WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump’s decision to scrap the 1987 Intermediate Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty will be welcomed by the US nuclear weapons industry and major defense contractors, veteran Pentagon analyst Chuck Spinney told Sputnik on Monday.
“The trashing of the INF treaty is simply another step down a slippery slope that is being greased by the nuclear arms contractors,” said Spinney, a senior Department of Defense analyst for more than 30 years.
Trump said on Saturday that his administration was preparing to withdraw from the INF.
Speaking to reporters on the White House lawn on Monday, the US president also claimed that Russia had not done enough to adhere to the treaty. However, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov denied on Monday that Moscow was in violation of the landmark agreement.
Spinney said Trump’s decision to scrap the INF was an anticipated and expected consequent of his predecessor, President Barack Obama’s approval of a colossal $1.5 trillion US nuclear modernization and expansion weapons program over the next 30 years.
“In my view, this evolution was almost inevitable. We unilaterally pulled out of the missile defense treaty and effectively launched a new arms race when Obama caved into the nuclear weapons industry and launched his across the board nuclear modernization plan,” he said.
Spinney recalled that Obama had been praised for negotiating the new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) and had been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize after only one year in office, but that his huge nuclear weapons program contradicted those claimed achievements.
“Trump’s strategy and nuclear posture review essentially sealed Obama’s actions,” he said.
Trump has also refused to acknowledge Russia’s legitimate concern about the potential offensive capabilities of the Ballistic Missile Defense (BMD) systems that the United States has deployed in Poland and was also setting up in Romania, Spinney pointed out.
“Russians claim the BMD capabilities placed in Eastern Europe could be used to offensive purposes and their ‘new’ missile may well be a response to that,” he said.
Terminating the INF treaty would be a heavy blow for the entire international legal system of nonproliferation and arms control, the Russian Security Council said on Monday.
The INF was signed in 1987 and was pivotal in eliminating thousands of missiles from the American and Russian arsenals. Ex-Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, who signed the treaty along with then-US leader Ronald Reagan called Trump’s planned withdrawal from it very irresponsible.
October 22, 2018
Posted by aletho |
Militarism, Timeless or most popular | INF treaty, Obama, United States |
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For decades, the Finnish state has run a eugenics-like program that pressured an unknown number of deaf women to undergo sterilization before marriage and forced pregnant women to get abortions, a topic that largely remains taboo even today.
Members of the Finnish sign language society have argued that the state should take responsibility and acknowledge the abuses and encroachments on private life committed over the course of decades.
“(Forced) sterilization is a violent act and a serious human rights violation that has been tacitly accepted,” Maija Koivisto, a teacher at the Deaf Folk High School, told the daily newspaper Hufvudstadsbladet, in her call for a reconciliation process.
According to the Marriage Act of 1929, the deaf were not allowed to marry each other without special permission from the president. This law remained in force until 1969. According to Koivisto, many deaf women were slapped with an ultimatum: get sterilized or forget about marriage.
However, it’s now being acknowledged that some doctors continued to recommend sterilization to patients for several more decades. “Until now, I have assumed that the sterilizations continued until the 1950s and 1960s. But I have heard of a case in the 1990s when a doctor suggested sterilization for his deaf patient,” Koivisto told Hufvudstadsbladet.
According to Koivisto, the church may have had a role in forcible sterilizations, something that has not been talked about so much. In Deaf magazine, two women testified that church staff had exerted pressure on them to get sterilized.
At present, no exact data is available on exactly how many deaf women were sterilized in Finland, a mistake Koivisto intends to rectify. The Sterilization Act of 1935 led to devastating consequences for at least 7,530 Finnish women.
Koivisto suggested that many circumvented the marriage laws by becoming pregnant, thus forcing priests to wed them. Nevertheless, some had to agree to sterilization after that. Others chose to ‘live in sin’; cohabiting and giving birth to children out of wedlock was considered unacceptable at that time.
Koivisto ventured that the topic of sterilization has long been a taboo due to society’s attitude involving shame. Additionally, sterilized women were often seen as “whores” as they could have sex without having to worry about getting pregnant.
Koivisto noted a general tendency to disregard the needs of the deaf in the past. In Finland, sign language was forbidden in schools during the epoch of “oralism” between 1880 and 1970, when deaf children were encouraged to read lips and articulate. According to Koivisto, this matter may be gender-related, as most politicians and all priests at that time were men.
According to Koivisto, the Finnish state should give the deaf victims financial compensation for the abuse.
“I think the state should promise that we can participate in all decisions that concern us and will work to improve the status of the sign language. The state should also grant funds for investigations within the deaf community, for instance for therapeutic purposes,” she added.
Previously, Finland officially apologized for the mistreatment of children at orphanages and boarding schools. Last autumn, it was decided to form a Truth and Reconciliation Commission to gather information about the forced “Finnization” and discrimination that the Sami people have suffered. The Commission received over $1.7 million from the state budget.
Neighboring Sweden sterilized almost 63,000 people between 1935 and 1975, but later apologized and compensated the victims in 1997.
This year, the Japanese victims of a state-run sterilization program that targeted tens of thousands of people to prevent the birth of “inferior descendants,” demanded an apology from the state.
READ MORE:
Sweden to Make Peace With Forced Sterilization Victims Through Indemnities
October 22, 2018
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | Finland, Human rights, Sweden |
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Robrecht Vanderbeeken, the cultural secretary of Belgium’s ACOD trade union
A Belgian official’s remarks that Israel steals the organs of Palestinian children, whom it kills, have made headlines again after the news website which published them decided to stick to the story.
Robrecht Vanderbeeken, the cultural secretary of Belgium’s ACOD trade union and a philosophy of science scholar, had made the comments back in August in a column published by Belgian website De Wereld Morgen.
The population of the Gaza Strip is being “starved to death, poisoned, and children are kidnapped and murdered for their organs,” he wrote then.
The website recently received a complaint by Belgian watchdog, the Interfederal Center for Equal Opportunities, over the story.
De Wereld Morgen, however, stuck to the assertion that Israel “kidnapped” and “murdered” Palestinian children and used organs belonging to the Palestinians its forces killed.
In November 2015, the Palestinian ambassador to the United Nations said Israel harvested the organs of the Palestinians it killed.
In a letter to the UN secretary general, Riyad Mansour said the bodies of Palestinians killed by Israeli security forces “were returned with missing corneas and other organs, further confirming past reports about organ harvesting by the occupying power.”
The New York Times also said in an August 2014 report that transplant brokers in Israel had pocketed enormous sums of money. Based on the newspaper’s analysis of major organ trafficking cases since 2000, Israelis had played a “disproportionate role” in organ trafficking.
The issue of organ theft by Israel was first brought to the fore in a report published by Sweden’s most highly-circulated daily Aftonbladet in 2009.
Back in 2000, Dr. Yehuda Hiss, the former head of Israel’s forensic institute, divulged that Israeli pathologists at the institute would harvest skin, corneas, heart valves, and bones from the bodies of Palestinians and others often without permission from relatives.
The interview was, however, released no later than 2009 by Nancy Scheper-Hughes, a professor of anthropology at the University of California-Berkeley, who had conducted it as part of her investigation into the institute, in response to a row created between Israel and Sweden over Aftonbladet’s report.
October 21, 2018
Posted by aletho |
Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular | Human rights, Israel, Palestine, Zionism |
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No state established on land seized by force from the people living on that land can claim moral legitimacy and a ‘right’ to exist.
A purported ‘right’ to exist is not central to the existence of states anyway, let alone colonial settler states established amidst the wreckage of the genuine rights of another people.
States exist because they have strong armies because their enemies are too weak to destroy them, because they have good relations with near and far neighbors whose respect they have earned and because they have the consent of the people they govern.
They do not exist because of an imagined ‘right’ to exist. Were that to be the case, no state would ever have risen and then fallen in history. They would all still be here.
Israel understands this as well as anyone. It makes a lot of noise about its right to exist and its legitimacy but this is bluster. It knows why it exists and why it believes it will continue to exist. It has a strong military. It has nuclear weapons. It can destroy anyone who threatens to destroy it. These are the constituent elements of its existence, not morality and the ‘rights’ of which it endlessly talks.
‘Rise up and kill first” is not just the motto of Mossad but of the state. This is what it has done repeatedly ever since 1948. It has risen up and killed first, but with declining efficiency and herein lies the danger to its existence.
Its enemies are catching up. It has these enemies, not because of opposition to the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine. They certainly did oppose it but had this been followed with admissions of moral responsibility and legal liability, accompanied by material measures to make up for the damage done. Israel might have achieved a measure of consent within the Arab world.
It does have some but in a vacuous form. The treaty with Egypt has prevented war but the people of Egypt are as resolutely opposed to Israel as they were the day it was signed. This is not blind animosity but born of the fact that instead of working for a just peace, Israel has done its best to secure an unjust peace. It wants peace entirely on its own terms, which of course can never be achieved when two parties are in dispute if a serious peace really is the desired objective.
Israel’s bona fides are not genuine and never were. It has deceived not just its enemies but its partners. It has taken them for a ride. The Oslo ‘peace process’ was all process and no peace and was never designed, in the official Israeli mind, to lead to a genuine peace. It was aimed at achieving through an endlessly stretched-out ‘peace process’ what otherwise would have had to be achieved through war and it worked perfectly.
The trade-off for a genuine peace, East Jerusalem and the West Bank, are now densely settled. Facts always matter and nothing has mattered more to the Zionists from the beginning than creating facts on the ground that could not be removed because they were facts, irrespective of what the law said.
About a million settlers now live in East Jerusalem and the West Bank colonies. How can all these facts possibly be reversed, Netanyahu and his cohorts say with the palms of their hands extended helplessly as if they had nothing to do with this process and can’t do anything about it anyway.
Of course, they can be removed, as the French settlers in Algeria were in the 1960s, after 130 years of French occupation. Israel should have been made to remove its West Bank and East Jerusalem settlers long ago, apart from the fact that they never should have been there in the first place.
In any case, this should be regarded as Israel’s problem, instead of various governments accepting Israel’s justification of an illegal presence. One punishes the lawbreaker. One does not allow it to get away with the stolen goods.
The fact of settlement was intended to smother the question of illegality and in some minds, the American in particular, the strategy has succeeded. In the official US view the territories taken in 1967 are no longer occupied but ‘administered’ or ‘contested,’ enabling the next step, the shifting of the embassy to Jerusalem.
If Israel annexes all or most of the remainder of occupied Palestine the US will not oppose it and in time it will accept it, underlining the first point that the achievements of raw power, diplomatic, economic and military, are what is important to the Zionists and not the ephemera of legitimacy and the ‘right to exist.’ These phrases are fictions, distractions, the cover for a deeply immoral and deeply illegal process.
For Palestinians the state is illegitimate. There is absolutely no reason why they should think otherwise. There is no reason why they should have accepted a recommendation of the UN General Assembly in 1947 that was only passed because of threats by the US to vulnerable delegations.
There is no reason why they should accept their expulsion from their homeland, even if they have to deal somehow with the fact of Israel’s existence. No resolution gave Israel the right to take the land and drive out the people and no resolution could have given Israel such a right. Palestinian rights are inalienable.
The Palestinians have both law and morality on their side. Israel has neither. Even while claiming legitimacy and the ‘right to exist,’ it has never abided by the UN resolutions laid down as the conditions for its acceptance as a UN member.
But for the protective arm of the US, it may well have been suspended or expelled from the UN long ago. After all, what club accepts the membership of those who are warned time and again but still refuse to obey its rules?
States often violate international law. Israel is the only state in the world that lives in permanent, continuing violation of international law, not at one but many levels. This is not incidental or accidental but the necessary condition of its existence. To live within the law, to respect the law, would mean that Israel could not be what it wants to be and could not have what it wants to have.
To be what it wants to be, at least what every government has wanted it to be since 1948, Israel must live outside the law. The law is not relevant anyway. Israel sneers at the UN and has no respect for international law when it comes to Palestinian rights. It only respects its own laws, which of their nature are occupier’s laws and thus inconsistent with and indeed in violation of international law.
Israel’s strong right arm is all that really counts. ‘Friendships’ and pseudo-alliances, such as the ‘unbreakable bond’ with the US, are important but only for as long as they serve Israel’s interests. There is no sentiment here. Israel flattered Britain with fine phrases before jumping in the direction of the US when Britain had no more to give. For seven decades the US was the gift that kept giving but now that it is running out of steam as a global power, Israel has to hedge its bets, hence Netanyahu’s currying of favor with Vladimir Putin and the ramping up of its relations with China.
In the end, Israel’s ultimate defense is not questionable ‘friendships’ and ‘mutual interests’ that never last forever in the game of nations but its own strong right arm. So how strong is it?
Well, Israel has nuclear weapons and thus the ‘Samson option,’ the ability to pull down the roof on everyone’s head as well as its own. Whether, in the final resort, it will use these weapons is a question for the future but Israel’s possession of them has not deterred its enemies.
Rationally, perhaps it should have, but who is being rational here, a government and movements that resist occupation, as is their right in international law, or a government that continues an occupation, in defiance of law, morality and against the possibility of one day being able to call the people whose land it has taken and the states around its non-declared borders genuine ‘neighbors’? Against the possibility, it might be said, of one day really being able to call the Middle East home.
Whether or not the nuclear threat is a bluff, and given the extreme nature of Zionism, it probably is not, the resistance continues. With its nuclear weapons, yes, Israel has the capacity to destroy all life in the Middle East, but short of this, what about its conventional weaponry and military strength? Is this enough to hold its enemies at bay and beat them on every occasion?
The answer has to be probably not. In 1967 Israel caught Egypt and Syria napping. With their air forces destroyed on the ground, they were rendered almost helpless from the first day but it is most unlikely that there will be another 1967.
Since then Israel’s conventional military superiority has been slowly but perceptibly declining. In the size of the territory it has taken and the size of its population it lacks strategic depth. It must fight short wars. Thus, in 2006, after only a month of fighting Hizbullah, a guerrilla organization, not a regular army, it had to withdraw. The longer a war continues the less likely it is that it will be able to win it.
Its ‘victory’ in 1973 came about because Anwar Sadat stopped his army from fighting. In the first week of the war, the Israeli forces on the east bank of the Suez Canal were routed. Sadat never intended to defeat Israel because he knew the US would not allow it, so he declared an ‘operational pause’ after nine or ten days and handed Israel the opportunity to recover and cross the canal to the western side.
With Egypt sidelined militarily because of the 1979 ‘peace treaty’, Israel was free to go on the rampage elsewhere, mainly against Lebanon, a virtually defenseless target against the operations of a large army and air forces.
‘Incursions’ ending in thousands of civilian deaths led up to the invasion of 1982. What were the consequences? For Lebanon and the Palestinians, about 20,000 dead civilians, including the thousands killed in Sabra and Shatila. For Israel, yes, the defeat of the PLO was an achievement, but not much of one compared to the establishment of a far more dangerous enemy, Hizbullah.
By 2000 Hizbullah had driven Israel out of Lebanon and in 2006 it drove it back again. All Israel could do was use its air power to devastate cities, towns, and villages, but on the ground in the south, its highly rated Merkava tanks were destroyed and its troops outfought by Hizbullah’s part-time soldiers. This was a humiliating outcome for an army touted as one of the best in the world. Borrowing from Hizbullah, the Israeli military then increased the intake of ideologically committed recruits into the ranks of its officers, many of them from West Bank settler colonies.
Since then Israel has been itching to have another go at Hizbullah but this time the deterrence factor is working against it. It knows Hizbullah has built up an armory of missiles that can cause devastation across occupied Palestine. It knows its anti-missile defenses will not be able to stop many of them. In the meantime, while weighing up its chances and while preparing the blows that it says will destroy Lebanon as well as Hizbullah, it has a softer target to pick on, Gaza.
There, its onslaughts over the years, vicious in the extreme, brutal and inhumane, have killed many thousands of Palestinians. Hundreds of Palestinians, mostly very young, have been shot dead by snipers along the Gaza fence just in the past few months, without the Palestinian will to resist being destroyed.
The Israelis are now fighting balloons carrying fire into the occupied land, while Palestinians continue to strike at settlers occupying their land on the West Bank, despite the terrible consequences to themselves and their families.
Through all of this, Israel’s actions and reactions are becoming more hysterical, exposing psychological fragility and nervousness within the shell of outward confidence. It cannot shut down Palestinian resistance, its intimidation of Iran and Hizbullah has not worked and in the US there is a growing awareness that Israel is a violent racist state that does not merit by any means the large-scale support the US has always given it.
It is fighting back with all the weapons at its disposal, including hasbara, the attempt to criminalize the BDS movement and attacks on individual academics but the tide is running against it.
States need flexibility but Israel has none. Its power is brittle and like the oak against the willow, when the storm comes it is more likely to fall. After more than seven decades, it has no friends and allies in the Middle East worthy of the name. It uses Arab governments up just as they use it up but the Arab people are just as strongly opposed to this western colonial-settler implant in their midst as they always were. To repeat, this is not because they can’t adjust but because Israel can’t. In terms of being accepted by the Arab masses, it has not moved an inch forward.
History worked once for Israel but it is not working for it now. The wheel is turning against it. All it has on its side is armed might. By no means is this to be underrated but time does not stand still and neither do enemies convinced they have a just cause standing against a state that within itself knows it does not have a just cause.
Israel is always preparing for the next war but against a real enemy, not just defenseless civilians reduced to fighting back with fire balloons, it is going to take casualties unprecedented in its history next time around.
This is the very least that is going to happen, and all because of the determination to create a Jewish state on territory populated by people who are not Jewish. In the arrogant, twisted mindset of Netanyahu, Naftali Bennet, Ayelet Shaked, Avigdor Lieberman and the racist rabbis and settlers urging them on, it is the ideology that matters and not the peace and security of the Jewish people living in Palestine. Legitimacy is not the point. The point of the sword is the point and just as Israel has lived by it, so must it live with the possibility that one day it will die by it.
– Jeremy Salt taught at the University of Melbourne, at Bosporus University in Istanbul and Bilkent University in Ankara for many years, specializing in the modern history of the Middle East. Among his recent publications is his 2008 book, The Unmaking of the Middle East. A History of Western Disorder in Arab Lands (University of California Press).
October 19, 2018
Posted by aletho |
Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Militarism, Timeless or most popular | Hezbollah, Israel, Middle East, Palestine, Zionism |
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Watch at Bitchute
Or Rumble
Ed Mays October 11, 2018
Investigative journalist and best selling author Chris Bollyn makes the case for why he believes the Israeli Zionist government was behind the 9/11 attack in order to trick the US into carrying out it’s agenda in the Middle East.
Recorded 9/22/18 Pirate TV is a 58 minute weekly TV show that provides the book talk and lecture content for Free Speech TV.
Pirate TV challenges the Media Blockade, bringing you independent voices, information and programming unavailable on the Corporate Sponsor-Ship. These posts are for YouTube and are usually longer than the broadcast versions.
You will notice that I don’t monetize my videos. I’m irritated by constant interruptions as I’m sure are you. If you would like to pitch in to support this work, consider a donation: http://www.edmaysproductions.net/pira…
October 19, 2018
Posted by aletho |
False Flag Terrorism, Timeless or most popular, Video, Wars for Israel | Israel, Middle East, Palestine, United States, Zionism |
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The mainstream media reported today that Twitter suspended hundreds of accounts after users on the pro-Trump Reddit forum r/The_Donald coordinated efforts to use Twitter to set up ‘Non-Player Character’ (NPC) profiles mocking liberals.
The artistic campaign was born out of their characterisation of liberals as uncritical characters – automatons, name callers not capable of independent authentic thinking.
The BBC reported that within 24 hours there were more than 30,000 uses of the term NPC on Twitter, and Facebook pages dedicated to the trend amassed tens of thousands of followers.
The term NPC is borrowed from the digital games industry. It refers to characters managed by artificial intelligence whose behavior is limited to certain scripted responses and actions.
The NPC meme began as a satirical attempt to ridicule the New Left’s sound-bite, cliched culture. The BBC quoted one poster saying, “If you get in a discussion with them it’s always the same buzzwords and hackneyed arguments…It’s like in a when you accidentally talk to somebody twice and they give you the exact lines word for word once more.”
21st Century Wire’s Patrick Henningsen commented this morning on his Facebook page that “the ‘NPC’ meme is pure art, much more illustrative and reflective than the Pepe meme, and opens a whole new level of social commentary. By definition, this is what art does.”
But for some reason parts of the mainstream media are not enthusiastic about the new artistic adventure. Henningsen continues, “the MSM reaction is telling and so is Twitter’s ban. Ironically, Twitter proves they are ‘NPC’ by banning these memes after decreeing them to be ‘political manipulation’.” According to Henningsen, the recent panic over the NPC meme “… proves the insecurity of the Latte Left, that they can’t even tolerate laconic gamer satire.”
I believe that the negative reaction to the NPC meme is one more piece of evidence of the Judaisation of our social, political and cultural landscape.
Judaism is very strict in its opposition to icons and artistic imagery. The Torah contains a number of verses that specifically prohibit the creation of icons and images. The strongest Judaic anti artistic segment is provided by the second of the Ten Commandments: “Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image.” (Exodus 20:3-6)
Why should the Jewish God prevent his most favourite people from exploring the inspirational human facility to create and contemplate artistic beauty? The Almighty’s reasoning is explicit. Because “for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me.” Pretty scary God that the Jews invented for themselves although he can be kind to those who follow his orders. The Jewish God promises to “ show[ing] love to a thousand generations of those who love me and keep my commandments.”
Judaic aniconism supports a rejection of authentic thinking and doesn’t allow for the possibility of doubt. This restriction is spread throughout the entire Old Testament. The Judaic message is unambivalent – Do not think for yourself, do not be creative or artistic.
Knowingly or not, the ‘NPC’ meme ridicules the Judaization of America and the West. It points at our removal from the Athenian ethos of pluralism, aesthetics and critical thinking. It points at the Jerulamisation of the liberal political discourse, burdening open debate with a tyranny of correctness sustained by strict terminology and a list of the politically correct mitzvoth.
October 18, 2018
Posted by aletho |
Full Spectrum Dominance, Timeless or most popular | Facebook, NPC, Twitter |
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Our Vexed and Bitter Masters Seek Regime Change Again
Back in April of this year, a journalist in Gaza wearing a vest marked “PRESS” was deliberately shot and killed by IDF snipers. That brings the total number killed to 18 since the start of the Second Intifada. No one of consequence called for regime change in Israel.
As of July this year, there had already been six journalists killed in Mexico by drug cartels linked to Mexico’s corrupt government and our own intelligence services. The last one beaten to death in a horrific murder. Last year the number of journalists murdered set a new record for the country at 42. As far as I know, the MSM and Lindsey Graham have yet to call for sanctions and regime change.
In Columbia there have been two murdered for covering things the rulers didn’t want covered. But we like Columbia’s neoliberal government so for now, not a peep about changing it.
What makes the disappearance of Jamal Khashoggi so different? This is a question a few writers and researchers have been asking themselves and a couple of us have come to some honest, sensible, business-oriented answers… since of course the U.S. and her allies are all about Business.
Now let’s be clear. I write about Khashoggi’s disappearance because the only hard evidence that we have before us is this…
CCTV image of the missing Saudi Journalist Jamal Khashoggi entering the Saudi consulate
That is a blurry image of a middle aged man walking toward the door of the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. It is not proof of a murder. It is proof someone walked toward a door and then entered the building.
Everything else is speculation or statements from “anonymous sources close to the investigation” meaning it’s all baseless rumor, innuendo or deliberate disinformation.
It is entirely possible that the man in the image is not Jamal Khashoggi. And it is entirely possible that it is.
Therefore it is also entirely possible that Khashoggi is not dead by the hands of the Saudis and simultaneously… it is.
But it is not definitive by any stretch of the imagination in either way… unless all of a sudden you take our intelligence assets at face value as if they never lied to us before. Which is quite a leap of faith in my opinion.
All of the journalist murders I listed above have definite proof of their demise. Bodies. DNA. Causes of death. Death certificates. Coroner’s reports. Things of that nature. Here there is only that grainy image taken from a grainy video of about 4 seconds in length. And that, boys and girls, is it.
So why all the pressure being put on Saudi Arabia to essentially foment a regime change in the Kingdom of Saud over a grainy picture of a man who set up a Saudi Regime change NGO in Delaware back in January of this year? A regime change NGO promoted by the National Endowment for Democracy.
Why are MSM outlets and even so-called “alternative anti-war” (Common Dreams, Moon of Alabam and others) ones suddenly parroting the likes of Bernie Sanders and Lindsey Graham in calling for Mohammad bin Salmon’s removal from office?
Was the murder so brutal that it offended even the hardest regime change advocates in D.C. and their allies in the Washington Post? Do they not know the UAE hired a for-profit death-squad based in the U.S. to kill political rivals in Yemen in vicious brutal ways from 2015-2017?
In one case the American former Special Ops mercs put a big bomb on the door of a building they thought their one target was holding a meeting with a whole bunch of others. They hoped to kill EVERYONE in the building but were too late. So later they developed a methodology of using bikes to put bombs on cars in busy traffic intersections killing their targets that way. Them and anyone else who happened to be close.
Have you ever seen someone die slowly after a bomb goes off and blows off their legs or arms or rips open their guts? It’s horrible. And they weren’t even the target.
And yet this hit squad operated with impunity for a favored nation of ours and most involved with the operation find it hard too believe our military and political leadership didn’t know about it. Notice, it started under Obama and continued under Trump. What a shock huh?
You think the alleged abduction, torture, murder and dismemberment was so shocking to those folks they just HAD to do SOMETHING?
Or do you think it was because Khashoggi was pretending to be a journalist at the Washington Post as he fought for regime change in Saudi Arabia?
As some journalists , some news agencies and bloggers have pointed out, Khashoggi’s disappearance perfectly coincides with a number of international events that make this case rather suspect. Unfortunately that number is relatively low.
Khashoggi had extensive ties to Lockheed Martin, the old guard of Saudi royalty, the CIA and other intelligence assets… and of course… his very own regime change focused NGO.
We also know that the deal President Trump made with MbS and Saudi Arabia last year for 110 billion dollars worth of weapons sales was falling through and a deadline for them to purchase the horribly untrustworthy THAAD missile defense system came and went on Sept. 30th of this year with no purchase by MbS.
And we know that the Saudi ambassador to Russia was worried about the U.S. imposing sanctions on Saudi Arabia as recently as Sept. 21 due to them buying the Russian S-400 system instead.
Add to all that the Davos in the Desert meeting taking place this week which the risk of sanctions would seriously screw up… and you have a perfect storm of motive for someone OTHER than Saudi Arabia to either kidnap, kill or “send into early retirement” one Jamal Khashoggi. Right?
Now, 110 billion dollars in deals promised to the MIC is a lot of money, that is for sure. But the question kept rattling around in my feeble little brain… is that really enough to motivate every sector of American empire support, including the fake “alt-right and alt-left” outlets to go all out calling for YET ANOTHER regime change operation in the Middle East?
Seems like a damn good question doesn’t it?
And my answer was “no”
Then I started digging again and what I found makes that 110 billion dollars look like something I give to the local homeless guy every morning when he shows up lightly rapping, rapping upon my chamber door.
Try 4 trillion on for size. Four Trillion spread across every facet of our glorious business community and stretching into every pocket of every director sitting on both the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the for-profit Central Bank system.
Now THAT is something that EVERYONE can get behind, huh?
Yes, MbS is on the outs as they say but it’s not entirely due to his reluctance to buy U.S. made crappy weapons of war (though that is part of it)
What is really at play here is his apparent reneging on an even bigger deal and an ideological shift that made him the darling of all neoliberals in D.C., New York, London and Tel Aviv.
You see, MbS was installed by our intelligence assets for one purpose: he was finally going to be the Saudi royal family member to fully neoliberalize Arabia on behalf of our hot money speculators and Big Business interests.
The plan was called Vision 2030 (put together by globalist neoliberal technocrats from McKinsey in 2014) and when he first signed on for it (open financial markets to hot money speculators and Wall Street, privatization of everything from nationalized oil company to healthcare) MbS immediately became the DARLING of the Middle East. Man, the right and left of the Business Party loved him to death. Lindsey Graham drooled over him right along side Chris Mathews. Obama praised him as did Trump and everyone in between.
They coupled that with some bullshit about letting women drive cars so the left would get on board and suddenly the brutal dictatorship in Saudi Arabia was something left of Sesame Street. Bert and Ernie would still get beheaded for being gay, the Grouch would have his trash-can privatized and Big Bird would still loose his head for asking too many questions… but the facade was going to hold and a Saudi Arabia would be the new Shining City on the Hill.
All was great in the land Colonel Thomas Edward Lawrence.
But then a funny thing happened on the way to neoliberalization: the vulture capitalists kept being told … to wait till the feeding frenzy could begin.
The oil company IPO was the biggest single disappointment for the masters of the universe but there were many others detailed in the Vision 2030 plan. The IPO, the largest single offering of it’s kind in history, was supposed to have already taken place, making folks like Exxon, Goldman Sachs and BP shareholder in Saudi Arabia’s massive oil business. But it never happened and from the looks of it, the owners of all things planet Earth are getting tired of waiting around for the feast.
Mohammad bin Salmon was raised up and made the heir apparent to the throne in Saudi Arabia ahead of older, more established royal family members for one reason and one reason alone: he was willing to allow the West to roll into the country and chop it up and sell it off for profits.
Keep in mind… by 2014 the glorious captains of industry and banksters had already digested their latest consumables found in places like Libya, Ukraine and Iraq. Syria was resisting and the Russians and Iranians were making it hard for them to anticipate when they would get their next mergers and acquisitions meal fed to them so they needed something to tide them over so to speak. They needed new markets to exploit and pillage and Obama apparently refused to invade Venezuela so something had to give.
Then along came a power struggle in a country they have coveted for decades. A nation with tons of state-owned property and businesses and services they could consume.
Saudi Arabia.
All they needed was a front-man on the inside they could promote and then control.
Prince Mohammad bin Salmon fit the bill perfectly.
He was young, would be their man for decades to come and his youth made him seem like something they could promote as the new face of the old kingdom.
But something has changed in him and thus, in our masters’ opinion and trust of him.
Hell hath no fury like a globalist spurned and what we see now is clearly a ramification of that love lost and turned to hatred.
Is it a coincidence that all of these things are coming to a head at the exact same time a man committed to removing MbS from power goes “missing” at the consulate in Istanbul?
Possible I assume.
But I quit believing in geo-political coincidences right around the same time I quit believing in our two party “democracy” so for me, this seems like the beginnings of another neoliberal regime change operation.
Only this one will be fueled by the fire of an unrequited love and the desperation of vulture capitalists starving for another carcass upon which too feed.
October 18, 2018
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Economics, False Flag Terrorism, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Timeless or most popular | Saudi Arabia |
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Running out of space to store water contaminated by fuel that escaped during the Fukushima meltdown, the Japanese government is preparing to release it into the Pacific Ocean – despite the presence of radioactive elements.
Currently, 1.09 million tons of contaminated water is stored in 900 tanks near the Dai-Ichi nuclear plant, which suffered a catastrophic release of fuel following an earthquake and tsunami in March 2011.
The government claims that radioactive material is being reduced to non-detectable levels through the Advanced Liquid Processing System procedure, but there is evidence that this process does not remove many radioactive elements, including antimony, cobalt, iodine, rhodium, ruthenium, strontium, and tellurium. Tepco, which operates the plant, admits the water contains tritium, but insist the levels are “safe.”
The UK Telegraph has obtained documents from Japanese government sources indicating that authorities are aware ALPS, developed by Hitachi, is not actually eliminating radioactive elements to non-detectable levels. Tepco was forced last month to admit that 80 percent of the water still contains radioactive substances after local residents and fishermen protested plans to dispose of it in the ocean.
Tepco admits that 65,000 tons of ALPS-cleansed water retain more than 100 times the amount of strontium-90 legally permitted. Strontium-90 accumulates in teeth and bones and can cause leukemia and bone cancer.
Tritium, too, is not harmless, despite Tepco’s assurances. According to nuclear specialist Shaun Burnie, beta particles of the element are more harmful than X-rays and gamma rays.
The government initially planned to release the contaminated water in 2016, but was surprised by the strength of local opposition. In March 2016, Tepco executives were charged with contributing to deaths and injuries in relation to the Fukushima meltdown after a judicial panel said they had ignored a 2008 internal report warning the plant could be struck by 15-meter waves in the event of a tsunami.
October 17, 2018
Posted by aletho |
Environmentalism, Nuclear Power, Timeless or most popular | Japan |
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The idea of “whistleblowing” has been in the news a great deal.
Is the anonymous author of a recent New York Times op-ed eviscerating the president a whistleblower?
Is the victim of an alleged sexual assault by Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh a whistleblower?
I’m fortunate to have access to the media to talk about torture after blowing the whistle on the CIA’s program. I think Ed Snowden, Tom Drake and others would say the same thing about the aftermath of their own whistleblowing.
Cost of Doing the Right Thing
The problem is that we are the exception to the rule. Most whistleblowers either suffer in anonymity or are personally, professionally, socially and financially ruined for speaking truth to power. Darin Jones is one of those people. He’s one of the people silenced in Barack Obama’s war on whistleblowers. And he continues to suffer under Donald Trump.
Jones was an FBI supervisory contract specialist who in 2012 reported evidence of serious procurement improprieties to his superior. Jones maintained that Computer Sciences Corporation (CSC) had been awarded a $40 million contract improperly because a former FBI official with responsibility for granting the contract then was hired as a consultant at CSC. Jones said, rightly, that this was a violation of the Procurement Integrity Act. He made seven other disclosures alleging financial improprieties in the FBI, and he was promptly fired for his troubles.
Remember, the United States has a Whistleblower Protection Act. Any federal employee who brings to light evidence of waste, fraud, abuse, illegality, or threats to the public health or public safety is protected under federal statute.
The FBI didn’t care, though. Jones was a troublemaker. He was talking about his fellow FBI agents. And he had to be silenced.
Immediately upon his firing, Jones appealed. He was not reinstated, however, because he had made his revelation to his supervisor and not to one of the nine people on the FBI leadership-approved list of who could hear a whistleblower complaint. Jones appealed again, beginning a more than four-year odyssey.
Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) is the champion of whistleblowers on Capitol Hill, whether you like his politics or not. Jones contacted Grassley and asked for help. His dismissal was clearly retaliation for his revelations and was illegal, according to the whistleblower protection law. Grassley agreed and wrote three separate letters to then-FBI director James Comey and then-Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates. None were answered.
Grassley urged the Justice Department to reinstate Jones, saying that his dismissal was a violation of the Whistleblower Protection Enhancement Act of 2016, which strengthened the original whistleblower protection law. He added that when Yates appeared before his Senate Judiciary Committee for her confirmation hearings earlier in the year, she promised “to improve the process for adjudicating claims of retaliation, including expanding the list of persons to whom a protected disclosure may be made.”
She never did that. In fact, Yates ordered the director of the Justice Department’s “Professional Misconduct Review Unit” to write to Jones and to tell him, “The Deputy Attorney General’s review is complete and her decision is final. Your case is no longer pending. You should not expect to receive any future communications that you or any other organization or individuals may submit with regard to your whistleblower reprisal case.” In other words, the official policy of the Justice Department was to ignore the law and to give the Senate Judiciary Committee chairman and the whistleblower himself the middle finger.
The FBI’s response was equally bad, albeit predictable. The FBI’s Office of the General Counsel wrote to Jones, “The FBI has advised you that it will not conduct further investigation into your allegations that the FBI removed you from employment because you reported a compliance concern and retaliated against you in violation of applicable whistleblower retaliation protection regulations. The FBI has met its legal obligations and considers this matter closed without any basis for further review or reopening. Please be advised that the FBI will not respond to any additional correspondence or emails related to or arising from the termination of your employment.”
That’s another middle finger.
Note also that the FBI refers to “whistleblower regulations.” It’s not a regulation. It’s a law. And the FBI, too, has to respect and follow the law even when they don’t want to.
End Victimization of Whistleblowers
The bottom line here, though, is that Darin Jones did the right thing. He did the honorable thing. He did the ethical, legal, and moral thing. And he paid for it with his career. Like other federal whistleblowers, he’s ruined financially. Friends and family members have walked away from him. He can’t find a job. I can tell you from firsthand experience that the psychological weight of the fallout from whistleblowing is sometimes too much to handle.
Jones’ friends and supporters are creating a GoFundMe campaign to help him through this horrible period.
We also need to keep up the heat on the FBI, the CIA, NSA, TSA, and every other governmental organization that victimizes whistleblowers.
We have to support Chuck Grassley and others on Capitol Hill who are trying to protect whistleblowers.
We have to force our own elected officials to do the same. After all, they work for us.
Our goal should be a simple one. Work hard to ensure that Darin Jones is the last federal whistleblower to be treated this way.
John Kiriakou is a former CIA counterterrorism officer and a former senior investigator with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. John became the sixth whistleblower indicted by the Obama administration under the Espionage Act – a law designed to punish spies. He served 23 months in prison as a result of his attempts to oppose the Bush administration’s torture program.
October 17, 2018
Posted by aletho |
Corruption, Timeless or most popular | FBI, United States |
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Despite the vast amount invested in Holocaust education and in spite of the fact that the Holocaust is the only compulsory subject in the British national history curriculum, British pupils seem not to follow the message of the rigid topic. For some reason, they struggle to buy into the primacy of Jewish suffering. They show little interest and learn mostly nothing. Yesterday’s Tablet Magazine article, “The Failure of Holocaust Education in Britain”, produced a clumsy attempt to grasp the reason for the failures of Holocaust education.
UCL’s Centre for Holocaust Education has recently conducted the ‘world’s largest ever study of its kind, it interviewed over 8,000 pupils aged 11-18 in England. Andy Pearce who work as a researcher at the centre told the Tablet that apparently 25-30 years of Holocaust education “is failing to make an impact.”
Pearce reports that when students were asked who was responsible for the Holocaust, “Hitler dominated the answer.” This is presumably a ‘wrong answer.’ Pearce continues, “Incredibly when we asked them to tell us who the Nazis were, students responded by saying they were ‘Hitler’s minions’ and ‘Hitler’s paratroopers.’” Pearce wasn’t happy with this answer either. “There was no reference to the Nazi Party as a political movement. Students also told the researchers that most Jews were killed in Germany. There was no understanding of collaborating regimes and many believed that mass killing began in 1933.”
Pearce inadvertently provided some crucial insights into the systematic failure of ‘holocaust education.’ While Heidegger taught us that to educate is to teach others how to learn, indoctrination is a very different exercise. It teaches how to produce the ‘right’ answers. The Holocaust, as taught and preached, falls into the domain of indoctrination. It is not a subject matter that is open to discussion or revision. The Holocaust as a subject does not accommodate dilemma or confusion. It is treated like a religious text with a rigid structure that doesn’t allow deviation.
For history to be relevant it must contain a dynamic discourse with present day, historical and contextual connotations. If the Holocaust is to be a vibrant topic that is engaging and enlightening for young enthusiastic minds, then the Holocaust must be placed into a context, such as comparing Auschwitz to Gaza. Nuremberg laws must be juxtaposed with the Israeli National Bill and the Israeli Law of Return. For the Holocaust to win our kids’ attention they must try to address the most difficult of questions: How and why was it that just three years after the liberation of Auschwitz, the newly born Jewish State ethnically cleansed the vast majority of the indigenous Palestinians? For the Holocaust to garner universal interest, it must carry a universal message!
Apparently ‘Holocaust education’ in Britain and in the West in general is dependent on Holocaust survivors. Elli Olmer is an outreach teacher for the Holocaust Education Trust. She told the Tablet, “I love what I do and hope to do it for many years but it all depends on what happens after we lose our survivors.” Despite Israel’s scientific gains in life extending technologies, it seems survivors aren’t going to live forever. Moreover, many survivors complain that their ability to reach young audiences is fading for the obvious reasons. However, their approach that engagement with a chapter in the past can only be reached through personal experience with people who lived through that chapter shows that the Holocaust is understood by these so called ‘educators’ as an a-historical narrative.
Historians revisit Napoleonic wars without depending on ‘meetings’ with survivors of those wars. We believe that we can learn about the Roman empire without expecting veteran Roman generals to visit our classes. Why then does the Holocaust need its survivors? Why can’t the Holocaust be taught as a proper historical chapter through analysing texts and documents and encountering some opposing views? Because Holocaust education is driven by political interests and laws requiring such education are passed by means of emotional manipulation. It is there, of course, to serve Israeli and Jewish politics — the Holocaust is the raison d’être behind the Jewish state. But the Holocaust is also used to serve other global political trends such as (im)moral interventionism, pro immigration, anti racism, pro liberalism and so on.
The use of the Holocaust for political ends suggests that British youngsters may actually be more sophisticated than the banal minds that attempt to crudely indoctrinate them into submission. They sense that something about the holocaust education is not ‘straight forward,’ so to say. It is not taught as an open discourse, it is somehow different than other chapters in the past. It isn’t really open to discussion.
As could have been expected, Corbyn and the Labour party are dealt some of the blame. “The current debate over anti-Semitism in Britain’s opposition Labour Party and the views of its leader Jeremy Corbyn have also had a negative impact on Holocaust education in the classroom and made better teacher training even more imperative.” Apparently, British youngsters do not live in a bubble. “Students now ask about Holocaust denial and anti-Semitism… Two to three years ago I would not have had pupils who would have heard the terms,” a teacher said.
The UCL team also examined what teachers hope to achieve by teaching the Holocaust. “There is a belief that if we study the Holocaust it will stop it happening again.” The truth of the matter is that there is more than one holocaust happening at the moment: Palestine, Libya, Syria just to mention a few. The Holocaust will become a meaningful lesson when it is finally emancipated from the primacy of Jewish suffering and when we return to empathy and compassion as a basic tenet of our culture. Unfortunately I do not see the Holocaust Education Trust leading us in such a direction.
Surprisingly enough, Mike Levy, a Holocaust educator based in Cambridge, admitted to the Jewish outlet that there is “an atmosphere of fatigue in the air when it comes to talking about the Holocaust and that students and teachers want to learn more about other genocides and contextualize the Holocaust.” I agree with Mr. Levy. Let’s expose our kids to Aleppo, Tripoli and Gaza and show them the crimes that are committed by our own democratically elected governments. Let them figure out for themselves who are the Nazis of our time. I believe that this would be the first step in preventing the next Holocaust.
October 17, 2018
Posted by aletho |
Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance, Timeless or most popular | UK, Zionism |
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The new BBC2 documentary, ‘A Dangerous Dynasty: House of Assad’, should be contrasted with the 2010 BBC4 series ‘Syrian School’, which eschewed neocon propaganda and allowed us to make our own minds up about Baathist Syria.
Whatever happened to objective film making? Why does everyone today feel that the film or program maker must take sides and not just show us things as they are?
These thoughts were uppermost in my mind when watching the first episode of the 72 Films production, ‘A Dangerous Dynasty’ last week.
You could say the title was a bit of a giveaway. If you were expecting to see a balanced, intellectual analysis of Baathist rule in Syria, providing historical perspective, and putting the ‘House of Assad’ in some kind of regional context, you’d have been very disappointed.
We weren’t even two minutes in before a voice-over declared: “Many have wondered how this former eye doctor [Bashar Assad] and his British-born wife ended up running a regime of committing war crimes, of gassing their own people… Understand their saga [the Assads] and you will understand how their country now lies in ruins.”
Really? The ‘House of Assad’ had ruled Syria for over 40 years without the country being in ruins.
The descent into the abyss began in 2011. We can argue till the cows come home about ‘who fired first’, as anti-government protests swept the country, but even if we do blame the Syrian authorities for initiating the violence seven years ago, there’s no getting away from the fact that the conflict which developed was deliberately stoked by powers hostile to the Syrian Arab Republic.
These powers were desirous of either regime-change or keeping Syria permanently weak and divided for geo-strategic reasons that had absolutely nothing to do with concern for human rights.
To blame all the bloodshed on the ‘House of Assad’, as ‘A Dangerous Dynasty’ does, is ahistorical nonsense and ignores the pernicious role that the US, France, the UK, and their regional allies have played in destabilizing Syria and keeping the fires of war burning.
“We have to ask ourselves how does this mild-mannered eye doctor end up killing hundreds of thousands of people,” one commentator says in ‘A Dangerous Dynasty’, as if Bashar, who had originally planned to devote his life to the noble cause of medicine, just got up one morning and said “Right, now I’m going to kill hundreds of thousands of people.”
The reality is that the Syrian president was faced with a foreign-backed attempt to destroy his country. He reacted with great force, but just look at how neighboring Israel responds when rockets are fired in from Gaza, or how the US responded after 9-11. Imagine how the White House would react if foreign-backed jihadists took control of parts of the US and beheaded captured US soldiers. Do we think the US president would have said to the ‘rebels’, “Hi guys! Let’s sit round the camp fire together and sing Kumbaya”?
The program had unpleasant undertones of Arabophobia, promoting the narrative that Arabs, and in particular Arab ‘dictators’ who don’t show sufficient subservience to Western elites, cannot be trusted.
It reminded me of an interview with Syria’s deputy ambassador to the UN and a US neocon on BBC’s Newsnight, in the lead-up to the Iraq War, which I wrote about for the Guardian.
While the neocon was treated with great deference, the Syrian representative was treated with withering contempt and “Why should we believe YOU?” condescension. ‘A Dangerous Dynasty’ had much the same tone. Sinister music was played whenever a family photograph of the Assads was shown to make it clear we understood that these were ‘the baddies’.
We were told that Bashar’s mother was “tough and manipulative.” His father Hafez “has extraordinary eyes that seem to look into your soul.” Assad Sr. was “an old fashioned dictator.” Female soldiers had to bite off the heads of snakes and male ones kill puppies to show their obedience. In one segment, we were told that Hafez al-Assad was like a crafty hamburger seller from the bazaar who removes the meat after you’ve paid your money. “He didn’t trust anybody… he lives in a world of conspiracy and paranoia. His whole worldview was conspiratorial,” an American envoy complained.
But didn’t Hafez had good reason not to trust anyone – least of all American governments? Just look at what the US did to Iraq and Libya. Gorbachev trusted the Americans and believed promises that there would be no NATO Drang nach Osten following the disbanding of the Warsaw Pact. Today, NATO troops are on Russia’s borders.
Arabophobia can also be seen in the surprise expressed that Bashar Assad, is “civilized” and “well-mannered” in his personal interactions. As if Arabs, can’t do ‘civilized’ and ‘well-mannered’.
Ironically, probably the most nuanced view in the whole program came from Sir John Sawers, the former head of MI6, who was a British diplomat in Syria in the 1980s.
“It was a socialist military dictatorship, but actually there was a live-and-let-live approach. It was a tightly controlled society but one where Western diplomats could move around fairly freely. If you didn’t bother the Syrian regime they weren’t going to bother you,” Sawer said.
No one disputes that Hafez al-Assad was a ruthless leader, but while the words ‘regime’ and ‘dictator’ were repeated ad nauseam, there was nothing in the program about the advances that Syria made under Assad and his son in the years 1970-2011. The way Christians and other religious minorities were protected by the secular government was ignored. Ditto Syria’s very generous support for the dispossessed and stateless Palestinians, which made them a target.
The book ‘Parting Shots’, published by the BBC, includes a letter written by Sir James Craig, British Ambassador to Syria in 1979, to UK Foreign Secretary Lord Carrington. Craig admits he doesn’t like the Baathists. But he also says “all I have said against them could be said against a hundred other government is this naughty world.” He then goes on: “And there is this, above all, that can be said for them: ever since they came to power, and long before, they have devoted a preponderant part of their energy to the cause of the Palestinians, to which they are called not only by self-interest but by the ties of kinship, neighbourliness and compassion.” Sir James said he found “a distinct spark of nobility” in their “obstinacy” on this issue.
If we go back eight years, a much fairer picture of Syria was shown on the BBC in ‘Syrian School’.
This was arguably one of the best documentary series ever shown on British television. It didn’t preach and it didn’t tell us what to think. It simply showed us what everyday life was like in Syria – the good and the bad.
Max Baring, who worked as director-cameraman on the program said: “Syria is a country where, from poetry to politics, you can have an intellectual debate. You can re-imagine the world there in a way that we seem to have lost in the West, where even the credit crunch hasn’t dented the orthodoxy of Liberal Capitalism, where ‘The X-Factor’ seems now to have become the cultural pinnacle.”
You don’t have to be a diehard supporter of ‘House of Assad’ to acknowledge that life was (and is) better under the ‘dynasty’ than under the medieval head-choppers of ISIS and other associated fundamentalist ‘rebels’, who the enemies of Baathist Syria seemed quite happy to support – either directly or indirectly. As my fellow Op-ed columnist John Wight correctly pointed out last week, “Not one Western journalist denouncing the Syrian government would have dared to set foot within so much of an inch of militant-held territory, knowing that if they did they would be peremptorily abducted, tortured and slaughtered.”
Shamefully, it’s “the Syrian regime” that ‘Dangerous Dynasty’ blames for the rise of hardcore jihadist terrorism. The neo-con endless war lobby, who set the Middle East on fire, gets a free pass.
The second episode of the hatchet job will be shown this Tuesday. I think I’ll take a bath (no pun intended), instead. Looking further ahead, I’ve an idea (which I’ll give them for just £10K), for the program makers for their next series. How about doing one about another father and son, who both launch wars in successive decades against the same country? The father, who was a millionaire, was director of his country’s intelligence services. The son sold his illegal war on a pack of false claims about a country possessing weapons it didn’t have, with the invasion leading to a million deaths and a refugee crisis of Biblical proportions.
‘Junior’ also invaded another country where conflict is still raging today, and under the pretext of fighting a ‘War on Terror’ introduced a surveillance state and established a detention camp where people were held indefinitely without trial. The title of the series: ‘Dangerous Dynasty: The House of Bush’.
Over to you, 72 Films.
October 16, 2018
Posted by aletho |
Film Review, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Timeless or most popular | BBC, Syria |
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Time to cut the tie that binds
The ability of Israel and its powerful Lobby to control many aspects of American government while also sustaining an essentially false narrative about the alleged virtues of the Jewish State is remarkable. Politicians and journalists learned long ago that it was better to cultivate Israel’s friends than it was to support actual American interests. They also discovered to speak the truth about the Jewish State often would prove to be a death sentence career-wise, witness the experiences of Cynthia McKinney, Paul Findlay, William Fulbright, Chuck Percy, James Traficant, Pete McCloskey and Rick Sanchez.
More recently, we have seen the ascent to real political power on the part of a number of politicians whose pandering to Israel has been notorious, indicating that the path to the White House goes through Tel Aviv and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) offices on H Street in the District of Columbia. Nikki Haley, who recently resigned as United Nations Ambassador, gained national attention when she became the first state governor to sign off on laws that would punish supporters of the non-violent BDS movement. Subsequently, as ambassador, she became noted for her impassioned defense of Israel, to include complaining that “nowhere has the U.N.’s failure been more consistent and more outrageous than in its bias against our close ally Israel.” She vowed that the “days of Israel bashing are over” and is now being groomed by the neocons as a possible presidential candidate for 2020. Whichever way it goes, she will be showered with money by Israel supporters as she finds her perch in the private sector, like others before her doing “work” that she does not understand while also making speeches about the importance of the Israeli relationship.
All of that said, one of the truly odd aspects of the Israeli/Jewish dominance is its ability to change the United States. Normally, a tiny client state attached to a great power would conform to its patron, but in the U.S.-Israel relationship the reverse has happened. When 9/11 occurred Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was pleased, commenting that the attack would tie the United States more closely to Israel in its war against “terrorism,” which to him meant his Islamic neighbors in the Middle East. Since that time, the bilateral “special” relationship has conformed to what Professors Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer observed in their groundbreaking book “The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy,” namely that the United States does things in the Middle East that cannot be attributed to national interest. Rather, Washington behaves in a certain way due to the power of Israel and its lobby. There is no other way to explain it.
The emergence of Israeli practices as models to be adopted by U.S. agencies has occurred, to be sure, to include Israeli training of American policemen and soldiers in their “methods,” but the odd thing is that as Israel has lurched to the right and embraced political extremism under Netanyahu, the United States has done the same thing, curtailing civil liberties with the Patriot Acts, the Military Commissions Act, and various updates of the Authorization to Use Military Force. Indefinite detention without trial and assassination of citizens overseas is now acceptable in America and criticizing Israel could soon become a criminal offense in spite of the First Amendment. In short, the United States of America has become more like Israel rather than vice versa.
With one or two exceptions, there is no one in the United States government, elected or civil service, who has anything that is not wonderful to say about Israel in spite of the numerous war crimes and crimes against humanity being committed by Netanyahu nearly daily, the unfunded costs of the wars fought in part on behalf of Israel, and the thousands of dead American soldiers plus the hundreds of thousands of dead foreigners, nearly all Muslims. Indeed, Netanyahu is treated like a conquering hero, having received 23 standing ovations from Congress in 2015 when he was in the United States complaining about an agreement with Iran made by President Barack Obama. This inside the beltway approval of Israel contrasts sharply with the general view of the rest of the world, which sees both the U.S. and Israel negatively as the two nations most likely to start a new war.
There are several recent articles that demonstrate pretty clearly the danger in allowing Israel and its friends to have the power and access that they currently enjoy purely because government and the media make no effort to tell them “no” and rein them in. One comes from New Zealand where two women wrote a letter to the pop singer Lorde, urging her to cancel an appearance in Israel due to the treatment of the Palestinians. Lorde posted the letter on twitter, agreed and the trip was canceled.
The tale would have ended there but for the fact that Israel’s parliament the Knesset has passed a law now making it illegal to support a boycott of Israel ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD [my emphasis]. Enter the group called Shurat HaDin, which is an Israeli government supported lawfare instrument, that seeks to find and sue the perceived enemies of the Jewish state, punishing them through court costs and potentially bankruptcy.
The lawsuit argued that Lorde’s response on twitter after receiving the letter showed her decision was directly influenced by the New Zealand women’s plea. Three Israeli ticket holders filed the suit, claiming the cancellation had caused emotional distress. The Israeli court awarded damages of $12,000 dollars and their lawyer, Nitsana Darshan-Leitner of Shurat HaDin, boasted that the verdict was “precedent-setting,” sending a message that “no one can boycott Israel without paying for it.” Israeli government agents in New Zealand are taking steps to obtain the money, even though it remains unclear whether the plaintiffs will be able to collect the cash. Darshan-Leitner explained that she will seek to enforce the judgment through “international treaties” and go after the women’s bank accounts, either in New Zealand or if they try to travel abroad. Even if she is unsuccessful, the lawsuits will have a chilling effect on any individual or group seeking to criticize Israel’s brutal behavior by endorsing what once were perfectly legal boycotts.
A second story is possibly even more bizarre. On October 10th, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said that “Israel is everything we want the entire Middle East to look like going forward” while asserting that the bilateral relationship between Washington and Tel Aviv is “stronger than ever.” Pompeo was keynote speaker at an award ceremony hosted by the Jewish Institute for National Security of America in Washington D.C. He also hailed Israel as “democratic and prosperous,” adding “it desires peace, it is a home to a free press and a thriving economy.”
Pompeo also mentioned Iran, condemning the latter’s “corrupt leaders [who] assault the human rights of their own people and finance terrorism in every corner of the Middle East”. He also announced to a cheering audience that he had that same day denied a $165 million transfer of aid to the Palestinian Authority (PA) because of the PA’s “funding of terror.” Pompeo was referring to the PA’s refusal to comply with Washington’s demands that it end the so-called “martyr payments” to the families of those killed or imprisoned by Israeli occupation forces.
Pompeo, together with National Security Advisor John Bolton, has been the driving force behind punishing the Iranians and Palestinians. Like others in Washington, he understands that success inside the beltway is best guaranteed by binding oneself as closely to Israel as possible. Pompeo certainly knows that Israel is not democratic, does not desire peace and is itself a major source of terrorism. Its government is corrupt, witness the current trial of Benjamin Netanyahu’s wife as well as the charges pending against the prime minister himself. A number of Israeli leaders have wound up in jail in the past few years. To describe Israel as a model for the entire Middle East is absurd, but, then again, Pompeo was speaking in front of the Jewish Institute for National Security and presumably intended to suck up to his wealthy and politically powerful audience.
How does Israel maintain its control over American politicians? First of all, no politician who wants to get reelected can risk even the mildest criticism of the Jewish state. Anyone who does so will be pilloried in the media before finding him or herself confronted by an extremely well-funded opponent who will oust them from office. And anyone who even suggests that the Palestinians are human beings that are being severely punished by a powerful Israel had best watch his or her back. On October 8th Congressman Eliot Engel of New York spoke regarding liberal Democrat rising star Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and three other liberals seeking congressional seats next month, all of whom have expressed sympathy for the Palestinians while also criticizing Israel’s heavy handed repression.
Engel told a New York synagogue gathering that had been organized and promoted by AIPAC that all Democrats “need to be educated” in support of Israel. “We are going to continue to work in Congress to make sure that we have overwhelming support for Israel on both sides of the aisle… I am certainly cognizant of the fact that people who are coming in as far as I’m concerned on the Democratic side, will be educated and need to be educated. But we have overwhelming support for Israel in the Congress. And… it will continue that way. We will maintain it that way.”
So, maintaining “overwhelming support” for Israel requires doing whatever is necessary, be it fair or foul, and many Jews and Jewish organizations worldwide, like Engel, are prepared to place alleged Israeli interests ahead of those of the countries where they actually reside. In America, Jewish groups and individuals have succeeded in buying politicians and using their money and control over much of the media to corrupt the entire political system to benefit Israel.
Israel should be judged by how it behaves, not by how well it buys favor among morally challenged politicians and media shills. Nor should it be seen favorably as it engages, threatens and destroys critics. When private citizens cannot write a letter to an entertainer without risk of being sued, deference to perpetual Israeli victimhood has gone way too far. When an intelligent man like Mike Pompeo finds it in his interest to say something transparently stupid in praise of Israel, something which he knows to be the reverse of the truth, the corruption of our elites becomes clear even to those who choose to remain blind to it. When a candidate for national office has to be “educated” by Jewish politicians to say the right things about Israel it smacks of Stalinism.
We Americans don’t need any more of this nonsense, which is inter alia destroying our liberties. It is largely driven by the guilt laden “holocaust hucksterism,” as Norman Finkelstein has termed it, that has been giving Israel a free pass for seventy years. It is time for a change in thinking about how we view our “good friend and ally” Israel, a country that is neither. It is time for government to do what is best for Americans, not for Israelis.
Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is www.councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is inform@cnionline.org.
October 16, 2018
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Corruption, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | AIPAC, Eliot Engel, Human rights, Israel, Palestine, United States, Zionism |
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