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Attacks on Samidoun: PayPal’s complicity in silencing Palestinian prisoners

Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network | April 30, 2019

The Israeli state and the Zionist movement are continuing their attacks on the Palestinian prisoners and the Palestine solidarity movement. One of the most recent effects of these attacks was the closing of Samidoun’s PayPal account. On its face, this is nothing new: PayPal has shut down the accounts of numerous groups supporting Palestinian rights around the world, including BDS campaign organizations, political parties and even media organizations at the behest of demands from various pro-apartheid politicians and agencies.

On the other hand, the sensationalistic attacks posted in pro-Zionist, pro-apartheid media on anyone who struggles for the rights of the Palestinian people and especially the Palestinian prisoners reflect an ongoing effort to isolate the Palestinian political prisoners in Israeli jails by cutting off international moral and political support for their freedom struggle. As a grassroots, unfunded organization, Samidoun very much relies on the small and generous donations provided by contributors, people of conscience who want to ensure that Palestinian prisoners – and the Palestinian people – are not silenced.

On 23 April, we were suddenly told that our account had been “permanently limited,” due to the “nature of our activities.” This is word-for-word the same message that numerous other global Palestine advocacy organizations have received over the years to block them from receiving donations via PayPal. No appeal mechanism is permitted. This cannot be separated from the company’s ongoing refusal to provide services to Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, while continuing to make its products available to illegal Israeli settlements.

Closing our PayPal account is another method designed to make it more difficult for us to continue to do our work. We are committed to do so, however. So long as Palestinian women and men, children and elders, are held behind colonial bars because they struggle for freedom, we are determined to work alongside them to achieve that goal – for the prisoners and all of Palestine.

Your contribution can help to push back against these attacks. You can donate online to Samidoun here, and if you are interested in donating another way or giving your time to help us, please email us at samidoun@samidoun.net.

An entire Israeli state ministry, the Ministry of Strategic Affairs, has been granted an undisclosed budget that reportedly numbers in the tens of millions of dollars to fight back against the growing popular movement around the world in solidarity with the just cause of the Palestinian people. In particular, this ministry has directed its efforts against supporters of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign. It has also taken a special interest in attacking Palestinian human rights defenders and solidarity organizations working to expose Israeli repression against Palestinian political prisoners and campaign for their freedom, including Samidoun.

This ministry is headed by Gilad Erdan, a far-right Likud politician who also heads the Ministry of Internal Security in Netanyahu’s government – overseeing the Israel Prison Service itself. It was the “Erdan commission” that promulgated the recent repressive attacks against Palestinian prisoners that led to the collective hunger strike of April 2019 – ending in a victory for the prisoners. It comes as no surprise that the same institutions responsible for confiscating the rights gained by Palestinian prisoners through years of struggle also want to silence, criminalize and suppress all activists and organizations who work to support those prisoners’ rights on an international level.

Most recently, this ministry published a report, “Terrorists in Suits.” Full of misinformation, deception and outright false information, the report aims to cast support for Palestinian prisoners, the boycott of Israel and human rights defense as “terrorism.” Samidoun was attacked alongside many other Palestinian and international organizations for one simple reason – because we defend the rights of Palestinian prisoners.

The Ministry is also heavily involved in interfering in campaigns for justice around the world. It was referred to repeatedly in the US “The Lobby” Al-Jazeera documentary series, censored and then revealed by the Electronic Intifada, working to pass anti-BDS laws and attack student groups and community organizers in the United States. It claimed credit for prohibiting a speech by former Palestinian prisoner and torture survivor Rasmea Odeh in Germany, as well as the stripping of her Schengen visa.

Via its social media accounts, it continues to attack Belgian artist, worker and activist Mustapha Awad after he returned home from being released after 253 days of unjust Israeli imprisonment. The ministry’s social media page has hosted death threats against Mustapha from various far-right, racist commenters – after even the notoriously biased Israeli court system released him early from Israeli imprisonment. It is difficult to see these ongoing attacks as anything other than an attempt to silence him from telling his story, including his experiences of cruel and inhumane treatment, and that of his fellow Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails.

The Palestinian people are facing conditions of siege nearly everywhere, of course most notably in the Gaza Strip and in the Israeli occupation prisons. These arbitrary attacks – and PayPal’s acquiescence to these groundless threats over and over again – are but one small part of that larger siege which we are struggling to break, on the road to victory and liberation for Palestine.

To donate to Samidoun, please click here.

April 30, 2019 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , | Leave a comment

Butina Case Creates ‘Pretty Dangerous Situation’ for All Foreign Nationals

Sputnik – April 27, 2019

On Friday, 30-year-old Russian national Maria Butina was sentenced in a US federal court to 18 months in prison for conspiring to act as a “foreign agent.” However, even though the government agreed with Butina’s case, it twisted her sentencing in such a way as to nullify her plea deal and give her more time behind bars.

Judge Tanya Chutkan gave Butina 18 months in a US prison for actions she said were “sophisticated and penetrated deep into political organizations,” threatening US national security. In practice, this means that Butina will serve another nine months, having been imprisoned since her July arrest.

The former American University grad student pleaded guilty last month to one count of conspiring to act as an unregistered foreign agent as part of a plea deal negotiated late last year. She sought immediate deportation to Russia following her sentencing, but the Daily Beast reported that won’t happen until her prison sentence is completed.

“She looked shocked the whole time,” Sputnik News analyst Nicole Roussell told Radio Sputnik’s Loud and Clear Friday, noting that most people, including Butina’s attorneys, expected her to be sentenced to time served and be expelled. “She’s served nine months, and a lot of that has been in solitary confinement. This is for someone who — as the judge noted — never had any [prior convictions], is clearly hard-working, intelligent, had 24 letters of character and recommendation on her record. The judge noted a ton of positive stuff about her during the sentencing hearing, so it was definitely a little bit of a shock to see that [the judge] went entirely with the side of the prosecution and gave the full 18 months, meaning she has nine more in prison.”

​Butina spoke before the court Friday, saying, “My parents discovered my arrest on the morning news they watch in their rural house in a Siberian village,” she said. “I love them dearly, but I harmed them morally and financially. They are suffering from all of that. I destroyed my own life as well. I came to the United States not under any orders, but with hope, and now nothing remains but penitence.”

Butina’s charge stems from her political lobbying work with the National Rifle Association — work the government says required her to register under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), an obscure measure dating to the 1930s that’s been revived in recent years in the interests of prosecuting foreign nationals and repressing alternative news sources. Sputnik, as well as RT, Xinhua and CGTN, have all been required to register under FARA due to their associations with the governments of other countries.

However, Butina isn’t associated with the Russian government and didn’t act on its behalf. She noted in a February interview that she never attempted to conceal her actions because she didn’t believe she was doing anything wrong.

“Anyone who thinks that someone who wasn’t Russian would be in this situation is fooling themselves,” Butina’s lawyer, Robert Driscoll, told Roussell Friday.

Roussell recalled Judge Chutkan saying to Butina in the courtroom: “No doubt you have suffered greatly due to the national atmosphere, including salacious details proven to be untrue.”

“So she noted these things, and yet, went ahead and just agreed” with the prosecution, ignoring that those “salacious details” had been given to reporters by the prosecution, the most notorious of which was that she’d traded sex for information and political connections, Roussell said. Becker noted that such a charge would never be levied against a male suspect.

“I think it would apply very broadly to very large numbers of people,” Driscoll told reporters Friday. “The government’s theory that you act as an agent whenever you do anything for a foreign official — I think that is an extremely broad interpretation that can apply not only to people like Maria, but to other people. I think it’s something that should be looked at. I think anyone who is a foreign national in this country should be exceedingly concerned by the government’s position in this case and what they did here.”

“This is a little bit different than some of the cases we’ve seen,” Roussell told hosts Brian Becker and John Kiriakou. “When some of these FARA regulations started to be prosecuted, what, two years ago, we were all a little bit shocked — very shocked, actually — because this was a statute that had not really ever been regulated, hadn’t really been criminally prosecuted. But even when they started to prosecute those FARA charges, it was for people who… there was a real case against them, even if it was something that was clearly politically motivated.”

“In this case, she never lied; she never stole documents; she never funnelled money to the NRA; she cooperated; she was an extroverted student interested in political discourse,” Roussell noted.

“The irony of this case is, the government believed her,” Roussell said.

“When we look at the record, when we look at what was said, she wasn’t a spy. She was not an agent of the Russian government, in the sense of ‘secret agent.’ She was more of an agent in the sense of a principal agent,” Driscoll said, noting that “if I buy you some opera tickets, I’m your agent.”

“When we entered into the plea agreement, the understanding was that if she cooperated she would get a downward departure motion, but the government’s decision not to try to apply guideline, and then jack up a base offense level, essentially took away the departure motion with their left hand while offering it with their right,” Driscoll said. “So, the substantive effect of the departure motion was probably nil.”

In other words, while promising Butina it would decrease the amount of time she would be sentenced to serve, the federal government chose to charge her with a more serious crime, increasing the amount of time she could possibly serve and then applying the deal from there, resulting in more time in prison for Butina than before.

Roussell said the precedent set by the case has “far-reaching implications.”

“Maria could not have been prosecuted under civil FARA, which is the one that everyone knows about through [Paul] Manafort and other cases, because she had no knowledge of the statute,” Driscoll explained to Roussell. “In order to be criminally prosecuted under FARA, you need to have a willful violation.”

“So, because of her lack of knowledge, she ended up being charged with a more serious crime under the foreign agent statute. I think it’s an area that’s ripe for reform. If you take it seriously and literally, the government’s position in this case, and applied it to other circumstances, you really end up in a pretty dangerous situation. Not only for foreign nationals here, but I think for Americans abroad doing similar activities, I think would not be thrilled with this,” Driscoll explained.

Butina’s lawyer also noted that, while Judge Chutkan invoked special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russiagate investigation, his client was wholly unconnected to any events described in that report.

“She had nothing to do with the Mueller investigation. The Mueller team was aware of Maria, they were aware of this case, they interviewed her as part of her cooperation, and obviously she didn’t appear anywhere in the Mueller report. I found it curious that that was mentioned, that what she did was during the time of Russian election interference, it was alleged by the judge, when in fact, had she been involved in any of that, I would imagine that special counsel Mueller would have mentioned it somewhere in his 400 pages if she had anything to do with it,” Driscoll said. “But he did not.”

April 28, 2019 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Russophobia | , | Leave a comment

Butina’s sentence ‘criminalizes what thousands of international students abroad do’

RT | April 26, 2019

The politically motivated sentence of Russian gun activist Maria Butina, brought on by the anti-Russian agenda in the US, makes anyone going to study abroad – including Americans – look like a criminal, analysts have told RT.

The 18-month prison sentence for Butina “is a horrific miscarriage of justice,” belives Daniel McAdams, executive director of the Ron Paul Institute. “The only thing she’s guilty of is being a Russian in America at a time that America is under a spell of some kind of anti-Russian hysteria.”

“This woman was held in maximum security solitary confinement for ten months for a crime for which an average person would get a small fine and be sent off,” McAdams added.

Butina, who arrived in the US on a student visa in 2016 and became active in pro-gun circles, was sentenced on Friday for acting as a foreign agent on behalf of the Kremlin without a proper registration.

“What she did is what thousands and thousands of other foreign international students do in the US. They come to the US to get to know the country; to get to know how the political system works; to make friends… The idea that she is some sort of Russian spy is absolutely absurd,” McAdams told RT.

Thousands of American students abroad do the same as well, and the ruling against Butina “criminalized” them all, he added.

“There’s danger that there could be a tit-for-tat response from Russia,” said independent political commentator Anthony Webber.

“I don’t think it helps relationships on the world stage. What’s needed is for Russia is to be calm and not overreact,” he told RT, adding that the history of Russian-American relations shows that Moscow is actually “good at not overreacting to over-the-top provocations.”

After being held in solitary confinement for months, Butina pleaded guilty to being a de facto lobbyist, saying that she was unaware that a registration was needed.

“Going to jail for that seems really over the top,” Webber said. “I don’t think it makes the democratic process or the judicial process look very good either.”

Her whole case “has been blown out of proportion to fit the anti-Russian agenda, which has been going on in the US since the 2016 presidential election… She’s just being made use of as a pawn,” the analyst said.

The entire affair has been “political from the beginning,” said Patrick Henningsen, editor at 21st Century Wire. “Some of the media stories that have been circulating about her early on have been proven to be false, like that she was exchanging sexual favors for information and somehow trying to corrupt the democratic system through her activities. This is all mainly in the wake of the 2016 election.”

The prison sentence handed to the 30-year-old might have been “a face-saving exercise” on the part of the US, Henningsen suggested.

“To have her going free and speaking to the media, telling her story – it’s going to be hugely embarrassing” for Washington, he told RT, adding that the ruling means that Butina will be released “in the thick of the 2020 US presidential election. So this should be very interesting.”

International attorney Douglas McNabb believes that 18 months is an appropriate sentence for Butina, however, considering that “the statutory maximum for the crime that she pleaded guilty to is five years.”

With Butina receiving credit for her pretrial custody of 9 months and good time credit cutting the sentence by another two months, she’ll actually spend seven more months in federal custody, McNabb pointed out.

April 27, 2019 Posted by | Full Spectrum Dominance | , | Leave a comment

Wikipedia founder appointed to judge trustworthiness of news, proving satire is dead

By Helen Buyniski | RT | April 26, 2019

The Orwellian browser plugin NewsGuard, which purports to judge the trustworthiness of media outlets, has appointed Wikipedia’s founder to its board, proving that even neoliberal thought police have a sense of humor.

In its bid to “tackle misinformation online,” NewsGuard has named such defenders of journalistic integrity as former NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen and Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales to its advisory board. That’s Wikipedia, “the encyclopedia anyone can edit,” where propaganda and hoaxes cross-pollinate to produce mutant strains of fake news that would make a 19th-century ‘yellow journal’ merchant blush.

The Wikipedia model posits that it’s hopeless to look for absolute truth, so the best we can hope for is “verifiability.” This is achieved by querying “reliable sources” and writing up whatever the consensus is. Editors are forbidden from drawing conclusions based on the sources they use – if a “reliable source” hasn’t covered it, it didn’t happen. And what does Wikipedia consider reliable? The same type of publications that NewsGuard assigns a “green” rating – mainstream media outlets – along with scholarly journals, books from reputable publishers, and so on.

Giving Wikipedia’s co-founder a say in determining what sources will be considered “reliable” in the future may sound like a terrible idea, but wait – there’s more. Wales’ latest project, WikiTribune, launched in 2017 with the lofty goal of fixing the news (sound familiar?) and attempting to wed the Wikipedia model of volunteer editors with the mainstream-media model of paid journalists. Perhaps unsurprisingly, it didn’t work out, and Wales fired all the journalists. The project went dormant last year, but is now being re-launched as a “fact-checking wiki,” according to Wales. Surely it’s just a coincidence that he’s been welcomed onto the board of a company that wants to make its plugin part of the internet experience for everyone.

Hoaxes, mistakes, and propaganda written into Wikipedia make their way into “reliable sources” frequently, when rushed journalists who don’t have time for proper fact-checking instead glance at Wikipedia and uncritically reprint what they find there. If these journalists happen to write for a “reliable source,” what they’ve printed then becomes “reliable” for the purposes of Wikipedia, meaning that even if the original hoax, mistake, or propaganda is uncovered and removed, it can now be re-added ad infinitum, because a reliable source said it. This process is so common it has a name – “citogenesis.

Coverage of Wikipedia hoaxes that became ‘real’ tends to focus on the ridiculous ones – the fake Australian Aboriginal deity ‘Jar’Edo Wens’ who made it into a book on religion after hiding out in a Wikipedia entry for nine years – or the seemingly endless parade of celebrity death hoaxes. But citogenesis can have far more damaging effects. Turkish history professor Taner Akcam was detained by Canadian and later US authorities because Wikipedia vandals had written that he was a terrorist.

Editor Edward Patrick Alva fudged the facts in Wikipedia articles about controversial rape incidents on college campuses in order to make them conform to the version of events reported in ‘The Hunting Ground’, a film he helped produce, writes the Washington Examiner. The depiction of colleges as “hunting grounds” for sexual predators has arguably terrified a generation of women based on false and misrepresented data, and the editing of protagonists’ biographies to emphasize rape accusations that were never substantiated rises to the level of libel.

The US media spent years embroiled in a fictional conspiracy involving the Russian government colluding with Donald Trump to get him elected president, and Wikipedia had more to do with that than many people think. After all, when one encounters an unfamiliar name or term in the news – ‘Seth Rich’, ‘kompromat’ – they Google it, and the first result on Google is usually Wikipedia.

Yes, political operatives are editing Wikipedia, and they favor a certain narrative. Before the Mueller report crushed the Russiagate hopes of millions of #Resistance keyboard-warriors, Wikipedia editors – including several administrators – were seriously discussing banning“pro-Trump users” (a category some expanded to include users who denied the reality of the Russian-collusion conspiracy theory) from editing political articles. They had already decided to “purge” an article on “Russian interference in the 2016 US elections” of sources contradicting Russian hacking claims, so it was a logical next step. After all, reliable sources said there was collusion, so it must be true!

Wikipedia claims to be written by everyday people, but its history of pay-for-play editing by everyone from congressional aides to intelligence agencies to members of Parliament to “Zionist editing initiatives” to the Vatican – to say nothing of an army of corporate shills and PR flacks – proves that isn’t the whole story. Wikipedia does not actually forbid editing for pay, nor does Jimmy Wales condemn it, so long as the editor admits their paid status (on their profile page, which the casual Wikipedia reader never sees). What better partner for NewsGuard than a website where the ruling establishment can inject favorable coverage of itself while pretending it comes from the hoi polloi?

Trust in mainstream media dropped to historic lows on both sides of the pond around the time Trump was elected and the Brits voted themselves off the World-Island, outcomes that were both met with apocalyptic dismay from the ruling class. This outbreak of populism was blamed on ‘fake news’, a phenomenon that sprung fully-formed from the forehead of mainstream-media propagandists to explain away the people’s maddening tendency to vote in what they believed to be their best interests. Even though fake news has been a problem since the advent of the printing press, Americans and Brits were told that this new strain of disinformation, bearing the unmistakable imprint of Putin Inc., could single-handedly shatter our fragile democracies if we did not at once put down the independent media and rush back into the comforting arms of “reliable sources” (which happens to be the name of Brian Stelter’s show on CNN, a fact that is surely coincidental).

NewsGuard continues that patronizing narrative, serving up color-coded ‘nutrition labels’ to ensure internet users they won’t accidentally ingest anything spicy that might cause them to radically reconsider their place in the world, or their country’s policies, or their relationship to technologies like NewsGuard. It’s an extra-delicious irony that Tom Ridge, the same man who introduced a color-coded terror warning system during George W. Bush’s presidency, also sits on the advisory board of NewsGuard.

NewsGuard gives WikiLeaks, which has never had to issue a correction, an untrustworthy “red” rating, while trusting Wikipedia – which has unleashed literally hundreds of hoaxes on the world, and that’s only the ones we know about – so much they name its founder to their board. Wales’ appointment to the advisory board of NewsGuard is proof that this organization has never been about stopping the spread of fake news – only spreading their own.

April 26, 2019 Posted by | Deception, Fake News, Full Spectrum Dominance, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | Leave a comment

As US Government Strangles Iran’s Economy, Google ‘Suffocates’ Iranian Media

Sputnik – April 25, 2019

The recent shutdown of PressTV and HispanTV’s YouTube and Gmail accounts are more examples of the continued effort by the US government to silence Iranian media outlets, Alex Rubinstein, a journalist for MintPress News, told Sputnik.

“I think that this is part of a larger trend of cracking down on Iranian media,” Rubinstein told Radio Sputnik’s By Any Means Necessary on Wednesday. “Just as this was happening, the United States was saying that we want to bring down Iranian oil exports to zero. Well, it seems like they’re also trying to bring down Iranian expression down to zero through these kinds of moves.”

“It’s a message which both strangles their economy and also suffocates their voice,” he added.

​Google barred PressTV and HispanTV, an Iranian Spanish-language outlet, from accessing their respective YouTube and Gmail accounts without notice and without an explanation detailing what Google policies were violated, the outlets recently reported.

Although content from both outlets is still viewable, the organizations are unable to upload new content.

Israeli media outlets have speculated that the order was handed down by Google after HispanTV issued a report claiming imprisoned Palestinians were being used for medical experiments.

“On its face, that sounds like that could be questionable,” Rubinstein said of the speculation. “But there have been a number of other outlets to carry this report, and it wasn’t like they were pulling this information out of thin air — it came from a Palestinian politician in Israel… he made this allegation, and they were citing him properly.”

The journalist told hosts Eugene Puryear and Sean Blackmon that while it’s unclear what initiated Google’s action, it seems in line with the behavior of tech companies vying to “stifle Iranian media” at the behest of the US government.

“These tech companies are basically extensions of the US empire. You look at all that’s going on with NATO and the US government trying to push back on Chinese 5G — well, the point of that is that [the US] can’t spy so well if [the 5G grid is] Chinese,” Rubinstein said.

“The American government has a dominance over these companies, and we see that with the ban on PressTV, and we see that with the other countries that have been targeted, which are primarily Russia and Venezuela.”

“It’s hard to imagine that this is just a coincidence,” he added.

Earlier this month, after the US formally designated Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps a terrorist organization, popular photo and video-sharing platform Instagram began banning pages belonging to various Iranian military officials. The site later explained that the move was in line with the US’ designation.

“I understand to have a policy against spreading terrorist messages on a social media platform… but we didn’t see these crackdowns for terrorist organizations like the Free Syrian Army, or any of the other supposedly moderate rebels in Syria,” Rubinstein told Blackmon.

“We see them [crackdowns] for the supposed terrorist that are enemies of the United States… It seems like the tech companies are all too happy to follow in lockstep.”

See also:

Google’s Campaign Against Iranian Media Outlets Sets ‘Dangerous Precedent’

Facebook Takes Down Iranian Media Pages in Continued War on Alternative News

April 25, 2019 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , , , | Leave a comment

France seeks source of damaging leak on Yemen war

Press TV – April 25, 2019

French authorities have been searching for a government employee who they believe has leaked damaging information about France’s role in the Saudi-led war on Yemen to the media, a report says.

In mid-April, the new investigative media outlet Disclose published a report that contained a classified 15-page note from the French military intelligence service (DRM) revealing that the two Arab countries had deployed French weaponry in their aggression against Yemeni.

The leaked note, which was provided to the government in October 2018, contained lists of French-manufactured tanks, armored vehicles, fighter jets, helicopters, howitzers, ammunition, and radar systems sold to both Saudi Arabia and the UAE.

The use of French weapons in Yemen contradicts previous public statements from Paris, which has repeatedly asserted that these weapons are used only in a limited manner and in “defensive” operations only. Back in January, French Armed Forces Minister Francoise Parly said during an interview on the France Inter radio station that she was “not aware that any (French) arms are being used in this conflict.”

Citing unnamed informed sources on Wednesday, AFP reported that an investigation into the “compromise of national defense secrecy” had been opened by prosecutors on December 13 last year after a complaint by the ministry of the armed forces.

The AFP report did not say when the note was leaked.

The sources also said that France’s domestic intelligence agency, the DGSI, was leading the probe, which concerned the compromise of information involving a government employee and a third party.

Disclose disagrees

Disclose argued that the note was “of major public interest.”

“The confidential documents revealed by Disclose and its partners are of major public interest, that bring to the attention of citizens and their representatives what the government wanted to conceal,” AFP quoted an editorial for Disclose and its partners as saying.

Additionally, Geoffrey Livolsi, the founder of Disclose, said at least three journalists who had taken part in the preparation of the website’s investigative report had been called in for a hearing to be conducted by the DGSI in May.

“This judicial investigation has only one objective: to know the sources that allowed us to do our job. It is an attack on the freedom of the press and the protection of the sources of journalists,” he said.

The French weapons in action

The report revealed that Leclerc tanks, a main battle tank built by the Nexter, and Mirage 2000-9 fighter jets sold in the 1990s to the UAE were being used in the war on Yemen.

Furthermore, 48 CAESAR artillery guns, manufactured by the Nexter group, were being used along the Saudi-Yemen border by the Saudi-led coalition.

Nexter Systems is a French state-owned manufacturer of weapons, based in Roanne, Loire.

According to the DRM document, French-made Cougar transport helicopters and the A330 MRTT refueling plane have been seen in action, and two French ships are serving in the crippling blockade of Yemeni ports which has led to unprecedented food and medical shortages in impoverished Yemen.

The classified note also contained a map estimating that over 430,000 Yemenis live within the range of French artillery weapons on the Saudi-Yemeni border. It further estimated that French weapons have resulted in civilian casualties.

France, the third-biggest arms exporter in the world, is a large provider of various kinds of weapons to Saudi Arabia and the UAE.

The French government has so far resisted pressure from rights groups to stop the lucrative arms trade with the two Persian Gulf countries, denying that the weapons were being used against the Yemenis.

Saudi Arabia and a number of its regional allies, most notably the UAE, launched the devastating campaign against Yemen in March 2015. According to the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (ACLED), a nonprofit conflict-research organization, the war has so far claimed the lives of about 56,000 Yemenis.

Apart from France, the United States, Britain, and other Western countries have faced criticism over arms sales to the Saudi regime and its partners.

April 25, 2019 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

Facebook hires ‘co-writer’ of the pro-surveillance Patriot Act amid growing concerns over privacy

RT | April 23, 2019

As Facebook is facing more pressure over its handling of user data, the embattled social media giant has hired Jennifer Newstead, widely regarded as a co-author of the Patriot Act, to deal with its legal woes.

Facebook announced on Monday that Newstead would be replacing Colin Stretch as the company’s general counsel. COO Sheryl Sandberg touted Newstead as a “seasoned leader whose global perspective and experience” would help the company “fulfill its mission.” While Newstead might boast vast experience in the legal field, having worked in both private and public sectors, her government record is not without controversy.

Before taking the job with Facebook, Newstead served as a legal adviser to the State Department for two years. If tapping a Trump official for the job is a move not striking enough, Newstead’s reputation as the co-author and passionate advocate of the 2001 Patriot Act that has widened the government’s surveillance and detention powers is bound to raise a few eyebrows about Facebook’s choice of its new top lawyer.

While there is little official information about Newstead’s role in drafting the legislation, she is reported to be the driving force behind its adoption by the Congress and is said to have penned portions of the Act. In a 2002 press release issued by then head of the Department of Justice Office of Legal Policy, Newstead was hailed for “her excellent service on a range of issues – including helping craft the new U.S.A. Patriot Act to protect the United States against terror.”

The Act was ostensibly aimed at protecting American citizens from terrorism and was passed on the back of the 9/11 attacks with hardly any debate. In the years that followed, it has drawn widespread criticism for granting the government broad powers to spy on its own citizens which many believe to be incompatible with protection of privacy.

The Act allowed law enforcement to collect and store the phone and Internet records of millions of Americans on a daily basis. The practice was confirmed by Edward Snowden’s revelations in 2013, which have reignited the debate about sweeping surveillance powers exercised by the state. The resulting outrage eventually led to the portion of the Act that allowed the National Security Agency (NSA) to conduct its mass phone data collection to be amended in 2015.

In a statement on Monday, Newstead said that she was “excited to be joining Facebook at an important time and working with such a fantastic team.”

“I am looking forward to working with the team and outside experts and regulators on a range of legal issues as we seek to uphold our responsibilities and shared values,” she stated.

Facebook has been under fire for its hands-off approach to handling the sensitive personal data its millions of users share with the platform. The tech giant has recently been caught asking new users to give their private email passwords, an immediate red flag for every privacy-concerned individual.

Last month it was revealed that Facebook stored over half a billion users’ passwords on its servers for years, that could be accessed by the company’s employees.

April 22, 2019 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | | Leave a comment

Combatting Anti-Semitism: Washington Goes to War for World Jewry

By Philip Giraldi | American Herald Tribune | April 21, 2019

One of the most extraordinary displays of Jewish power in the United States took place in the State Department press briefing room on April 11th though it went virtually unreported in the mainstream media. It involved the introduction to the media of Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism Elan S. Carr, who had been sworn in earlier that day by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. Carr, who will “lead United States policies and projects aimed at countering anti-Semitism throughout the world,” is a former Los Angeles prosecutor, who is, of course, Jewish, and ran for Congress in 2014 declaring that he was a “reliable vote for Israel.” He believes U.S. support for Israel should be “constant, unequivocal and bipartisan.” Carr speaks Hebrew, boasts about his visits to Israel every year and is a protege of GOP casino magnate and mega-donor Sheldon Adelson.

The State Department already has an Office of International Religious Freedom which inter alia seeks to “Promote freedom of religion and conscience throughout the world as a fundamental human right and as a source of stability for all countries” while also “identify[ing] and denounce[ing] regimes that are severe persecutors on the basis of religious belief.” It would seem that the International Religious Freedom office has all the bases covered, but there is apparently the Jewish exception rule that operates across the federal government and even at state levels. Jews, definable both as a religion and an ethnicity, clearly require more protection from government than other groups even though they are the most wealthy and politically powerful segment of the population both in the United States as well as in numerous European and Anglophone countries where they have a significant presence.

Here in America, Jewish organizations already benefit directly and grossly disproportionately as recipients of over 90% of Department of Homeland Security discretionary funds to protect their buildings and offices and such largesse is also the rule in countries like Britain and France. Holocaust education is mandatory in nearly all school districts, presumably to depict both Israel and Jews in a favorable light, and legislation to penalize or even criminalize any criticism of Israel is now in place in a majority of American states. Criticism of Israel is already regarded by the federal government as de facto anti-Semitism and anti-Semitism is itself considered a hate crime, subject to harsh penalties.

The United States is now committed to protecting Jews worldwide, with Carr putting it this way in a comment he made at a meeting of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations in February, shortly after he was nominated: “My office was created by law and designed to protect the Jewish people throughout the world. Think about that. The world’s greatest power is focused, by law and design, on protecting the Jews.”

One is hard pressed to find in the Constitution of the United States some mention of the “law or design” that mandated protecting one particular ethno-religious group worldwide at taxpayer expense. Nor has there ever been a referendum on the question of whether Jews should be protected by Washington no matter where they live. Indeed, if there is a religious group that is facing extinction it is Christians in the birthplace of the religion in the Middle East, but there is little advocacy on the part of the U.S. government regarding their plight because it is Israel that has been actively engaged in creating unfavorable conditions for Palestinian Christians that eventually lead them to emigrate. It is called ethnic cleansing to make the Jewish state truly and completely Jewish. Ironically, Christians are better protected in neighboring majority Muslim countries Syria, Lebanon and even in Iran.

To be reminded once again just how powerful Jewish interests are in the United States, it is only necessary to examine some of Carr’s remarks. He is, of course, an opponent of the nonviolent Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement which seeks to apply economic pressure against Israel to persuade it to end its colonization of the Arab West Bank and its ruthless suppression of the Palestinians.

Carr regards it as an “honor” to be sworn in to “fight against anti-Semitism, to the protection of the Jewish people throughout the world, and to the support for the Jewish state.” He intends to do that by “ focus[ing] relentlessly on eradicating this false distinction between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism.” He elaborated that “… if there is an organized movement to economically strangle the state of Israel, that is anti-Semitic, and the administration has gone on the record for – as being opposed unequivocally to the BDS movement and the idea that somehow there can be movements organized to deny Israel its legitimacy and not to allow Israel to participate in economic commerce in the world – sure, that is. Hatred of the Jewish state is hatred of the Jewish people, and that’s something that’s very clear and that is our policy.”

Carr, responding to a question, also discussed what is now the U.S. government’s accepted definition of anti-Semitism, that “Criticism of the policies of any country, whether it’s the state of Israel or of the United States, is entirely proper and can’t be regarded as being inappropriate. However, as you may know, the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of anti-Semitism gives as a specific example the application of double standards to the state of Israel. And so if Israel is criticized in a way that no other country in a similar circumstance is criticized, yes, that is anti-Semitism.”

A journalist asked “Having covered the Israeli-Palestinian issues for – like many other people in this room – for a very, very long time, we know that U.S. former President Jimmy Carter did refer to Israel as an apartheid state, that it’s more of a human rights issue, especially with – in terms of policy. And a lot of things that the Trump administration has done – moving the U.S. embassy, recognizing the sovereignty of Israel over the Golan Heights – as not recognized under the international community. Can you tell me why you think Israeli settlements and a boycott, which was reminiscent of sort of South African sanctions issues and divestment, is an anti-Semitic issue specifically and not really one of more of a human rights or two peoples that need to get along?”

Carr responded: “I think any comparison between the state of Israel and apartheid is offensive to its core, and anyone who makes that comparison needs to check their facts. Israel is an exemplar of a democracy with democratic values, where all citizens of Israel not only vote but have representation in the Knesset, including, by the way, in the election we saw just yesterday. And so any notion that the state of Israel, which is a shining example of a democracy and a shining example of an American ally, one of our best allies – any suggestion that the state of Israel in any way, even remotely, reflects apartheid is offensive.”

Elan Carr is living on fantasy island, but he knows perfectly well that within the framework of the United States government he can say all the good things he wants about Israel while simultaneously labeling its critics as evil, even if you have to make things up, which he does when he claims repeatedly that BDS is seeking to “strangle” the Jewish state. He certainly knows perfectly well that hatred of the Jewish state is not hatred of the Jewish people but chooses to ignore the fact that Israel is criticized for how it behaves not because of what religion it claims to represent. If it is uniquely criticized it is because its record of war crimes is unique.

And Carr also should understand but clearly chooses not to, that criticism of Israel is not equatable to anti-Semitism but for the fact that he offers a definition designed to come to that conclusion. And even if it were so, there is that pesky thing called the First Amendment. Israel is no “shining example of democracy,” nor is it an ally of the United States. It is a perfect example of an essentially racist apartheid state, worse than South Africa was before it democratized, and it is also a parasite that has completely corrupted America’s body politic, which is why Carr has the position that he holds.

Finally, the United States has no moral or legal authority to police the world on behalf of international Jewry. It does not need a Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism to lead it on a crusade – dare I use that word in this context – to fix the world and make it a more comfortable and enriching experience for people like Elan Carr. American taxpayers should not be required to support this kind of entitlement nonsense, particularly as Israel and worldwide Jewish communities are wealthy and powerful enough to protect themselves without having to bleed the rest of the world by virtue of an unending victim narrative that generates a guilt trip relating to events in Europe seventy years ago. Will Americans ever arrive at a point where Israel and its diaspora helpmates like Carr will just leave the rest of us alone? One can only hope.

April 22, 2019 Posted by | Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , | Leave a comment

The Splendid Peter Ridd Court Judgment

James Cook University took 28 separate actions against Professor Ridd. Each of them, including his termination, has been declared unlawful.

By Donna Laframboise | Big Picture News | April 22, 2019

Few victories are as complete as the one achieved last week by Peter Ridd in the Federal Circuit Court of Australia.

A former head of the physics department at James Cook University, Ridd was fired after questioning the reliability of Great Barrier Reef research produced by some of his colleagues.

To quote the editor-in-chief of The Lancet, “much of the scientific literature, perhaps half, may simply be untrue.” Whenever third parties attempt to replicate published research, they often get different answers altogether. Since government decisions can throw people out of work, disrupt families, and destroy communities, Ridd thinks it’s a bad idea to base government policy on research that hasn’t been double-checked.

This saga began in December 2015, after Ridd sent an e-mail to journalist Peter Michael of the Courier-Mail outlining his concerns about the misleading use of Great Barrier Reef photographs and other matters. His e-mail offered to condense his thoughts for publication, but also urged the newspaper to ask pointed questions of those in charge of two publicly funded organizations affiliated with his own university.

Some journalists go to jail to protect their sources. Peter Michael instead forwarded Ridd’s e-mail whole cloth to Terry Hughes, the director of one of those entities. Less than two hours after receiving it, Hughes informed a James Cook administrator that he wanted to “make a formal complaint” against Ridd for attacking his integrity.

There’s no indication that Hughes or anyone else at James Cook has ever addressed Ridd’s concerns. When the powers-that-be swung into action, silencing him was apparently the only thing on their mind.

Universities are supposed to be places of rigorous inquiry and vigorous debate. Academic tenure is supposed to prevent exactly this situation: a professor being hounded from campus for expressing unfashionable views.

Ridd’s superiors insist his criticism of his colleagues wasn’t the problem. The way he criticized them was. In other words, their position is that bad manners is a firing offence.

Between April 2016 and May 2018, James Cook University took 28 separate actions against Ridd. Each of them, including his termination, was declared unlawful by Judge Salvatore Vasta last week (see the full list, three pages long, here).

Vasta determined that the university’s relationship with its staff is governed first and foremost by an employment contract ratified by Australia’s Fair Work Commission. That contract can’t be altered without the federal agency’s say-so, and was described by the judge as “the basis from which other [university] documents gain their power.”

Clause 14 of the contract is devoted to Intellectual Freedom, a concept Judge Vasta calls “the cornerstone upon which the University exists. If the cornerstone is removed, the building tumbles.”

Clause 14 clearly proclaims James Cook to be an institution of independent thought where professors have the right to participate in public debate. It says “ideas may be put forward and opinion expressed freely,” including  “unpopular or controversial views,” so long as the professors doing so don’t “harass, vilify, bully or intimidate those who disagree…”

Since Ridd hasn’t harassed, vilified, bullied, or intimidated anyone, the university has never claimed that Clause 14’s built-in limits apply.

Instead, those in charge have argued that a right recognized and affirmed by the Fair Work Commission isn’t worth the paper it’s written on. They say professors are only entitled to that right if they also abide by the university’s homegrown Code of Conduct, a rambling document that talks vaguely about “the collegial and academic spirit,” and instructs employees to “celebrate diversity.”

Ridd’s first Formal Censure said he’d violated the Code by failing to behave in a collegial manner and failing to respect the reputations of his colleagues (the only reputation actually mentioned in the Code is that of the university). It also claimed he’d gone to the media in a manner that “did not respect the rights of others.”

Judge Vasta observed that the university neglected to explain “exactly how this was not collegial or how the rights of others were not respected.” It just declared Ridd guilty of misconduct.

Using words such as “extraordinary” and “simply absurd,” the judge ruled that the Code of Conduct cannot be used as a mechanism to rob professors of something that has been guaranteed to them via the Fair Work Commission. In his words:

Clause 14 means that it is the right of Professor Ridd to say what he has said in any manner that he likes so long as he does not contravene the sanctions embedded in cl. 14. (my italics)

A few pages later, matters become crystal clear:

The termination of Professor Ridd’s employment was unlawful because it punished Professor Ridd for conduct that was protected by cl.14…

Case closed.

April 22, 2019 Posted by | Corruption, Full Spectrum Dominance, Science and Pseudo-Science | | Leave a comment

Google ‘disables’ Press TV’s YouTube account without prior warning

Press TV – April 19, 2019

Google has blocked Press TV and Hispan TV’s access to their official accounts on the technology company’s platforms, including YouTube and Gmail, without prior notice, citing “violation of policies”.

“Your Google Account was disabled and can’t be restored because it was used in a way that violates Google’s policies,” Google said in a message that appears after Press TV tries to log into its account.

The YouTube channels are open to public view for now, but the administrators cannot publish any new content.

Google has so far refused to provide any explanation for disabling Press TV’s account.

This is not the first time that Google is blocking Press TV’s YouTube channels.

The original YouTube channel was established in December 2009, and closed in September 2013. A new channel was then opened, but it was shut almost two months later.

Another channel was opened, but it suffered the same fate after five months.

The fourth channel, however, remained active with over 270,000 subscribers until it was closed today without any prior notice for what Google calls “violation” of its terms and policies.

Google Support says it may not provide any prior notice “in some urgent or extreme cases”. However, it has yet to explain for what “urgent” case it has “disabled” Press TV’s account.

Google has also deprived Press TV of its News service.

US pressure

The Google ban seems to be in line with the US government’s stepped-up pressure on Iran and an all-out propaganda campaign against the country, which includes targeting Iranian media.

In January, Press TV anchor Marzieh Hashemi was detained by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) at St. Louis Lambert International Airport in Missouri.

The journalist, a 59-year-old American-born Muslim convert who has lived in Iran for years, was jailed in the US for days and later released on January 23 after some 10 days of detention without charge.

A US federal court failed to indict the journalist, who was arrested as a material witness in an unspecified criminal proceeding, of any crime.

Hashemi’s detention prompted condemnation in the US and abroad, sparking rallies in several countries, including the United States.

While in detention, she was forced to remove her hijab and was only offered non-halal food.

April 19, 2019 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | | Leave a comment

Facebook bans British anti-immigrant groups including EDL, BNP and Britain First

RT | April 18, 2019

Facebook has banned 12 high-profile, anti-immigrant British organizations and individuals including the English Defence League, the British National Party, Britain First and Jayda Fransen.

The silicon valley company said it took the decision because it bans users who “proclaim a violent or hateful mission or are engaged in acts of hate or violence.”

“Individuals and organisations who spread hate, or attack or call for the exclusion of others on the basis of who they are, have no place on Facebook,” it said in a statement.

The following organizations and people are now prohibited from the site: The British National Party and Nick Griffin, Britain First and Paul Golding and Jayda Fransen, English Defence League and Paul Ray, Knights Templar International and Jim Dowson, National Front and Tony Martin, and Jack Renshaw.

They were all outlawed under Facebook’s ‘Dangerous Individuals & Organisations policy’. They will no longer be allowed a presence on Facebook or Instagram and posts and other content which expresses praise or support for them will also be banned.

“Our work against organised hate is ongoing and we will continue to review individuals, organisations, pages, groups and content against our Community Standards,” the statement added.

The Knights Templar International said it was “horrified” by the ban, and that it was investigating legal options. “Facebook has deemed our Christian organisation as dangerous and de-platformed us despite never being charged, let alone found guilty of any crime whatsoever,” it said in a statement. “This is a development that would have made the Soviets blush.”

In February the social media giant banned EDL founder Tommy Robinson from its platforms saying the prominent anti-immigration activist repeatedly breached its policies on Hate speech.

April 18, 2019 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , | Leave a comment

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