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Israel bans travel of noted Jerusalemite figure abroad & to West Bank

Palestinian Information Center – July 21, 2016

682730247OCCUPIED JERUSALEM – The Israeli occupation police have handed professor Jamil Hamami, secretary-general of the higher Islamic commission in Occupied Jerusalem, a written order banning his travel abroad and to the West Bank.

According to this police order, Hamami will be prohibited from entering the West Bank for four months and the previous ban on his travel abroad will be extended for six months.

The police justified the measure against Hamami by saying that he is involved in banned activities and his departure for other countries will constitute a security threat to Israel.

For his part, Hamami, who works as a lecturer at al-Quds University, condemned Israel’s decision against him as “unjust and a violation of the Palestinians’ right to travel and movement”. He considered this Israeli step as “part of the Israeli campaign that targets the Palestinian dignitaries in Jerusalem.”

July 21, 2016 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Ukrainian Regime Turns Into ‘Mass Grave’ for Journalists – Moscow

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Journalist Pavel Sheremet © Sputnik/Ramil Sitdikov
Sputnik — 20.07.2016

MOSCOW — Ukrainian political system is turning into “mass grave” for journalists and journalism in general, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said Wednesday, commenting on the killing of journalist Pavel Sheremet in a car bomb attack in Kiev.

Earlier in the day, a car bomb claimed Sheremet’s life in the Ukrainian capital of Kiev. The Ukrainian general prosecutor confirmed Sheremet’s death, classifying it as murder.

“A vehicle with Pavel Sheremet was blown up in Kiev. [He was] a professional journalist, who was not afraid of telling the authorities what he thinks about them — to different authorities and at different periods of time. And he was respected for this. Ukraine (not the country, but the system) is turning into mass grave for journalists and journalism,” Zakharova wrote on her Facebook page.

President Petro Poroshenko ordered investigators to ensure the perpetrators of the attack are brought to justice.

Sheremet is a well-known journalist who worked in Russia, Belarus and Ukraine. He had worked in Kiev for the last five years for the Ukrayinska Pravda news portal and Radio Vesti broadcaster.

In April 2015, Ukrainian opposition journalist Oles Buzina was shot dead in Kiev by two masked gunmen near his home. The incident occurred less than a day after former lawmaker and government critic Oleh Kalashnikov was murdered at his residence in the Ukrainian capital. Another Ukrainian journalist, Donetsk-born Serhiy Sukhobok, was also killed the same month near his house in Kiev.

Reporters Without Borders has repeatedly urged the Ukrainian authorities to investigate the killing of journalists.

July 20, 2016 Posted by | Full Spectrum Dominance | , | Leave a comment

Neocon Schizophrenia

When friends of friends are enemies

By Philip Giraldi • Unz Review • July 19, 2016

A friend recently observed to me that it is ironic that the neoconservatives, whose bottom line foreign policy issue is the uncritical support of Israel, should be obsessed with constantly confronting and goading Russia even though Tel Aviv and Moscow get along just fine. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has traveled to Russia three times in the past year and he and President Vladimir Putin reportedly understand each other very well.

To be sure, part of the reasoning behind the Israeli offering the hand of friendship is certainly demographic and electoral as many Israelis are Russian in origin and also characteristically strongly support recent right wing governments. They are regarded as essential members of Netanyahu’s coalition, but there is clearly more to it than counting votes.

From the Israeli point of view, Russia, though allied with Syria and friendly with Iran, does not threaten Israel and it also is an available resource to help Tel Aviv develop, refine and market its claimed offshore energy resources. Israel, increasingly isolated because of its repression of the Palestinians, is always eager to make new friends who will help protect it in international fora, witness Netanyahu’s recent charm offensive in Africa.

From the Russian point of view, Israel is a useful friend given its unparalleled access to the U.S. Congress, the White House and the American media. The Netanyahu government also understands Moscow’s concerns about radical Islam in the Arab world and Central Asia and is willing to share information that it obtains to contain the problem. For both Israel and Russia terrorism is not an abstraction – it sits right on and even inside their borders.

Even though Israel is undercutting the neocon plan to isolate and punish Russia at every opportunity people like Bill Kristol, the Kagans and John Bolton make no effort to criticize Netanyahu for his temerity. It is a policy of deliberately looking the other way and it underlines the essential phoniness of what the neoconservatives stand for. To put it bluntly, the neocons claim to support American military dominance globally for altruistic reasons but the reality is that they are largely in it for the money as well as the political and media access to power that money brings with it in contemporary America. What would Sunday morning talk shows be like without a beaming Bill Kristol?

And the cash for the neocons comes mostly from defense contractors who are eager to have a clearly defined serious enemy to boost military spending coupled with an articulate group of pundits who insist on seeing threats worldwide and are willing to promote that viewpoint. Keeping the cash flowing to fund that nice corner office with a view of the Capitol even trumps the Israel relationship but the neocons are careful to make sure the two issues never bump up against each other when they are fulminating against Obama’s national security policies.

We are currently witnessing neocon perfidy at its most refined. They are jumping over themselves to support Hillary Clinton for president in spite of her manifest corruption and unreliability because Donald Trump has threatened to do two things: first he has expressed his unwillingness to enter into new wars in the Middle East or anywhere else and second he has stated that Washington should be even handed when attempting to negotiate peace between Israel and the Palestinians. Both are anathema to the neocons and Trump has further complicated matters by indicating that he would be willing to talk with Vladimir Putin. If Trump were to win, many neocons would likely find themselves having to look for a real job, a terrifying prospect for people with few skills to fall back on.

Hillary Clinton on the other hand will do what is right from the neocon point of view – confronting the world one nation at a time starting with Iran, which she has threatened to “obliterate.” She will also need to boost defense spending to support her wars, will stiff Vlad, and will allow Bibi to move in down the hall at the White House as Bill will often be out on the town and his room in the East Wing is not needed.

Hillary’s bellicosity guarantees that the military industrial complex cash machine will continue to operate full speed, driving scores of leading neocons to announce that they will vote for her. Reuel Marc Gerecht, one of the neocons’ favorite Iran bashers, concluded in an article appearing in a recent issue of the Weekly Standard that Hillary’s “not a neoconservative, but Hillary Clinton isn’t uncomfortable with American power. Unlike Obama, she isn’t the apologetic type. Whatever her opinions were in the Vietnam era, she doesn’t now view the Cold War ambivalently. She’s certain that might married right in that struggle, even in the Third World, where Obama and many on the left have serious doubts.” I’m not completely sure what that pompous bit of prose is supposed to mean but Gerecht in a backhanded fashion also provided what is for me a ringing endorsement of Donald Trump, though he of course meant to do the opposite having stated his intention to vote for Hillary, writing “Trump is probably the most anti-interventionist presidential candidate since Eugene V. Debs, the indefatigable socialist, in 1912.”

The issue of Israel has, of course, been somewhat hidden during the lead-up to the major party nominating conventions, with everyone inevitably expressing his or her deep affection for Netanyahu, but it has surfaced somewhat in the Democratic Party platform deliberations where Cornel West and James Zogby attempted to introduce some language critical of the occupation of the former Palestinian West Bank. They failed in that attempt though it is possible that something similar will be introduced from the floor during the actual convention. It will undoubtedly also fail even if it succeeds as it did in 2012 when the presiding chairman seemed to hear more “yea” votes than anyone else present in the hall.

The Republicans, still firmly under control of the neocon foreign policy clique, have outdone the Democrats. On July 12th the platform committee, with input from Jason Greenblatt and David Friedman, advisers to presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump, approved a plank on Israel that does not accept creation of a Palestinian state at all unless Israel decides to take action to permit that to develop. On that and all other issues there will be “no daylight” between the U.S. and Israel. The subcommittee that drafted the position reportedly approved it by an overwhelming majority followed by a standing ovation.

The document calls Israel a “beacon of democracy and humanity.” It states that “support for Israel is an expression of Americanism” and declares that the U.S. Embassy will be moved to Jerusalem. It denies that Israel is an “occupier,” and calls for legislation to combat the “anti-Semitic” Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement. The plank could have been written by Netanyahu’s Foreign Ministry or perhaps by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and basically cedes to Israel control over the direction of U.S. foreign policy in a critical and unstable region.

And there has been additional activity in Congress lately regarding Iran, with a large sale of Boeing jets being blocked and three additional bills submitted for consideration that will punish that country by, among other steps, denying it access to international finance. Indeed, the unrelenting neocon hostility towards Iran is a subset of the pro-Israel bias as Tehran is perceived as a problem for Tel Aviv while the arguments made to suggest that Iran threatens Europe and the United States lack any plausibility.

The creation of enemies unnecessarily, as applied to both Iran and Russia, is a symptom of the neoconservative disease. It is a pointless search for full spectrum military dominance that panders to an inchoate fear that the U.S. is surrounded by foes that can only be dealt with by decisive kinetic action which will require large defense budgets. Today’s neo-conservatism is a movement born from a curious amalgam of interests that have come together at a time when the United States is in reality militarily unchallenged worldwide and is threatened neither by any other country nor by the pinpricks inflicted by terrorists. Neocons and their associated liberal interventionists have to an extent dominated the foreign and defense policy thinking of the two major parties and most of the media but their message is ultimately based on emphasizing national insecurity, which in the current context is somewhat inexplicable. The United States has never been more secure internationally, if not domestically, and the only problems it is confronting are themselves part and parcel of the imbroglios that have been engineered by the interventionists and their friends. Speculation is that a Trump victory will actually end their dominance. If that is so, it might just be sufficient reason to vote for Donald Trump.

July 19, 2016 Posted by | Full Spectrum Dominance, Militarism, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | , , , , | Leave a comment

Palestinian journalist Samah Dweik sentenced to six months in Israeli prison

samah-dweik

Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network – July 18, 2016

Palestinian journalist Samah Dweik has been sentenced by the Israeli Jerusalem court to six months and one day in prison, on charges of “incitement” for posting on her Facebook page. She was arrested on 10 April 2016 from her home in the Ras al-Amud neighborhood of Silwan, Jerusalem, in a pre-dawn raid in which occupation soldiers invaded and ransacked her home, accused of posting in support of the intifada on Facebook.

She is one of hundreds of Palestinians targeted for arrest and persecution on the basis of postings on social media. Dweik, 25, is a freelance journalist who works with Quds News Network. She is one of over 20 Palestinian journalists detained and imprisoned by Israel, including Palestinian Journalists’ Syndicate leader Omar Nazzal, Addameer media coordinator Hasan Safadi, and multiple journalists accused of “incitement” for posting on social media.

banan-mafarjahDweik is one of over 60 Palestinian women imprisoned by Israel, held in HaSharon and Damon prisons. On Saturday, 16 July, two more Palestinian women were arrested: Banan Mahmoud Mafarjah, 21, a medical student at Al-Quds University in Abu Dis, Jerusalem, was arrested at an Israeli occupation “flying checkpoint” west of Ramallah; while Amal Masalmah of al-Khalil was among 10 Palestinians detained in late night and pre-dawn raids on 17 July.

July 18, 2016 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance, Subjugation - Torture | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Palestinian journalist ordered to administrative detention, campaign launched for syndicate leader’s release

adib-alatrash

Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network – July 18, 2016

The Israeli Ofer military court issued a thee-month administrative detention order against Palestinian journalist Adib al-Atrash on Sunday, 17 July, as the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate launched an international effort to free syndicate leader Omar Nazzal, also held under administrative detention without charge or trial.

Al-Atrash, who recently graduated from Eastern Mediterranean University in Cyprus, was arrested by Israeli occupation forces on Monday, 20 June from his family’s home in Al-Khalil. Al-Atrash and Nazzal are two of over twenty Palestinian journalists detained and imprisoned by the Israeli occupation.

Nazzal was arrested by Israeli occupation forces on 23 April 2016, as he attempted to cross at the Karameh crossing from Palestine’s West Bank to Jordan, to travel to the European Federation of Journalists’ annual general meeting in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina. Nazzal, a member of the PJS’ general secretariat, was representing the syndicate at the conference; he was also ordered to four months’ administrative detention without charge or trial.

The Palestinian Journalists Syndicate is working with the International Federation of Journalists and international syndicates of journalists to campaign for freedom for Nazzal and his imprisoned colleagues. The IFJ has called for the release of Nazzal and other imprisoned Palestinian journalists, including former hunger striker and administrative detainee Mohammed al-Qeeq.

Al-Atrash and Nazzal are among nearly 750 Palestinians held under administrative detention without charge or trial, out of a total of 7,000 Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails. Administrative detention orders, issued for periods of one to six months on the basis of secret evidence, are indefinitely renewable.

July 18, 2016 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance, Subjugation - Torture | , , , | Leave a comment

Palestinian youth activist and former prisoner arrested by Israeli occupation forces

Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network – July 12, 2016

karajah

Palestinian youth activist and former prisoner Hassan Karajah was arrested this evening, 12 July, by Israeli occupation forces at Beit Ur checkpoint west of Ramallah, reported family sources to Samidoun. They are concerned about his situation, especially because he spent 22 months in Israeli prisons after being targeted for his work as a human rights defender.

He was arrested on 23 January 2013 and freed on 19 October 2014, facing an Israeli military court on allegations of participation in a prohibited organization (all Palestinian political parties are prohibited organizations) and contact with an enemy state (frequently used to target Palestinians who travel to Lebanon for conferences and other events.)

Karajah, well known for his work in a number of civil society organizations, including the Stop the Wall Campaign and the Partnership for Development Project, and his advocacy for boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) against Israel, was the subject of an international campaign for his release, which highlighted the Israeli targeting of Palestinian human rights defenders.

A letter Karajah wrote from prison was widely distributed: “Here, we draw our energy to continue from you. We, the newly detained prisoners, our hearts are full of happiness when, while being transported from prisons to court, we meet prisoners we have heard about for decades, whose photos and posters we have carried in the streets, prisoners from whom we learned our readiness to struggle since childhood.

In conclusion, I affirm to you that they will never be able to bring about our end. We are stronger than they are able to weaken us. We are higher than they are able to lower us. We are deeper than they are able to reach us. We continue.

I say to you at the end of this message – I will see you soon. I will come out as you have known me and better, and I will greet you with the single word, ‘Freedom.’”

July 12, 2016 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance, Subjugation - Torture | , , , , | Leave a comment

Jeff Halper vs Criticising Israel

By Barbara McKenzie | July 6, 2016

Jeff Halper is an Israeli, based in Israel, and an activist for Palestinian rights, being head of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions. On 29 June he posted an article on Facebook, without title, on some issues facing the pro-Palestine movement. The connection between the issues is tenuous: it’s hard to see how Mahmoud Abbas can influence anti-Zionist groups in the US, but this is afterall Facebook, and in its way the article is groundbreaking.

The Problem of Mahmoud Abbas

Halper rightly sees Mahmoud Abbas as a hurdle in terms of obtaining a just solution for Palestine. ‘Say what you will about Israel, justice for Palestinians will be achieved only after the ineffectual, downright collaborationist regime of Abbas falls, once and for all…. But we who actively support the Palestinian cause … desperately need direction from our Palestinian partners.’

I have sympathy with anyone who criticises Mahmoud Abbas, and I view with trepidation the idea of Abbas negotiating a settlement for Palestine at Camp David with Netanyahu and Hillary Clinton. However Halper appears to be overlooking the fact that Abbas is supported by the American and Israeli government: he represents those parties, not Palestine. He has to be viewed as one of many problems imposed on Palestinians, not as a symptom of Palestinian ‘failure’. As one William James Martin replied to Halper’s post, ‘It is easy to take out one’s frustrations on Abbas. But the problem is Israel and the US, not the Palestinians’.

It is perhaps worth noting that Halper finishes his article by suggesting, ‘For all the success of BDS, unless we begin advocating a vision and program of our own, we will lose’. Which invites the question, who is ‘we’?

Conspiracy theories and antisemitism

Throughout the Palestine movement there pervades a belief that a special concern of Palestinians and pro-Palestine activists should be the fight against antisemitism. Jeff Halper clearly subscribes to this belief, and indeed the bulk of this article is devoted to just this issue. Halper is concerned that without strong leadership ‘the Palestinian issue will deteriorate into crazy and, yes, anti-Semitic conspiracy theories’. Bizarrely, he points to Gilad Atzmon as guilty in this regard. As Atzmon replied to Halper’s post, ‘I argue that there are NO Jewish conspiracies. You people do it all in the open whether it is Goldman Sachs wiping out Greece or Jeff Halper attempting to kosherise the discourse of the oppressed’. And in truth, Atzmon has never concerned himself with the theories that traditionally cause the ire of protectors of Jewish sensibilities, relating to the JFK assassination for example, or 9/11. Nor has he written about the type of ‘conspiracy theories’ that Halper is concerned with here, and which are discussed below.

Atzmon’s sins lie elsewhere. The traditional position of Jewish and Israeli organisations promoting Palestinian rights and ‘the left’ in general is that criticising Israel is not antisemitic, while criticising Jewish elites, or Jewish communities for their support of Israel, or analysing why they do, is exactly that. This is the primary reason for labelling Gilad Atzmon, an Israeli Jew who writes about Jewish power, as an antisemite.

Investigating conspiracy theories which implicate Israel in criminal activities abroad, such as 9/11, is also deemed to be antisemitic, even though this contradicts the professed view that ‘criticising Israel is not antisemitic’. One extrapolates from this that, in the view of the gatekeeping faux left, one may criticise Israel, but only in respect of its treatment of Palestinians, not for its wider activities.

In his article Halper extends the traditional notion of what constitutes an antisemitic conspiracy theory. He cites a recent claim that a settler rabbi endorsed poisoning the wells of West Bank Palestinians. The veracity of the claim is under question, and Richard Silverstein, for one, has written in Tikun Olam that he believes it to be a hoax. Halper is inspired by this story to suggest that it constitutes an ‘antisemitic conspiracy theory’. He goes on to address the problem of the increasing number of ‘conspiracy-peddling hate groups’. Halper is not talking about hate against Jews, but hate against Israel, and his example is an organisation with the self-explanatory and fairly precise title ‘Americans Against Genocide in Gaza’.

Now, there is substantial evidence that supports the perception that the Israeli government and sections of Israeli society are intent on eliminating Palestinians from their homeland, and if that involves physically exterminating them so be it. The actions of the government in bombing Gaza in 2014, the ongoing blockade of goods that would allow, for example, repair of the sewage system, and therefore safe drinking water, and the large number of extrajudicial shootings of young people all show a breathtaking indifference to Palestinian life. Whether or not this is technically genocide, to refer to it as such is hardly some off the wall antisemitic conspiracy theory.

In the case of the discredited story of the genocidal rabbi mentioned above, Silverstein explains that ‘there is ample past evidence of settlers poisoning Palestinian wells by throwing dead animals and soiled diapers into them’. That one claim may be false does not prove bad faith in those who react, or overreact, to such a story – as Silverstein comments ‘If true, this would be yet another outrageous, racist, even genocidal statement in a long line from such settler rabbis.’ A search on Google will show that such views are commonly expressed by senior Israeli rabbis, and not just on the West Bank. Given that Palestinian concerns are valid in principle, Halper’s approach has to be seen as an attempt to stifle criticism of Israeli treatment of Palestinians.

Another convention popular with the liberal left is that although to refer to ‘Jews’, or even to ‘the Jewish lobby’ may be considered racist, it is acceptable to speak of Zionists or Zionist Jews – ‘anti-Zionism is not antisemitism’ (the mission statement of Jewish Voices for Peace stresses that being Jewish is not synonymous with Zionism). This is another assumption that Halper throws out the window. Halper takes exception to a video entitled What Do Famous People Think of Zionist Jews? I had as much interest in watching this as I had in watching the equivalent produced for the NO side of the Scottish independence referendum, but I trawled through it nonetheless. It turned out to be a fairly substantial production, not without interest – I was particularly moved by Louis Farrakhan’s spirited defense of Kanye West (1:21:07). While most statements were focused on the crimes of Israel, there were indeed one or two which struck me as racist, ie they could be read as implying that all Jews are innately bad. A number of segments would fit the standard faux left definition of antisemitism, in that the speaker talked about Jewish power, such as the influence Jews have in Hollywood, or questioned the facts of the holocaust.

It appears, however, that Halper himself had watched little or nothing of the video – it is difficult to understand otherwise why he sneers at the description of the participants, who include people like Nelson Mandela, Norman Finkelstein, Mel Gibson, Jeremy Corbyn and Malcom X, as ‘famous’. The inescapable deduction therefore is that Halper is not so much concerned with antisemitism as usually defined by the left, but by the very idea of campaigning so specifically against Zionism, and feels no need to inquire further. The view that it is acceptable to criticise Zionists and Zionism is no longer valid. Anti-Zionism is now antisemitic.

Halper exemplifies the ‘soft’ or ‘anti-Zionist’ Zionist, in that he is involved in the Palestinian cause but puts a limit on criticism of Israel and/or the Jewish lobby, and to that end openly declares eradicating antisemitism as a top priority. The effect of this is to suppress criticism of external supporters of Israel. Halper’s outlook is shared by certain non-Jewish organisations and individuals in the Palestine movement, who are unkindly referred to by Gilad Atzmon as sabbos goyim (a sabbas goy being someone who does the work of a Jew on the Jewish Sabbath).

Not content with prioritising the suppression of antisemitism themselves, anti-Zionist Zionists and sabbas goys use their position in the Palestine movement to ensure that Palestine activists and Palestinians do so as well, ignoring the outrage expressed by some Palestinians. Palestinians, despite themselves, find themselves complicit in the campaign to prioritise Jewish sensibilities and to prevent criticism of the external forces dedicated to supporting and furthering the Zionist occupation of their land.

What is more, Halper is taking his gatekeeping to a new level. Forget the mantra, so beloved of anti-Zionist Zionists and the faux left, that ‘criticising Israel is not antisemitic’. Not only is it forbidden to question the activities of Israel and its intelligence services outside of Israel, but it is now apparently unacceptable to use the word Zionist negatively, and even to question the actions of Israel against Palestinians, within Palestine itself, is antisemitic. Halper has closed further the narrow gap between the relative positions of hardline Zionists and the ‘soft’ Zionists of the Palestine movement – criticising Israel is antisemitic.

July 6, 2016 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance, Timeless or most popular | , , , | Leave a comment

34 violations against Palestinian journalists in June

Israeli-forces-arrested-a-Palestinian-journalist

MEMO | July 5, 2016

Israeli occupation forces and the Palestinian Authority carried out 34 violations against Palestinian journalists in June, Quds Press reported an NGO saying.

Palestinian Youth Congress for Journalists said in a statement that the Israeli violations included direct assaults, firing rubber bullets at journalists and cameramen, arbitrary arrests and the closure of media offices.

The group said the attacks happened while the journalists were documenting Israeli aggression at Al-Aqsa Mosque. Photographer Rami Al-Khatib and journalists Osaid Amarneh and Ahmed Jaradat were wounded during the violence.

Moreover, the statement noted that the Israeli policy of arbitrary detention of Palestinian journalists continued as several journalists, including 25-year-old Nasser Al-Khatib from Ramallah, 27-year-old Iyad Al-Taweel and 43-year-old Bassam Al-Safadi from the Golan Heights were arrested.

There are currently 20 journalists being held in Israeli jails, the statement said.

The group added that Israel had closed Musawat TV which broadcasts from occupied Palestinian territories under the pretext that it incites hatred.

The Youth Congress reported 17 violations against journalists at the hands of the Palestinian Authority.

July 5, 2016 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , | Leave a comment

Jeremy’s Jewish Friends

By Gilad Atzmon | July 2, 2016

Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn could do with better advisers. Yesterday, in a press conference Corbyn announced, “our Jewish friends are no more responsible for the actions of Israel or the Netanyahu Government than our Muslim friends are for those of various self-styled Islamic states or organisations.” This ‘equivalence’ of the Jews and the Muslims is weak.

Despite Israel’s devastating record of war atrocities, the vast majority of the world’s Jews support the Jewish state and identify with Zionism. The Jewish lobby dominates American, British and French foreign affairs. This lobby pushes for criminal immoral interventionist wars. Corbyn obviously knows this since he has consistently voted against these wars. None of these factors apply to Muslims or Islam. Only a fraction of Muslims worldwide support the Islamic state. In fact, the vast majority of Islamic leaders denounce Isis politically, religiously and culturally. There are no Islamic lobbies operating in our midst and pushing for wars. Finally, unlike Jewish oligarchs such as Haim Saban and George Soros, Muslim billionaires do not attempt to buy our political system. So I can’t imagine what led Corbyn to make such a comparison.

And who are these ‘Jewish friends’ to whom Corbyn referred?

Is the pro- Israel Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mrivis, who was quick to denounce Corbyn, one of Corbyn’s Jewish friends? Probably not.

Is the former Chief Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks, who added his voice to the complaint that Corbyn’s comparison was “demonisation of the highest order, an outrage and unacceptable.” Is he one of Corbyn’s Jewish friends?

Are the Labour Friend Of Israel, who have utilised every trick in the Book of Esther to destroy Corbyn, Corbyn’s Jewish friends?

Maybe Corbyn reckons that the Jews who pushed for the suspension of the heroic Ken Livingstone and many other Labour politicians and members, maybe they are his Jewish friends. Who knows?

Corbyn probably thinks that ‘Jews for Corbyn’ are his true Jewish friends. However, they formed their group only after it was clear that Corbyn was about to win Labour in a storm, and this was done so they could control the opposition.

No, as far as I can see, Corbyn has only ever had one true Jewish friend and his name is Paul Eisen. Paul Eisen was the first ‘Jewish friend’ to support Corbyn, the first ‘Jewish friend’ to praise the old proletariat leader, the first ‘Jewish friend’ to believe in Corbyn’s ability to win the Labour leadership and even to bring change to this country.

Such a pity that Corbyn dropped Paul the moment his ‘Jewish friends’ told him to.

July 2, 2016 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance, Video | , , | Leave a comment

Female politicians (sometimes) receive more abuse than male counterparts, apart from when they don’t…

OffGuardian | June 29, 2016

The Guardian have tried their hand at statistical analysis again – after resounding failures the last two times, you have to at least salute their determination.

As part of their “web we want” initiative, the Guardian have published Max Kelsen’s extensive study of twitter “abuse” suffered by politicians. The study seeks to demonstrate and explain the “concerning” level of abuse, and manages to do neither. Instead it becomes just a tool for the Guardian to justify and renew their assault on the idea of internet free speech.

Methods and Data

The first point that needs to be addressed is how this study defines, and subsequently identifies, “abuse”:

Tweets were filtered into those that contained abusive words, and those that didn’t. While this will include false positives in the case of tweets primarily directed at one politician but containing abuse directed at another, these are in the minority.

Their method WILL produce false positives. Not “might produce”, “ will produce”; a very important distinction.

But don’t worry, these “false positives” are, they assure us, definitely “in the minority”. They never say how they know this, or how they could know, since no data is given. For all we – and possibly they – know the admitted “false positives” could make up literally 100% of their sample.

And it should be noted that these “false positives” could include total reversion of the intent of the tweet. For example the phrase “Hillary Clinton is not a bitch”, would be shuffled into the “abuse” pile simply for containing the word “bitch”.

Still, it’s not every statistics firm that would have the chutzpah to freely admit that anything up to 49% of their data may be totally and irrevocably flawed. So hats off Max Kelsen on that score anyway.

The study also suggests that the vast majority (75%+) of “abusive” tweets come from men, without in turn pointing out that Twitter never specifically asks for a user’s gender, and actually “assigns” it using an algorithm that famously skews male.

… but wait a minute:

The gender of tweeters was assigned where possible based on available information, such as bio information or the tweets themselves.

So twitter’s algorithm doesn’t actually matter, because this “analysis” didn’t even get that technical. No, they just looked at the accounts and sort of guessed. Brilliant.

None of which really matters, in the end, because their graphs reveal that – even including all those false positives – less than 2% of twitter posts are abusive.

Less than two percent. 98% of tweets are non-abusive.

That’s hardly a tickly cough, let alone the “epidemic” that the Guardian is so fond of describing. The study itself seems to recognise the minuteness of the alleged problem, saying this in their summary:

A key point to make is that data alone is not an accurate way to reflect the impact of abuse.

Again, it’s not every statistical study that would sum up: “OK, there’s not much data here… but it feels bigger than it looks”. Maybe this is some new, progressive mathematics – much like the Common Core syllabus in the US – where numbers are given increased weight based on how they make one feel.

The Agenda

It doesn’t take a skilled reader of subtext to see where this is going – the intent of the “Web We Want” section, coincidentally launched parallel to Yvette Cooper’s “Reclaim the Internet” campaign, has always been clear. They attack free speech under the guise of protecting the “oppressed” and the “bullied” – most of the time, this means women.

That slant is clear here. The headline reads:

From Julia Gillard to Hillary Clinton: online abuse of politicians around the world

…which implies there is disparity between men and women in the amount of abuse received. This early paragraph does the same:

The abuse of politicians online, particularly women, is perceived by some to come with the territory. But as high-profile cases flag the urgent need to clean up the web, the scope of the problem is now revealed in greater detail in work by a Brisbane-based social data company, Max Kelsen.

The bolded phrase above – “particularly women” – is an interesting one. Especially since, just a little way down the page, they reveal that the abuse is, in reality, evenly split between men and women over their samples.

Hillary Clinton receives more “abuse” than Bernie Sanders, and Julia Gillard was apparently abused more than Kevin Rudd… but Chris Christie received more abuse than Carly Fiorina, and Andy Burnham and Jeremy Corbyn both received nearly twice as much “abuse” as their female counterparts. In short: There’s no real difference between the genders.

You’d be forgiven, given the tone, for thinking the opposite – the article cites the Jess Philips claim of 600 threats in one night, repeats Yvette Coopers famous “threat” (which, to me, reads as an obviously rather tasteless joke), and then treats us to some pictures of Jo Cox’s mournful public, suggesting that controlling what people are allowed to say on the internet might have saved her life.

The study tells us to disregard the data, and focus on the “emotional impact” of the abuse. I would say disregard the data (or lack thereof), and instead focus on how the Guardian is choosing to present it.

July 1, 2016 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | | Leave a comment

Leaked FBI doc reveals secret policy of targeting journalists, sources

RT | July 1, 2016

FBI documents sought after in Freedom of Information Act requests for the last year are now available, thanks to a leak to the Intercept. They lay out secret rules for collecting phone records of journalists, bypassing normal judicial processes.

The documents, published Thursday, outline how FBI agents would utilize National Security Letters in obtaining journalists’ phone records. They date back to 2013, the same year the agency’s overseer, the US Department of Justice, amended its standards for subpoenaing for such records.

However, the newly leaked papers are marked “last updated October 2011,” and they seem to conflict with DOJ policy as well as reveal information that many say never should have been secret in the first place.

The FBI’s National Security Letters, or NSLs, are used like search warrants, but unlike a normal warrant, they are not signed off on by any judge or court. They are approved in-house without even a requirement to notify the target. For the purposes of these documents, that means not even the news organization employing the journalist would necessarily be informed. Furthermore, they nearly always come with some form of a gag order, preventing the target from talking about their NSL case.

Getting an NSL authorized typically requires the signatures of the FBI’s general counsel and its National Security Branch’s executive assistant director as well as other chain of command OK’s following the agent making the request, the Intercept reported. That is, as long as the NSL is deemed “relevant” to an investigation pertaining to national security.

Except in investigations over a leak, such as how these FBI documents came to be available, when the purpose of an NSL is “to identify confidential news media sources,” according to the documents, the general counsel and executive assistant director defer to the DOJ National Security Division’s assistant attorney general. To identify a leaker, however, the DOJ is not needed for NSL approval.

The Freedom of the Press Foundation sued the DOJ for a more complete release of these rules, since they had previously been divulged under ample redaction in 2011, along with the rest of the FBI’s Domestic Investigations and Operations Guide, or DIOG.

“These supposed rules are incredibly weak and almost nonexistent — as long as they have that second sign-off they’re basically good to go,” Trevor Timm, the executive director of the media advocacy group told the Intercept. “The FBI is entirely able to go after journalists and with only one extra hoop they have to jump through.”

FBI spokesman Christopher Allen gave little comment to the Intercept, only to say the agency was “very clear” that “the FBI cannot predicate investigative activity solely on the exercise of First Amendment rights.”

Press advocates have criticized President Obama’s administration harshly, as it has pursued more cases, including under the Espionage Act, against publishers, leakers and reporters than prior administrations.

In 2013, in response to backlash over its seizing the phone lines of the Associated Press and keeping tabs on Fox News’s James Rosen, the DOJ released new “Media Guidelines” that conveyed a tightening up of the practices. The information just leaked to the Intercept, though, “makes a mockery” of those guidelines, the Freedom of the Press Foundation wrote Thursday.

It is important to note that NSLs are covered by rules wholly separate from the DOJ’s media guidelines.

Efforts on Capitol Hill to loosen restrictions on NSLs have failed recently, but only by slim margins, and the fight does not seem to be letting up. An amendment to a Senate criminal justice funding bill failed last week by just two votes, while this past Monday, a similar amendment allowing the FBI to demand email header information, web browser history, social media account access and other metadata was blocked by Senator Ron Wyden (D-Oregon), Reuters reported.

July 1, 2016 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , | Leave a comment

Corbyn: Clowns to the left of him, Jokers to the right

By Stuart Littlewood | Dissident Voice | June 30, 2016

A political beacon is about to be extinguished unless he breaks with the doomed Labour Party and sets up on his own.

Well, I don’t know why I came here tonight
I got the feeling that something ain’t right,
I’m so scared in case I fall off my chair,
And I’m wondering how I’ll get down the stairs,
Clowns to the left of me,
Jokers to the right, here I am,
Stuck in the middle with you.
Yes I’m stuck in the middle with you,
And I’m wondering what it is I should do,
It’s so hard to keep this smile from my face,
Losing control, yeah, I’m all over the place,
Clowns to the left of me, Jokers to the right…

— Lyrics from ‘Stuck in the Middle with You’, a 1972 recording by Stealers Wheel

Only last December I was writing a piece titled ‘You have better things to do than captain a sinking ship – Message to Corbyn: dump the baggage, build from new’.

That message said:

Commiserations, comrade.

Last Wednesday – ‘Let’s Bomb Syria Day’ – was a day of infamy. Tomorrow you’ll need to come to terms with the UK Labour party’s unswerving death-wish.

Its integrity is in tatter, brand image beyond repair, and the very voters it needs to win round regard it as a joke. And the thousands who became your supporters in the heady days of the leadership campaign, exhilarated and inspired by the promise of better politics, are dismayed that their high hopes can never be delivered through such a bitterly divided party machine.

In that debate on bombing Syria senior Labour MPs and shadow ministers supported the Tory warmongers. In particular Hilary Benn (son of the illustrious Tony) played on human fears, ignored operational shortcomings and discounted the risk of reprisals against ‘soft’ targets on our streets. His scare tactics were exactly what the warmongers wanted to hear and his speech was triumphantly applauded by Tory Government benches and praised in the media. The party’s Blairite rump, who had shamed the nation by blindly voting for the Iraq war 12 years earlier, trooped into the lobbies to vote for war in Syria.

In a recent speech to Labour Friends of Israel Benn, the shadow foreign secretary, dishonestly called the rogue state “a vibrant democracy”, talked of shared values and claimed the bonds between it and the Labour party were “strong and run deep”. The puzzle was how Jeremy Corbyn could have appointed such a person to that key post. Earlier this week Corbyn finally sacked him, a move that set off a vengeful chain reaction.

Only 10 months ago Corbyn came from nowhere and panicked the Westminster Establishment by winning the Labour leadership with nearly 60% of first-choice votes. His nearest rival mustered only 19% so he had sufficient mandate to silence plotters who threatened a coup if he won. They have smouldered ever since.

The Conservatives reacted by broadcasting that Corbyn and Labour were “a serious risk to our nation’s security, our economy’s security and your family’s security. Whether it’s weakening our defences, raising taxes on jobs and earnings, racking up more debt and welfare or driving up the cost of living by printing money – Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party will hurt working people.”

So slender was his support in the Parliamentary Labour Party (as opposed to the party membership) that his shadow team inevitably included many critics. Mounting an effective opposition has thus been near impossible with so many colleagues willing him to fail, although he has chalked up a number of successes. Of course, the effectiveness of a leader depends in large measure on the performance of his senior colleagues.

Just lately the pressure on Corbyn to step down has been ratcheted-up, with accusations that he didn’t try hard enough to galvanise the Remain vote in the EU referendum. The official party line is pro-EU but ‘Old Labour’ Corbyn has been opposed to the EU for decades and knew perfectly well that at least one-third of Labour supporters would vote Leave.

This week there were mass resignations from his shadow team, at such regular intervals that they were clearly orchestrated for maximum effect. Replacements were hurriedly appointed. In the House of Commons David Cameron made an unusually good joke of it. Welcoming the newly elected Labour MP for Tooting he advised her to “keep her mobile switched on – you might be in the shadow cabinet by the end of the day”.

On Corbyn’s referendum effort Cameron quipped: “I know he says he put his back into it. All I’d say is, I’d hate to see him when he’s not trying.” That might have been funny except that Cameron, when setting up the referendum, couldn’t be bothered to appoint a team to examine the way forward in the event of a Brexit win. Hence the damaging post-Brexit confusion that will probably go on for months.

Then, very rudely, Cameron turned on Corbyn, telling the House: “It might be in my party’s interest for him to sit there, it’s not in the national interest and I would say, for heaven’s sake man, go!”

To illustrate the depths of silliness to which the campaign to oust Corbyn has sunk, the Labour Party today released a report on antisemitism. In a speech introducing it Corbyn said: “Our Jewish friends are no more responsible for the actions of Israel or the Netanyahu government than our Muslim friends are for those of various self-styled Islamic states or organisations.”

Fair comment, you might think. But it was eagerly seized on for wild accusations that he was making direct comparison between the Israeli government and Isis, which calls itself the Islamic State, although several other terrorist groups use the same name. A Labour councillor said on Twitter: “For that alone, he should resign. I am red with fury.”

The Telegraph quoted a statement by Lord Sacks in which the former Chief Rabbi accused the Labour leader of comparing the State of Israel to ISIS and “demonisation of the highest order, an outrage and unacceptable”.  He added: “Israel is a democratic state with an independent judiciary, a free press and a diverse population of many cultures, religions and creeds. ISIS is a terrorist entity whose barbarities have been condemned by all those who value our common humanity.”

No, you couldn’t make it up.

And the current Chief Rabbi is reported calling Corbyn’s comments “offensive, and rather than rebuilding trust among the Jewish community, are likely to cause even greater concern”.

On top of everything Ruth Smeeth, a Labour MP, stormed out of the press conference complaining she was verbally abused by a Corbyn supporter who accused her of being part of a ‘media conspiracy’, and Corbyn failed to intervene. “I call on Jeremy Corbyn to resign immediately and make way for someone with the backbone to confront racism and antisemitism in our party and in the country,” she announced. Reports omit to mention that Smeeth is a former director of BICOM, a pro-Israel propaganda organisation.

So the picture is bleak for Jeremy.

Clowns to the left of me,
Jokers to the right, here I am…

That song is possibly running through his mind repeatedly, and won’t go away.

July 1, 2016 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , | Leave a comment