Anti-Arab brainwashing by the US media
By Paul J. Balles | August 8, 2009
More insidious than the wars with tanks and guns, aircraft and bombs, missiles and guidance systems, shock and awe campaigns. The wickedest wars are the wars for people’s minds – the propaganda campaigns that exercise thought control…
Western brainwashing comes from the media. Readers, listeners and viewers need to be aware of these propaganda sources. About the media in general, Steven Salaita correctly observed:
The flippancy with which US media apply the word “terrorism” to Arab populations reinforces the notion that violence in the Arab world is ahistorical and therefore senseless. Arabs in turn become a people without narratives who belong to a culture incapable of rationality.
Steve Emerson has a website and blog with as much anti-Arab ranting on it as any bigot might produce. Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz has implied that all Arabs are potential terrorists and therefore worthy of slaughter. American Israeli Caroline Glick, Deputy Managing Editor of The Jerusalem Post, writes two weekly syndicated columns preaching hard-line Israeli propaganda.
InThe Progressive, Ruth Conniff validated the false but widespread notion that while violence exists among both Arabs and Israelis, terrorism is exclusive to the Arabs. When Arabs fight against Israelis, the Arabs are guilty of “terrorist violence” but the Israelis are engaging in “military reprisals”.
On anti-Arab radio you hear things like “Arabs love dictators” and “Obama is an Arab,” as if being an Arab disqualifies one from humanity. If they aren’t referring to Arabs as “camel jockeys” or “rag heads”, they’re calling them as Islamo-fascists. Along with O’Reilly, Sean Hannity, Lou Dobbs and Glenn Beck give Fox news stable of anti-Arab propagandists.
Hollywood films have been vilifying Arabs for decades. Jack Shaheen revealed, in The TV Arab, how television stereotypes Arabs as “billionaires, bombers and belly dancers”.
Even as a youngster, Shaheen was disturbed by the Arab stereotypes in children’s cartoon characters.
In Shaheen’s Reel Bad Arabs, a long line of degrading images – from Bedouin bandits and submissive maidens to sinister sheiks and gun-wielding “terrorists” – have vilified Arabs since the days of silent films.
In his research, Shaheen identified more than 1150 films that defile Arabs. His newest book, Guilty: Hollywood’s Verdict on Arabs after 9/11, reveals how the film industry continues to shape American understanding of Arabs and Arab culture.
Muslim scholar Ziauddin Sardar made it clear that anti-Islamic brainwashing is not new: “From the days of Voltaire right up to 1980, thanks largely to the efforts of Enlightenment scholars, it was a general Western axiom that Islam had produced nothing of worth in philosophy, science and learning.”
That the propaganda has reached the masses should be clear from some of the slurs on the internet, examples of which are displayed here:
F**K ALL YOU SAND NIGGERS! I HOPE WE BLOW YOU ALL UP AND TAKE THE ONLY THING YOU ARE GOOD FOR OIL!
It wasn’t enough to curse Arabs. He had to shout it, writing his message in uppercase letters, revealing how effective anti-Arab propaganda has been in America.
Those who control the media control the mental attitudes of the population; Americans have been programmed to hate Arabs and Muslims and to love Israelis. How could compassionate Americans be nonchalant about their slaughter of a million Arabs in Iraq, even though they know that it was all based on lies? Decades of propaganda and brainwashing.
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An Extremely Newsworthy Op-Ed in Venezuela, or So One would Think
By Joe Emersberger | Zblogs | March 21, 2014
An op-ed in Ultimas Noticias (20/3/14), Venezuela’s largest circulating newspaper, stated that “One can’t keep playing around with Maduro’s assassin government and its insincere calls for peace”.
It goes on to state that Maduro’s government will go down in history as one of the most murderous and dictatorial ever, and makes a thinly veiled call for its unconstitutional ouster.
How does a vehemently anti-government op-ed like this appear in Venezuela’s largest newspaper when Reporters Without Borders (RSF) ranks Venezuela 116 out of 179 in its “freedom of expression” index?
The international corporate press eagerly bolsters RSF’s assessment and prominently reports any allegation of censorship by the Maduro government, as it did with the Chavez government. But if international reporters have integrity, and believe their own coverage, shouldn’t this op-ed be deemed extremely newsworthy? Doesn’t the appearance of this op-ed reveal a spectacular act of courage on the part of both the author and Ultimas Noticias ? In fact, it doesn’t.
The author of the op-ed appears regularly in Ultimas Noticas as do similar authors like [prominent opposition politician] Antonio Ledezma. The op-ed is noteworthy only because it exposes the remarkable dishonesty of RSF and the international corporate media.
Ultimas Noticas also a published an investigative report in February that led to the arrests of government agents implicated in the killing of a protester. In May of last year, it published that transcript of a private conversation in which a prominent government supporter, Mario Silva, talked about corruption within government ranks and named prominent allies of Maduro’s government.
You can literally read Ultimas Noticas on any random day and find reporting and op-eds that completely demolish the lies peddled by RSF and international media about the state of press freedom in Venezuela.
Foreign reporters in Venezuela who are honest and not ideologically hostile to the Maduro government, may indeed face resource constraints that prevent them from seeking out some stories that contradict the prevailing distortions. Wealthy, urban based, English speaking government opponents have many ways to make their stories and opinions readily and economically available to foreign journalists. However, that can’t excuse failing to inform readers about what regularly appears in an outlet like Ultimas Noticias. If most people in English speaking countries believe that the media is far less free in Venezuela than in their own countries, it actually highlights the deplorable state of press freedom in their own.
Washington Post’s Anti-Putin ‘Group Think’
By Robert Parry | Consortium News | March 20, 2014
Not since Feb. 6, 2003, the day after Secretary of State Colin Powell wowed the world with his slam-dunk speech “proving” that Iraq was hiding WMD, has the Washington Post’s editorial section shown this unity of “group think.” On Thursday, the Post presented a solid phalanx of denunciations directed at Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Across the two editorial pages, Post writers and columnists stood, shoulder to shoulder, beating their chests about Putin as evil, mad or both. “A dangerous Russian doctrine,” screamed the lead editorial. “An elemental fear” was the headline of a George F. Will column. “Making Russia pay” was the goal of Sen. Marco Rubio’s opinion article. “Putin’s fantasy world” was explored by editorialist Charles Lane.
The one slightly out-of-step pundit was E.J. Dionne Jr. whose column – ”Can Crimea bring us together?” – agreed on Putin’s dastardly behavior but added the discordant note that most Americans weren’t onboard and didn’t want their government to “get too involved” in the dispute over Ukraine and Crimea.
All the other opinion articles marched in lockstep to the theme that Putin was crazy and delusional. The Post’s lead editorial favorably quoted Secretary of State John Kerry as saying that Putin’s speech about the Ukraine crisis “just didn’t jibe with reality.”
This was the same John Kerry, who earlier in the Ukraine crisis, denounced Putin’s intervention in Crimea by declaring that “you just don’t in the 21st Century behave in 19th Century fashion by invading another country on completely trumped-up pretext.” Kerry, of course, voted in 2002 to authorize the U.S. invasion of Iraq in pursuit of hidden WMD stockpiles that didn’t exist.
However, what now should be painfully clear is that since almost no one in Official Washington paid any serious price for following neocon propaganda into the Iraq War a decade ago, the same patterns continue to assert and reassert themselves in other crises a decade or more later, often executed by the same people.
The Washington Post’s editorial page is run by literally the same people who ran it when all those Post’s opinion leaders were standing with the estimable Colin Powell on Feb. 6, 2003, and asserting the existence of Iraq’s WMD as “flat fact.” Fred Hiatt is still the editorial-page editor and Jackson Diehl is still his deputy.
Putin’s Thoughtful Address
Yet, contrary to the Post’s latest “group think,” Putin delivered a rather remarkable, even insightful speech on Tuesday, explaining Russia’s not unreasonable view of recent history. Recognizing the actual U.S. approach to the world – not the fairy-tale one favored by Kerry and the Post – Putin said:
“Like a mirror, the situation in Ukraine reflects what is going on and what has been happening in the world over the past several decades. After the dissolution of bipolarity on the planet [i.e. the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991], we no longer have stability. Key international institutions are not getting any stronger; on the contrary, in many cases, they are sadly degrading.
“Our western partners, led by the United States of America, prefer not to be guided by international law in their practical policies, but by the rule of the gun. They have come to believe in their exclusivity and exceptionalism, that they can decide the destinies of the world, that only they can ever be right.
“They act as they please: here and there, they use force against sovereign states, building coalitions based on the principle ‘If you are not with us, you are against us.’ To make this aggression look legitimate, they force the necessary resolutions from international organizations, and if for some reason this does not work, they simply ignore the UN Security Council and the UN overall.”
Nothing in that key passage of Putin’s speech is crazy. He is stating the reality of the current era, though one could argue that this U.S. aggressive behavior was occurring during the Cold War as well. Really, since World War II, Washington has been in the business of routinely subverting troublesome governments (including overthrowing democratically elected leaders) and invading countries (that for some reason got in Washington’s way).
It is a challenge to list all the examples of U.S. interventions abroad, both in America’s “backyard” (Guatemala, Cuba, Chile, Nicaragua, Grenada, Haiti, Venezuela, Honduras, etc.) and in far-flung parts of the world (Iran, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Congo, Lebanon, Serbia, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Yemen, Somalia, Libya, etc.). These actions – usually outside international law and in violation of those nations’ sovereignty – have continued into the current century and the current administration.
It’s also true that the United States has behaved harshly toward Russia during much of the post-Cold War era, reneging on an understanding with Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev that his concessions to President George H.W. Bush regarding German reunification and Eastern Europe would not be exploited by the U.S. government.
Yet, the U.S. government and corporate America moved aggressively against Russia in the post-Soviet era, helping to plunder Russia’s resources and pushing the frontlines of NATO right up to Russia’s borders. For all his autocratic faults, Putin has moved to put a stop to these encroachments against Russian national interests.
Offending the Neocons
Putin also has helped President Barack Obama extricate the United States from dangerous situations in Syria and Iran – while the neocons and Washington Post’s editorialists were pounding the drums for more confrontation and war.
And, therein may lie the problem for Putin. He has become a major impediment to the grand neocon vision of “regime change” across the Middle East in any country considered hostile to Israel. That vision was disrupted by the disaster that the American people confronted in the Iraq War, but the vision remains.
Putin also is an obstacle to the even grander vision of global “full-spectrum dominance,” a concept developed by neocons in the two Bush administrations, the theory that the United States should prevent any geopolitical rival from ever emerging again. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “Bush’s Grim Vision.”]
Thus, Putin must be portrayed as unstable and dangerous even though much of his account of the Ukraine crisis fits with what many on-the-ground reporters observed in real time. Indeed, many of the key facts are not in serious dispute despite the distortions and omissions that have permeated the U.S. mainstream press.
For instance, there’s no factual dispute that Viktor Yanukovych was Ukraine’s democratically elected president. Nor is there an argument about him having agreed to a European-negotiated deal on Feb. 21, which included him surrendering much of his power and moving up elections so he could be voted out of office.
After that agreement – and Yanukovych’s order to pull back the police in the face of violent street demonstrations – it was widely reported that neo-Nazi militias spearheaded the Feb. 22 coup d’etat which forced Yanukovych to flee. And no one is credibly saying Ukraine’s constitutional rules were followed when a rump parliament stripped him of the presidency.
Nor is there any serious doubt that the people of Crimea, which has historically been part of Russia, voted overwhelmingly on Sunday to separate from the coup regime now governing Ukraine. The difference between exit polls and the official results was 93 percent in the exit polls and 96 percent in the final tally.
Only in the neocon-dominated and propaganda-soaked U.S. news media is this factual narrative in dispute – and mostly by ignoring or ridiculing it.
American Hypocrisy
However, when Putin politely takes note of these realities, he is deemed by the Washington Post’s editorialists to be a madman. To hammer that point, the Post turned to one of its longtime neocon writers, Charles Lane, known for his skills at bending reality into whatever shape is needed.
In his column, Lane not only denied the reality of modern American interventionism but cleverly accused Putin of doing what Lane was actually doing, twisting the truth.
“Putin presented a legal and historical argument so tendentious and so logically tangled – so unappealing to anyone but Russian nationalists such as those who packed the Kremlin to applaud him – that it seemed intended less to refute contrary arguments than to bury them under a rhetorical avalanche,” Lane wrote.
Lane then suggested that Putin must be delusional. “The biggest problem with this cover story is that Putin may actually believe it,” Lane wrote.
Lane also was offended that – when Putin later spoke to a crowd in Red Square – he concluded his remarks by saying “Long live Russia!” But why that is so objectionable coming from a Russian politician is hard to fathom. President Obama – and other U.S. politicians – routinely close their remarks with the words, “God bless the United States of America!”
But double standards have always been part of Charles Lane’s repertoire, at least since I knew him as a fellow correspondent for Newsweek in the late 1980s. Before Lane arrived at the magazine, Newsweek had distinguished itself with some quality reporting that belied the Reagan administration’s propaganda themes in Central America.
That, however, upset Newsweek’s executive editor Maynard Parker, who was a strong supporter of U.S. interventionism and sympathized with President Ronald Reagan’s aggressive policies in Central America. So, a shake-up was ordered of Newsweek’s Central America staff.
To give Parker the more supportive coverage he wanted, Lane was brought onboard and dispatched to replace experienced reporters in Central America. Lane soon began getting Newsweek’s field coverage in line with Reagan’s propaganda themes.
But I kept messing up the desired harmony by debunking these stories from Washington. This dynamic was unusual since it’s more typical for reporters in the field to challenge the U.S. government’s propaganda while journalists tied to the insular world of Washington tend to be seduced by access and to endorse the official line.
But the situation at Newsweek was reversed. Lane pushed the propaganda themes that he was fed from the U.S. embassies in Central America and I challenged them with my reporting in Washington. The situation led Lane to seek me out during one of his visits to Washington.
We had lunch at Scholl’s cafeteria near Newsweek’s Washington office on Pennsylvania Avenue. As we sat down, Lane turned to me and, rather defensively, accused me of viewing him as “an embassy boy,” i.e. someone who carried propaganda water for the U.S. embassies.
I was a bit nonplussed since I had never exactly put it that way, but it wasn’t far from what I actually thought. I responded by trying to avoid any pejorative phrasing but stressing my concern that we shouldn’t let the Reagan administration get away with misleading the American people – and Newsweek’s readers.
As it turned out, however, I was on the losing side of that debate. Lane had the support of executive editor Parker, who favored an aggressive application of U.S. power abroad and didn’t like his reporters undermining those efforts. Like some other young journalists of that era, Lane either shared that world view or knew what was needed to build his career.
Lane did succeed in making a profitable career for himself. He scored high-profile gigs as the editor of the neocon New Republic (though his tenure was tarnished by the Stephen Glass fabrication scandal) and as a regular guest on Fox News. He’s also found steady employment as an editorialist for the Washington Post.
Now, Lane and other Post columnists have made it clear who Official Washington’s new villain is and who must be loudly hissed: Vladimir Putin.
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US Proxy Terror War on Venezuela
By James Petras :: 03.17.2014
Introduction
Protest, dissent and terrorist wars are obviously very distinct forms of expressing opposition and bringing about change. The Obama-Kerry regime claim that the opposition in Venezuela is a “protest movement” a “peaceful democratic opposition” expressing discontent with economic conditions and that the democratically elected Maduro Administration is an ‘authoritarian regime’ violently repressing dissent. Washington claims to play no part in the action of the opposition and that its pronouncements are directed at furthering democratic freedoms.
The overwhelming evidence speaks to the contrary. By every measure, the opposition has engaged in prolonged and extensive violent activity, including terrorist acts, assassinations, arson, destruction of public property including the murder of military officials and civilian supporters of the government. Widely circulated photographs, even in media outlets backing Washington, show opposition activists throwing Molotov cocktails and building barricades for street warfare.
The Obama-Kerry Administration is in total denial of each and every violent act by the opposition; it unconditionally defends the opposition; it forcibly attacks and demonizes each and every effort by the Government to defend the rights of its citizens, uphold the Constitution and enforce law and order. The Obama-Kerry regime’s political intervention, its escalating rhetoric, is designed to incite the opposition to continue and intensify its violent activity to destabilize the country..
Kerry’s vitriolic rhetoric is timed to coincide with the ebb of opposition activity. The purpose is to assure the opposition that Washington stands four-square with open terror warfare. The Obama regime’s propaganda, economic sanctions and channeling of financial and military resources is designed to buttress the declining fortunes of the terror campaign. Kerry- Obama sanctions and propaganda war complements the violent terrorist war internally.
Kerry-Obama Rely on the Big Lie
Kerry’s accusation that the Venezuelan government is launching “a terror campaign” – reverses roles: The Venezuelan government is the target of two months of violent assaults. Caracas is accused of the crimes committed by the US backed proxy opposition: a favorite ploy of totalitarian imperial rulers. Washington is intent on violently overthrowing a democratic government and establishing a satellite regime.
The launch of a proxy terrorist power grab is evident in every aspect of the opposition’s activity. The opposition is authoritarian and not democratic in its demands. Economic and social issues are simply ploys to pursue the overthrow of the government by force and violence. The terrorists’ violent action is designed to weaken and undermine the government – not negotiate and seek agreements on specific sets of issues. Government offers to meet and dialogue are rejected outright. Each government concession is interpreted as “weakness” and is exploited. Molotov cocktail throwing arrestees released from jail by the government return to firebomb buildings and police.
The opposition was given every chance to influence the electorate in Presidential, state and local elections and were defeated. They refused to accept the majority’s electoral choice and launched violent assaults to undermine majority rule. Opposition mayors aid and abet terrorist activity blocking commerce and assaulting local supporters of the national government.
The opposition has accumulated vast stores of arms and munitions suited for an armed uprising. It has organized snipers to assassinate military and police upholding the rule of law and protecting municipal workers and citizens voluntarily engaged in cleaning streets of debris.
In terms of means, goals and ideology the opposition fits the description of an imperial financied terrorist minority directed toward seizing power, destroying majority rule and imposing an autocratic dictatorship, serving as a proxy for US imperial power.
Democratic Politics or Terrorist Putsch?
In the 8 weeks to March 15, 2014, the terrorist opposition perpetrated 500 violent actions throughout the country. At least 68 members of the Venezuelan National Guard have been injured, shot, wounded or killed by Kerry’s “democratic protestors”. On May 13, government officials were attacked by high powered weapons; seven were arrested with arms and explosives. Paramilitary terrorists are openly trained at two or more universities (Carabobo University and UCV in Caracas) where phony claims of “autonomy” are used to shield armories, training bases and sanctuaries for paramilitary gangs and snipers.
Business revenues, salaries and wage losses run in the tens of millions. The sniper fire has curtailed the right of pro-government workers and citizens to shop, work and demonstrate. The terrorists have sown fear and insecurity, primarily in middle class neighborhoods – they dare not enter workers’ barrios.
The government has been extraordinarily tolerant (or excessively conciliatory) with the terrorist gangs considering the scope and depth of violence: as of March 15, of 1,529 arrestees only 105 remain in jail facing judiciary process.
Many concerned democrats and experts on terrorism believe the Maduro government’s restraint has allowed the terrorists time and space to arm, recruit and receive US funds via phony NGO’s, and to prepare for bigger and more destructive acts of terror, such as bombing bridges and assassinating top civilian and military officials. Their assessment of the Maduro governments’ security policy is that it is too focused on the “lowest level” – the bomb throwers – rather than the political networks which reach into the major political parties and business elite who provide financial aid, political cover and ideological justifications for the terror war. Moreover, the “revolving door” judicial system encourages terrorists– since a day in jail is a small price for burning down a community health center or firebombing a Guardsman.
The government in its efforts to secure agreements with a section of the opposition has tied the hands of the security forces in many instances: small contingents of Guardsmen are vulnerable to organized terror gangs protected by highly placed opposition political leaders.
Conclusion
In the past two months over a thousand public buildings have been violently assaulted , mostly firebombed by Kerry’s “democratic and peaceful opposition”. Many of the buildings targeted for firebombing are directly related to the governments’ popular social welfare program. They include centers providing adult educational programs and medical care; banks financing low income micro-economic projects; primary and secondary schools; publically owned supermarkets providing subsidized food and groceries; trucks transporting subsidized goods to working-class neighborhoods; public buses, community radio stations, pro-government media centers and Socialist Party headquarters.
Large scale caches of arms, including automatic rifles and mortars were discovered in an opposition controlled municipality underground parking lot; another cache of 2,000 mortars and other weapons were found in Táchira, a frontier state bordering Colombia and an opposition stronghold. Over half of the 68 National Guardsmen injured were shot by opposition snipers. On March 16 a Captain of the Guard was assassinated by a sniper holed up in a high rise. The assassin was captured-a Chinese mercenary hired by the opposition As part of a para-military hit team
Kerry-Obama’s claim that the protestors are mainly students is belied by the fact that nearly two-thirds (971) of the total arrestees (1,529) are non-students; many self-confessed “subsidized” street fighters.
Kerry’s claim that the US is “not involved”, and the State Departments’ ludicrous effort to ridicule Venezuela’s charges of US intervention (“paranoia”), are refuted by published official documents showing a continuous flow of tens of millions of dollars each year to opposition organizations linked to the terror networks, including $15 million disbursed during the first two months of this year.
Top security experts on externally funded terrorist warfare, reviewing the scope and depth of damage and casualties, urge the government to give greater backing and a bigger role to the armed forces in pacifying the country. Their recommendations include declaring martial law and organizing military sweeps in opposition strongholds to neutralize and disarm the terrorist groups; unlimited detention pending trials for suspected homicide perpetrators and arsonists; military trials for suspects accused of murdering soldiers. Opposition mayors, governors or university officials who offer sanctuaries and provide arms storage facilities would forfeit their impunity. In response to a multitudinous demonstration by civilians and soldiers in support of the Armed Forces and demanding that the Maduro government take firmer measures to end terror, Maduro issued an ultimatum to the terrorists to end their actions or face the full force of the public authorities.
President Maduro also addressed the Kerry-Obama regime, calling on it to stop backing the terrorist opposition by threatening economic sanctions and calling on Washington to join a tri-partite commission, including a top representative from the US, Venezuela and the Union of South American states (UNASUR), to discuss peace and sovereignty. UNASUR declared in favor of Maduro’s proposal for dialogue and his peace initiative. Kerry proceeded with sanctions in support of the terror war by proxy.
Time for political conciliation is running out: The Venezuelan Armed Forces may finally get a chance to end the specter of imperial war by proxy.
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Questions the Media Haven’t Been Asking about Flight MH370
By Doug E. Steil | Aletho News | March 19, 2014
By now, many people following the reports of Flight MH370, the missing Malaysian aircraft, are becoming very suspicious of a cover-up, almost as if though there is no genuine interest in locating the plane, yet going through the superficial motions of at least attempting to do so. Though some officially released information should be considered reliable because elaborate recovery efforts by numerous countries depend on it, for instance the two arcs showing possible 40° locations of the last “ping” with a satellite in geostationary orbit (which would exclude the possibility of the plane having been diverted, say, to the Diego Garcia military base or a variety of other places that have been mentioned), what seems more interesting is the information nobody mentions and the media appear too afraid to ask. For example:
* Why haven’t the corresponding data for previous possible “ping” locations been publicly released, thus constraining the area of the aircraft’s possible location, hence allowing more focus on prioritized search areas?
* Who were those lucky people who had booked that particular flight but did not board (according to initial reports some of them even checked in their luggage) and why has there been no public information about them?
More than seven years ago, in 2006, a publication by the name of Homeland Security News Wire, whose editor in chief studied at Tel Aviv University, ran a brief story about Boeing’s Uninterruptible Auto Pilot System. In the wake of the still missing Boeing 777 aircraft, another publication ran a story, which stated in part:
Perhaps the most unsettling information in regards to the missing Boeing 777 comes from retired 35 year Delta pilot, Field McConnell, who states that since 1995, Boeing Uninterruptible Auto Pilots have been equipped in Boeing planes. This information was apparently not released until March of 2007, following a subsequent lawsuit by McConnell. The modification was reported to the FAA, NTSB and ALPA (airline pilots association). According to McConnell’s documents, Boeing is said to have stated that by end of 2009 all Boeing planes would be fitted with the BUAP – making them impossible to manually hijack within the plane but susceptible to remote control by the military, according the flight veteran.
At least one organization, Voice of Russia, bothered to interview the retired pilot, mentioned above, on this particular topic, but it is obviously not deemed to be sufficiently relevant for general public consumption, as though it were yet another taboo subject, just too “hot” to address.
Aside from such issues as an unauthorized intruder with malicious intent being able to hack the airplane’s avionics and communications system with external piloting commands that override those of the pilots inside the cockpit, the alleged ubiquity of such an autopilot system raises other questions that ought to be addressed; here are just eight:
* Is it only a nation’s military that is authorized to activate the system in an emergency situation?
* Would multiple military organizations be involved in the case of an actual on-board hijacking, say, over Europe?
* Could the military of Malaysia, Vietnam, Thailand, and perhaps even Indonesia and India have been in the loop about the situation involving Flight MH370?
* Would those authorized to intervene be able to actively supersede the malicious commands of an unauthorized commandeering attempt?
* Wouldn’t it make more sense for the airline operating the aircraft to be primarily responsible, through a 24-hour command center on stand-by, with the military of the countries the aircraft is flying over or near at any particular moment?
* Who would be in charge, say, of an aircraft from a European airline flying over international waters far away, on the other side of the world?
* Could the central command in the case of such rare emergencies that require 24-hour stand-by have been contractually delegated to a private security company to deal with, simply for the sake of expediency or cost, just as the security operations at many airports have been delegated to Israeli-run companies?
* Does the software for these remote autopilot systems get customized or at least regularly updated to fix or at least patch up known or possible security leaks?
Civilians Support Venezuelan National Guard amid Media False Claims
By Tamara Pearson | Venezuelanalysis | March 17, 2014
Merida – On the weekend civilians marched with National Bolivarian Guard (GNB) soldiers, and today the government declared part of Caracas “free” from violent protests. The march came as private media heightened its false statements about GNB actions.
GNB march
On Saturday in Caracas there was a large civic-military march in support of “peace and life” and the GNB soldiers.
In his speech to those present President Nicolas Maduro accused the “government of the United States” of trying to “implement a plan to assassinate [him]”. He said in such a case, “the people should stay in the streets, making the revolution, united with the armed forces”.
Since 12 February, he said, over 20,000 GNB soldiers have been in the street, carrying out “some 16,000 operations to re-establish order and avoid confrontations, on average almost 500 operations per day. However, of the 29 deaths [since 12 February], there is only one under investigation attributed to a GNB soldier, [but] the opposition has carried out a campaign… writing them [the GNB] off as killers”.
The majority of deaths have been caused by violent barricades, two of them were allegedly caused by SEBIN (the national intelligence service) agents, and one by the Chacao police. Chacao police take orders from the opposition Chacao mayor.
Maduro himself is Commander in Chief of the National Bolivarian Armed Forces. He stressed that there had never been any orders to repress. “If the national guard or the national police had gone out in a repressive blind rage or with a an order to repress, in the face of [almost 500] violent actions per day [by the opposition], the death statistics would be different,” he said.
According to a recent survey by private firm, Hinterlaces, of 1200 Venezuelans, 87% reject the violent barricades “as an instrument of protest”, and 11% support their continuation. 79% express “doubt” that the violence could improve the situation in the country.
GNB death, Chacao operation
Sunday night, Aragua governor Tareck El Aissami reported that a GNB captain was injured in Maracay by “criminal groups”. El Aissami said the captain was shot in the head. He explained that when a “violent group” tried to close Avenue Jose Casanova Godoy and the GNB arrived, the GNB were shot at.
Yesterday Maracay also held a Peace Conference, as part of a national government initiative being held in various states around the country.
This morning El Aissami reported that Captain Jose Guillen Araque had died from the injury. This is the second GNB captain killed in less than a week. Captain Ramzor Bracho, was killed last Wednesday in Valencia, allegedly by opposition groups.
Meanwhile, the government announced today that the upper class area of Chacao had been made a “peace zone”. Over the last five weeks the area has been one of many zones around the country subject to constant road blockades, rubbish burning, destruction of public property, harassment, aggression, and vandalism, by violent groups calling for Maduro’s resignation.
Last Monday GNB soldiers dismantled a clandestine storage area in Chacao used by the violent groups. They confiscated guns, knives, C4 explosives, drugs, and fuel.
In his speech on Saturday, Maduro said the government was willing to use “force” to “restore peace” to Chacao. “We’ll capture all the violent people, the terrorists, the murderers, we’ll do it…respecting all human rights. The first human right we’ll respect is the right to free transit, the right of the children to go to school,” he said.
That night, VTV reported that the violent groups “voluntarily withdrew” from Altamira plaza in Chacao.
Early this morning the minister for internal affairs, Miguel Rodriguez Torres announced the “liberation and pacifying” of the area, a few hours after 661 GNB soldiers were deployed there. He said the guards will patrol 24 hours a day “in order to guarantee citizen safety”.
Rodriguez Torres said that authorities were waiting on the mayor of the area, Ramon Muchacho, in order to “hand over control and that he take charge of maintaining the area”.
Resident of Chacao, Susana Saavedra told Correo del Orinoco that she congratulated the GNB, “for taking this initiative, because it was lawless here”. She accused local opposition authorities of “collaborating with the barricaders… we couldn’t leave our houses or send our children to school”.
While the number of violent barricades around the country has been reduced, both voluntarily and because of the GNB, in Merida this morning the science museum was attacked for a second time, high school Fray Juan Ramos de Lora was attacked, and a main city intersection was blocked by a burning truck.
Manipulation by Venezuelan private media
Venezuelan private media however, have blamed much of the violence on the GNB. El Nacional headlined on 15 March, “GNB and collectives attack universities around the country”. Though colectivos is a term used in Venezuela for a range of social and productive organisations, the private media in February began using it to denote supposedly armed, pro-government groups. The El Nacional article accused the GNB and “collectives” of “repressing student protests”.
In Carora, Lara state on Friday, the media reported “repression by GNB and collectives”. Opposition state governor, Henri Falcon said “anarchic groups supported by the GNB caused damage, panic, and commotion” in the National Poli-technical Experimental University (Unexpo).
Video footage of the event however shows the violence by the opposition groups, the GNB cleaning up the area, verbal abuse by groups towards the GNB, and the GNB responding politely. The GNB then sat the groups down and gave them a workshop on human rights, then let them all go, the footage shows.
Further, today El Nacional quoted opposition leader Maria Corina Machado accusing the GNB of “creating the chaos in Altamira to justify militarisation”.
Machado also called for a march against so called “Cuban interference” on Sunday. According to AFP, only “hundreds” turned up to the march. The AFP article stated that “protests… against the government of Nicolas Maduro… have seen a total of 28 deaths”, implying that the deaths were all opposition “protestors”.
La Patilla and social networks have also circulated a photo, which they claim was GNB soldiers “repressing, beating, and arresting a special youth”. However, on Saturday, Alejandro Cegarra, an AP photographer who has been critical of the government claimed to have taken the photo and stated the “GN official was helping the protestor to breathe… the guy started to faint and was choking”.
Further, the AP caption for the photo described the National Guard helping the man to breathe, but according to Cegarra, those who reposted the photo “decided to ignore the caption”. A video by photographer, Cristian Dubo also makes it clear the GNB were trying to help the man. While he was not beaten, it does appear he was taken to hospital, and also detained and is awaiting trial, after being involved in confrontations in Altamira.
Other press went further, using a different photo to claim the man had Down syndrome, and he was “brutally beaten by the GNB”. However the man in this second photo, according to RT, was beaten by Miami police last year. The man photographed by Dubo did not have Down syndrome.
The GNB forms part of the National Bolivarian Armed Forces. It is responsible for public order. President Hugo Chavez, over his three terms, aimed to transform the GNB from what was previously a repressive institution into one geared towards promoting development. He increased the role of the GNB in civil affairs, including involving soldiers in implementing social programs such as the Mercal food program. The majority of GNB soldiers come from the poorer sectors of Venezuela, and Chavez often referred to the Armed Forces as “the people in arms”.
The Banality Of The Guardian Of Judea
By Gilad Atzmon | March 17, 2014
The once well-respected Guardian has been reduced in recent years into a lame Zionist mouthpiece – a light Jewish Chronicle for Gentiles consumption. Last week, the paper launched an attack on Martin Heidegger, the 20th century’s most influential philosopher.
“Heidegger’s ‘black notebooks’ reveal antisemitism at core of his philosophy” the paper’s headline read. But what does that mean? Was Heidegger really a Jew hater? Did he oppose people for being ethnically or ‘racially’ Jewish or was he, instead, critical of Jewish politics, culture, ideology and spirit?
According to the ‘progressive’ British Guardian, the newly published Black Notebooks reveals that Heidegger saw ‘world Judaism’ as the driver of “dehumanising modernity”.
Needless to mention that we didn’t need a ‘new publication’ to assert that this was Heidegger’s view of Jewish culture and politics. The German thinker, like many of his contemporaries, saw “Jerusalem” as a suppressive and corrupted spiritual, cultural and intellectual influence as opposed to “Athens”, which portrayed in his eyes, the birth of humanism, universalism, aesthetics, ethics and pluralism.
Let’s examine what makes a prominent thinker into an Anti Semite in the eyes of The Guardian. “While distancing himself from the racial theories pursued by Nazi intellectuals, Heidegger argues that Weltjudentum (“world Judaism”) is one of the main drivers of western modernity, which he viewed critically.”
But aren’t we entitled to criticize religion, culture or Ideology? Aren’t we allowed to disapprove of modernity or technology and to try to identify its cultural and ideological roots? For some reason, I can’t recall The Guardian taking Max Weber to task for suggesting that Protestant ethics was the driving force behind Capitalism. Embarrassingly enough, the same Guardian that clumsily and shamelessly smears the greatest continental thinker, provides a platform to a long list of Neocons, pro-war advocates such as Nick Cohen who constantly and relentlessly criticize the so-called ‘Islamo-Fascists’ – a code name for Islamic political culture. I guess that for The Guardian of Judea, it is only Jewish culture, religion and ideology that must remain beyond criticism.
“World Judaism”, Heidegger writes in the notebooks, “is ungraspable everywhere and doesn’t need to get involved in military action while continuing to unfurl its influence, whereas we are left to sacrifice the best blood of the best of our people”. But is the above observation anti Semitic? Can an honest observation be anti Semitic, or shall we say a form of ‘hatred’, or should it be more appropriately tagged as an uncomfortable truth?
Heidegger was a German patriot. As such he knew very well that it was Zionist leadership and German Jewish bankers in America that facilitated the entry of the USA into the first world war (in return in part for the 1917’s Belfour Declaration that promised a national home for Jews in Palestine). In that regard, Heidegger, like his contemporaries, had good reason to believe that Germany was betrayed by its Jewish elite.
When Heidegger published his monumental Being And Time (1927), certainly the 20th century’s most important philosophical text, the Frankfurt School, dominated by Jewish academics, had already been in operation for more than four years, gaining ground in its attempt to subvert German culture in the name of communism. As a German nationalist, Heidegger had more than just one reason to oppose Jewish culture, politics and ideology.
Heidegger was a philosopher as opposed to a politician or an ‘activist’. His understanding of the world was driven by the search for an essential and categorical comprehension. For Heidegger it wasn’t the ‘Jew’ nor was it ethnicity that posed danger, it was an ideology and culture that was set to undermine his Athenian West and its value system as he saw it. Such an approach has nothing to do with racial hatred.
Let’s examine Heidegger’s above statement regarding ‘world Judaism’, its ‘ungraspable’ impact and its unwillingness to ‘sacrifice.’ Heidegger basically suggests that the Jewish elite is launching wars by proxy. At first, this may sound like a vile criticism of Jewish culture and power within politics. But a deeper look into this statement reveals that Heidegger was highly observant. Let’s face it, Heidegger certainly didn’t know about the cabal of Zionist neocons who pushed Britain and the USA into an illegal war in Iraq five decades after his death. Heidegger, most definitely didn’t know about the Jewish Lobby Groups: AIPAC, LFI, CFI and the CRIF. He certainly didn’t know of Bernard Henri Levy or Jewish Chronicle writers David Aaronovitch and Nick Cohen, who have been advocating Zionist immoral interventionist campaigns for years. Furthermore, as Heidegger predicted, not many young Jews followed the Zionised Neocon militant enthusiasm and rushed to join the US Army Special Forces or The Royal Marines. Heidegger somehow foresaw that Jews wouldn’t be overrepresented in the list of dead British and American soldiers that emerged out of this chain of futile conflicts.
When Heidegger writes, “we (the Germans) are left to sacrifice the best blood of the best of our people,” it is Zionist proxy wars he has in his mind – those Zionist wars that are fought by everyone except the Zionists themselves. But how could the philosopher predict the Zionist’s political apparatus so precisely? Was he a prophet?
To philosophize is to dig into the true essence. The philosopher’s quest is a search for the essential meaning, whether it is being, beauty, knowledge, science and so on. Heidegger, the philosopher, saw in Jewish culture something most Jews either fail to see in themselves or conceal very well and for a good reason. It is hardly surprising that The Guardian that has systematically failed to confront the Jewish Lobby and its relentless war advocacy, would denounce the great mind who accurately listed the exact conditions in which such bellicosity takes place.
Tragically, annihilating intelligencia and deep critical thought has become an obsession of the New Left. This may explain the deterioration of the progressive discourse into an intellectual desert. The Guardian, in its current form and under its current leadership, has a major role in that process.
“In another passage”, the Guardian continues, “the philosopher writes that the Jewish people, with their ‘talent for calculation’, were so vehemently opposed to the Nazi’s racial theories because ‘they themselves have lived according to the race principle for longest’”.
But is this really a lie? Not at all. The German philosopher obviously hits the nail on the head. Heidegger, who didn’t approve of the Nazi racist doctrine, properly noted that Nazi racial supremacy was, in fact, Kosher by nature.
It is hardly a secret that Jewish culture is ethno-centric and racially driven. Israel defines itself as the ‘Jewish State’. Far more embarrassing is the fact that Israel’s Jewish opponents also follow the same racially supremacist methodology and, in most cases, operate within ‘Jews only’ political cells (such as JVP, IJAN, Jewish Socialist Group etc.).
Heidegger, was obviously ahead of his time in observing the similarity between Jewish political exclusiveness and Nazi ideology. Does that make Heidegger an anti Semite? Quite the opposite, it affirms that the German philosopher is a timeless precious intellectual asset. Yet, The Guardian doesn’t posses the minimal integrity to admit that Heidegger was actually spot on. Instead, the British paper is desperate to undermine the work of the great philosopher by means of inept and vague association.
By tagging Heidegger as an anti Semite The Guardian basically advises his readers not to read the greatest Germano–Greco philosopher and certainly not to evaluate the content of his writing. This is ‘Newspeak’ as observed by Orwell, which minimizes the possible content of intellectual exchange by means of ‘correctness’.
It is no secret that the contemporary politically correct observer adheres to the rule that truth better be inoffensive. As such, he or she contributes to the suppression of the truth and the transformation of knowledge into a system of selective concealment. Interestingly, it was Heidegger who was there to turn the floodlight onto ‘concealment’ and the ‘forgetfulness of Being’, something the Guardian has made into an art from.
Heidegger, the truth teller has come to represent everything the Jerusalemite ‘Guardian of Judea’ is there to suppress. I guess that the time is ripe for The Guardian to wake up. It would do well to reinstate its position as The Guardian of the truth rather than The Guardian of Zion. We could use a quality Left paper driven by true humanist and universal concerns, instead of just another ignorant and banal Zionist mouthpiece.
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Venezuela: Who You Gonna Believe, the New York Times or Your Lying Eyes?
By Mark Weisbrot | CEPR Americas Blog | March 15, 2014
Today’s report from the New York Times trashes the government for “combative tactics” and “cracking down” on protesters, but if you watch the accompanying video, all you see are protesters attacking police, and the police – without venturing forward, defending themselves with water cannon and tear gas.
One can criticize the decision of the government to block the march from going to hostile territory, but given the continuous presence of violent elements among the protestors, and that Venezuela is a country with a very high homicide rate and many armed civilians, it could have been the prudent thing to do. The government also believes, with some justification, that these protests seek to provoke violence in order to de-legitimize the government. Their stated goal is to overthrow the democratically elected government, and given that the vast majority of the country is against the protests, this really is their only chance of getting anywhere. And the government also knows that the media (both national private and international) will generally blame them for any violence.
In the United States, and especially here in Washington DC, you have to get a permit for marches like this, and they are often denied or re-routed; and if you try to defy this the police will generally beat you and throw you in jail. And these are actually peaceful protests here.
As for the violence so far associated with the protests since they started on February 12, the statistics show that more people have died at the hands of protesters than security forces:
Of the 29 people killed (full details here),
— 3 appear to be protesters allegedly killed by security forces; 1 other was killed by security forces but it’s not clear if he was a protester.
— 3 appear to be protesters allegedly killed by civilians (the opposition always alleges that these civilians are somehow taking orders from the government, but there has not been any evidence linking the government to any killings by armed civilians; and in a country where there are on average more than 65 homicides per day, it is most likely that these armed civilians are acting on their own).
— 11 civilians appear to have died at the hands of protestors: three of them shot, and the rest killed by various barricades or other obstructions (e.g. motorcyclist beheaded by wire allegedly strung by protesters).
— 3 national guard appear to have been killed by protesters
— 1 pro-government activist appears to have been killed by security forces
— 6 have died in circumstances that are too unclear to determine if they were really related to protests, but they are often included in press reports.
At least 14 security officers have been arrested and remain in jail for alleged violence against protesters, including the incidents described above.
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U.S. Propaganda
By Margaret Kimberley | Black Agenda Report | March 12, 2014
German chancellor Angela Merkel said that Russian president Vladimir Putin was not “in touch with reality” and was “in another world.” At least that is how the New York Times quotes an unnamed source. Those words have been repeated by reporters, bloggers, pundits and late night talk show hosts numerous times over the past week. Unfortunately there are a few problems with this often repeated quote. There is no proof that Merkel said such a thing at all, and if she did that she meant he was unstable, as many Americans happily and ignorantly assert. Logic and real reporting show that such a statement was highly unlikely. No matter. It has endlessly been reported as fact. Welcome to American style propaganda.
It is impossible for most Americans to think that their country and their government are not beloved around the world. That attitude is due to the relentless propaganda we are subject to our entire lives. We are told our nation is the best, richest, most just, and most deserving. After years of brain washing we are subject to a cynical collaboration between politicians and big business, the same big businesses who run our media outlets and determine what we’ll see and what we should think about what they choose to reveal.
This perversity has many negative consequences. Among them is the public acceptance and approval of nearly every crime committed by our government. If an American president decides that the elected head of state in other country must go, then go he must. The president of Haiti was literally kidnapped by the United States and taken out of his country, with hardly any outcry from Americans. If the Venezuelan people vote for a leftist government and make the same choice in election after election, we are told to ignore the will of that population and join our government in opposing another people’s choice.
The current target of government and media propaganda is Russian president Vladimir Putin. When George W. Bush was president he bestowed the silly moniker Putey Pute and the press followed right along in declaring Putin an A OK kind of guy. He was a friend of our president who knew how to do a deal when called upon and who wouldn’t rock America’s boat.
Fast forward another ten years or so. When the United States and NATO nations set their sights on making Ukraine a puppet fiefdom, the president of the superpower next door said not so fast. Suddenly he was no longer Putey Pute, but an enemy to be hated, feared or derided as a figure of fun. The Obama administration is determined to make good on neo-con fantasies of United States world domination, and anyone who stands in the way is the next target of propaganda from within the government and without.
Photos taken on one day five years ago showing a shirtless Putin are shown again and again. One gets the impression that he rarely wears any clothing. The same media who considered Putin good copy because he hunts, fishes, pilots planes, swims with dolphins and drives formula one race cars now use the same information to convince Americans that he is either a brute or a fool who can and should be bent to their country’s will.
The anti-Putin hysteria and joke telling began in earnest when he put a stop to Obama’s plan to attack Syria, Russia’s ally. Even the recent Winter Olympics became a victim of the United States propaganda machine. In truth, every Olympics is an opportunity for corruption, theft, and displacement of thousands of people. The Sochi games were no worse in those regards but tales of mismanagement and possible terror attacks were magnified because Uncle Sam’s enemy du jour was on worldwide display. When the United States and NATO attempt to make Ukraine a puppet fiefdom met resistance, no stone was left unturned in the anti-Putin propaganda fest.
Like good little scribes the media follow the White House line that German chancellor Angela Merkel would assist in bolstering the United States position vis a vis Putin. The networks and newspapers were so eager to curry favor that they omitted any mention of reports that the NSA tapped Merkel’s personal cell phone for a period of ten years. Of course bringing up that story would force coverage of whistle blower Edward Snowden’s revelations. That is a sore subject for the White House and has of course been relegated away from the front pages now that public compliance is so urgently needed.
The media also omitted the fact that Putin speaks German. The two leaders literally speak the same language and both are targets of United States efforts to control the world and turn everyone into a subject of domination or an enemy. It may be Obama administration wishful thinking that Merkel will carry America’s water but there is no reason for anyone else to believe such nonsense.
The New York Times happily picked up the bone left by the Obama White House but didn’t bother telling readers that Merkel’s staff disputed the account. The German newspaper Die Welt reported that “The chancellery was not pleased with the reporting on the conversation. They claim that what the chancellor said was that Putin has a different perception on Crimea, which is why she is pushing for a fact finding mission on the matter.”
We will never know her exact words but we do know the most important fact of all. The United States government creates and disseminates propaganda to assist in having its way with the world. They have ready and willing compatriots in the corporate media and an apathetic or uniformed public. That mixture is a recipe for lying to be undisputed and for wrongs to go on without protest. Propaganda is not a word meant just for other countries but for ours too. There is official propaganda right here in America and pretending it doesn’t exist only strengthens a system which will put itself and the rest of the world on a course of ultimate destruction.
Gaza missile seizure, Netanyahu’s latest anti-Iran joke
By Finian Cunningham | Press TV | March 11, 2014
Comedians say that the art of telling jokes relies on “timing.” Israeli’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the world’s top comic politician, seemed to be proving the point with his “timely” claims about seizing Iranian rockets aboard a cargo ship in the Red Sea.
Standing in front of 40 pointed missiles, each carefully displayed on props (you sense the stilted exhibitionism here), the Israeli leader said the seized cache “showed the true face of Iran” in its support for terrorism. Netanyahu lashed out at Western leaders who are “shaking hands with Iran” and preparing to finalize a political settlement to the long-running nuclear dispute.
Iran swiftly denounced the Israeli allegations as orchestrated, indicating that the capture of munitions on a Panamanian-registered vessel was a set-up.
Even some of the Israeli media have grown weary of such “propaganda stunts,” as the newspaper Haaretz described Netanyahu’s melodramatic display of Iran’s alleged clandestine cargo in the port of Eilat at the weekend. Netanyahu’s corny sensationalist manner, standing in front of the green-colored rockets, was reminiscent of his previous presentation to the United Nations using a cartoon bomb in which he claimed then that Iran was “only months away from building a nuclear weapon.”
Netanyahu’s record of failure over the past 20 years in predicting “imminent” Iranian nuclear arms capability makes him a laughing stock. Some people watching the latest televised stunt of displaying “captured” Iranian rockets may have wished that one of the devices could have accidentally fired off during the Israeli premier’s speech.
The buffoonish Netanyahu cannot be taken seriously on anything he says. Nevertheless it is worthwhile defusing the latest Israeli propaganda hoax to reveal the mindset of those in Tel Aviv and their backers in Washington and the Western mainstream media who shamefully never fail to lend credibility to such reprehensible smear jobs. “Israeli forces seize rockets ‘destined for Gaza’ in raid on Iranian ship in Red Sea,” read a headline in the British Guardian.
It is amazing how much credence is afforded to baseless Israeli and Western government claims against Iran. In recent years, the Western public has been fed with tall tales of Iranian plots to assassinate diplomats in Washington, and involvement in bombings or attempted bombings in Argentina, Thailand, India, Georgia, Bulgaria and Kenya. Tellingly, none of these stories – always initially reported with ubiquitous fanfare in the Western media – are ever followed up or substantiated.
Yet the same absurd story line, with dramatic plot variations, is peddled over and over again. This systematic regurgitation shows that the Western media is nothing but an instrument of state propaganda.
Of course, Zionist lobby groups, sympathetic Zionist media owners, reporters, pundits are a big part of the charade. So too is the political agenda of Washington and its European allies who slavishly indulge Israel for geopolitical reasons, and who are only too glad to undermine Iran with regard to their support for Israel and the despotic Arab oil sheikhdoms, as well as in their covert war against Tehran’s ally, Syria.
The latest stunt may be also a pretext for the Western governments to procrastinate on the P5+1 settlement – and to subject Iran to further torturous illegal sanctions.
Let’s look at some of the claims in the latest smear job against Iran, which has seen US defense secretary Chuck Hagel also weighing in to accuse Iran of “destabilizing the region”.
The Israelis claim that Syrian-made M-302 rockets, with a firing range of 160km, were first flown by air cargo to Iran. Then Iran moved the ordnance to the port of Bandar Abbas, where it was loaded on to a ship, the KLOS-C. As mentioned, the ship is reportedly registered in Panama with an owner in the Marshall Islands. So what connection Iran has to the vessel is right away tenuous.
Next, the ship is said to have sailed north to the port of Umm Qasr in Iraq, where it was loaded with bags of cement conveniently bearing Iranian trademarks. The KLOS-C made its way out of the Persian Gulf and into the Red Sea, where Israeli Special Forces raided the ship last week off the coast of Sudan.
The Israelis claim – and Western media gave full vent to the claims – that the rockets were to be shipped over land from Sudan via Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula and delivered to Hamas in Gaza. Hamas, as well as Tehran, denies any involvement. It was even speculated in some Western media that the shipment of rockets could also have been intended by Iran for al-Qaeda groups based in Sinai.
This circuitous route, involving weeks of transport time over one of the most intensely surveyed sea-lanes in the world, does not bear serious scrutiny. The risk of such a smuggling plot being uncovered is so high as to make it implausible. Put another way, the chances of it being part of a stage-managed set-up are all the more plausible.
The destination aspect of the alleged plot does not hold water either. Egypt, under the military junta led by General Abdel al Sisi, has stepped up its collusion with Israel to seal off the Sinai Peninsula and all land crossings into Gaza. The notion of trucks carrying dozens of medium-sized surface-to-surface missiles driving into Gaza, undetected, is inconceivable to the point of ridicule.
So too is the Israeli-inspired sub-plot that Iran may have been trying to send the weapons to al-Qaeda in Sinai. This group is waging a Western-backed covert terrorist campaign against Syria and against Shia Muslims in particular. The idea that Shia Iran or its ally Syria would supply Syrian-made rockets to such enemies illustrates how moronic the thesis for this Israeli propaganda stunt is.
The Israeli seizure, by the way, was given the ever-so contrived title of “Full Exposure.” The give-away to this being a stunt is the timing. It came just as Netanyahu was in Washington trying to tell the world that the failure of Mid-East “peace talks” was all the fault of the Palestinians – not anything to do with the genocidal policies of Israel. In other words, it serves as a handy foil to shield Israel from international opprobrium. As Netanyahu was speaking in the White House, Israeli warplanes killed two Palestinians in air strikes on Gaza.
The second timed factor is that Iran is scheduled to complete the P5+1 negotiations for a final settlement over the nuclear dispute. EU foreign policy chief, Catherine Ashton, was in Tehran at the weekend when Netanyahu fired off rhetorical salvos about “Western hypocrisy in the face of Iranian support for international terrorism.” Israel is livid at the prospect of any nuclear deal being reached. And no doubt there are political forces in Washington and Europe that would relish an accord being sabotaged.
Netanyahu went on to warn about Iranian “armed nuclear suitcases” being sent to every port in the world.
Who needs imaginary nuclear-armed suitcases when we already have a nuclear-armed nutcase – Netanyahu and his apartheid regime?
Comic Netanyahu may have a dubious skill at timing, but his tedious jokes have by now become just stupidly bad. The latest one about “Full Exposure” of Iranian rockets has backfired.
Witnesses at Crimea base: ‘No fighting or shooting like reported on TV’
RT | March 11, 2014
Recent reports from Western media say Russian troops have allegedly seized control of the naval base near the Crimean city of Bakhchisaray on Monday, with “shots being fired in the air.” However, the sailors at the base deny all these reports.
“We were never ambushed or beaten. That’s just nonsense,” Aleksandr Gubenko, a seaman at the Crimean naval base, told Crimea-based journalist Ryan O’Neill.
According to Gubenko, the sailors at the base were told to come to the security checkpoints because “someone was trying to get in.”
“When we got there, these men asked us who we want to align ourselves with,” said Gubenko, “I am leaning towards Crimea because that’s where I’m from, same as 80 percent of other people at this base, and they all know they won’t go fighting their own people.”
It’s not only sailors that have denied the reports of an ambush. The members of the Crimean self-defense squads also say there was “no fighting or shooting” at the Bakhchisaray base “like they are reporting it on TV.”
“A group of Crimean self-defense forces just came in,” Sergey Yurchenko, from the Crimean self-defense squad, told O’Neill, “Their leader is currently negotiating with the commander of the base.”
“I don’t know what exactly they’re talking about there. There is definitely no fighting and no conflict,” he adds.
On Monday many Western media outlets have run reports that “masked troops of unidentified armed men fired in the air at the base near Bakhchisaray.” Some said that it was “Russian forces” which “took over a military hospital and a missile unit” in the naval base.
According to some reports these “masked pro-Russian troops” on Sunday kidnapped the base commander Vladimir Sadovnik. However, later it turned out that Sadovnik had never been kidnapped. On Monday he arrived at the Bakhchisaray base along with self-defense squads.
The Autonomous Republic of Crimea will hold a referendum for March 16 where its people – about 60 percent of whom are ethnic Russians – will decide whether they want the Crimea to remain part of Ukraine, or join Russia.
The situation on the Crimean Peninsula is tense and the authorities fear possible provocations from the coup-imposed Kiev government. On Monday radicals backed by the Kiev authorities made provocations in the village of Chinghar in northern Crimea, said a source from the Crimean self-defense squads. Over 30 cars with nearly 70 people, apparently intending to organize a coup, demanded the self-defense groups let them pass into the territory of Crimea.
Despite all these attempts to disrupt the upcoming the referendum, the Crimean government is controlling the situation on the peninsula, according to the speaker of the Supreme Council of Crimea, Vladimir Konstantinov. He added that “No provocations will be staged before or during the referendum as the region has enough self-defense forces to protect itself.”
The US and EU authorities do not recognize the legitimacy of the Crimean authorities, nor the March 16 referendum, despite the Crimean parliament welcoming a mission from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) to observe the ballot.
Meanwhile, Crimean authorities are preparing for the Sunday poll. The government of the autonomous republic will issue up to US$2 million for ballot printing and providing technical support. Overall 1,550,000 ballots will be printed.
Over 1,500 Crimean troops will be deployed at polling stations, according to Crimean Prime Minister Aksyonov.
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From the Archive
Zionism’s Violent Legacy
By Donald Neff | Washington Report On Middle East Affairs | January 1996
On January 4, 1948, Jewish terrorists drove a truck loaded with explosives into the center of the all Arab city of Jaffa and detonated it, killing 26 and wounding around 100 Palestinian men, women and children.[1] The attack was the work of the Irgun Zvai Leumi – the “National Military Organization,” also known by the Hebrew letters Etzel – the largest Jewish terrorist group in Palestine. The Irgun was headed by Revisionist Zionist Menachem Begin and had been killing and maiming Arabs, Britons and even Jews for the previous ten years in its efforts to establish a Jewish state.
This terror campaign meant that at the core of Revisionist Zionism there existed a philosophical embrace of violence. … continue
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