents because the authorities refuse to approve proper homes and they are denied public services like schools, water and electricity.

The Bedouin have one option if they wish to live within the law: they must abandon their ancestral lands and their way of life to relocate to one of the poor townships.

Many of the Bedouin have resisted, clinging on to their historic lands despite the dire conditions imposed on them.

One such unrecognised village, Al Araqib, has been used to set an example. Israeli forces have demolished the makeshift homes there more than 160 times in less than a decade. In August, an Israeli court approved the state billing six of the villagers $370,000 (Dh1.6 million) for the repeated evictions.

Al Araqib’s 70-year-old leader, Sheikh Sayah Abu Madhim, recently spent months in jail after his conviction for trespassing, even though his tent is a stone’s throw from the cemetery where his ancestors are buried.

Now the Israel authorities are losing patience with the Bedouin.

Last January, plans were unveiled for the urgent and forcible eviction of nearly 40,000 Bedouin from their homes in unrecognised villages under the guise of “economic development” projects. It will be the largest expulsion in decades.

“Development”, like “security”, has a different connotation in Israel. It really means Jewish development, or Judaisation – not development for Palestinians.

The projects include a new highway, a high-voltage power line, a weapons testing facility, a military live-fire zone and a phosphate mine.

It was revealed last week that the families would be forced into displacement centres in the townships, living in temporary accommodation for years as their ultimate fate is decided. Already these sites are being compared to the refugee camps established for Palestinians in the wake of the Nakba.

The barely concealed aim is to impose on the Bedouin such awful conditions that they will eventually agree to be confined for good in the townships on Israel’s terms.

Six leading United Nations human rights experts sent a letter to Israel in the summer protesting the grave violations of the Bedouin families’ rights in international law and arguing that alternative approaches were possible.

Adalah, a legal group for Palestinians in Israel, notes that Israel has been forcibly evicting the Bedouin over seven decades, treating them not as human beings but as pawns in its never-ending battle to replace them with Jewish settlers.

The Bedouin’s living space has endlessly shrunk and their way of life has been crushed.

This contrasts starkly with the rapid expansion of Jewish towns and single-family farming ranches on the land from which the Bedouin are being evicted.

It is hard not to conclude that what is taking place is an administrative version of the ethnic cleansing Israeli officials conduct more flagrantly in the occupied territories on so-called security grounds.

These interminable expulsions look less like a necessary, considered policy and more like an ugly, ideological nervous tic.

October 17, 2019 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , , , | Leave a comment

And now, a message from our wannabe masters about Syria

The Saker | October 16, 2019

this just came to my inbox:

Dear The Saker,

The American Jewish Congress opposes the U.S. decision to withdraw troops from Syria and strongly condemns Turkey’s actions in Syria against the Kurds. In addition to endangering a U.S. ally, the Kurds, it also poses a great threat to Israel and to the region’s stability overall. Israel shares a border with Syria and is affected by what happens within Syria.

Syria has become a hotbed of Hezbollah and Iranian activity, which poses a direct threat to Israel; as a result of this decision, Turkey, Iran and Hezbollah win while Israel loses. Ultimately, the impact of this decision may come to outweigh President Trump’s historic actions in support of Israel. Regional stability and the security of our allies must be paramount for U.S. policy in the Middle East.

Jack Rosen
President
American Jewish Congress

American Jewish Congress
745 5th Ave., 30th Floor
New York NY 10151 United States

October 16, 2019 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | , , , | Leave a comment

The EU’s conditional aid and suppression of Palestinian rights

By Ramona Wadi | MEMO | October 14, 2019

The European Union’s incoming Foreign Policy Chief Josep Borrell has already signalled a continuation of the bloc’s prevailing politics when it comes to Palestine – preserve the two-state compromise by ensuring funding to the Palestinian Authority.

“If anyone helps the Palestinians today and their right to have their own state, that is Europe,” Borrell declared at the European Parliament’s Committee on Foreign Affairs. The truth is Europe does neither; it is merely concerned with maintaining its influence when it comes to the two-state compromise and peace-building narratives, all of which serve the EU’s political agenda.

Summarising the gist of the EU’s foreign policy when it comes to Palestine, Borrell tweeted: “The EU contributes almost one million € a day to attend the Palestinian Authority. We must continue to defend a peaceful coexistence and the two states solution.” A succinct description of what EU funding constitutes – providing the PA with the necessary backing to function without the existence of a Palestinian state.

For the EU, maintaining the two-state paradigm at the helm of policy works better than implementation, which is now inapplicable anyway. The pretence of state-building, which the PA forms part of, is also a veneer that shifts focus away from the EU’s lucrative trade deals with Israel. Borrell has already stated, unsurprisingly, that the EU’s trade agreements with Israel will not be broken. In 2017, Israel-EU trade amounted to €36.2 billion, which pales in comparison to EU assistance to the PA.

For Palestinians, therefore, the EU only finances hypotheses – in Borrell’s words, “the possibility of the creation of a Palestinian state that can coexist peacefully with an Israeli state.” The EU can claim to be the biggest donor to the Palestinians, yet it is financing its own agenda, rather than providing the means for Palestinians to demand their legitimate political rights.

The Oslo Accords, which allowed Israel to colonise additional Palestinian land, have not been repudiated by the EU. On the contrary, there has been no contestation of the framework on the grounds that it has stripped Palestinians of what remained of their land and freedom. With the PA a willing accomplice, the EU has never been challenged by Palestinian political bureaucrats to uphold the rights of the Palestinian people. Conversely, the PA reaches out to the EU for assistance in maintaining the violations imposed by Israel and to which the international community turns a blind eye.

Europe is not helping Palestinians towards statehood – it is maintaining the illusion of statehood as an interim project, while Israel colonises what remains of Palestinian territory. The Oslo Accords are vague and so is EU policy towards Palestine. Instead of seeking clear parameters to decolonise Palestine, the EU is adopting the same ambiguities that have transformed Palestinians into a humanitarian project against their will.

The EU is merely financing its unwarranted justification of the two-state paradigm and forcing Palestinians into conditional financial aid. While nothing new is expected when it comes to the EU’s farcical peace and state-building for Palestinians, Borrell has indicated the EU’s agenda upfront – the financing of agendas and illusions to enable Israel’s ongoing colonial project.

October 14, 2019 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , , | Leave a comment

The Vela Flash: Forty Years Ago

Edited by William Burr, Avner Cohen, and Richard Wolfson | National Security Archive | September 22, 2019

Washington D.C. – An unidentified flash on 22 September 1979 in the far South Atlantic had a “90% plus” probability of being a nuclear test, according to a CIA finding from later that year. The document, among others uncovered recently through archival research, adds significant weight to the argument that the flash, detected by a U.S. VELA satellite, was not a natural event, as White House science advisers later insisted.

On the fortieth anniversary of the Vela incident, the National Security Archive supplements its earlier postings with documents recently obtained from the Jimmy Carter Library.

The collection includes new information on scientific intelligence provided by the Arecibo Observatory (Puerto Rico) concerning an ionospheric disturbance on 22 September that corresponded to similar evidence from Soviet nuclear tests in the  early 1960s.

The documents also put an unflattering cast on the methods of White House science experts who discounted the views of the intelligence agencies, eventually agreeing to hear them out only so “we can more safely ignore them later.” While chief White House scientist Frank Press argued that the intelligence community had no convincing case, recent scientific studies suggest that the case for a nuclear event interpretation is formidable.

____________________________________________________________

Forty years ago, on 22 September 1979, the bhangmeters on a U.S. VELA satellite picked up signals that were initially interpreted as most likely originating from a nuclear test in the far South Atlantic but which a high-level White House panel chaired by MIT professor Jack Ruina later interpreted as more probably the result of a non-nuclear event (e.g., a striking meteoroid) on or around the satellite. That view became the semiofficial public interpretation but it was contested and controversial. By contrast, according to a White House report published today by the National Security Archive, the Central Intelligence Agency had “assessed the probability of a nuclear test as 90% plus.” [See Document 5]

The CIA and White House science advisers raised their views almost entirely within the walls of government secrecy. In the intervening decade bits and pieces on the Vela incident—and the controversy over it—started to get declassified. Besides the CIA estimate of high probability, another release, a November 1979 memorandum from the Department of Energy included data from the Arecibo Ionospheric Observatory in Puerto Rico on an ionospheric disturbance that some interpreted as corroborating evidence of a nuclear explosion [See document 2].

Today’s posting introduces for the first time previously declassified but obscure and previously unpublished documents from the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library and Museum. Collectively shedding light on the controversy over the Vela flash, the new documents supplement the two major collections published by the National Security Archive in 2006 and 2016.

These documents confirm that a number of senior government officials at the Energy Department, the Defense Department, Defense Intelligence Agency, and the CIA, among others, held the view that a nuclear explosion had taken place on 22 September 1979. Nevertheless, White House scientific advisers and officials were so strongly committed to the Ruina panel’s non-nuclear interpretation that they dismissed alternative explanations. They only agreed to hear out the views of dissenting officials “so that we can more safely ignore them.” [See Document 5]

In recent years, the Ruina panel’s arguments have come under critical scrutiny with scientists in the security studies field systematically reinterpreting the Vela data to make the case for a nuclear event. In recent publications, Lars-Erik De Geer (Swedish Defence Force Institute) and Christopher M. Wright (Australian Defence Force Academy) reviewed the publicly available evidence and concluded that the argument for a nuclear explosion is “founded upon three pillars, which include the original optical signal, the iodine-131 evidence, and the hydroacoustic signal.” According to De Geer and Wright, each of the pillars “by itself, is a strong indicator of a nuclear explosion.” For example, they found that the Vela signals provided stronger evidence of a test than the Ruina panel would credit. They further argued that the hydroacoustic data indicated that the test took place on or around the barren Prince Edward Island, some 955 nautical miles off the southern coast of South Africa.[1]

If the Vela sensors did detect a nuclear explosion, who set it off has also been a matter of speculation and controversy. A leading theory, advanced by former Senate staffer Leonard Weiss and others, is that it was an Israeli test conducted with South African logistical assistance.[2] In a major report the CIA also looked at scenarios involving both Israel and South Africa, among other countries, but its conclusions remain classified. President Jimmy Carter shared the view that Israel most likely played a lead role. On 27 February 1980, he wrote in his diary that “We have a growing belief among our scientists that the Israelis did indeed conduct a nuclear test explosion in the ocean near the southern end of South Africa.” [3]

By now, forty years later, it is clear enough that South Africa could not be a suspect.  South Africa was not in a position to conduct such a test, as former South African scientists openly acknowledged years later. Israel, although presumably assisted by the South Africans, remained the sole suspect.[4]

It would be worth knowing which scientists President Carter had in mind, because the Ruina panel would have strongly disagreed with his assessment. He may have become acquainted with scientific intelligence reports as part of his daily briefing, but what they were is unknown. With major studies still classified, such as a critically important report by the Naval Research Laboratory (which the NRL cannot locate) and CIA studies as well as White House files still under declassification review or under appeal, much remains to be learned about U.S. government intelligence collection and analysis as well as the role that politics and diplomacy played in internal discussions of the Vela incident.

Documents

Document 1

White House Situation Room, Situation Room Log, “Reflections of South African Nuclear Event,” 25 October 1979, Secret

1979-10-25

Source: Zbigniew Brzezinski Material, Country Files [NSA 6] Box 72, South Atlantic Nuclear Event, 9/79-6/80

Since its creation during the Kennedy administration, the White House Situation Room has functioned as a communications center and a site for holding sensitive meetings. This record of situation room interactions with various agencies concerning the 22 September event provides an overview of the delayed and unsuccessful efforts to detect the radioactive debris that a nuclear test could have produced. The excised portions are probably a reference to the Air Force Technical Applications Center [AFTAC], which under various names has been monitoring overseas nuclear developments since the late 1940s and which played a role in the search for radioactive samples in the South Pacific after the Vela Incident..

Even though AFTAC found no traces of fallout, analysis of thyroid glands of sheep slaughtered in Australia in October 1979 showed “abnormally high levels” of Iodine 131, a “short-lived isotope that occurs as the result of a nuclear event.”

Document 2

John Deutch, Deputy Secretary of Energy, to Ambassador Henry Owen, enclosing “21-22-September Acoustic Gravity Wave Detection, Arecibo Ionospheric Observatory, Puerto Rico Facility,” 8 November 1979

1979-11-08

Source: Zbigniew Brzezinski Material, Country Files [NSA 6] Box 72, South Atlantic Nuclear Event, 9/79-6/80

Writing to Ambassador-at-Large Henry Owen, who had overlapping roles at the White House and the State Department, John Deutch sent a report of a “traveling ionospheric disturbance”—a wave in the upper atmosphere—detected by the Arecibo Observatory, a giant radio telescope nestled into the mountains of Puerto Rico. According to Deutch, the data on the ionospheric disturbance “possibly may confirm the signal from the VELA system.”

The Arecibo Observatory (now a National Science Foundation facility) can detect signals in the upper atmosphere that originate in violent events at Earth’s surface—including volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, nuclear explosions, and even rocket launches. Such events can produce strong sound waves of very low frequency (pitch), far below what the human ear can detect (the periods of these waves are measured in minutes or longer, as opposed to thousandths of seconds for humanly audible sound). These waves propagate upward through the atmosphere. When they reach the ionosphere, a layer of electrically charged particles beginning about 80 kilometers (50 miles) above Earth, they may induce so-called traveling ionospheric disturbances (TIDs).

The Arecibo Observatory is one of the best instruments in the world for observing TIDs. It does conventional radio astronomy for studying the cosmos, but it also sends powerful radar beams into the upper atmosphere to probe Earth’s ionosphere. Several hours after the VELA flash detection, Arecibo observed a TID. Initially downplayed in part because of Aricebo’s location thousands of miles from the VELA event, the observation produced a different perspective from DOE, which suggested that the TID was consistent with “an earthquake or explosion source” and that the wave speed was consistent with an event having come from the VELA source—although ambiguities in the exact type (mode) of the wave made a shorter distance also possible. The available declassified information notes that similar observations (although pre-Arecibo) have been associated with nuclear tests in the Soviet arctic in 1961.

The Department of Energy’s Los Alamos Laboratory developed its thinking on the Arecibo signal, treating it as a possible indicator of a nuclear event. Nevertheless, the Ruina panel would discount the Arecibo data on grounds of “mathematical errors,” although the defense and energy departments strongly disagreed. Pending declassification requests may shed more light on the debate over the Arecibo data.

Document 3

White House Science and Technology [Staff] Report to National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, “Evening Report,” 9 November 1979, Secret

1979-11-08

Source: Staff Material Science and Technology Files [NSA 30], Box 5, [Marcum Chron file]: 1-12/79

According to national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski’s aides, a panel organized by White House science adviser Dr. Frank Press and chaired by MIT professor Jack Ruina was already reviewing data and heading toward a “preliminary finding” that the Vela flash was not a nuclear event. According to the early findings, “it is entirely possible that the September 22 signal could have been caused by a meteroid of somewhat different velocity, size and rotational motion.” Moreover, the Vela signal “itself differs in some important ways from previous nuclear signals.” Without corroborating data, “these facts tended to make the panel somewhat skeptical that a nuclear explosion actually occurred.”

The report also mentioned Deutch’s report on the newly interpreted data from the Arecibo Observatory. While noting that the Arecibo data “has a very different timescale” and that the “relationship between nuclear explosions and ionospheric disturbances is much less well understood than for optical signals recorded by bhangmeters [on VELA satellites],” it “represents the best lead yet in the search for corroborative data.”

Document 4

Henry Owen/Jerry Oplinger, White House Staff, to National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, “South Atlantic Event,”9 January 1980, Secret

1980-01-09

Source: Staff Material Global Issues Files [NSA 28], Box 55, Proliferation – South Atlantic Nuclear Event, 1/80

On 9 January 1980, a “mini-SCC [Special Coordinating Committee]” meeting discussed the 22 September event. According to participants, “The consensus was that we don’t know what happened, and must proceed in policy terms accordingly.” The effort to politicize science is implicit. In a way, that conclusion matched the findings of the Ruina panel. Agnostic semi-official conclusions notwithstanding, important elements of the intelligence community continued to hold that a nuclear event had been detected, as evidenced in a report included in the National Security Archive’s 2016 posting.

Document 5

Jerry Oplinger, National Security Council/Science and Technology Staff, to Ambassador Henry Owen, “South Atlantic Event,” 25 January 1980, Secret, Excised copy

1980-01-25

Source: Staff Material Global Issues Files [NSA 28], Box 55, Proliferation – South Atlantic Nuclear Event, 1/80

This report conveys the approach that senior White House staff took toward dissenting views on the 22 September event. A scheduled presentation by representatives of the Departments of Energy and Defense would provide an opportunity for them to express arguments that a nuclear event had occurred; they would be heard out, according to this memo, “so that we can more safely ignore them.” This can arguably be seen as another possible demonstration of a “whitewash” effort to politicize scientific evidence.

According to Oplinger’s memorandum, the CIA’s “Safeguards-D” report had “assessed the probability of a nuclear test as 90% plus.” The Safeguards-D report was one required by the U.S. Senate when it ratified the Limited Test Ban Treaty in 1963. Consistent with proposals by the Joint Chiefs of Staff that the treaty be ratified on the basis of specific conditions, the Senate required the Kennedy administration to take specific implementing actions, such as recommendation D: “The improvement of our capability, within feasible and practical limits, to monitor the terms of the treaty, to detect violations, and to maintain our knowledge of Sino-Soviet nuclear activity, capabilities, and achievements.”

Having heard rumors that the CIA wanted to rewrite its safeguards report so that it corresponded to the findings of the Ruina panel, Oplinger wanted to make sure that CIA did no such thing because “nothing would suggest a whitewash more effectively.” If the CIA later decided that it wanted to update the earlier report that would be another matter as long as it could “provide solid and objective reasons.”

Document 6

Frank Press to Stan Turner, “Possible South Atlantic Nuclear Explosion,” 6 June 1980, Secret

1980-06-06

Source: Zbigniew Brzezinski Material, Country Files [NSA 6] Box 72, South Atlantic Nuclear Event, 9/79-6/80

In this memorandum to Director of Central Intelligence Stansfield Turner, Frank Press, White House science adviser, explained the reasoning behind the Ruina panel’s conclusion that the Vela flash was “probably not from a nuclear explosion” and “more likely … caused by a natural event.” He could not have written to Turner, however, without acknowledging the dissents expressed by “key officials” at the Defense Intelligence Agency, the CIA’s Nuclear Intelligence Panel (NIP), and the DOE weapons laboratories, who believed that the Vela signal detected a nuclear event. According to Press, “this is due primarily to the fact that the signal so closely resembles those from previous nuclear explosions, but the weapons laboratories have been unable to come up with a physical explanation that could explain the discrepancies observed in the signal.”

Press also noted that some of the agencies point to the “few pieces of geophysical data from September 22 that might have been related to a nuclear explosion.” He most likely referred to Arecibo data, and quite possibly also to the acoustic signals as analyzed by the naval Research Laboratory. Nevertheless, Press discounted it all: the data had “been thoroughly analyzed and none can be clearly correlated with the VELA signal.” We do not know if CIA Director Turner responded in writing to this memorandum. In the late 1990s, Turner told one of us (Avner Cohen) that he (and the Agency) had no doubt that it was a test and almost certainly an Israeli test.

Believing that White House scientists were not acting in good faith, by the spring of 1980, DIA experts saw the nuclear interpretation as settled in light of Naval Research Laboratory acoustic data that had not been available to the CIA or the Ruina panel. According to a senior DIA official, the acoustic signals were “unique to nuclear shots in a maritime environment.’”

Notes

[1]. Lars-Erik De Geer and Christopher M. Wright, “The 22 September 1979 Vela Incident: The Detected Double-Flash,” Science and Global Security 25 (2017): 95-124, and “The 22 September 1979 Vela Incident: Radionuclide and Hydroacoustic Evidence for a Nuclear Explosion,” Ibid, 26 (2018): 20-54.

[2]. Weiss has written extensively on this issue. See “Israel’s 1979 Nuclear Test and the U.S. Cover-up,” Middle East Policy,” Vol. 18 No.4 (2011); “The 1979 South Atlantic Flash: The Case for an Israeli Nuclear Test,” in Henry Sokolski, ed., Moving Beyond Pretense: Nuclear Power and Nonproliferation (Harrisburg, PA: Strategic Studies Institute and U.S. Army War College Press, 2014), 345-371; and “Flash from the Past: Why an Apparent Israeli Nuclear Test in 1979 Matters Today,” The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, (8 September 2015). “Flash from the Past: Why an Apparent Israeli Nuclear Test in 1979 Matters Today.” See also Timothy McDonnell, “International Conference: The Historical Dimensions of South Africa’s Nuclear Weapons Program,”4 January 2013, Nuclear Proliferation International History Project.

[3]. Jimmy Carter, White House Diary, (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2010), p. 405.

[4]. See Sasha Polakow-Suransky, The Unspoken Alliance: Israel’s Secret Relationship with Apartheid South Africa (New York: Pantheon Books, 2010), at 136 and 141, and Nic von Wielligh and Lydai von Wielligh-Steyn, The Bomb: South Africa’s Nuclear Weapons Programme (Pretoria: Litera Publications, 2015), at 157.

October 12, 2019 Posted by | Deception, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Militarism, Timeless or most popular | , | Leave a comment

Jewish terrorist involved in Duma operation prepares to join Israel army

MEMO | October 11, 2019

Yedioth Ahronoth reported on Thursday that a Jewish terrorist who participated in the killing of members of the Dawabsheh family in the village of Duma, in the occupied West Bank, is currently located in an Israeli military establishment in preparation to join the Israeli army. Thus, Israel follows a policy of integrating terrorists who kill Palestinians in cold blood, as in the case of the killer and soldier to be, Elor Azaria.

The terrorist is in a preparatory institution for military service in the centre of the country. He was not identified at the time of his arrest, claiming that when the terrorist attack took place, he was 16 years old. He was referred to by the letter “A.”

Lawyers of terrorist “A” reached a plea bargain with the Public Prosecution, following which he was as acquitted of having a direct connection with the planning of the terrorist attack. They also claimed that he had never entered the Dawabshah family home; instead, the defence required the plaintiff to confess to conspiracy.

According to the prosecutors’ deal, “A” must remain in prison for five years, despite the brutality of the crime committed in July 2015. Back then, the Dawabsheh family home was burned down, leading to the death of the father, Saad, his wife, Reham, and their child, Ali, in addition to seriously wounding their other child, Ahmed.

According to the same deal, “A” confessed to burning a warehouse in the village of Aqraba, vandalising property and setting fire to a car in the village of Jubb Yusuf on racially motivated grounds, in addition to deflating tires in Beit Safafa. The Prosecution removed charges, including setting fire to the Abbey of the Dormition in occupied Jerusalem, as well as committing several crimes as part of the “price paying” movement. The deal also stipulated that prosecutors should not seek five and a half years sentence.

The District Court approved the deal in Lod on 12 May. In July last year, the same court ordered “A” to be placed under house arrest after spending two years in prison. Although the Prosecution objected to his release, the court decided to issue such decision upon the recommendation of the Department of Juvenile Justice.

This was preceded by another court decision, in April last year, abolishing the confessions of “A” and the terrorist Amiram Ben-Uliel, who was convicted of carrying out the terrorist attack, claiming that the confessions were obtained under torture.

The court claimed at the time that the boy was a minor and the period he spent in prison justifies a review of the sentence. The Department of Juvenile Justice also maintained that “A” changed his attitudes and expressed regret for his actions. However, the Prosecution confirmed that this was to mislead the court.

Israeli security officials, including former Shin Bet chiefs, have warned against the tolerant treatment of Jewish terrorists who commit crimes as part of the “price-paying” movement, particularly by refusing to treat them as terrorists.

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October 11, 2019 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , , | Leave a comment

Israeli concern over the Turkish military operation against the Kurds

By Dr Adnan Abu Amer | MEMO | October 11, 2019

It was significant that the Israeli media presented extensive press and analytical coverage immediately after the start of the Turkish military operation in northern Syria against the Kurdish sites. It seems as if it were a purely internal Israeli affair, and not a regional or international issue. This opens the door to many sensitive questions regarding the reason for Israel’s concern over this operation and why Israel appears as if it were affected by the operation even though it is about 800 kilometres away from its borders.

The Israeli reactions, especially the official ones, reflect the magnitude of their concern and unease towards the Turkish military behaviour in the region. Most described it as a show of military power that was once unique to Israel alone. This current Turkish operation showed that there is a military force in the region that has influence, impact, and behaviour on the ground comparable to Israel’s and perhaps even superior to it.

We can talk about two kinds of Israeli reactions to the Turkish military operation in northern Syria against the Kurdish sites. The first are the official positions issued by the Israeli government and opposition leaders, which, agreed that Turkey should be attacked, despite their differences in most other issues.

Gilad Erdan, the Israeli Minister of Public Security, Strategic Affairs, commented the Turkish military operation in northern Syria by saying Erdogan is an “anti-Semitic racist who supports terrorism – slaughter the Kurds without us making a moral voice heard and calling on the world to stop it. We can’t stay indifferent on this.”

MK Zvi Hauser of the Blue and White party said, “As a nation-state of an ethnic minority in the Middle East, Israel cannot close its eyes to the suffering of the Kurds in the region. Fresh and deported Kurds will bring a wave of refugees, changing demographics, intensify instability and weep for generations, even from Israel’s point of view. Israel must internalise the new rules of the game concerning all challenges.”

Gideon Sa’ar, one of Netanyahu’s rivals in the Likud party, announced that Israel is must take a clear position on what he described as “Erdogan’s attack” on the Kurds and provide them with help. Former financial minister Yair Lapid said that given Turkey’s actions against the Turks, Lapid said “The time has come for Israel to officially recognize the genocide of the Armenian people and stop giving in to Turkish pressure.”

Ayelet Shaked, leader of the Yamina party and justice minister, said, “The Kurds are the world’s largest nation without a country, with a population of about 35 million people. They are an ancient people that share a special historical connection to the Jewish people,” adding, “They are the main force that fought against ISIS and endured thousands of deaths, under a special joint leadership of men and women. The Western world should stand with them.” Meanwhile, Netanyahu’s son, Yair, expressed his support for the Kurds by tweeting about Kurdistan under the hashtag #freekurdistan, indicating his separate support for the establishment of a Kurdish entity.

The second part of the Israeli positions involves the Israeli political and military analysis that gave itself a larger margin to criticise the American behaviour, thus “betraying” the Kurds, disappoint them, and delivering them to their inevitable fate before the lethal Turkish force. This requires Israeli decision-making circles to think hard about the American policy that has consistently let down its allies.

Haaretz newspaper’s military expert, Amos Harel, said: “Israel was surprised by U.S. President Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw American forces from Syria and allow Turkey to begin a military operation in the area.” He added, “Several sources also said that the American decision was also not seriously discussed, and possibly even wasn’t discussed at all, during Sunday’s security cabinet meeting, which focused on Iran and the Palestinian arena.”

Meanwhile, Ben-Dror Yemini, a political analyst for Yedioth Aharonoth, said that Washington leaving the Kurds to face their fate against the Turks raises red flags in Israel, as Trump has been exposed, one time after another, as a leader who is not well-versed, and instead acts arbitrarily. He does not know what is expected of a leader of a global superpower, and the result is Trump has become an unreliable ally for Israel because his current behaviour is a knife in the back of both the Kurds and Israel.

However, Arab affairs expert at Channel 12, Ehud Yaari said that Israel was wrong from the beginning to embrace Trump, and it must stay away from him before it loses the American public, because his chatter will not benefit them. He no longer has anything to give Israel.

Before the start of the Turkish military operation in northern Syria against Kurdish sites, senior Israeli officials expressed serious concern regarding US President Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw US troops from northern Syria, leaving its Kurdish allies as prey for Turkey, according to Israel.

More importantly, Israel was surprised by the American decision and saw it as an abandonment of the Kurdish forces that fought and contributed to the defeat of Daesh. Moreover, American action encourages Turkish-Iranian activity in Syria. All of this means that Israel cannot depend on Trump with regards to Syria, except for the political support for the Israeli attacks that target Iranian forces is well.

The US decision to withdraw from northern Syria suddenly spelled bad news for US allies in the region, specifically Israel. It is the second time that Trump surprises Israel after he decided to withdraw troops from Syria last December. All of the combined events create a new strategic reality in the region requiring Israeli readiness, because removing US troops in northeastern Syria, and letting Kurdish allies face their inevitable fate before the Turks, should be a serious, not artificial, source of concern in Tel Aviv.

The Turkish military operation in northern Syria, and the preceding and accompanying revelations, reveal the fear expressed by the Israelis and their desire not to reach a situation or scenario in which they are like the Kurds or Saudi Arabia, who did not receive American support or aid. This is because the Kurds’ disappointment from the Americans is a new indicator that he [Trump] will not fight anyone on behalf of Israel. It is worth noting that Israel lived some time under the assumption that the Americans will fight on behalf of it, but it has become clear that this assumption is completely mistaken and should not be built upon in light of the Turkish developments.

On the direct Israeli-Kurdish level, the Israeli concern over the Turkish military operation in northern Syria stems from Israel’s loss of its Kurdish allies and losing the great opportunity to establish a Kurdish entity or autonomy, which could result in forming a Kurdish-Israeli alliance that would serve both sides brought together by mutual strategic forces.

Israel and the Kurds are tied together by old historical alliances since the “minority alliance” theory emerged with the establishment of Israel over seventy years ago. Israel trained and armed Kurdish fighters who played a central role in helping Israel displace the Iraqi Jews in late 1969, moving Jews from their homes towards the border with Iran and then transferring them to Israel.

Israel’s interest in Kurdistan, which consists of parts of four countries, i.e. Iraq, Iran, Turkey, and Syria, manifested in a number of reasons that prompted Israel to strengthen ties between the two sides. Israel is almost the only country in the world to declare support for the establishment of a Kurdish state.

Israel seeks to keep the Kurds as a regional force in the area in order to prevent the revival of the “eastern front” threat, which poses a threat of a potential attack from that direction. The establishment of a Kurdish state or at least an advanced autonomy for the Kurds would solidify the division of Iraq on the one hand and surround Turkey and Iran on the other. It has been revealed that Israel has used the Kurdish region as a base to launch operations against Iranian facilities, which reveals the common ground for military and security relations between the Israelis and Kurds.

On an economic level, 75 per cent of Israel’s oil imports come from Iraqi Kurdistan, as well as significant economic cooperation, through the acquisition of a lot of investments by Israeli companies in Kurdistan, especially in the field of energy, construction, communications and security consulting.

Israel is assessing the Turkish-Kurdish developments around the clock because of its sensitivity. Perhaps the most important conclusion we can reach is that Israel joins the moderate Arab states and the Kurds are constantly and jointly assessing a position that is gradually becoming clearer. This position is that they are facing an American president that is unreliable because the US is living a phase completely separate to them all, even though they are supposed to be its most important and trusted allies in the region.

To conclude, the Turkish military operations in northern Syria, and the previous American withdrawal and abandonment of Saudi Arabia after the Iranian attacks [sic] on the country, all confirm to Israel that Trump is personally willing to sell it weapons and combat methods without military assistance. Therefore, in recent weeks, Israel has begun witnessing a state of agitation and disappointment that prevails in moderate countries, especially Saudi Arabia and the UAE.

From the Israeli point of view, this is a new cause for concern, because of the decline in confidence in Trump and the US as a trusted ally, as evidenced by his recent behaviour. The most recent of this behaviour is allowing the Turkish forces to attack the Kurds in northern Syria, this, which, in turn, would increase the Iranians’ interest in carrying out more attacks in the Middle East to establish their existence and control. It will be Israel’s turn sooner or later.

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October 11, 2019 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Militarism, Wars for Israel | , , , , | Leave a comment

Winston Churchill Starved 3 Million Indians to Death in the Man-Made Bengal Famine of 1943

By Marko Marjanović | Checkpoint Asia | December 22, 2016

Churchill’s Secret War: The British Empire and the Ravaging of India during World War II is a book by a science journalist Madhusree Mukerjee. It tells of British policy in India in the Second World War and how it relates to the Bengal Famine of 1943.

Mukerjee reminds the reader that before the British conquest India was a rich land. Certainly the conquerors drawn to Bengal in the 18th century were of the opinion they were adding a magnificently wealthy possession to their empire. Under colonial rule, however, Bengal soon became a synonym for poverty and a frequent setting of famine.

During the Second World War the colony was made to contribute heavily to the British war effort. India’s industries, manpower, and foodstuffs were made to serve requirements of the war the empire had involved itself in.

This was merely the latest escalation in a long lasting exploitation of the colony. The British deemed their unwanted presence in India a service and therefore extracted “payment” for it in the form of the Home Charge. As the British obstructed the expansion of manufacturing in India lest it provide competition for their domestic industry, the export of agricultural produce presented the only way of realizing this transfer.

Finally, since the empire set the transfer so high so much grain was extracted for export that the colony — which continued to produce more food than its need through the 19th century — was artificially kept in a condition of chronic malnutrition.

Unsurprisingly, there was strong resistance to colonial rule that could only be overcome by large scale repression. As part of the August 1942 crackdown against the Quit India Movement alone, more than 90,000 people were locked up and up to 10,000 were killed.

Short on manpower the British at times resorted to attacking crowds with aircraft. In particularly rebellious districts authorities burned down homes and destroyed rice supplies. British India was not unlike an occupied land.

The book exposes the manifold causes of the Bengal Famine. To begin with mortality rate in Bengal under British rule was atrocious even in a normal year with some of that attributable to malnutrition.

The immediate reasons why conditions deteriorated beyond this “normal” state of semi-famine was the catastrophic Midnapore Cyclone and the Japanese capture of Burma.

The Cyclone storm and subsequent floods disrupted life and ruined crops. The loss of Burma severed links with an important source of rice imports to India. These two factors which were outside British control, were probably enough for a disaster on their own, but subsequent British policies made the crisis far worse than it needed to be.

Anticipating the possibility the Japanese could advance further, the British carried out a scorched earth policy in coastal Bengal, seizing rice stocks, motor vehicles, bicycles and boats. Seizure of boats was particularly disruptive as they normally represented the primary means of transporting rice crops to the markets.

The loss of Burmese rice imports to India was not made up by imports from elsewhere, nor was India’s obligation to supply British Indian troops abroad lessened. Instead, India was made to cover the loss of Burmese rice imports to Ceylon, Arabia and South Africa even though these territories were already better provisioned with food than India.

Albeit in the years before WWII India had become a net importer of food, importing at least one million tons of cereal per year — a figure that was not actually sufficient to cover its needs, but represented what it could afford to import after paying the Home Charge — the British now undertook to export food from India.

Anticipating food shortages that were certain to follow, colonial administration moved to protect the strata of society most useful to the British Empire — administrators, soldiers and industrial workers. It set out to buy up huge quantities of grain and store it for their use. It would pay for these stocks in the same way it acquired supplies for the war effort — by printing money.

The government acquired some grain by requisitioning, but for the most part it simply bought it. Some purchases it made on its own, others it contracted out to private traders. Big merchant companies were given advances of vast sums of money and instructed to purchase grain at any price for the government.

The price of already precious grain skyrocketed and the Bengal peasant was priced out of the market. Between the purchases of the Bengal administration, the Government of India, the army and the industries which were recipients of government largesse, grain was sucked out from rural areas. Departments of government and industries crucial for the war effort secured huge stocks of grain — part of which would end up rotting as millions starved.

What made the looting of the countryside to this extent possible was that the transfer of purchasing power away from the peasant and to the government and those the government made business with that money printing entailed.

In the course of the war the money supply increased by between six and seven times, so that the British worried they were “within sight of collective refusal to accept further paper currency”. This confounded the problem of food scarcity since some cultivators understandably held onto their grain rather than release it to the market, as it was seen a better store of value than the rapidly depreciating currency.

The reason government purchases were so devastating for Bengal peasants was that most families owned tracts of land too small to sustain their families on their own.

Even in a normal year such families were not in position to store enough of their harvest to sustain them until the next one. They were not sellers of crops, they sold their labor to the big landowners and bought food.

Except now buying food meant competing with a government that could print money at will.

Prevalence of effectively landless peasants in Bengal in itself was the result of British policies in India which had created the landlord class from what had been tax collectors before the conquest.

Albeit crop failure and the loss of Burmese imports was enough to create a serious food deficit for India, there was actually no food problem for the British Empire taken as a whole. In fact London claimed that Bengal could not be fed — not for a lack of food, but for a lack of ships — supposedly shipping was so scarce that grain, which was available, could not be taken to India without disrupting the British war effort.

Prioritizing its war over the bare lives of three million of its subjects would have been bad enough, but Mukarjee shows that shipping was nowhere as scarce as London claimed, albeit it was certainly being mismanaged. For example there was shipping and food enough to build up a stockpile in the Eastern Mediterranean for the purpose of Allied invasion of the Balkans that would never come about. Also there were always ships aplenty to build up an enormous and ever growing stockpile of food in the British Isles that the London government was actually building up for post-war use.

In reality the biggest obstacle to secure food for famine-stricken India was not a lack of means, but the lack of will to allocate the resources necessary. Such readjustments would have clashed with the interest and the intent of the British Empire under Winston Churchill to exploit its colony for its purposes to the greatest extent possible.

To their credit, not every Brit was of a mind with the London government personified in Winston Churchill.

Many officials, including high ranking ones like the Secretary of State for India, Leopold Amery and the Viceroy of India, Field Marshal Wavell repeatedly called for a decisive effort to relieve the famine. Governments of Australia, New Zeeland and Canada offered grain for India if United Kingdom, which had taken control of their shipping, would transport it there.

British soldiers on the scene defied orders not to help famine refugees often handing over food from their own rations.

In addition to showing how the British Empire helped cause the Bengal Famine of 1943 and then denied it famine relief Churchill’s Secret War also provides the context for these two stories.

Mukarjee recounts a fair bit of the dynamic between colonial metropolis and the colony centering on exploitation and resistance, explains the consequences of British wartime policies for the political future of the colony — partition and independence — and paints a picture of famine and repression as seen from the ground by offering vivid first hand accounts by people who were affected.

It is a book rich in content, but probably the one thing to take from it is the way in which the famine was made worse and its victims selected by government abuse of paper currency.

British reaction to food shortages in Bengal was to protect the cities and industries at the expense of the peasants. Like the Soviet Union which had faced a food crisis of its own a decade earlier the British Empire figured it was up to it to decide who would live and who would die.

Only where the Soviet method of robbing the countryside of grain in 1932-33 was requisition, the British method of choice in India was money creation. It was a more elegant method, but no less deadly, and more difficult to effectively resist.

If the famine in 1932-33 in the Soviet Union was a requisition famine, the Bengal Famine of 1943 was a printing press famine.

October 10, 2019 Posted by | Book Review, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , | Leave a comment

Syria Says Ready to Welcome Kurds back into Fold

Al-Manar | October 8, 2019

Damascus voiced readiness on Tuesday to welcome Syria’s Kurds back into the fold after Washington left them to face Turkish military threats alone.

Deputy Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad stressed that Damascus “will defend all Syrian territory, and will not accept any occupation of its land,” he told Al-Watan newspaper.

The official said Kurdish groups have been “tossed aside” by Washington, after US President Donald Trump on Monday gave Turkey a green light to press ahead with its planned military operation.

“The nation welcomes all its children and Damascus will solve all problems in Syria in a positive manner, away from violence,” Mekdad said, vowing to take back all Syrian territory.

“We advise those who have gone astray to return to the nation, because the nation is their final destiny,” he added, encouraging Syria’s Kurds to reconcile with the government.

Ankara has threatened an offensive in Syria against Kurdish militias and US forces on Monday pulled back from Turkish border areas, opening the way for an invasion President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said could come at any moment.

Mekdad said that Kurdish militias in Syria were being “played” by Washington.

October 8, 2019 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation | , , | Leave a comment

Hunger striker reveals details of her horrific torture in Israeli prisons

Palestinian prisoner, Heba Al-Labadi is on the eighth day of hunger strike after being sentenced to administrative detention for five months without charge or trial on 20 August 2019 [Twitter]

Palestinian prisoner, Heba Al-Labadi was sentenced to administrative detention for five months without charge or trial on 20 August 2019 [Twitter]
MEMO | October 8, 2019

A Palestinian-Jordanian who has been on hunger strike for 15 days in Israeli prisons has revealed the details of her horrific interrogation and torture, the PLO Prisoners’ Committee reported on Monday. Heba Al-Labadi, 24, was arrested on 20 August by Israeli soldiers as she crossed the Allenby Bridge from Jordan to attend a wedding in the occupied West Bank with her mother.

According to her lawyer, Al-Labadi has been subjected to inhumane treatment in detention. She was apparently stripped of all of her clothes as soon as she was arrested, handcuffed, blindfolded and leg-chained before being moved to the Bitah-Tikva investigation centre. She told her lawyer that she was embarrassed when she saw the female Israeli soldiers looking at her private parts when she entered and left the toilet.

Al-Labadi also explained that she was interrogated for 20 consecutive hours during the first 16 days of her detention and said that she was given only two breaks for meals every day. She was then moved to rooms full of collaborators, who started to interrogate her; this lasted for up to 35 days, during which she was subjected to verbal, physical and psychological abuse and torture. The Israeli interrogators, she insisted, got close to her body intentionally and used the dirtiest words to insult her.

“They also insulted Islam and Christianity,” she said, “and said that I am an extremist and told me that they had arrested my mother and sister and they would put me under renewable administrative detention for seven and a half years and then release me to the West Bank and put me under 24-hour surveillance.”

A large number of investigators are said to have interrogated Al-Labadi and kept her in a very dirty cell with insects and spiders. The cell had rough walls and a bright light which prevented her from sleeping. The “very thin” mattress had no cover or clean sheets. The interrogators told her that she would “rot” in prison.

On 25 September, Heba Al-Labadi was issued with a 5-month administrative detention order with neither charges made against her nor a trial. That was why she started her hunger strike.

Two days later, she was moved to a cell monitored by four cameras. The toilet in her cell has a see-through door, so her every move is monitored by the prison guards.

Despite being ordered to end her hunger strike, she insisted that the “tragedy” of the administrative detention must end first. “I will continue until the end or I shall die.”

October 8, 2019 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture | , , , | Leave a comment

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