CNN analyst claims Trump’s speech sounded like HITLER’s, but script was written by… PUTIN?!
RT | March 3, 2019
A CNN analyst and adviser at the Biden Institute has showcased her unmatched skill to roll all in one by comparing Donald Trump to Hitler for using a turn of phrase once shouted by Joe Biden and at the same time written by Putin.
Offering her thoughts on the president’s speech at the 2019 Conservative Action Conference (CPAC), Sam Vinograd told her CNN colleagues that she was horrified that Trump had spoken about “reclaiming our nation’s priceless heritage.”
For Vinograd, this was clearly a message lifted straight from Mein Kampf.
“His statement makes me sick, on a personal level, preserving your heritage, reclaiming our heritage, that sounds a lot like a certain leader that killed members of my family and about six million other Jews in the 1940s,” she said.
She went on to lament how Trump had used his CPAC address to “spread misinformation and conspiracy theories,” and that certain things he said “really” made it seem as if “Vladimir Putin scripted his speech.”
It wasn’t long before her eyebrow-raising remarks caught the attention of social media users – who found some glaring problems with her logic.
For starters, former vice president Joe Biden made a nearly verbatim declaration in 2011, when he told the Florida Democratic Party Convention that “it’s time to reclaim our heritage.” He yelled it, too – which seems like something Hitler might do.
To add salt to the open hypocrisy wound, Vinograd is a former Obama administration official who currently serves as an adviser to the Biden Institute, a think tank named in honor of – yes, you guessed it – Joe Biden.
Then, of course, there’s the inconvenient reality that Trump’s daughter converted to Orthodox Judaism in keeping with her husband’s Jewish faith. Others pointed out that the US Commission for the Preservation of America’s Heritage Abroad – a government agency that uses that scary Hitler word! – is chaired by an Orthodox Jew.
Vinograd’s comments about Putin also didn’t quite add up, with Twitter pundits expressing regret that she had failed to elaborate on which parts of Trump’s speech were allegedly written by the Russian president.
Twitter users were especially impressed by Vinograd’s lack of self-awareness, after she accused the president of “pretending that there are foreign people trying to influence our country in a way that just isn’t accurate.” Seconds later, she suggested Vladimir Putin wrote Trump’s speech.
The televised train wreck also got two thumbs down from radio host and former CIA analyst Buck Sexton, who summed up his feelings about the segment with a perceptive observation.
“CNN is a joke. Just not a funny one,” he mused.
Remember the Maine? CIA Intervention in Venezuela
Photograph Source National Museum of the U.S. Navy
By David Rosen | CounterPunch | March 1, 2019
In January 1897, Frederic Remington, a 19th-century painter famous for his depictions of the Old West, was on assignment in Havana for William Randolph Hearst’s New York Journal to illustrate Spanish atrocities against Cubans. He sent a telegram to Hearst, noting: “Everything is quiet. There is no trouble. There will be no war. I wish to return.” Hearst replied: “Please remain. You furnish the pictures and I’ll furnish the war.”
One year later, on February 15, 1898, the battleship USS Maine mysteriously exploded in Havana Harbor. Pres. William McKinley ordered the battleship sent to Havana on January 25th to observe the growing tension between the U.S. and Spain. The explosion killed 268 of the crew’s 354 men and shocked the American public.
The U.S. press went wild with headlines proclaiming, “Spanish Treachery!” and “Destruction of the War Ship Maine Was the Work of an Enemy!” Hearst and the Journal offered a $50,000 award for the “detection of the Perpetrator of the Maine Outrage.” “Remember the Maine, to Hell with Spain!” became a rallying cry.
To this day, no one knows what caused the explosion. Initial reports claimed the ship was sunk by a naval mine. Later investigations, one in 1911 and another in 1974, hypothesized that it was a coal dust fire. Still others believed it was due to sabotage, some speculating it was a covert Hearst operation to increase his newspaper’s readership.
While McKinley sought to maintain peace with Spain, Theodore Roosevelt, the Sec. of the Navy, led the war faction. He insisted, “Let the fight come if it must. I rather hope that the fight will come soon. The clamor of the peace faction has convinced me that this country needs a war.”
On April 21, 1898, the U.S. declared war on Spain. The sinking of the Maine climaxed pre-war tensions, a provocation that accelerated the breakdown in diplomatic relations between the U.S. and Spain. The war last 10 weeks and the U.S. was victorious; it took temporary control of Cuba (although it still controls Guantanamo Bay), control of the Philippines (until 1946) and ongoing control of Puerto Rico and Guam. Provocations can work.
***
Americans will likely never know the complete role the CIA has played – and likely continues to play — in the campaign to overthrow the Maduro government in Venezuela. (Claims of “national security” are used to hide the truth.) The Trump administration’s Troika of Evil – VP Mike Pence, Sec. of State Mike Pompeo and National Security Advisor John Bolton – seem to be plotting the overthrow of the Maduro government. One can well assume that the CIA, along with other agencies of the U.S. military-industrial complex, have been recruited to destabilize Venezuela, if not worse. Given this, one can wonder if another provocative act like the sinking of the Maine will be orchestrated to legitimize a domestic coup – or U.S. military intervention — in Venezuela.
Since Pres. James Monroe proclaimed what became known as the “Monroe Doctrine” in 1823, the U.S. has actively intervened in the affairs of innumerable countries across the globe. Since its establishment in 1946, the CIA has played a key role in U.S. interventions, whether through destabilization campaigns or an outright coups, especially in Latin and South America and the Caribbean.
A review of a dozen or so CIA interventions between 1954 and 2002 is suggestive as to what might be playing out in Venezuela.
Guatemala,1954 – the CIA launched the so-called Operation PBSuccess against president Jacobo Arbenz in support of United Fruit Company and bombed Guatemala City.
Haiti, 1959 – the CIA intervened to halt a popular movement to overthrow the puppet dictator, Francois Duvalier; according to one report, “over 100,000 people were murdered.”
Brazil 1964 – the CIA backed a coup against the democratically-elected president Joao Goulart who threatened to tax U.S. multinational corporations.
Uruguay, 1969 – CIA agent Dan Mitrione trained security forces in torture as part of Operation Condor; the agency pushed a coup that installed a military dictatorship led by Juan Maria Bordaberry.
Cuba, 1961 – the CIA-backed Cubanexiles and oversaw the failed Bay of Pigs invasion in the wake of the Cuban revolution of 1959; repeated CIA attempts to kill Fidel Castro failed.
Bolivia, 1971– the CIA orchestrated a coup against Gen. Juan Jose Torres, installing Gen. Hugo Banzer who imposed a violent dictatorship.
Chile, 1973– the CIA backed Gen. Augusto Pinochet’s coup against Pres. Salvador Allende, imposing a dictatorship that last 17 years.
Argentina, 1976 – the CIA installed Gen. Jorge Rafael Videla in a coup as part of the Dirty War to overthrow the Peronists.
El Salvador, 1979 – the CIA supported a 1979 coup fearing a popular insurgency that culminated in the assassination of Archbishop Oscar Romero (February 1980) and four American nuns (December 1980); in 1984, it financed Jose Durate’s campaign.
Grenada, 1983 – the CIA began efforts to destabilize the Marxist government in 1981 that led to the U.S. Marines invading in the country in ‘83 allegedly to protect about 1,000 American students on the island.
Panama, 1989 – the CIA orchestrated Operation Just Cause to overthrow its long-time operative, the drug trafficker Manuel Noriega, that left 3,500 civilians dead.
Peru, 1990 – the CIA backed Alberto Fujimori presidential election who renamed himself National Intelligence Service director, dissolved Congress and locked up the justices of the Supreme Court.
Venezuela, 2002 – the CIA backed mutinous army officers who briefly deposed Pres. Hugo Chávez in a coup attempt.
The CIA has also been involved in numerous other political and military campaigns in the region.
***
On February 15th, the U.S. celebrated the 121st anniversary of the sinking of the USS Maine. Since then, the U.S. has engaged in numerous military and political interventions in countries across the globe. Since its founding in 1947, the CIA has been the lead federal entity in foreign interventions and is likely playing a key role in the destabilization of Venezuela. Little information about the agency’s role in Venezuela has been reported, but suggestive rumors are circulating.
Earlier this month, a 21 Air cargo flight from Miami International Airport was seized by government authorities in Valencia, Venezuela, transporting 19 assault rifles, telescopic sights, radio antenna and other materiel likely for anti-Maduro forces. The flight company denied all knowledge of what it was shipping. The company that chartered the flight, GPS-Air, flatly rejected any claim that it had shipped weapons. As McClatchy reported, “Only a fool would try sending guns out of the [Miami] airport,” said Cesar Meneses, GP-Air’s cargo shipping manager.
Last year, a rumor circulated that the CIA was involved in an attempted assassination of Pres. Maduro. While giving a TV broadcast speech in February 2018, an explosion disrupted the event and Maduro blamed Colombia for the attack, saying later on, “I have no doubt that the name [Colombian president] Juan Manuel Santos is behind this attack.” Trump advisor Bolton denied any U.S. involvement, insisting on Fox News, “I can say unequivocally there is no US government involvement in this at all.”
It’s unlikely that the American public will know the role the U.S. military-intelligence apparatus, especially the CIA, is playing in the attempted overthrow of the Venezuelan government. A direct military intervention in the grand old sense of Cuba, Panama or Grenada seems unlikely. Unfortunately, the Troika of Evil – Pence, Pompeo and Bolton – are likely scheming for a provocative incident similar to the sinking of the Maine.
The ‘Russian bots’ that weren’t: Twitter backtracks on troll claims, media ignores updated info
RT | February 26, 2019
Twitter quietly revised its public database of ‘Russian bot’ accounts earlier this month, removing 228 accounts it previously said were “connected to Russia”— but the admission has gone almost completely unnoticed by the media.
Bloomberg reported on the “burst of activity” from the bot accounts and claimed that Russia’s “social-media trolling operation” was “stepping up its Twitter presence to new heights.”
Fast-forward to 2019 and Twitter has removed 228 of these accounts from the database, saying they had “initially misidentified” them as being linked to Russia, but nobody in the media seems to have noticed.
In fact, Bloomberg is the only major US outlet which bothered to correct the story to reflect reality, admitting that Twitter’s changes to the dataset “invalidate central portions” of its original report and that there was “no surge” in this so-called Russian bot activity at the time in question. Oops!
Pivot to Venezuela!
Interestingly, the highlighted accounts have now been linked to Venezuela, another country the US government just so happens to have bad blood with.
In a tweet, Twitter’s “head of site integrity” Yoel Roth said that the company can now “more confidently associate” the 228 accounts with Venezuela. Roth’s short tweet thread on the misidentification was met with little interest receiving only a few retweets and no attention from media figures who supposedly actively follow any and all news remotely related to Russian activity online.
In a statement to Bloomberg, Roth later admitted that “definitive attribution is very, very difficult.” The Bloomberg mea culpa also noted that Twitter is “reluctant to discuss” how it connects accounts to so-called trolling networks in the first place.
Some on Twitter quickly pointed out that the timing of the pivot to focus on Venezuelan bots was curious, given the US’ recent efforts to engineer regime change against the government of Nicolas Maduro.
Journalist Sam Sacks tweeted that the new information about Venezuelan bots was “convenient” and said that the vast majority of stories written about Russian trolls and their alleged social media activity are “based on junk research.” Sacks also questioned why anyone should have faith in the credibility of such flawed analyses going forward.
Another Twitter user found it odd that Twitter and Bloomberg had “suddenly discovered” that bots it claimed were Russian had “miraculously turned into Venezuelans.”
Pattern of fake ‘Russian bots’
When it comes to the hot topic of Russian bots and trolls, the media and various social media monitoring groups have suffered unfortunate “misidentification” incidents before.
In 2017, an African American activist Charlie Peach was suspended from Twitter during one of the company’s purges of accounts purportedly linked to Russia, a claim that was happily echoed later by multiple major media outlets. Peach told RT at the time that Twitter was engaging in “suppression of voices” using the “Russian scare tactic.”
Twitter users in the UK have also been swept up into the hysteria over Russian bots based on their political opinions, with some accounts belonging to real people even being listed in a UK government report on nefarious Russian activity online.
More recently, a dodgy US-based cybersecurity firm called New Knowledge was busted by the New York Times for creating an army of fake Russian bots in order to secretly influence an Alabama election by accusing one candidate of being ‘supported’ by the fake accounts. Yet, despite its own dirty tricks being exposed, the firm is still cited by major US media outlets as a legitimate source of information on Russian “disinformation” online.
So it seems media interest in Russian bot stories waxes and wanes based on whether or not the information bolsters the ‘correct’ narrative.
Read more:
‘Fake news’ is okay if it’s about #RussiaGate: Top 7 fake ‘collusion’ stories the media pushed
The Russian Mirror
By Jacob G. Hornberger | FFF | February 26, 2019
A recent article in the New York Times about Russia’s “intelligence state,” authored by John Sipher, a former chief of station for the CIA, provides a valuable mirror for the American people. The problem is that American statists cannot see it as a mirror. While Sipher’s article clearly demonstrates that American statists, especially conservative ones, can see the wrongdoing of foreign totalitarian or authoritarian regimes with great clarity, they have a moral blindness when it comes to recognizing wrongdoing by their own government. Even worse, they defend wrongdoing by their own regime (which they can’t see as wrongdoing) as a way to combat foreign wrongdoing. In fact, they come to view their own wrongdoing as something good when it is being used to oppose wrongdoing by a foreign regime.
Sipher labels Russia’s (and, before that, the Soviet) governmental system an “intelligence state.” He’s critical of it, and rightly so. It is a type of governmental system that engages in such things as secret surveillance of the citizenry, assassination, torture, and interference in the affairs of other nations.
Referring to Russia’s system under Vladimir Putin, who Sipher reminds us is a former KGB officer, Sipher writes:
“The history of the brutal Soviet security services lays bare the roots of Russia’s current use of political arrests, subversion, disinformation, assassination, espionage and the weaponization of lies. None of those tactics is new to the Kremlin.
“In fact, those tactics made Soviet Russia the world’s first “intelligence state,” and they also distinguished it from authoritarian states run by militaries…. The result is a regime with the policies and philosophy of a supercharged secret police service, a regime that relies on intelligence operations to deal with foreign policy challenges and maintain control at home….
“Over the decades, the Soviet and Russian secret services developed tools and habits based on their Chekist experience that set them apart from their counterparts in the West. Rather than focusing on collecting and analyzing intelligence, they developed expertise in propaganda, agitation, subversion, repression, deception and murder.”
Sipher uses the label “intelligence state” to describe the Russian and Soviet system. There is another label that Sipher could have used, a much more common one: a “national security state.”
Why would Sipher avoid using the term “national-security state”? My hunch is that he instinctively knows that that would be holding the mirror to himself and the rest of the American people. That’s because the United States is a “national-security state” or an “intelligence state,” just like Russia is.
In fact, a supreme irony in Sipher’s article is that he worked for the CIA for 27 years. At the risk of belaboring the obvious, the CIA is an “intelligence agency,” one that not only engages in intelligence gathering but also has long wielded and exercised the powers of assassination, torture, indefinite detention, involuntary drug experimentation, and secret surveillance — that is, the same types of powers that Sipher decries in the Russia/Soviet “intelligence state.”
Sipher points out that one of the main features of an “intelligence state” is lying. He ought to know. Since its very beginning, the CIA has been an agency based on lies and lying. Deception has always been justified under the rubric of “national security.” Coming immediately to mind is CIA Director Richard Helms, who was convicted of lying to Congress regarding the CIA’s secret regime-change operation against Chile, to the praise and acclaim of his subordinate officers in the CIA. Let’s also not forget the lies that former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper Jr. told Congress under oath regarding the NSA’s secret surveillance of Americans.
Consider all the nefarious things the CIA has done and continues to do in foreign countries, including assassination, coups, installation of foreign dictators, invasions, wars of aggression, torture, rendition, partnerships with dictatorial regimes, sanctions and embargoes targeting innocent people with death, impoverishment, and suffering.
Or consider MKULTRA, the CIA’s top-secret operation to subject innocent, unsuspecting people to drug experimentation, along with the subsequent intentional destruction of official records to prevent Americans from discovering the full extent of the operation.
Or the U.S. national-security state’s secret surveillance of American citizens, along with secret illegal operations to spy on and infiltrate peaceful and law-abiding organization with the intent to smear and destroy them and their members.
Of course, it wasn’t always that way. The United States was founded as a limited-government republic, which is the opposite of a national-security state. For more than 150 years, our nation prospered without a Pentagon, a military-industrial complex, a national-security state, a CIA, and a NSA. Governmental procedures were transparent. There was no obsession over the nebulous and meaningless term “national security.”
Then came the aftermath of World War II, when U.S. officials told Americans that they were now facing a new official enemy, one that had been an official enemy of Nazi Germany and a friend and partner of the United States. That new official enemy was the Soviet Union and its system of communism. The communists were coming to get us, U.S. official maintained, as part of a worldwide communist conspiracy based in Moscow, Russia.
U.S. officials said that there was only one way to prevent a communist takeover of the United States. In order to prevail against the Soviet Union, the U.S. government would have to be converted into the same type of governmental system, U.S. officials said.
That meant moving to the dark side — toward torture, assassination, coups, regime-change operations, sanctions and embargoes, secret surveillance — i.e., the types of things the communists were doing. That’s how we got the Pentagon, the CIA, and the NSA, three principal components of the U.S. national-security state or intelligence state.
What about our limited-government republic? U.S. officials said that as soon as the Cold War was over, we could have it back. But when the Cold War suddenly and unexpectedly ended, we didn’t get our republic back. Instead, we got the continued existence of the national-security state, along with its forever wars and forever interventions all around the world, along with its never-ending plunge into the dark side.
Worst of all, we got a moral blindness, one in which all too many Americans are unable to recognize what all this has done to us.
In Face of Yellow-Vest Critics, France Moves to Criminalize Anti-Zionism
Alain Finkielkraut being confronted by yellow-vest protesters.
By Guillaume Durocher • Unz Review • February 24, 2019
The French Jewish intellectual Alain Finkielkraut was recently profusely insulted by yellow-vests on the margins of a demonstration. This attack has been widely-portrayed as anti-Semitic, even though the yellow-vests in question explicitly attacked Finkielkraut as a Zionist. As Damien Viguier, the anti-Zionist intellectual Alain Soral’s lawyer, observed:
Alain Finkielkraut was called “a dirty Zionist shit (a Zionist two times again and “shit” perhaps three times more), a “fascist,” a “racist (two times), and “hateful.” He was asked to leave the demonstration in direct times: “get out of here” (twice), “piss off,” “go back home to Israel!” I can see in all this insults, or defamatory comments, I would even grant a light violence, but I find no trace of a discriminatory motivation. This shows well that the words “anti-Semite” and “anti-Semitic” are used in an absolutely arbitrary manner.
It is true that “Zionist” is often used as a euphemism for “Jew.” But it is also true that many anti-Zionists are happy to befriend genuinely anti-Zionist Jews such as Gilad Atzmon (himself an associate of Soral’s). Finkielkraut was likely attacked for his values rather than his ethnicity.
This subtlety did not prevent the incident from triggering a veritable pro-Semitic moral panic across the entire politico-media class. The media lamented the “anti-Semitic” attack on Finkielkraut and he was comforted by politicians from across the political spectrum, from the far-left to the far-right, including the bulk of prominent nationalist and identitarian figures.
Much of the foreign press (the London Times, The Jerusalem Post, the Jewish Telegraph Agency . . .) misrepresented things further, claiming that Finkielkraut had been called a “dirty Jew.” This is a genuine example of fake news.
Then a Jewish cemetery in the Alsatian village of Quatzenheim was desecrated, with over 90 tombstones being sprayed with with swastikas and anti-Semitic slogans. One tombstone was sprayed with the words: “Elsassisches Schwarzen Wolfe,” meaning “Alsatian Black Wolves,” an Alsatian nationalist group which has been inactive since 1981 . . . Of course, a hate hoax cannot be excluded: one thinks of the recent Jussie Smollett debacle or the Israeli-American who instigated 2000 supposed anti-Semitic bomb and shooter threats over the years.
For those whom anecdotal evidence was not sufficient, the regime also trotted out the usual “statistics” about, seemingly released every year of every decade, showing a massive increase in “anti-Semitic” acts. I will only say that such statistics are dubious in general, repetitive, and obviously ethnically and politically convenient. Grand old man Jean-Marie Le Pen commented:
There is no anti-Semitism in France which would justify a mobilization of public opinion. . . . Incidentally, we’re given a figure of a 74% increase in [anti-Semitic] attacks. Compared to what? I ask that we have the list of all these attacks committed against the Jews, in such a way that we can actually tell the difference between a graffiti, a murder, a telephone call, or a schoolyard scuffle. It is true that radical Islamism is extrapolating in a sense the Israeli-Arab conflict into France. It is much more a matter of anti-Zionism than anti-Semitism.
Regardless of whether the Quatzenheim incident is authentic, and it could well be, this event immediately prompted a solemn visit by the President of the Republic himself, Emmanuel Macron. This was followed by a national call to demonstrate against anti-Semitism, initiated by the Socialist Party but with virtually the entire political class following suite.
The response of both of the indigenous French people and the Africans/Muslims was lackluster however. According to the official media, some 20,000 people demonstrated in Paris and negligible amounts in the rest of the country. Actually, as the 20,000 figure was provided by the Socialist Party itself, we can be sure that this is an overstatement.
Serge Klarsfeld, one of the leading lights of the highly-profitable local holocaust industry, could not conceal his disappointment, telling the top journalist Jean-Pierre Elkabbach (a fellow Jew[1]) on television:
The masses were not there. The crowd was not there. The French on the whole were not there. There were demonstrations, but I was there, I was there with my entire family and I saw a lot of familiar faces. But the crowd did not come, and which is indignant, should have come. . . . In Lyon there were 1500 or 2000 people. That is not a lot for a big city like Lyon. The crowd was absent and those who were not Jewish were generally absent!
This is in stark contrast with the similar 1990 Carpentras Affair, during which a Jewish cemetery was also desecrated. The pro-Semitic demonstrators following this incident numbered over 200,000 in Paris alone. The event was skillfully exploited by the Socialist President François Mitterrand and by the politico-media class in general by abusively linking this event to Jean-Marie Le Pen’s rapidly-rising Front National (FN). This contributed to making the FN unhandshakeworthy and to preventing any alliance between Le Pen’s nationalists and the mainstream conservatives, which would have spelled doom for the Left. It was later shown that the FN had nothing to do with the incident, which had apparently been instigated by a handful of neonazis with no links to the party.
People should generally speculate less about the authenticity of an event (e.g. 9/11, the Reichstag Fire), which is often difficult to prove one way or the other, than on whether the event has been used as a pretext by the ruling elite to do something questionable or disproportionate (often something which it had been hankering to do for a long time), which is typically quite easy to demonstrate.
This time, as Klarsfeld complains, the gentiles were not so interested in these theatrics. However, the event is having significant political and legal effects. The Macron regime is exploiting the incident to implement measures which have long been demanded by the CRIF (Representative Council of Jewish Institutions of France), the country’s powerful official Jewish lobby. Macron himself appeared before the (very conveniently-timed, as it happens) CRIF annual dinner, where the crème de la crème of the French political class regularly appear, in a solemn ritual of solidarity and genuflection before the Lobby-That-Doesn’t-Exist.
French President Emmanuel Macron with CRIF President Francis Khalifat (himself the successor to the long-time present Roger Cuckierman, you can’t make some things up).
Macron made a number of promises to the CRIF:
- Three small “anti-Semitic” nationalist groups would be banned (Bastion Social, Blood & Honor Hexagone, and Combat 18).
- A new law strengthening the state’s already considerable ability to censor anything it deems to be “hate speech” on social media (the French government is among the world leaders in demanding and obtaining the suppression of content on Twitter, behind only Turkey and Russia).
- Most significantly, France would adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s “working definition of anti-Semitism,” which ludicrously includes anti-Zionism as an integral part of anti-Semitism. Thus, Jewish organizations and the French government are moving to outright criminalize opposition to Jewish ethno-nationalism (the definition of Zionism) all the while criminalizing all Western ethno-nationalisms as being discriminatory, hateful, xenophobic, etc.
This was quickly followed by the European Union me-too-ers in Brussels making their own proposals for an “anti-Semitism pact,” notably aimed at punishing Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s campaign raising awareness around international financial speculator George Soros’ multi-million dollar efforts to flood Europe with migrants and undermine traditional European culture and ethnic identity.
Surprisingly, Soral’s anti-Zionist and civic nationalist association Égalité & Réconciliation actually hailed Macron for resisting the CRIF’s demands, bowing to them only reticently, and in some cases only symbolically. After all E&R itself, the most prominent anti-Zionist organization in France, will not be banned. The social-media censorship legislation will only be presented in parliament in May. And, apparently, France’s redefinition of anti-Semitism to include anti-Zionism will not be legally-binding, but will be used to educate policemen and judges (go figure). All this, E&R surmises, left the CRIF’s audience underwhelmed. And, E&R notes that the CRIF’s demands are “extremely anti-popular and legally untenable . . . unless there is a complete shift to a communitarian [ethnic] dictatorship.”
Let us return to the original “victim” of all this, Alain Finkielkraut. Following the incident, an immediate “investigation” was launched of the various “perpetrators,” showing the absurd judicialization of French life. Finkielkraut, recently appointed as one of the forty “Immortals” of the Académie française, has been known to the younger generation primarily as an anti-racist Jew turned neoconservative once he realized Islamic immigration to France was bad for the Jews. He has become a popular Internet meme for his numerous televised hysterical outbursts: “Shut up! Shut up!”
Personally I haven’t followed Finkielkraut very closely and whenever I listen to him his discourse sounds like over-complicated pilpul. That said, he has objectively voiced a number of French identitarian concerns over the years. In 2005 he correctly and controversially told the Israeli newspaper Haaretz: “People say that the French national [football] team is admired because it is black-blanc-beur [black, white, Arab]. In reality, the national team is today black-black-black, which makes it the laughingstock of Europe.” There was clearly an element of rivalry in claiming the status of top ethnic victim. Finkielkraut also told Haaretz:
I was born in Paris and am the son of Polish immigrants, my father was deported from France, his parents were deported and murdered at Auschwitz, my father returned from Auschwitz to France. This country deserves our hatred. And what it did to my parents was far more brutal than what it did to the Africans. And what did it do to the Africans? Nothing but good. My father was forced to endure hell for five years. And I was never taught hatred. Today the blacks’ hatred is even stronger than the Arabs’.
In 2017, upon the death of the French rock singer Johnny Hallyday, Finkielkraut told the right-wing journalist Élisabeth Lévy (another fellow Jew, at once moderately anti-Muslim and hysterical on anti-Semitism): “the little people, the little whites went in to the streets to say adieu to Johnny. […] The non-natives[2] shone by their absence.”
Alain Finkelkraut’s biased & red-pilled critics
In the footage of his “assault” by the yellow-vests, Finkielkraut however played his role to perfection, bearing his grotesque attackers’ insults with calmness and dignity. He then appeared on the radio to discuss the incident and emphasized that the attackers were probably of Islamic origin:
When one hears this slogan, “France is ours” [pronounced by one of the yellow-vests], one could thinks this is a variant of “France for the French” of classical fascism. But in fact no: he is saying “France is ours, it belongs to us Islamists.” He therefore is a believer in the theory of the Great Replacement. I do not say this Great Replacement is taking place, but for him it should take place. And for him, the Jews should be the first to be kicked out.
One will appreciate the utter tartuffery of claiming an opponent is promoting the Great Replacement while denying that it is taking place.
I will take this opportunity to emphasize again the Soviet-style absurdity of the French politico-media class’s denial of the Great Replacement. The replacement of the indigenous French population by both European and non-European (overwhelmingly African/Muslim) allogenes is visible in every major French city and, increasingly, in towns and villages across the country. And yet, our treacherous ruling elite, media, and even Wikipedia claim that all talk of a Great Replacement is a mere “conspiracy theory.” I’m not sure even Pravda’s claims concerning the workers’ paradise were so bold.
As it happens, Finkielkraut’s attackers seem to have been Muslims and one, “Benjamin W.,” appears to be an indigenous French convert. It seems quite likely that they were indeed influenced by Soral or at least the multiracial “patriotic” anti-Zionist culture he has created.
All in all, these events are illustrative of the French and Franco-Jewish elites manias for anti-Semitism and the growing indifference of the French and Afro-Islamic populations to such theatrics. The Lobby-That-Doesn’t-Exist – denounced by French leaders as varied as Charles de Gaulle, Raymond Barre, and François Mitterrand – continues to play the victim. But their power is weakening; and they know it. Macron himself, a convinced high-globalist, is only moderately interested in these matters. Many leading Jews, Bernard-Henri Lévy and Daniel Cohn-Bendit, have been extraordinarily alarmed by the uncontrolled and populist nature of the yellow-vest movement. Time will tell if this movement will participate in France’s liberation from globalism and the lobby’s distorting influence.
Notes
[1] Soral has observed that while Jews make up only 1% of the French population many French talk shows resemble “a little Jewish theater.” This disparate outcome and ethnic privilege should be noted.
[2] Actually, the non-souchiens, the non-French-by-blood. Souchien is a term coined by “anti-colonial” Arab-Berber racial activists. It is a homophone for sous-chien, “sub-dog.”
The Hunt for Konstantin Kilimnik
By Deena Stryker – New Eastern Outlook – 24.02.2019
Since 2014, the US has been accusing Russia of having ‘invaded’ Ukraine. Yet the latest story being repeated by the news media transforms an interesting proposal by a Ukrainian national to bring peace to that country into a devious attempt to have sanctions on Russia removed!
It was months ago that Rachel Maddow first mentioned the name of Konstantin Kilimnik, without mentioning why, specifically, that he had a plan to bring back Ukraine’s ousted President Yanukovich to head the Donbas. Merely quoting Kilimnik as saying ‘This is about my country’ Maddow implied he was a Russian, in what was to become a long series of misinterpretations and obfuscations.
A youngish Ukrainian who worked for Paul Manafort’s PR firm, Konstantin Kilimnik figured the Russian-speaking Donbas’s refusal to recognize the Kiev government could be ended by installing the country’s former pro-Russian President, whom the US deposed, in the breakaway province, the Minsk Agreements (I and II) laboriously crafted by the West having failed to heal the rift.
If he were an American, Kilimnik would be referred to as a patriot, but instead his only moniker is ‘having ties to the GRU’, that is being assumed because of the fact that he received language training in Russia’s Military University of the Ministry of Defense. Having become proficient in English, Kilimnik got a job working with the American Paul Manafort, who was trying to teach that President, Viktor Yanukovich to become a public figure. When, in 2014, Hillary Clinton, as Obama’s Secretary of State replaced Yanukovich with a government that relies on virulent anti-Russian fascist militias (among other things, they burned 200 opponents live), the Russian-speaking Donbas refused to recognize the new government and President Putin looked the other way when ‘volunteers’ crossed the border to help them repulse Kiev’s attacks.
(This policy is consistently referred to by the US media as Russia ‘invading’ Ukraine, hence US sanctions…). When Donald Trump ran for President, Kilimnik’s boss, Manafort, became the head of his campaign, and managed to scotch a Republican Party plan to deliver arms to Kiev for use against the Donbas.)
While the press endlessly details accusations against Manafort (known as a high-flyer wearing exotic clothes), it never mentions his protege’s goal: to secure American backing for a plan that would bring peace to Ukraine. Recently, for the first time, the BBC’s Katy Kay mentioned that plan on MSNBC. But without spelling it out, she allowed her colleagues to remark that it could result in the sanctions the US imposed on Russia being lifted. The US is not interested in bringing peace to Ukraine after five years of strife, but only in pursuing its goal of replacing Vladimir Putin with a more compliant Russian President, among other things, via sanctions for its ‘behavior’ vis a vis Ukraine.
When President Trump rightly points out that the majority Russian-speaking population of Crimea voted by 90% to rejoin Russia in a referendum, the media comments that he knows nothing about foreign affairs. Five years after the events, the American public is unlikely to remember — if it ever knew — that 90% of Crimeans are Russian. Not one in a hundred thousand knows that Catherine the Great wrested Crimea from the Ottoman Turks in the eighteenth century, building a big naval base in Sebastopol to give Russia a warm water port. (In the US it would be an impeachable offense if the president were to allow a hostile government to lay its hands on such a crucial asset.)
The latest chapter in the federal case against Manafort involves the ‘revelation’ that he met with Kilimnik in a New York bar during the campaign, providing him with polling data about the up-coming election, Trump having probably indicated to Russians in or around the government that he would be open to relaxing the sanctions imposed by Obama.
The laudable desire to bring peace to Ukraine has been turned into a crime in order to prove that Trump is appeasing Russia — either in return for money-laundering facilities or a future tower in Moscow. Washington cares not a whit that Ukraine — whose Western aspirations it supposedly backs — will continue in a state of low-level civil war for the foreseeable future.
P.S. Just in: Ukraine’s US installed president Petro Poroshenko just had an article added to the constitution stating that it is the duty of the government to ensure that Ukraine simultaneously enters the EU and NATO, so that NATO can not only camp on Russia’s European border, but in neighboring Ukraine as well.
Venezuela Coverage Takes Us Back to Golden Age of Lying About Latin America
By Mark Cook | FAIR | February 22, 2019
I was sitting in my apartment in Caracas, Venezuela, reading the online edition of Time magazine (5/19/16), which carried a report that there was not even something as basic as aspirin to be found anywhere in Venezuela: “Basic medicines like aspirin are nowhere to be found.”
I walked out of the apartment to the nearest pharmacy, four blocks away, where I found plenty of aspirin, as well as acetaminophen (generic Tylenol) and ibuprofen (generic Advil), in a well-stocked pharmacy with a knowledgeable professional staff that would be the envy of any US drugstore.
A few days after the Time story, CNBC (6/22/16) carried a claim that there was no acetaminophen to be found anywhere, either: “Basic things like Tylenol aren’t even available.” That must have taken the Pfizer Corporation by surprise, since it was their Venezuelan subsidiary, Pfizer Venezuela SA, which produced the acetaminophen I purchased. (Neither Time writer Ian Bremer nor CNBC commentator Richard Washington was in Venezuela, and there was no evidence offered that either of them had ever been there.)
I purchased all three products, plus cough syrup and other over-the-counter medications, because I doubted that anyone in the United States would believe me if I couldn’t produce the medications in their packages.
Unrelenting drumbeat of lies
In fact, I myself wouldn’t have believed anyone who made such claims without being able to produce the proof, so intense and unrelenting has been the drumbeat of lies. When the Youth Orchestra of Venezuela gave a concert in New York in early 2016, before I moved to Caracas, I went there thinking, “Gee, I hope that the members of the orchestra are all well-dressed and well-fed.” Yes, of course they were all well-dressed and well-fed!
When I mentioned this in a talk at the University of Vermont, a student told me that he’d had the same feeling when he was following the Pan American soccer championship. He wondered if the Venezuelan players would be able to play, because they’d be so weakened from lack of food. In fact, he said, the Venezuelan team played superbly, and went much further in the competition than expected, since Venezuela has historically been a baseball country, unlike its soccer-obsessed neighbors Brazil and Colombia.
Hard as it may be for followers of the US media to believe, Venezuela is a country where people play sports, go to work, go to classes, go to the beach, go to restaurants and attend concerts. They publish and read newspapers of all political stripes, from right to center-right, to center, to center-left, to left. They produce and watch programs on television, on TV channels that are also of all political stripes.
CNN was ridiculed recently (Redacted Tonight, 2/1/19) when it carried a report on Venezuela, “in the socialist utopia that now leaves virtually every stomach empty,” followed immediately with a cut to a demonstration by the right-wing opposition, where everybody appeared to be quite well-fed.
But surely that’s because most of the anti-government demonstrators were upper-middle class, a viewer might think. The proletarians at pro-government demonstrations must be suffering severe hunger.
Not if one consults photos of the massive pro-government demonstration on February 2, where people seemed to be doing pretty well. This is in spite of the Trump administration’s extreme economic squeeze on the country, reminiscent of the “make the economy scream” strategy used by the Nixon administration and the CIA against the democratic government of President Salvador Allende in Chile, as well as many other democratically elected governments.
Rival demonstrations
That demonstration showed considerable support for the government of President Nicolás Maduro and widespread rejection of Donald Trump’s choice for president of Venezuela, Juan Guaidó.
Guaidó, who proclaimed himself to be president of the country and was recognized minutes later by Trump, even though a public opinion poll showed that 81 percent of Venezuelans had never heard of him, comes from the ultra-right faction in Venezuelan politics.
The pro-Maduro demonstration suggested, not surprisingly, that Guaidó had failed to win much popular support outside the wealthy and upper-middle class. But Guaidó couldn’t even win support from many of them. The day before rival rallies February 2, Henrique Capriles, the leader of a less extreme right-wing faction, gave an interview to the AFP that appeared in Últimas Noticias (2/1/19), the most widely read newspaper in Venezuela. In it, Capriles said that most of the opposition had not supported Guaidó’s self-proclamation as president. That may explain the surprisingly weak turnout at Guaidó’s demonstration, held in the wealthiest district of Caracas, and obviously outshone by the pro-government demonstration on the city’s main boulevard.
The New York Times did not show pictures of that pro-government demonstration, limiting itself to a claim by unnamed “experts” (2/2/19) that the pro-government demonstration was smaller than the anti-government one.
Readers can look at the photos of the rival demonstrations and judge for themselves. Both groups did their best to pull out their faithful, knowing how much is riding on a show of popular support. The stridently right-wing opposition paper El Nacional (2/3/19) carried a photo of the right-wing opposition demonstration:
If that was the best photo it could find, it was remarkably unimpressive compared to the photos in the left-wing papers CCS (2/2/19)….
… and Correo del Orinoco (2/3/19), which were only too happy to publish pictures of the pro-government event:
Unlikely humanitarian
A huge anti-government demonstration was supposed to make possible a coup d’état, a maneuver the CIA has used repeatedly—in Iran in 1953, Guatemala in 1954, Brazil in 1964 and many more, straight through to Honduras in 2009 and Ukraine in 2015. The turnout at the Trump administration’s demonstration was disappointing, and the coup d’état never occurred. The result is that Trump has expressed a sudden interest in getting food and medicine to Venezuelans (FAIR.org, 2/9/19).
Trump, who let thousands die in Puerto Rico and put small children in cages on the Mexican border, seems to be an unlikely champion of humanitarian aid to Latin Americans, but the corporate media have straight-facedly pretended to believe it.
Most have suppressed reports that the Red Cross and the UN are providing aid to Venezuela in cooperation with the Venezuelan government, and have protested against US “aid” that is obviously a political and military ploy.
The corporate media have continued to peddle the Trump-as-humanitarian-champion line, even after it was revealed that a US plane was caught smuggling weapons into Venezuela, and even after Trump named Iran/Contra criminal Elliott Abrams to head up Venezuelan operations. Abrams was in charge of the State Department Human Rights Office during the 1980s, when weapons to US-backed terrorists in Nicaragua were shipped in US planes disguised as “humanitarian” relief.
Canada’s CBC (2/15/19) at least had the honesty to acknowledge that it had been had in swallowing a lie from Secretary of State Mike Pompeo that the Venezuelan government had blockaded a bridge between Colombia and Venezuela to prevent aid shipments. The newly built bridge has not yet been opened: it has never been open, apparently because of hostile relations between the two countries, but the non-opening long predates the US government’s alleged food and medicine shipments.
The absurdity of $20 million of US food and medicine aid to a country of 30 million, when US authorities have stolen $30 billion from Venezuela in oil revenue, and take $30 million every day, needs no comment.
‘Failed state’
The campaign of disinformation and outright lies about Venezuela was kicked off in 2016 by the Financial Times. Ironically, it chose the 14th anniversary of the 2002 failed coup d’etat against President Hugo Chávez—April 11, 2016—to claim that Venezuela was in “chaos” and “civil war,” and that Venezuela was a “failed state.” As with the Time and CNBC reports, the Financial Times reporter was not in Venezuela, and there was no evidence in the report that he had ever been there.
I asked right-wing friends in Venezuela whether they agreed with the Financial Times claims. “Well, no, of course not,” said one, stating the obvious, “there is no chaos and no civil war. But Venezuela is a failed state, since it has not been able to provide for all the medical needs of the population.” By that standard, every country in Latin America is a failed state, and obviously the United States too.
The New York Times has run stories (5/15/16, 10/1/16) claiming that conditions in Venezuelan hospitals are horrendous. The reports enraged Colombians in New York, who have noted that a patient can die on the doorstep of a Colombian public hospital if the patient has no insurance. In Venezuela, in contrast, patients are treated for free.
One Colombian resident in New York said that his mother had recently returned to Bogotá after several years in the United States, and had not had time to obtain medical insurance. She fell ill, and went to a public hospital. The hospital left her in the waiting room for four hours, then sent her to a second hospital. The second hospital did the same, leaving her for four hours and then sending her to a third hospital. The third hospital was preparing to send her to a fourth when she protested that she was bleeding internally and was feeling weak.
“I’m sorry, Señora, if you don’t have medical insurance, no public hospital in this country will look at you,” said the woman at the desk. “Your only hope is to go to a private hospital, but be prepared to pay a great deal of money up front.” Luckily, she had a wealthy friend, who took her to a private hospital, and paid a great deal of money up front.
Such conditions in Colombia and other neoliberal states go unmentioned in the US corporate media, which have treated the Colombian government, long a right-wing murder-squad regime, as a US ally (Extra!, 2/09).
Well, OK, but are the reports of conditions in Venezuelan hospitals true or grossly exaggerated? “They are much better than they were ten years ago,” said a friend who works in a Caracas hospital. In fact, he said, ten years before, the hospital where he worked did not exist, and new hospitals are now being opened. One was dedicated recently in the town of El Furrial, and another was opened in El Vigia, as reported by the centrist newspaper Últimas Noticias (3/3/17, 4/27/18). The government has also greatly expanded others, like a burn center in Caracas and three new operating rooms at the hospital in Villa Cura.
Meanwhile, the government is inaugurating a new high-speed train line, The Dream of Hugo Chávez, in March (Correo del Orinoco, 2/6/19). Since the US media have never allowed reporting on any accomplishments in the years since Chávez took office in 1999, but only any alleged, exaggerated or, as noted, completely invented shortcomings, readers have to consult an alternative history. Here is one offered by a Venezuelan on YouTube (3/31/11): “Por Culpa de Chávez” (“It’s Chávez’s Fault”). Depicting new hospitals, transit lines, housing, factories and so on built under Chavismo, it might help many understand why the Maduro government continues to enjoy such strong backing from so many people.
Economic warfare
This is not to minimize Venezuela’s problems. The country was hit, like other oil-producing countries, and as it was in the 1980s and ’90s, by the collapse of oil prices. That failed to bring down the government, so now the Trump administration has created an artificial crisis by using extreme economic warfare to deprive the country of foreign exchange needed to import basic necessities. The Trump measures seem designed to prevent any economic recovery.
Like any country at war (and the Trump administration has placed Venezuela under wartime conditions, and is threatening immediate invasion), there have been shortages, and products that can mostly be found on the black market. This should surprise no one: During World War II in the US, a cornucopia of a country not seriously threatened with invasion, there was strict rationing of products like sugar, coffee and rubber.
The Venezuelan government has made food, medicine and pharmaceuticals available at extremely low prices, but much of the merchandise has made its way to the black market, or over the border to Colombia, depriving Venezuelans of supplies and ruining Colombian producers. The government recently abandoned some of the heavy price subsidies, which resulted initially in higher prices. Over the past few weeks, prices have been coming down as supplies stayed in Venezuela, especially as the government gained greater control over the Colombian border to prevent smuggling.
There has never been a serious discussion of any of this in the US corporate media, much less any discussion of the campaign of lies or the Trump administration warfare. There has been no comparison with conditions in the 1980s and ’90s, when Venezuela’s neoliberal government imposed IMF economic recipes, resulting in a popular rebellion, the bloody 1989 Caracazo, when wholesale government repression took the lives of hundreds (according to the government at the time) or thousands (according to government critics), and martial law took the lives of many more.
Efforts by the right-wing opposition to provoke a similar uprising, and another Caracazo that could justify a foreign “humanitarian intervention,” have failed repeatedly. So the US administration and corporate media simply resort to the most extreme lying about Latin America that has been seen since the Reagan administration wars of the 1980s.
Red Cross denounces unsanctioned use of its emblems to smuggle US aid to Venezuela
Security forces block the Francisco de Paula Santander bridge between Colombia and Venezuela © Reuters / Marco Bello
RT | February 23, 2019
The largest international aid organization has demanded that activists at the Venezuela-Colombia border not use the insignia of the Red Cross, which isn’t participating in what Caracas has dismissed as a US “propaganda show.”
The Red Cross learned that some “people not affiliated” with the agency are trying to disguise themselves as aid workers to smuggle cargo for Venezuela’s opposition across the closed frontiers.
“They might mean well but they risk jeopardizing our neutrality, impartiality & independence,” the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies said.
Earlier, Venezuelan Foreign Minister Jorge Arreaza stressed that the UN and the International Red Cross are not participating in the “propaganda show” staged by the United States. “It is clearly an action with political objectives, it could never be described as a humanitarian action,” he said on Twitter, accusing the governments involved in the US plot of violating the principles of the UN charter.
The government of Nicolas Maduro has sealed off the borders with neighboring Colombia, Brazil and the Dutch island of Curacao, trying to prevent US shipments from entering the Latin American State. Caracas denounced the ‘aid’ as a highly-publicized attempt to foster division and chaos, and possibly to use it as a cover to smuggle arms to the country’s opposition.
Featured Video
Seyed M. Marandi: US-Iran War Inevitable: Kuwait and Bahrain May Fall
or go to
Aletho News Archives – Video-Images
From the Archives
USS Liberty Massacre: A Pivotal Moment in the Hostile Takeover of America
By Kevin Barrett | Crescent | Dhu al-Qa’dah 24, 1445
In corporate America, hostile takeovers are commonplace. They occur when an aggressor—a larger corporation or rich individuals—seizes control of a smaller corporation without asking permission.
What few recognize is that the United States itself has been subjected to a hostile takeover. Since the aggressor, the illegitimate settler colony known as “Israel,” is much smaller than the US, the takeover has necessarily been surreptitious.
As of June, 2024, Israel’s gradual takeover of the US has become obvious and undeniable—a proverbial “elephant in the living room.” … continue
Blog Roll
Aletho News- Seyed M. Marandi: US-Iran War Inevitable: Kuwait and Bahrain May Fall
- Leaders Condemn Ansarallah Attack on Saudi Arabia While Ignoring Illegal War Against Yemen
- Leaked: Britain’s Covert Iraqi Psyops Network
- Yemeni Armed Forces Warn Airlines Against Using Saudi Airports, Exempt Mecca and Medina
- Iran security chief says powers greater than US tried to conquer Iran but ended in ‘dustbin of history’
- Europe’s mounting social chaos… chickens coming home to roost for proxy war against Russia
- US-Russia Diesel Deal Becomes Massive Defeat for Ukraine
- Hormuz and the Looming Economic Catastrophe
- Dhubab offensive, media blitz and the rapid unraveling of Saudi-backed coalition’s new gambit
- Putin Conveys to Trump Iran’s Vision on Possible Conflict Resolution – Kremlin
- If Americans Knew
- Gaza: Ceasefire Anniversary Marks Year of Failed Promises
- The American Conservative: Mike Huckabee Should Resign
- A C-Section in Shackles: A Palestinian Woman’s Harrowing Birth in Israeli Detention
- ‘He’s Desperate’: AIPAC Begins Spending Against Abdul El-Sayed to Boost Mike Rogers:
- Trump, Hormuz, and the Looming Economic Catastrophe
- For three years, Israel has killed a child in Gaza every 71 minutes – Daily Update
- Israeli forces kill another child in Gaza – Daily Update
- Gaza ceasefire exists in name only, say more than 100 organizations
- Nearly 2 Million in Gaza Need Urgent Shelter Assistance as Winter Looms: IOM Chief Warns
- Suppressing Palestinian resistance: US charity under fire for AI monitoring of Gaza classrooms
- No Tricks Zone
- Germany’s Green Energy Debacle: High Energy Costs Force Kahla Porzellan to Close After 182 Years!
- New Study: 50 Years Of The Most Aggressive ‘Net Zero’ Policies Can Only Affect The Global Climate By 0.03°C
- US September “Heat” Was No Record…Many Records Set Decades Ago
- Latest European Green Energy Debacle; Portugal’s Largest Flagship Solar Park Insolvent!
- Green Energy Debacle: German Expert Professor Fritz Vahrenholt Warns Of Severe Economic And Social Consequences
- Two More Paleo Reconstructions Affirm Meters-Higher Sea Levels Across Ireland, Brazil 7000-6000 Years Ago
- New Study: Earth And Venus Surface Warmth Largely Explained By Convection And Lapse Rate, Not CO2 Or Radiation
- 2025 Nature Paper Claiming Worsening Global Drought Gets RETRACTED …Heavily Flawed
- New Study: ‘Global Drought Shows No Detectable Recent Acceleration Under Climate Warming’
- Economic Masterminds: German Socialists Suggest Taxing Productivity Gains Stemming From Using AI
