US aid is tied to Palestinian acquiescence to the two-state illusion
By Ramona Wadi | MEMO | March 30, 2021
The US has reversed one aspect of the Trump administration’s foreign policy in Palestine; humanitarian aid will be resumed with a $15 million grant for vulnerable Palestinian communities in the occupied West Bank and Gaza. “Our engagements all have the same aim: to build support for a peaceful solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,” the US Representative to the UN, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, declared. Given that Washington used to give $350 million to the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) before Trump stopped the support in 2018, this is a very limited “engagement”.
And it’s very selective support. Moreover, it comes as US Secretary of State Antony Blinken is opposing the Palestinian Authority’s recourse to the International Criminal Court for justice over Israel’s war crimes. Such crimes, and the context of occupation in which they are carried out, contribute to humanitarian aid for the Palestinian being a necessity.
More importantly, humanitarian aid remains tied to the two-state compromise. Now that the US has returned to international consensus over the defunct paradigm, restoring humanitarian aid may be considered the next, logical step, only there is nothing logical about pursuing a strand of diplomacy that spells loss unless it results in a gain for Israel.
PA Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh welcomed the resumption of humanitarian aid as “an important step in the right direction.” However, Palestinians still have no political direction and the PA is merely speaking about its standing in the diplomatic arena. Following restored humanitarian aid, the next step will most likely be renewed diplomatic relations. The PA will then feed upon the illusion that it is an important negotiating partner. Perhaps it is, in terms of “negotiating” the sell-out of what remains of Palestine to the Zionist colonial project.
For ordinary Palestinians, of course, it is a different story. The resumption of humanitarian aid within the context of the two-state compromise only sustains Israeli colonialism, while allowing the Palestinian people the necessary means for daily survival. Resuming the two-state cycle of humanitarian aid in return for acquiescence to the two-state illusion is not a better option than the so-called “deal of the century”. Both have generated loss, and the PA is merely favouring one form of loss over another.
To what extent can such a move be welcomed? Humanitarian aid to promote peace is a recipe for failure, given its reinforcement of the power dynamic bolstered by the billions of dollars that Israel gets each year from the US. It would be understandable if the PA spoke of humanitarian aid in terms of alleviation, but not as an “important step in the right direction” when Israel is not facing any punitive measures for advancing its illegal settlement expansion, for example.
It is to be expected that the US selectively lauds its meager support for Palestine, especially when, in contrast to the Trump administration, US President Joe Biden is yet to face significant scrutiny. For the PA to emulate the US rhetoric, however, is a different story. It seems as if the Ramallah authority is far more interested in asserting its earlier and premature, overtures to Biden even before the new foreign policy was revealed, despite the fact that the politics of humanitarian aid are a mere convenience for the international community in its process of aiding Israel to colonise what is left of Palestine.
Western Bullying of China No Longer Tolerated
By Stephen Lendman | March 29, 2021
The era of US-dominated Western hegemony over China is over, said Xinjiang government spokesman Xu Guixiang, stressing the following:
“China is no longer the China of 1840, and the era when Chinese people suffered from great power hegemony, and bullying will never return again,” adding:
A “century of humiliation” is over. Exploitation of China and its people by the West will no longer be tolerated.
Nor will the “big stick of sanctions” — the favored US, UK, EU weapon against nations unwilling to sacrifice their sovereign rights to higher powers in their capitals.
Xu’s remarks came in response to false US-led Western accusations of human rights abuses against Xinjiang Uyghur Muslims — phony claims about forced labor, re-education centers and other fabrications.
Last December — as part of its war on China by other means — the US banned imports of cotton and cotton products from the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps — based on phony claims about human rights abuses by the world’s leading abuser of people worldwide USA.
It notoriously blames others for its own high crimes of war, against humanity, and other wrongdoing.
Its megalomaniacal drive for hegemony risks global war 3.0.
In response to Swedish clothing company Hennes & Mauritz’s (H & M) boycott of Xinjiang cotton, company stores were closed by Chinese mall operators.
The company was removed from major Chinese e-commerce apps.
On Monday, China’s Foreign Ministry slammed “manufactured lies and unreasonable accusations (by) the West.”
Over the weekend, the Ministry accused the US and its Western imperial partners of inventing a Xinjiang Uyghur issue to try “disrupt(ing) (and) contain(ing) China.”
The US doesn’t give a damn about Uyghurs or ordinary people anywhere.
US war on Islam is longstanding.
Jack Shaheen’s book “Reel Bad Arabs: How Hollywood Vilifies a People” documented how US filmmakers vilify them.
So do both right wings of the US war party.
For decades, Muslims have been disparaged and otherwise abused by the US.
They’ve been falsely portrayed as dangerous gun-toting terrorists.
Hate-mongering persists against independent, predominantly Muslim countries and their leadership.
Notably post-9/11, US-led imperial wars of aggression smashed Afghanistan, Yemen, Iraq, Libya, Syria and Somalia.
US wars by other means target numerous other countries, including predominantly Muslim Iran and Lebanon.
For years post-9/11, targeted Muslims in the US were hunted down, rounded up, held in detention, kept in isolation, denied bail, restricted in their right to counsel, tried on secret evidence, convicted on bogus charges, and given long sentences — for political reasons, not for any crimes committed.
Torture and other human rights abuses continue in Washington’s global gulag at home and abroad — Guantanamo the tip of the iceberg.
On all things related to US targeted individuals for politicized reasons, their habeas rights, due process, and equal protection under law is denied — guilt by accusation automatic.
Muslims imprisoned domestically for their faith, ethnicity, and nationality are segregated in Communication Management Units (CMUs).
The practice flagrantly violates US Prison Bureau regulations.
They prohibit discrimination on the basis of race, religion, national origin, sex, disability, or political beliefs.
So-called American exceptionalism, the indispensable state, and illusory moral superiority are belied by its viciousness on the world stage — against invented enemies, operating extrajudicially by its own rules, the rule of law long ago abandoned.
Notably from the Clintons to Bush/Cheney to Obama/Biden to Trump to Biden/Harris, the US is an unparalleled global menace.
It’s war on humanity at home and abroad risks destruction of planet earth by futilely trying to own it.
Beijing no longer tolerates its bullying and other lawless practices, its Foreign Ministry saying:
“We solemnly inform the US side that today’s China is neither Iraq nor Syria, still less the late Qing Dynasty downtrodden by the Eight-Power Allied Forces.”
“China is open and aboveboard.”
“All malicious lies and rumors against China will fall apart before facts and truths.”
“We have full resolution, determination and capability to firmly defend national sovereignty, security, dignity and honor.”
If Biden regime hardliners intend confrontation with China, they’ll get a bellyful more than they can handle in return.
It’s long past time for tepid Russia to match China’s unwillingness to tolerate US bullying and criminality.
Diplomatic outreach to its ruling regimes is a waste of time — toughness the only language they understand.
The same goes for the decadent West overall.
Following China’s playbook in dealings with their regimes is the only effective strategy. Softness assures failure.
Tara Reade: ‘Enemy’ leader or dissident like me, media’s playbook is the same – demonize, dehumanize, delegitimize
By Tara Reade | RT | March 27, 2021
Whether you are an American citizen daring to oppose the leadership or the leader of a nation designated ‘adversarial’, the methods of character assassination Washington’s PR machine hits you with are not much different.
“Nothing would fundamentally change” if he got elected, Joe Biden told a group of billionaires at a fundraising event during the 2020 presidential campaign. Like the saying goes, when someone tells you who they are, believe them.
As I stood up to tell my own history with Joe Biden, his multi-million-dollar public relations machine pushed back hard. The playbook used on every single survivor that tries to come forward about a powerful person rarely varies.
Silence, attack the character, terrorize the supporters, dehumanize and repeat. These tactics are also used on foreign countries and leaders we want to attack and demonize.
Last week however, it backfired quite gloriously.
You see, our political machine needs to be seen as justified when it attacks someone, be it a dissident at home or a foreign leader we don’t like. And what better way to justify it, to manufacture consent, than to dehumanize, demonize, simplify, take all complexity away, until the target du jour is seen as little more than a comic-book villain to be smacked down with a resounding KA-POW?
Use simple words. ‘Killer’, ‘bully’, ‘strongman’, ‘tyrant’, ‘thug’. Paint your opponent in the simplest, darkest colors possible. Then, you can be the superhero figure… provided you can put together a coherent phrase.
When you have to be led up to even the simplest of name-calling, and your opponent responds with calm, saturnine wit, even the most steadfast media support can’t save your façade from cracking.
After Joe Biden’s “Putin is a killer” (though what he actually said technically was “uh-huh”) interview many Americans chose to side with Putin, refusing to fall for the villainization anymore. The exchange put the two presidents in stark contrast – and made it impossible to see Putin as a simple, dumb ‘strongman’ next to Biden with his inane “uh-huh”.
The comic-book juxtaposition starts to flake when the ‘supervillian’ is so obviously more coherent and more in control than the ‘superhero’. And Biden and his administration are obviously aware – feeling too insecure about Putin to agree to a live debate. A live discussion would be an unmitigated disaster for Biden. That said, ordinary Americans want to hear from Russians and know their views. But balance of ideas is not high on the Democratic agenda. The likes of Rachel Maddow will keep raking in thousands of dollars daily to eviscerate everything Russian – even as fewer and fewer people believe them.
For a day or so after my recent on-air interview with RT, my social media feed filled up with blue-check Democrats like Edward Isaac Dovere from the Atlantic, posting all my past pro-Russia blogs and trotting out the old Russian-asset narrative. Last time that came up was 2019 when I first came forward about Joe Biden. Back then, Dovere’s online attacks resulted in death threats from strangers.
This time was different. No death threats and little harassment. I had positive feedback, with some people admitting they shared my affinity for Putin. In fact, I made the executive decision to answer all my trolls with President Putin quotes. That seems to quiet them down. One problem with American culture is the cult of personality. It is not emotionally healthy to hero-worship or demonize leaders. They are humans and to elevate them to superhuman status does not serve the greater good.
There are clear signals that Americans are craving balance in the media. The public shift may be because the Democratic Party has devolved with obvious, smug hypocrisy. An example of this is the boorish lineup planned for Kamala Harris’s World Summit discussion on Girl & Women’s Empowerment with none other than Bill Clinton.
Tara Reade is an author, poet, actor and former Senate aide, author of Left Out: When the Truth Doesn’t Fit In.
Iran takes United Nations ‘rights report’ apart, belies it bit by bit
Press TV – March 27, 2021
Iran has provided the United Nations with a detailed letter exposing all instances of falsification and deviation from the UN Human Rights Council’s standards in a recent controversial HRC report about the Islamic Republic.
Ali Baqeri-Kani, head of the Iranian Judiciary’s High Council for Human Rights, forwarded the letter recently to the world body’s Secretary General Antonio Guterres and High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet.
The message sought to “clarify the ambiguous allegations and accusations” leveled against the country in an earlier report by Javaid Rehman, the UN’s so-called special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Iran.
The rapporteur had thrown a flurry of accusations against the country, blaming it for a raft of self-proclaimed but unproven human rights abuses.
Among other things, he had alleged in his report that women were being treated in Iran as “second-class citizens” and attacked the Islamic Republic’s COVID-19 response.
UK, US, Saudi, Israeli footprints
Iran’s response noted how the report had been compiled based on information provided by anti-Iran counter-revolutionary and terrorist groups as well as fugitive and dangerous criminals , whom the report had glorified as “human rights defenders.”
It identified the alleged “sources” of the report as “organizations affiliated with governments hostile to the Iranian nation” such as the British, American, and Saudi governments as well as organizations linked to the Israeli regime.
The letter underlined those regimes’ own longstanding record of deadly human rights violations against the Iranian nation and other peoples around the world.
It further blasted the rapporteur for trying “to paint a black picture of the situation [of human rights in Iran] instead of stating the realities” and opting for “silence in the face of the biggest cause of violation of the rights of the Iranian nation.”
By the latter, the message was referring to the US’ long-drawn-out inhumane sanctions against Iranians, which have been illegally blocking their access to food and medicine among other vital items.
Elsewhere, the message asked how the report had failed “to reflect the views of the Islamic Republic” and “provide sufficient time for clarifications and responses to allegations and accusations.”
The Islamic Republic essentially discredits Rehman’s very mandate to report on Iran, calling the permission the result of a non-consensual resolution forced upon the Council by a few political actors.
Tehran also strongly disapproves of the way the Council tolerates such politicization of the human rights issue.
‘Gangster-like logic’: North Korea rejects Biden’s missile launch criticism, points to Washington’s own saber-rattling
RT | March 26, 2021
Responding to American criticism of its recent missile launch, North Korea has accused Washington of denying its right to self-defense, even as the US holds war games at the country’s doorstep and tests advanced weaponry.
“It’s a gangster-like logic that it is allowable for the US to ship the strategic nuclear assets into the Korean peninsula and launch ICBMs any time it wants but not allowable for the DPRK, its belligerent party, to conduct even a test of a tactical weapon,” senior North Korean official Ri Pyong-chol said in statement on Saturday.
The comments came after US President Joe Biden condemned a series of missile launches by Pyongyang, which test-fired several newly developed “tactical guided missiles” on Thursday, with the US leader vowing to “respond accordingly” if North Korea opted to “escalate.”
Defending the launches, Ri argued that the guided missile test was merely an “exercise of the full-fledged right of a sovereign state to self-defense,” given that the US and its allies routinely flex their military muscles in the region with “dangerous war exercises” and are happy to arm themselves with advanced weapons.
Ri appeared to reject speculation that the rocket launches, all conducted within a span of a week in the run-up to Biden’s much-anticipated first solo press conference on Thursday, were meant to send a signal to the new administration.
“We are by no means developing weapons to draw someone’s attention or influence his policy,” the official said. Ri, who according to North Korea’s state media, oversaw the latest launch, went on to denounce Biden’s vow of retaliation as “an undisguised encroachment” on North Korea’s right to self-defense and “provocation,” warning that the US “may be faced with something that is not good” if it continued such rhetoric.
The missiles test-fired on Thursday were described by the Japanese and South Korean militaries as ballistic missiles. While North Korea is banned from testing ballistic missiles under UN Security Council resolutions, Washington is not bound by such constraints. Last month, the US military fired an unarmed LGM-30G Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) from a California base, with the US Air Force saying that the launch showed that Washington’s “strategic deterrent is safe, secure and effective.”
“Our nation’s ICBM fleet stands ready 24/7,” Lieutenant General Anthony Cotton, deputy commander of the Air Force’s Global Strike Command, said at the time.
Earlier this month, the US and South Korea held a nine-day joint military exercise that was scaled back this year due to the Covid-19 pandemic. The scope of the annual computer-simulated drills has been limited since the previous US administration attempted to strike a denuclearization agreement with Pyongyang, though the effort ultimately failed after Washington refused to provide any sanctions relief until North Korea carried out “complete and irreversible” denuclearization.
Nicaragua rebuffs attacks at human rights hearing
Nicaraguan Attorney General Wendy Morales defended Nicaraguan government Caribbean Coast policies at the hearing of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights on March 18.
By John Perry | NicaNotes | March 25, 2021
Nicaragua was one of the first countries in Latin America to give constitutional rights to its Indigenous peoples and its laws to protect their territories are justly famous (especially the Autonomy Law of 1986 and the Demarcation Law of 2003). Some 40,000 Indigenous families live in areas that are legally owned and administered by over 300 Indigenous communities, covering almost a third of the country. Governmental recognition of land rights was the first step in tackling incursions by non-Indigenous settlers from western Nicaragua and the violent conflicts they sometimes produce. But because colonization of Indigenous territories has been taking place for decades, taking the next steps – delineation of the territories, dealing with illegal titles (primarily given under previous governments) and potentially removing settlers – is a complex process that involves delicate negotiation and agreement at the local level.
Sadly but inevitably, the invasions by settlers have become another issue on which to attack Nicaragua’s Sandinista government. A handful of local NGOs, in some cases funded by the US government and aided by US and European organizations such as California’s Oakland Institute, have weaponized the human rights of Indigenous Nicaraguans. They make outrageous claims that the government is not just trampling over such rights but is guilty of systematic assassinations, exterminating communities, forced disappearances and even genocide (using this term is particularly egregious: the NGOs claim there have been 46 deaths since 2015 and some of these cases are questionable; this is among more than 220,000 Indigenous Nicaraguans).
Claims such as these were repeated in an online hearing held by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights on March 18. IACHR is part of the Organization of American States and gets much of its funding from the US government. The hearing began with the heads of two Nicaraguan “human rights” bodies, CEJUDHCAN and CALPI, making these accusations, giving few details and calling in evidence only one member of the communities said to be affected (who seems to have spent much of the last three years living in Europe). In fact, except for these two NGOs and the spokesperson for the Nicaraguan government, none of the eight other speakers at the IACHR hearing were Nicaraguan. IACHR called none of the democratically elected representatives of Indigenous communities nor did it accept any questions to the speakers during the 90-minute hearing, despite having invited and received several detailed questions beforehand (including questions from Nicaraguans and from AFGJ supporters). Before the hearing, AFGJ and Task Force on the Americas formally submitted as evidence the new report, Nicaragua’s Indigenous Peoples – Neocolonial Lies, Autonomous Reality: this was completely ignored.
Of the dozen people invited to take part, only one, Nicaragua’s attorney general Wendy Morales, was prepared to comment positively about developments in the Caribbean regions (her testimony is available in English and in Spanish). Morales responded very effectively and comprehensively to the allegations made by the NGOs. She pointed out that the constitution is unique in recognizing communal land rights, that the rights of Indigenous people to take part in decision-making and to use their own languages are not only protected but a key part of (for example) the school and health systems. She explained the investment which the government is making in good roads and highways as well as public services, and the steps already taken to regularize land holdings and mediate with settlers, many of whom are long-established in Indigenous areas and may have been illegally “sold” land even though it can only be held communally. She noted that 23 original peoples’ territories have been titled and delimited and gave examples of how these areas are protected (e.g. by community-appointed forest wardens and by locally agreed procedures for dealing with new settlers).
Morales also responded to some of the direct accusations made by the NGOs. One was that “precautionary measures” issued by the IACHR to protect local activists had been ignored by the government. In response she cited the case of Juan Carlos Ocampo, the Indigenous Miskitu giving testimony at the proceedings at the invitation of CEJUDHCAN; he had been granted such measures in 2018 but had never presented himself to the local judge, as required, to take advantage of them. Challenging the argument that the government was allowing indiscriminate logging and mining in tropical forests, Morales held up an article from the right-wing newspaper La Prensa in which logging companies were complaining that the government refuses permits and prevents them from operating. Another article in La Prensa praised an agreement made between an Indigenous community and a mining company. The Oakland Institute representative, Anuradha Mittal, repeated false accusations about cattle farming in Indigenous areas which were debunked last year by NicaNotes and in an article for FAIR. Morales explained how Nicaragua’s sophisticated traceability system prevents any meat coming from cattle in protected areas from entering the supply chain.
As the AFGJ National Co-Coordinator Chuck Kaufman said before the hearing, “It strains credulity that the IACHR will hold a legitimate and fair hearing when it has not invited any of the elected and traditional Indigenous leaders from the region. Why would it even choose to examine Nicaragua in the first place on the issue of colonization when it has by far the best record with regard to Indigenous sovereignty and rights in Central America, if not the whole hemisphere?”
No one denies that the land conflicts in Nicaragua’s Caribbean territories are real. But knowing that this part of the country is deeply divided between supporters and opponents of Nicaragua’s government, IACHR chooses to give voice only to one side, allowing the government to respond but ignoring the variety of views in the communities themselves. IACHR encourages a judgment that the government is deliberately refusing to adopt obvious solutions to land conflicts, when the reality is much more complex. In doing so, it overlooks the obstacles and supports allegations of government neglect, while disregarding the many advances being made alongside the problems that remain.
It remains to be seen whether – after a long history of treating the Sandinista government in a manner little short of contempt – the IACHR is capable of reaching a balanced appraisal of the problems faced by the people of the Caribbean coast and of the government’s efforts to resolve them. When the outcome of the hearing is received, NicaNotes will be ready to analyze it.
NYT used ‘deceptive disinformation’ to smear Project Veritas, acted with ‘reckless disregard’ and ‘malice’, judge rules
RT | March 20, 2021
A defamation suit from Project Veritas against the New York Times is moving forward, as a judge has ruled the newspaper posed opinion as fact in their coverage of the conservative news outlet.
A New York Supreme Court judge handed Veritas, known for its undercover and whistleblowing videos, a big “win” this week, allowing a defamation suit against the paper and two reporters to proceed forward.
In the ruling denying a motion to dismiss the suit, the Times was accused of acting with “actual malice” and “reckless disregard” in multiple articles covering a 2020 video report from Veritas on alleged illegal voting practices taking place in Minnesota. It was not the only voter fraud allegation Veritas covered in 2020, with one video expose actually leading to the arrest of a Texas political consultant on charges of election fraud and illegal voting.
In the Minnesota video, multiple people are seen taking part in or discussing ballot harvesting and linking the act to Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minnesota). The report alleged ballots were being paid for and even filled out for voters to favor certain candidates. One ballot harvester featured in the video, Liban Osman, has since claimed footage of him was heavily edited and that he was offered money to connect the alleged fraud to Omar – an allegation Project Veritas denied.
The five Times articles in question called Veritas’ Minnesota videos deceptive, but Justice Charles Wood determined this was not fact, but rather opinion from reporters Maggie Astor and Tiffany Hsu.
“The Articles that are the subject of this action called the Video ‘deceptive,’ but the dictionary definitions of ‘disinformation’ and ‘deceptive’ provided by defendants’ counsel certainly apply to Astor’s and Hsu’s failure to note that they injected their opinions in news articles, as they now claim,” he wrote in his decision.
Astor referred to a “long history” of releasing “manipulated or selectively edited footage” on the part of Veritas in an article, while Hsu called the video “deceptive” in coverage.
Wood said this sort of vague coverage “could be viewed as exposing Veritas to ridicule and harm to its reputation as a media source because the reader may read these news Articles, expecting facts, not opinion, and conclude that Veritas is a partisan zealot group, deceptively editing video, and presenting it as news.”
Lawyers for the Times argued that a reader could determine that specific wording such as “deceptive” is opinion-based and cited other news outlets that used similar language, but Wood said the paper did not meet “their burden to prove that the reporting by Veritas in the Video is deceptive.”
Project Veritas founder James O’Keefe has celebrated the court victory as a “win” for his news outlet and promised that Astor and even New York Times executive editor Dean Baquet will now be put under oath “where they will be forced to answer our questions.”
“Project Veritas will record these depositions and expose them for the world to see,” he said.
As Israel plans to evict up to 550 Palestinians from East Jerusalem, Biden regime remains silent
By Robert Inlakesh | RT | March 18, 2021
Igniting tensions in East Jerusalem, Israeli settler organisations are seeking to uproot up to 550 Palestinians from the city, to the complete silence of a Biden administration that claims to seek a two-State solution.
In what could become one of the largest expulsions of Palestinians from East Jerusalem, Israeli settler organisations are working with the country’s legal system to evict 24 families from their homes.
During October, 2020, the Israeli magistrate court of Jerusalem ordered the expulsion of 12 families, out of the 24 living inside the East Jerusalem neighbourhood of Sheikh Jarrah. In addition to their expulsion from their homes, the Palestinian families were also ordered by the court to pay $20,000 in legal fees.
The expulsion order, which is likely to be completed with the destruction of Palestinian property, after it is seized to make way for illegal Israeli settlers, is set to be enforced as early as May. As it stands, four Palestinian households – comprising 27 people – will be forced out onto the street no later than May 2, while three other families are set to be forced out in August.
Israeli settler organisations based in the Karm al-Jaouni area are behind the expulsion orders, claiming that the land on which Palestinians live, in Sheikh Jarrah, was once owned by Jews prior to the 1948 Arab-Israeli war. Despite Palestinian attempts to present their legal case that the settler organisations are lying about this and have no proof, Israeli courts refuse to see the evidence. It is also important to note that, while the Israeli legal system will recognise the claims of Jewish Israelis to land allegedly owned previously by Jews, this right is not granted to Palestinians.
On the issue of the Sheikh Jarrah evictions, Fadi al-Hidmi, Palestinian Authority Minister of Jerusalem Affairs, stated that the international community is obligated to step in. “What is taking place is a systematic, programmed process of replacing the Palestinians expelled from their land and property with foreign settlers,” he said.
Last night, Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) movement also released a statement, vowing a response to the actions of Israel in Sheikh Jarrah. The PIJ proclaimed that Israel “will pay the price for this aggression.”
In the 1970s, following the June 1967 occupation of East Jerusalem, Israel began implementing a “demographic balance” policy. The aim for the Israeli authorities is to limit the percentage of Palestinians living in the city to 30% or less. While Israel claims that Jerusalem is its undivided capital, the Palestinian Authority only seeks to gain back East Jerusalem, which is considered under international law to be an illegally occupied territory.
Despite the Biden Administration having stated consistently that it seeks a two-State solution and that this is the only solution in the Palestine-Israel conflict, it continues to ignore the ongoing ethnic cleansing of East Jerusalem. Not only does Biden not confront Israel on the issue of its illegal settlements and home demolitions in Jerusalem, but it has worked to attack the International Criminal Court (ICC) which is poised to investigate the settlement issue.
Biden’s Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who is a supporter of the notion of a two-State solution weighed in on the announcement from the ICC that it would investigate alleged Israeli War Crimes, stating “The United States firmly opposes an @IntlCrimCourt investigation into the Palestinian Situation. We will continue to uphold our strong commitment to Israel and its security, including by opposing actions that seek to target Israel unfairly.”
If there is to be a two-State solution, the capital of the future Palestinian State will have to belong in currently occupied East Jerusalem. However, this is being made more and more impossible by the day, with the systematic expulsion of Palestinian residents from the city, along with the expansion of key settlements such as Atarot, Ramat Shlomo and Givat Hamatos, which divide the city from the West Bank.
Along with Sheikh Jarrah, Israeli Settler organisations are also heavily targeting the area of Silwan, from which at least 36 families have been expelled since the beginning of 2020, according to Israeli NGO Peace Now. In East Jerusalem as many as 200,000 Israeli settlers live, with about 2,500 hardline settlers residing in properties surrounding Palestinians in areas like Silwan.
Earlier this week, 11 Palestinians were injured in clashes with Israeli police forces, who reportedly raided the East Jerusalem neighbourhood of Kafr Aqab as a bulldozer made an opening in the wall surrounding the area. Local youths then acted to tear down the fences built around the construction site, for what has been described as a Judaization project in the area.
An Israeli NGO called Grassroots Jerusalem states that the presence of illegal Israeli settlers in East Jerusalem causes great agitation to Palestinian residents. The NGO claims that settlers have “been responsible for forced evictions and terrorism.”
Last year almost 1,000 Palestinians were made homeless due to Israeli house demolitions in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, with over 10,000 settler units having been approved.
If the Biden Administration continues to remain silent and shield Israel from prosecution for its violations of International Law in East Jerusalem, the two-State solution that the US claims to seek will only become more difficult to achieve. In order for there to be a Palestinian capital in East Jerusalem, Israel’s illegal settlements have to halt further construction, evacuate all settlers and the annexation of the territory – since 1980 – has to be reversed. None of the steps necessary to facilitate a two-State solution includes shielding war crimes, and what we are seeing is exactly that.
Robert Inlakesh is a political analyst, journalist, and documentary filmmaker currently based in London, UK. He has reported from and lived in the occupied Palestinian territories and currently works with Quds News and Press TV. Director of ‘Steal of the Century: Trump’s Palestine-Israel Catastrophe’.
THE RUSSIAN HYDRA
By Paul Robinson | IRRUSSIANALITY | March 16, 2021
If you want to understand international affairs but only have time to read one academic article, the one I’d recommend would be Robert Jervis’ “Hypotheses on Misperception,” published in World Politics in 1968. It contains 14 hypotheses about how states misperceive one another, creating many of the problems which endanger international security. None of it is exactly rocket science, but it’s the kind of obvious truth that needs to be said, and then repeated over and over again, because people seem to be unable to take it in.
I give the article to students in my defence policy course so we can discuss things such as “Hypothesis 8 is that there is an overall tendency for decision-makers to see other states as more hostile than they are,” and “Hypothesis 9 states that actors tend to see the behavior of others as more centralized, disciplined, and coordinated than it is.” Obvious stuff, as I said, but it comes in useful when we move on to discuss other matters such as this week’s class topic, which was hybrid warfare.
Long-term readers of this blog will know that I’m not a fan of the concept of hybrid warfare, but as it’s something students of defence policy will hear a lot about I kind of have to discuss it, for which purpose I googled around looking for suitable diagrams to use to explain the idea. In the process, I came across this one that accompanied an interview a couple of years ago with a guy called Mark Voyger who was at one time a special advisor to Lieutenant General Ben Hodges, the former Commanding General of US Army Europe.
I thought this depiction of the Russian ‘hydra’ with multiple tentacles emanating from a central core to attack the ‘target nation’ was great because it so clearly demonstrates hypotheses 8 & 9 mentioned above, as well as highlighting the absurdity of the hybrid warfare concept.
For what it does is label absolutely everything ‘war’. Intelligence, diplomacy, law, social-cultural activities, cyber, information, energy, economic relations, infrastructure, crime, and conventional military forces are not just intelligence, diplomacy, law etc. They’re WAR!! Which if you think about it is kind of odd. Isn’t diplomacy meant to be kind of the opposite of war? Why are social-cultural activities (e.g. cultural exchanges) war? Why are information or economic relations war? It’s an extraordinarily paranoid view of the world, in which everything another state, or its citizens do, is part and parcel of a campaign to destroy us from within. They don’t trade with us to get rich. No, they trade with us to subvert us! And so on.
In short, the hybrid warfare concept is pretty much an embodiment of hypothesis 8, allowing those who propagate it to exaggerate threats, and make just about everything a matter of security. That, if you think about it, is more than a little scary. Trade, diplomacy, culture, etc. shouldn’t be securitized. But it’s also conceptual dodgy – after all, when everything is war, then the term war loses any meaning as something distinct.
Beyond that, the Russian hydra model in the diagram above perfectly illustrates hypothesis 9 – i.e. the tendency, “to see the behavior of others as more centralized, disciplined, and coordinated than it is.” For in the diagram, all the tentacles come out of a single core, suggesting that the Russian political leadership is coordinating everything everybody in Russia does and directing it towards a single common purpose – destroying the “target nation.” Which is of course absurd – not only does it exaggerate the Russian state’s power and abilities, but it also ignores the fact that many of those engaged in activities such as cultural exchanges, trade, the media, etc., etc., are following their own agendas not those of the state.
Unfortunately, the hydra model seems quite well entrenched in Western thinkers’ minds. I was looking today at the British government’s new review of foreign and defence policy, and it had the following to say:
A more integrated approach supports faster decision-making, more effective policy-making and more coherent implementation by bringing together defence, diplomacy, development, intelligence and security, trade and aspects of domestic policy in pursuit of cross-government, national objectives. The logic of integration is to make more of finite resources within a more competitive world in which speed of adaptation can provide decisive advantage. It is a response to the fact that adversaries and competitors are already acting in a more integrated way – fusing military and civilian technology and increasingly blurring the boundaries between war and peace, prosperity and security, trade and development, and domestic and foreign policy.
You get it – foreign, “malign” states have fully integrated policies, “blurring the boundaries between war and peace” by coordinating defence, diplomacy, trade, etc., etc, in a seamless strategy of aggression.
And here we run into another danger of the hybrid warfare theory. On the basis of the myth of the hybrid ‘hydra’, Western states are now arguing that they need to become the hydra themselves. I can’t see it ending well.
How Do Big Media Outlets So Often “Independently Confirm” Each Other’s Falsehoods?
NBC News’ national security reporter and long-time de facto CIA spokesman Ken Dilanian purporting to “independently confirm” a false CNN story, Dec. 8, 2017
By Glenn Greenwald | March 16, 2021
There were so many false reports circulated by the dominant corporate wing of the U.S. media as part of the five-year-long Russiagate hysteria that in January, 2019, I compiled what I called “The 10 Worst, Most Embarrassing U.S. Media Failures on the Trump-Russia Story.” The only difficult part of that article was choosing which among the many dozens of retractions, corrections and still-uncorrected factual falsehoods merited inclusion in the worst-ten list. So stiff was the competition that I was forced to omit many huge media Russiagate humiliations, and thus, to be fair to those who missed the cut, had to append a large “Dishonorable Mention” category at the end (note: the Intercept’s site seems to be down for the moment, rendering that first link inoperable).
That the entire Russiagate storyline itself was a fraud and a farce is conclusively demonstrated by one decisive fact that can never be memory-holed: namely, the impetus for the scandal and subsequent investigation was the conspiracy theory that the Trump campaign had secretly and criminally conspired with the Russian government to interfere in the 2016 election, primarily hacking into the email inboxes of the DNC and Clinton campaign chief John Podesta. And a grand total of zero Americans were accused (let alone convicted) of participating in that animating conspiracy.
The New York Times’ May, 2017 announcement of Robert Mueller as special counsel stated explicitly that his task was “to oversee the investigation into ties between President Trump’s campaign and Russian officials” and specifically “investigate ‘any links and/or coordination between the Russian government and individuals associated with the campaign of President Donald Trump.’”
The related secondary media-created conspiracy theory was that the Kremlin clandestinely controlled U.S. political institutions by virtue of sexual and financial blackmail held over President Trump, which they used to compel him to obediently obey their dictates. “I don’t know what the Russians have on the president, politically, personally, or financially” was the dark innuendo which House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her media allies most loved to spout. “Prestige news” outlets created their own Q-Anon-level series of art designed to implant in Americans’ minds a slew of McCarthyite imagery showing the Kremlin (or an iconic Moscow cathedral they mistook for the Kremlin) having fully infiltrated Washington’s key institutions.
Cover story of The New Yorker, Feb. 24, 2017
But that all came crashing down on their heads in April, 2019, when Mueller announced that he was closing his investigation without charging even a single American with the criminal conspiracy that launched the entire spectacle: criminally conspiring with the Russian government to interfere in the election. Again: while Mueller — like so many Washington special counsels before him — ended up snaring some operatives in alleged process crimes committed after the investigation commenced (lying to the FBI and obstruction of justice) or unrelated crimes (Manafort’s financial sleaze), the 18-month aggressive, sprawling investigation resulted in exactly zero criminal charges on the core claim that Trump officials had criminally conspired with Russia.
If that were not sufficient to make every person who drowned the country in this crazed conspiracy theory feel enormous shame (and it should have been), the former FBI Director’s final Report explicitly stated that “the investigation did not establish that members of the Trump campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election.” In many cases, the Report went even further than this “did not establish” formulation to state that there was no evidence of any kind found for many of the key media conspiracies (“The investigation did not identify evidence that any U.S. persons knowingly or intentionally coordinated with the IRA’s interference operation”; the “evidence does not establish that one campaign official’s efforts to dilute a portion of the Republican platform was undertaken at the behest of candidate Trump or Russia”; “the investigation did not establish that [Carter] Page coordinated with the Russian government in its efforts to interfere in the 2016 presidential election”). The Report also barely even dignified let alone confirmed the long-standing, utterly deranged Democratic/media conspiracy theory that the Kremlin had taken over U.S. policy through blackmail.
The Advocate, Mar. 10, 2017
For a few weeks following the issuance of the Mueller report, Democrats and media figures gamely attempted to deny that it obliterated the conspiracy theories to which they had relentlessly subjected the country for the prior four years. How could they do otherwise? They staked their entire reputations and the trust of their audience on having this be true. To avoid their day of reckoning, they would hype ancillary events such as Paul Manafort’s conviction on unrelated financial crimes or Michael Flynn’s guilty plea for a minor and dubious charge (for which even Mueller recommended no prison time) or Roger Stone’s various process charges to insist that there was still a grain of truth to their multifaceted geopolitical fairy tale seemingly lifted straight from a Tom Clancy Cold War thriller about the world’s two largest nuclear powers.
But even they knew this was just a temporary survival strategy and that it was unsustainable for the long term. That the crux of the scandal all along was that key Trump allies if not the President himself would be indicted and imprisoned for having conspired with the Russians was too glaring to make people forget about it.
That was why former CIA Director John Brennan assured the MSNBC audience in March — just weeks before Mueller closed his investigation with no conspiracy crimes alleged — that it was impossible that the investigation could close without first indicting Trump’s children and other key White House aides on what Brennan correctly said was the whole point of the scandal from the start: “criminal conspiracy involving the Russians . . . . whether or not U.S. persons were actively collaborating, colluding, cooperating, involved in a conspiracy with them or not.” Brennan strongly insinuated that among those likely to be indicted for criminally conspiring with the Russians were those “from the Trump family.”
As we all know, literally none of that happened. Not only were Trump family members not indicted by Mueller on charges of “criminal conspiracy involving the Russians,” no Americans were. Brennan believed there was no way that the Mueller investigation could end without that happening because that was the whole point of the scandal from the start. To explain why it had not happened up to that point after eighteen months of investigation by Mueller’s subpoena-armed and very zealous team of prosecutors, Brennan invented a theory that they were waiting to do that as the final act because they knew they would be fired by Trump once it happened. But it never happened because Mueller found no evidence to prove that it did.
In other words, the conspiracy theory that the media pushed on Americans since before Trump’s inauguration — to the point where it drowned out most of U.S. politics and policy for years — proved to have no evidentiary foundation. And that is one reason I say that the sectors of the media pretending to be most distraught at the spread of “disinformation” by anonymous citizens on Facebook and 4Chan are, in fact, the most aggressive, prolific and destructive disseminators of that disinformation by far (nor was it uncredentialed YouTube hosts, Patreon podcasters or Substack writers who convinced Americans to believe that Saddam Hussein possessed nuclear weapons and was in an alliance with Al Qaeda but rather the editor-heavy prestige outlets such as The New York Times, The New Yorker, NBC News and The Atlantic).
With the crux of the Russiagate conspiracy theory collapsed, U.S. media outlets began acknowledging — because they had to — that none of it was vindicated by Mueller’s report. To do so, they abruptly nullified a rule that had been in place since Mueller’s appointment: one may not speak ill of the former FBI Director because he is a patriotic man of the highest integrity and to malign him is to undermine the Brave Men and Women of the FBI Who Keep Us Safe. The only self-preservation tactic they could find to salvage their credibility was to turn on Mueller, quite viciously. Overnight, the storyline emerged: the conspiracy theory we pushed on you was correct all along, but Mueller was a coward and failed in his patriotic duty to say so.
While the hypocrisy of watching a media that for months demanded reverence for Mueller turn on a dime to accuse him of being a borderline-senile, unpatriotic coward was quite amazing, it was at least some progress toward acknowledging the undeniable reality that the media had collectively failed. Their dark conspiracies and predictions of doom were pipe dreams. They flooded the country with disinformation for years about all of this. And while they characteristically engaged in exactly zero self-reflection or self-critique — preferring to heap all the blame on Mueller instead for failing to find the evidence that is still out there of their cognitive derangements — it at least consecrated the fact that this scandal ended in humiliation for them.
When I created my top ten list of media Russiagate debacles, choosing the top ten was difficult but choosing the top spot was not. It is worth briefly revisiting that particular journalistic humiliation because of what it reveals about ongoing media behavior.
On the morning of December 8, 2017, CNN went on the air with one of the most cataclysmic and breathless scoops of the entire Russiagate saga. The network hauled out all of its most melodramatic graphics, music and host voice-tones to signify that this was it : the smoking gun, the ultimate bombshell, the final nail in the coffin, inescapable proof for their conspiracy theory. The big huge scoop notably came from its Congressional reporter Manu Raju (one of the favorite dumping grounds for false leaks by leading House Democrat Russiagate fanatics such as Rep. Adam Schiff and Eric Swalwell (D-CA)).
According to this historic CNN revelation, a stunning and incriminating email had been obtained by “congressional investigators,” and “multiple sources” conveyed its contents to CNN. This email proved, said CNN, that Donald Trump Jr. was given advanced access to the archive of DNC and Podesta emails ultimately published by WikiLeaks on September 14, 2016. This earth-shattering email to Trump, Jr. was dated September 4 — ten days before WikiLeaks began publishing — and this, in the minds of CNN, proved somehow that the Trump campaign was in on the plot from the start.
Now, even if Trump had been shown the archive in advance by WikiLeaks or someone else, it would not have remotely proven that the Trump campaign was a participant in the plot, but let us not get detained on that hypothetical. The CNN story was treated by the entire liberal sector of the press as the most devastating and incriminating evidence yet produced to prove the truth of the Russiagate conspiracy theory, with one particularly loyal Democratic partisan-writer using an image of a nuclear explosion to convey its significance:
Talking Points Memo editor Josh Marshall, Dec. 8, 2017
As it turns out, there was one small problem with the CNN story: it was completely and utterly false. The email to Trump, Jr. on which the entire bombshell was based was sent after WikiLeaks began publishing the archive, not before. And it was sent not by some super-secret inside source with the Kremlin or WikiLeaks, but by a random member of the public who, having read about the WikiLeaks publications in the newspaper, emailed Trump, Jr. to encourage him to take a look.
How “multiple sources” all got the date on the email wrong — mis-reading it as September 4 rather than the real date of the email: September 14 — was never explained by CNN. That is because corporate media outlets believe they owe the public no explanation or accountability for the massive errors they commit.
But what was most notable about this episode is that it was not just CNN which reported this fraudulent story. An hour or so after the network shook the political world with its graphics-and-music-shaped bombshell, other news networks — including MSNBC and CBS News — claimed that they had obtained what they called “independent confirmation” that the story was true.
All of these media outlets, reading Orwell as if it is an instruction manual, have now scrubbed most of the humiliating videos where they did this from the internet. But one can still watch here as NBC News’ national security reporter and long-time de facto CIA spokesman Ken Dilanian breathlessly tells an MSNBC host, who herself can barely maintain her composure, that he has spoken with “sources” who have provided independent confirmation of the CNN story, thus adding NBC News’ imprimatur to it. Shortly thereafter, CBS News did the same.
All of this prompted the obvious question: how could MSNBC and CBS News have both purported to “independently confirm” a CNN bombshell that was completely false? The reason this matters is because the term “independently confirm” significantly bolsters the credibility of the initial report because it makes it appear that other credible-to-some news organizations have conducted their own investigation and found more evidence that proves it is true. That is the purpose of the exercise: to bolster the credibility of the story in the minds of the public.
But what actually happens is as deceitful as it is obvious. When a news outlet such as NBC News claims to have “independently corroborated” a report from another corporate outlet, they often do not mean that they searched for and acquired corroborating evidence for it. What they mean is much more tawdry: they called, or were called by, the same anonymous sources that fed CNN the false story in the first place, and were fed the same false story. And just as CNN did — repeated what they were told (almost certainly by Democratic Congressional members and/or their staff) without independently investigating it, because they knew any anti-Trump story would please their partisan audience — NBC News pretended they had obtained “independent confirmation” when all they had done was speak to the same sources that fed CNN.
This episode is so worth recalling not only because it is one of the most stunning and pathetic media humiliations of the Trump era — though it is that — but also because the shoddy tactic that drove it is still in full use by the same media outlets. We just saw proof of that again with a major Washington Post “correction” — which should be called a retraction — of one of the most-discussed news stories of the last six months: the Post’s claims about what Trump said when he called a Georgia election official while he was still contesting the 2020 election results.
On January 9, The Washington Post published a story reporting that an anonymous source claimed that on December 23, Trump spoke by phone with Frances Watson, the chief investigator of the Georgia Secretary of State’s office, and directed her that she must “find the fraud” and promised her she would be “a national hero” if she did so. The paper insisted that those were actual quotes of what Trump said. This time, it was CNN purporting to independently confirm the Post’s reporting, affirming that Trump said these words “according to a source with knowledge of the call.”
But late last week, The Wall Street Journal obtained a recording of that call, and those quotes attributed to Trump do not appear. As a result, The Washington Post — two months after its original story that predictably spread like wildfire throughout the entire media ecosystem — has appended a correction at the top of its original story. Politico’s Alex Thompson correctly pronounced these errors “real bad” because of how widely they spread and were endorsed by other major media outlets.
This is a different species of journalistic malpractice than mere journalistic falsehoods. As I detailed in February and again two weeks ago, the U.S. public was inundated for weeks with an utterly false yet horrifying story — that a barbaric pro-Trump mob had savagely murdered Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick by bashing his skull in with a fire extinguisher. That false tale about the only person said to have been killed at the January 6 riot other than pro-Trump supporters emanated from a New York Times report based on the claims of “two anonymous law enforcement officials.”
As it turns out, Sicknick’s autopsy revealed that he suffered no blunt trauma, and two men arrested this week were charged not with murder but assault and conspiracy to injure an officer: for using an unidentified gas. In reporting those arrests, even The New York Times acknowledged that “prosecutors stopped short of linking the attack to Officer Sicknick’s death the next day” because “both officers and rioters deployed spray, mace and other irritants during the attack” and “it remains unclear whether Officer Sicknick died because of his exposure to the spray.”
Many liberals defenders of these corporate media outlets insist that these major factual errors do not matter because the basic narrative — Trump and his supporters at the Capitol are bad people who did bad things — is still true. But these errors are enormous. That Trump, Jr. received that email from a random member of the public after WikiLeaks began publicly publishing documents transforms the story from smoking gun to irrelevant. That Trump did not utter the extremely incriminating quotes attributed to him in that call at least permits debate about whether he did anything wrong there and what his intent was (encouraging the official to find the fraud he genuinely believed was there or pressuring her to manufacture claims with threats and promises of reward). And there is, manifestly, a fundamental difference in both intent and morality between deliberately murdering someone by repeatedly bashing their skull in with a fire extinguisher and using a non-lethal crowd-control spray frequently used at protests even if it is ultimately proven that the spray is what caused Officer Sicknick’s death (which is why those two acts would carry vastly different punishments under the law).
But all of this highlights the real crisis in journalism, the reason public faith and trust in media institutions is in free fall. With liberal media outlets deliberately embracing a profit model of speaking overwhelmingly to partisan Democrats who use them as their primary source of news, there is zero cost to publishing false claims about people and groups hated by that liberal audience.
That audience does not care if these media outlets publish false stories as long as it is done for the Greater Good of harming their political enemies, and this ethos has contaminated newsrooms as well. Given human fallibility, reporting errors are normal and inevitable, but when they are all geared toward advancing one political agenda or faction and undermining the other, they cease to be errors and become a deliberate strategy or, at best, systemic recklessness.
But whatever else is true, it is vital to understand what news outlets mean when they claim they have “independently verified” the uncorroborated reports of other similar outlets. It means nothing of consequence. In many if not most cases — enough to make this formulation totally unreliable — it signifies nothing more than their willingness to serve as stenographers for the same anonymous political operatives who fed their competitors similar propaganda.
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From the Archives
Guaido’s true colors: “President” to fix Venezuelan relations with Israel
By Jim Carey | Geopolitics Alert | February 13, 2019
Caracas – In an interview over the weekend, “interim President” of Venezuela Juan Guaido promised he would work on restoring relations with Israel.
Despite not actually having a government or being in any type of official position of power within Venezuela Juan Guaido is still somehow making big promises. Last week it was the promise to sell oil he doesn’t control to the US and this week he is setting foreign policy for a state, a military, and a diplomatic core that he doesn’t have.
Regardless of Juan Guaido’s material position, Israel has been more than willing to indulge in the US fantasy in Venezuela and was one of the early states to recognize the fraud as “interim President.” Now it seems Guaido is more than willing to repay the favor should he ever actually hold office.
Guaido made this promise in a recent interview with the Israel Hayom newspaper where he told the interviewer that he was “very happy to announce that the process of stabilizing relations with Israel is in full swing.” While what exactly that means when you’re a President with no power is rather ambiguous, for some reason Guaido has said restoring relations “is very important for us.”
Regardless of all these factors, there are still several reasons the new President has made this a high priority. Even without any actual diplomatic staff recognized by the state, Guaidó has still been in contact with Israel and has even discussed opening a new Venezuelan embassy in Israel, saying it “is one of the subjects we are talking about.”
Another reason Guaidó claims he wants to restore relations with the Zionists is due to the fact that there “are many Venezuelans in Israel and many Jews in Venezuela.”
According to Guaidó, this Venezuelan Jewish community “is very active and prosperous”… continue
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