Thanks to courageous investigators, many anomalies in the official explanation of the events of 9/11 were posted on the Internet in the following months, providing evidence that this was a false flag operation, and that Osama bin Laden was innocent, as he repeatedly declared in the Afghan and Pakistani press and on Al Jazeera.[1] The proofs of this appalling fraud have been accumulating ever since, and are now accessible to anyone willing to spend a few hours of research on the Web. (Although, while preparing this article, I noticed that Google is now making access to that research more difficult than it was five years ago, artificially prioritizing anti-conspiracy sites.)
For example, members of Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth have demonstrated that it was impossible for plane crashes and jet fuel fires to trigger the collapse of the Twin Towers. Even Donald Trump understood this. In fact, speaking of “collapse” is perhaps misleading: the towers literally exploded, pulverizing concrete and projecting pieces of steel beams weighing several hundred tons hundreds of meters laterally at high speeds. The pyroclastic dust that immediately flooded through the streets, not unlike the dust from a volcano, indicates a high temperature mixture of hot gasses and relatively dense solid particles, an impossible phenomenon in a simple collapse. It is also impossible that WTC7, another skyscraper (47 stories), which had not been hit by a plane, collapsed into its own footprint at near free-fall speed, unless by “controlled demolition.”
Testimonies of firefighters recorded shortly after the events describe sequences of explosions just before the “collapse”, well below the plane impact. The presence of molten metal in the wreckage up to three weeks after the attack is inexplicable except by the presence of incompletely burned explosives. Firefighter Philip Ruvolo testified before Étienne Sauret’s camera for his film Collateral Damages (2011): “You’d get down below and you’d see molten steel—molten steel running down the channelways, like you were in a foundry—like lava.”
Aviation professionals have also reported impossibilities in the behavior of the planes. The charted speeds of the two aircraft hitting the Twin Towers, 443 mph and 542 mph, exclude these aircraft being Boeing 767s, because these speeds are virtually impossible near ground level. In the unlikely event such speeds could be attained without the aircraft falling apart, flying them accurately into the towers was mission impossible, especially by the amateur pilots blamed for the hijacking. Hosni Mubarak, a former pilot, said he could never do it. (He is not the only head of state to have voiced his doubts: Chavez and Ahmadinejad are among them.) Recall that neither of the black boxes of the jetliners was ever found, an incomprehensible situation.
And of course, there are the obvious anomalies of Shanksville and Pentagon crash sites: no plane or credible plane debris can be seen on any of the numerous photos easily available.
Inside Job or Mossad Job?
Among the growing number of Americans who disbelieve the official version of the 9/11 attacks, two basic theories are in competition: I called them “inside job” and “Mossad job”. The first one is the dominant thesis within the so-called 9/11 Truth movement, and blames the American government, or a faction within the American Deep State. The second one claims that the masterminds were members of a powerful Israeli network deeply infiltrated in all spheres of power within the US, including media, government, military and secret services.
This “Mossad job” thesis has been gaining ground since Alan Sabrosky, a professor at the U.S. Army War College and the U.S. Military Academy, published in July 2012 an article entitled “Demystifying 9/11: Israel and the Tactics of Mistake”, where he voiced his conviction that September 11th was “a classic Mossad-orchestrated operation.”
We can notice from the outset that incriminating Israelis or Arabs are both “outside job” theories (in fact, they are mirror images of each other, which is understandable in light of what Gilad Atzmon explains about Jewish “projected guilt”).[2] Before even looking at the evidence, “outside job” sounds more credible that “inside job”. There is something monstrous in the idea that a government can deceive and terrorize its own citizens by killing thousands of them, just for starting a series of wars that are not even in the nation’s interest. By comparison, a foreign power attacking the U.S. under the false flag of a third power almost seems like fair play. Indeed suspicion of Israel’s role should be natural to anyone aware of the reputation of the Mossad as: “Wildcard. Ruthless and cunning. Has capability to target U.S. forces and make it look like a Palestinian/Arab act,” in the words of a report of the U.S. Army School for Advanced Military Studies quoted by the Washington Times, September 10th, 2001 — the day before the attacks.
This is an important point, because it raises the question of how and why the 9/11 Truth movement has been led to endorse massively the outrageous “inside job” thesis without even considering the more likely thesis of an attack by a foreign power acting under an Islamic false flag—and what foreign power but Israel would do that?
Of course, the two dissenting theses do not necessarily exclude each other; at least, no one incriminating Israel denies that corrupted elements from the American administration or deep state were involved. The “passionate attachment” between Israel and the U.S. has been going on for decades, and 9/11 is one of its monstruous offsprings.
I can think of no better symbol of that reality than the marriage of Ted and Barbara Olson. Ted Oslon, after having defended Bush in the disputed 2000 election, had been rewarded with the post of Solicitor General (he also defended Dick Cheney when he refused to submit to Congress Enron-related documents). Barbara was a famous CNN reporter, but before that, she was born Barbara Kay Bracher of Jewish parents, educated at Yeshiva University School of Law, and hired by the legal firm WilmerHale, of which Jamie Gorelick, a future member of the 9/11 Commission, was also a member, and whose clients include powerful Israeli firms like Amdocs, a digital communication company charged with spying for Israel in the United States. On September 11, 2001, Barbara Olson alledgedly was on flight AA77, from which she made two telephone calls to her husband. Her calls were reported on CNN in the afternoon, and contributed to crystallize some details of the official story, such as the “box cutters” used as only weapons by the hijackers. Repeatedly invited on television shows after 9/11, Ted Olson frequently contradicted himself when questioned about the calls from his wife. In a 2006 report, the FBI identified only one call from Barbara Olson, and it was an unconnected call lasting 0 seconds. Like all other reported phone calls from desperate passengers (including the famous “Hi, Mom. This is Mark Bingham”), Barbara’s call was simply impossible, because the technology required to make high-altitude phone calls was not developed until 2004.[3]
9/11 was made possible by an alliance between secret worshippers of Israel and corrupted American elements. The question is: who, of the two, were the masterminds of this incredibly daring and complex operation, and for what “higher purpose”?
Another question is: why do those who keep repeating as a mantra “9/11 was an inside job” ignore totally the compelling evidence pointing to Israel? In other words, to what extent do they constitute a “controlled opposition” intended to cover up for Israel? Asking this type of question does not mean suspecting anyone who defends an erroneous or incomplete theory of being a hypocrite. Most people defending one theory or the other do so sincerely, based on the information to which they have access. I have myself been a believer in the official theory for 7 years, and in the “inside job” theory for 2 years, before progressively moving on to the present argument from 2010. On the other hand, we can assume that those who lead the public into error on a long term are not just mistaken but lying. In any case, it is legitimate to investigate the background of opinion makers, and when they are caught lying or distorting the truth, we can speculate on their motivation. I will come back to this issue at the end of the article.
The dancing Israelis
Researchers who believe Israel orchestrated 9/11 cite the behavior of a group of individuals who have come to be known as the “dancing Israelis” since their arrest, though their aim was to pass as “dancing Arabs.” Dressed in ostensibly “Middle Eastern” attire, they were seen by various witnesses standing on the roof of a van parked in Jersey City, cheering and taking photos of each other with the WTC in the background, at the very moment the first plane hit the North Tower. The suspects then moved their van to another parking spot in Jersey City, where other witnesses saw them deliver the same ostentatious celebrations.
One anonymous call to the police in Jersey City, reported the same day by NBC News, mentioned “a white van, 2 or 3 guys in there. They look like Palestinians and going around a building. […] I see the guy by Newark Airport mixing some junk and he has those sheikh uniforms. […] He’s dressed like an Arab.” The police soon issued the following BOLO alert (be-on-the-look-out) for a “Vehicle possibly related to New York terrorist attack. White, 2000 Chevrolet van with New Jersey registration with ‘Urban Moving Systems’ sign on back seen at Liberty State Park, Jersey City, NJ, at the time of first impact of jetliner into World Trade Center. Three individuals with van were seen celebrating after initial impact and subsequent explosion.”
By chance, the van was intercepted around 4 pm, with five young men inside: Sivan and Paul Kurzberg, Yaron Shmuel, Oded Ellner, and Omer Marmari. Before any question was asked, the driver, Sivan Kurzberg, burst out: “We are Israelis. We are not your problem. Your problems are our problems. The Palestinians are your problem”.The Kurzberg brothers were formally identified as Mossad agents. All five officially worked for a moving company (a classic cover for espionage) named Urban Moving Systems, whose owner, Dominik Otto Suter, fled the country for Tel Aviv on September 14.[4]
This event was first reported the day after the attacks by journalist Paulo Lima in the New Jersey newspaper The Bergen Record, based on “sources close to the investigation” who were convinced of the suspects’ foreknowledge of the morning’s attacks: “It looked like they knew what was going to happen when they were at Liberty State Park”.The 579-page FBI report on the investigation that followed (partially declassified in 2005) reveals several important facts. First, once developed, the photos taken by the suspects while watching the North Tower on fire confirm their attitudes of celebration: “They smiled, they hugged each other and they appeared to ‘high five’ one another”. To explain their contentment, the suspects said they were simply happy that, thanks to these terrorist attacks, “the United States will take steps to stop terrorism in the world”. Yet at this point, before the second tower was hit, most Americans believed the crash was an accident. The five Israelis were found connected to another company called Classic International Movers, which employed five other Israelis arrested for their contacts with the nineteen presumed suicide hijackers. In addition, one of the five suspects had called “an individual in South America with authentic ties to Islamic militants in the middle east”. Finally, the FBI report states that the “The vehicle was also searched by a trained bomb-sniffing dog which yielded a positive result for the presence of explosive traces”.
After all this incriminating evidence comes the most puzzling passage of the report: its conclusion that “the FBI no longer has any investigative interests in the detainees and they should proceed with the appropriate immigration proceedings”. In fact, a letter addressed to the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service, dated September 25, 2001, proves that, less than two weeks after the events, the FBI federal headquarter had already decided to close the investigation, asking that “The U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service should proceed with the appropriate immigration proceedings”. The five “dancing Israelis”, also known as “the high fivers”, were detained 71 days in a Brooklyn prison, where they first refused, then failed, lie detector tests. Finally, they were quietly returned to Israel under the minimal charge of “visa violation.” Three of them were then invited on an Israeli TV talk show in November 2001, where one of them ingenuously declared: “Our purpose was simply to document the event.”
The Israeli spy network
The five “dancing Israelis,” the only suspects arrested on the very day of the 9/11 attacks, were just the tip of an iceberg. In September 2001, the federal police were busy dismantling the largest Israeli spy network ever uncovered on American soil. In the summer preceding the attack, the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) compiled a report which would be revealed to the public by the Washington Post on November 23rd, 2001, followed by a Carl Cameron’s four-part documentary broadcast on Fox News from December 11th, 2001. On March 14th, 2002, an article in French newspaper Le Monde signed by Sylvain Cypel also referred to the report, shortly before the French magazine Intelligence Online made it fully accessible on the Internet.[5] It said that 140 Israeli spies, aged between 20 and 30, had been arrested since March 2001, while 60 more were arrested after September 11. Generally posing as art students, they visited at least “36 sensitive sites of the Department of Defense.” “A majority of those questioned have stated they served in military intelligence, electronic signal intercept, or explosive ordnance units. Some have been linked to high-ranking officials in the Israeli military. One was the son of a two-star general, one served as the bodyguard to the head of the Israeli Army, one served in a Patriot mission unit.” Another, Peer Segalovitz, officer in the 605 Battalion of the Golan Heights, “acknowledged he could blow up buildings, bridges, cars, and anything else that he needed to.”[6]
Of special interest is the mention that “the Hollywood, Florida, area seems to be a central point for these individuals.”[7] More than 30 out of the 140 fake Israeli students identified before 9/11 lived in that city of 140,000 inhabitants. And this city also happens to be the place where fifteen of the nineteen alleged 9/11 Islamist hijackers had regrouped (nine in Hollywood, six in the vicinity), including four of the five supposed to have hijacked Flight AA11. What was the relationship between the Israeli spies and the Islamist terrorists? We were told by mainstream news that the former were monitoring the latter, but failed to report suspicious activities of these terrorists to American authorities. From such a presentation, Israel comes out clean, since a spy agency cannot be blamed for not sharing information with the country it is spying in. At worst, the Israeli Intelligence can be accused of “letting it happen”—a guarantee of impunity. In reality, the Israeli agents were certainly not just monitoring the future “hijackers,” but financing and manipulating them, before disposing of them. We know that Israeli Hanan Serfaty, who rented two flats near Mohamed Atta, had handled at least $100,000 in three months. And we also learned from the New York Times on February 19, 2009, that Ali al-Jarrah, cousin of the alleged hijacker of Flight UA93 Ziad al-Jarrah, had spent twenty-five years spying for the Mossad as an undercover agent infiltrating the Palestinian resistance and Hezbollah.
Israeli agents apparently appreciate operating under the cover of artists. Shortly before September 11, a group of fourteen Jewish “artists” under the name of Gelatin installed themselves on the ninety-first floor of the north tower of the World Trade Center. There, as a work of “street art,” they removed a window and extended a wooden balcony. To understand what role this piece of scaffolding may have played, it must be remembered that the explosion supposedly resulting from the impact of the Boeing AA11 on the North Tower took place between the ninety-second and the ninety-eighth floors. With the only film of the impact on the North Tower being that of the Naudet brothers, who are under suspicion for numerous reasons, many researchers are convinced that no aircraft hit this tower, and that the explosion simulating the impact was provoked by pre-planted explosives inside the tower.
Floors ninety-three to one hundred of the North Tower were occupied by Marsh & McLennan, whose CEO was Jeffrey Greenberg, son of wealthy Zionist (and financier of George W. Bush) Maurice Greenberg, who also happens to be the owner of Kroll Inc., the firm in charge of security for the entire World Trade Center complex on 9/11. The Greenbergs were also the insurers of the Twin Towers and, on July 24, 2001, they took the precaution of having the contract reinsured by competitors. In November 2000, the board of directors of Marsh & McLennan was joined by (Lewis) Paul Bremer, the chairman of the National Commission on Terrorism, who, on September 11, 2001, two hours only after the pulverization of the North Tower, would appear on NBC to name bin Laden as prime suspect, perfectly calm as 400 of his employees are missing (295 will finally be declared dead). “It is the day that will change our lives,” he said. “It is the day when the war that the terrorists declared on the US [. . .] has been brought home to the US.” In 2003, Bremer would be appointed administrator of the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq to level the Iraqi state to the ground and oversee the theft of almost a trillion dollars intended for its reconstruction.
The super-sayanim
With Goldberg and Bremer, we have reached the upper level of the conspiracy, comprising a number of influential Jewish personalities, working inside and outside the U.S. government — super-sayanim, so to speak. The most representative of those outside government is Larry Silverstein, the real estate shark who, with his partner Frank Lowy, leased the Twin Towers from New York City in the spring of 2001. The head of the New York Port Authority, who granted Silverstein and Lowy the lease, was none other than Lewis Eisenberg, another member of the United Jewish Appeal Federation and former vice-president of AIPAC. It appeared that Silverstein had made a disastrous deal, because the Twin Towers had to be decontaminated for asbestos. The decontamination process had been indefinitely postponed since the 1980s because of its cost, estimated at nearly $1 billion in 1989. In 2001, the New York Port Authority had been all too happy to shift responsibility to Silverstein.
Immediately after acquiring the Twin Towers, Silverstein renegotiated the insurance contracts to cover terrorist attacks, doubling the coverage to $3.5 billion, and made sure he would retain the right to rebuild after such an event. After the attacks, he took his insurers to court in order to receive double compensation, claiming that the two planes were two separate attacks. After a long legal battle, he pocketed $4.5 billion. Silverstein is a leading member of the United Jewish Appeal Federation of Jewish Philanthropies of New York, the biggest fundraiser for Israel (after the US government, which pays about $3 billion per year in aid to Israel). Silverstein also maintained “close ties with Netanyahu,” according to Haaretz (November 21, 2001): “The two have been on friendly terms since Netanyahu’s stint as Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations. For years they kept in close touch. Every Sunday afternoon, New York time, Netanyahu would call Silverstein.” Besides being a powerful man, Larry is a lucky man: as he explained in this interview, every morning of the week, he had breakfast at the Windows on the World on top of the North Tower, but on September 11th, he had an appointment with his dermatologist.
Accomplices to the 9/11 false flag attack with strong Israeli connections should also be tracked at the other end of the trajectory of the planes reported to have crashed into the Twin Towers. Flights AA11 and UA175 took off from Logan Airport in Boston, which subcontracted their security to International Consultants on Targeted Security (ICTS), a firm based in Israel and headed by Menachem Atzmon, a treasurer of the Likud. So did Newark Airport where flight UA93 reportedly took off before crashing in Shanksville.
A serious investigation would follow many other trails, such as the Odigo instant messages received by employees at the WTC two hours before the plane crashes, as reported by Haaretzon September 27th, 2001. The first plane hit the WTC at the precise time announced, “almost to the minute,” admitted Alex Diamandis, vice-president of Odigo, headquartered in Israel. Also disturbing is the behavior of the American branch of Zim Israel Navigational, a maritime shipping giant 48% owned by the Jewish state (occasionally used as a cover for the Israeli secret services), which moved its offices from the WTC, along with its 200 employees, September 4th, 2001, one week before the attacks —“like an act of God, we moved”, said the CEO Shaul Cohen-Mintz when interviewed by USA Today, November 17th, 2001.
But of course, none of these trails were ever pursued. That is because the most powerful conspirators were at the highest level of the Justice Department. Michael Chertoff was head of the Criminal Division of the Department of Justice in 2001, and responsible, among many other things, for securing the release of the Israeli agents arrested before and after 9/11, including the “dancing Israelis.” In 2003, this son of a rabbi and of a Mossad pioneer would be appointed Secretary of Homeland Security, in charge of counter-terrorism on the American soil, which allowed him to control dissenting citizens and restrain access to the evidence under the pretext of Sensitive Security Information.
Another chief of the cover-up was Philip Zelikow, the executive director of the 9/11 presidential Commission established in November 2002. Zelikow is a self-styled specialist in the art of making “public myths” by “‘searing’ or ‘molding’ events [that] take on ‘transcendent’ importance and, therefore, retain their power even as the experiencing generation passes from the scene” (Wikipedia). In December 1998, he co-signed an article for Foreign Affairs entitled “Catastrophic Terrorism,” in which he speculated on what would have happened if the 1993 WTC bombing (already attributed to bin Laden) had been done with a nuclear bomb: “An act of catastrophic terrorism that killed thousands or tens of thousands of people and/or disrupted the necessities of life for hundreds of thousands, or even millions, would be a watershed event in America’s history. It could involve loss of life and property unprecedented for peacetime and undermine Americans’ fundamental sense of security within their own borders in a manner akin to the 1949 Soviet atomic bomb test, or perhaps even worse. … Like Pearl Harbor, the event would divide our past and future into a before and after. The United States might respond with draconian measures scaling back civil liberties, allowing wider surveillance of citizens, detention of suspects and use of deadly force.” This is the man who controlled the governmental investigation on the 9/11 terror attacks. Thomas Kean and Lee Hamilton, who nominally led the commission, revealed in their book Without Precedent: The Inside Story of the 9/11 Commission (2006), that the commission “was set up to fail” from the beginning. Zelikow, they claim, had already written a synopsis and a conclusion for the final report before the first meeting. He controlled all the working groups, prevented them from communicating with each other, and gave them as sole mission to prove the official story; Team 1A, for example, was tasked to “tell the story of Al-Qaeda’s most successful operation—the 9/11 attacks.”
A tight control of mainstream media is perhaps the most delicate aspect of the whole operation. I will not delve into that aspect, for we all know what to expect from the MSM. For a groundbreaking argument on the extent to which 9/11 was psy-op orchestrated by MSM, I recommend Ace Baker’s 2012 documentary 9/11 The Great American Psy-Opera, chapters 6, 7 and 8.
Machiavellian meta-Zionists
If we move up to the very highest level of the conspiracy, we find ourselves in Tel Aviv. The preparation for 9/11 coincided with the coming to power of Benjamin Netanyahu in 1996, followed by Ehud Barak in July 1999, and Ariel Sharon in March 2001, who brought back Netanyahu as minister of Foreign Affairs in 2002 (with Netanyahu again becoming prime minister in 2009). It must be noted that both Netanyahu and Ehud Barak were temporarily out of the Israeli government in September 2001, just like Ben-Gurion at the time of Kennedy’s assassination (read my article on JFK). A few months before 9/11, Barak, a former head of Israeli military intelligence, was “recruited” as a consultant to a Mossad front company, SCP Partner, specializing in security and located less than seven miles from Urban Moving Systems.[8] One hour after the explosion of the North Tower, Barak was on BBC World to point the finger at bin Laden (the first to do so), and concluded: “It’s a time to launch an operational, complete war against terror.”
As for Netanyahu, we are not surprised to hear him boast, on CNN in 2006, of having predicted in 1995 that, “if the West doesn’t wake up to the suicidal nature of militant Islam, the next thing you will see is militant Islam bringing down the World Trade Center.” Netanyahu is exemplary of the ever closer “special relationship” between the US and Israel, which started with Truman and blossomed under Johnson. Netanyahu had lived, studied, and worked in the United States from 1960 to 1978, between his 11th and his 27th year—except during his military service—and again after the age of 33, when he was appointed deputy ambassador to Washington and then permanent delegate to the United Nations. Netanyahu appeared regularly on CNN in the early 1990s, contributing to the transformation of the world’s leading news channel into a major Zionist propaganda tool. His political destiny was largely planned and shaped in the United States, under the supervision of those we now call neoconservatives, and the only thing that distinguishes him from them is that, for public relations reasons, he does not possess American nationality.
“What’s a neocon?” once asked Bush 43 to his father Bush 41, after more than three years in the White House. “Do you want names, or a description?” answered 41. “Description.” “Well,” said 41, “I’ll give it to you in one word: Israel.”[9] That anecdote, quoted by Andrew Cockburn, sums it up. The neoconservative movement was born in the editorial office of the monthly magazine Commentary, which had replaced the Contemporary Jewish Record in 1945 as the press organ of the American Jewish Committee. “If there is an intellectual movement in America to whose invention Jews can lay sole claim, neoconservatism is it,” wrote Gal Beckerman in the Jewish Daily Forward, January 6, 2006. “It is a fact that as a political philosophy, neoconservatism was born among the children of Jewish immigrants and is now largely the intellectual domain of those immigrants’ grandchildren.”
The founding fathers of neoconservatism (Norman Podhoretz, Irving Kristol, Donald Kagan, Paul Wolfowitz, Adam Shulsky) were self-proclaimed disciples of Leo Strauss, a German Jewish immigrant teaching at the University of Chicago. Strauss can be characterized as a meta-Zionist in the sense that, while an ardent supporter of the State of Israel, he rejected the idea that Israel as a nation should be contained within borders; Israel must retain her specificity, which is to be everywhere, he said in essence in his 1962 lecture “Why We Remain Jews.” Strauss would also approve of being called a Machiavellian, for in his Thoughts on Machiavelli, he praised the “the intrepidity of his thought, the grandeur of his vision, and the graceful subtlety of his speech” (p. 13). Machiavelli’s model of a prince was Cesar Borgia, the tyrant who after having appointed the cruel Ramiro d’Orco to subdue the province of Romania, had him executed with utter cruelty, thus reaping the people’s gratitude after having diverted their hatred onto another. Machiavelli, writes Strauss, “is a patriot of a particular kind: He is more concerned with the salvation of his fatherland than with the salvation of his soul” (p. 10). And that happens to be exactly what Jewishness is all about, according to Jewish thinkers such as Harry Waton: “The Jews that have a deeper understanding of Judaism know that the only immortality there is for the Jew is the immortality in the Jewish people” (read more here). As a matter of fact, in the Jewish World Review of June 7, 1999, Michael Ledeen, a neocon and founding member of the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA), assumed that Machiavelli must have been a “secret Jew,” since “if you listen to his political philosophy you will hear Jewish music.”
The neoconservatives of the first generation originally positioned themselves on the far left. Irving Kristol, one of the main editors of Commentary, had long claimed to be a Trotskyist. It was soon after the 1967 successful annexation of Arab territories by Israel that the Straussians experienced their conversion to right-wing militarism, to which they owe their new name. Norman Podhoretz, editor-in-chief from 1960 to 1995, turned from anti-war activist to defense budget booster in the early 70s. He gave the following explanation in 1979: “American support for Israel depended upon continued American involvement in international affairs—from which it followed that an American withdrawal into the kind of isolationist mood [. . .] that now looked as though it might soon prevail again, represented a direct threat to the security of Israel.” (Breaking Ranks, p. 336). Leading the U.S. into war for the benefit of Israel is the essence of the Machiavellian crypto-Zionists known deceptively as neoconservatives.
The Project for a new (((American))) Century
The story of how the neoconservatives reached the position of influence they held under George W. Bush is a complicated one, which I can only outline. They entered the state apparatus for the first time in the baggage of Rumsfeld and Cheney, during president Ford’s cabinet reshuffle known as the “Halloween Massacre,” following Nixon’s resignation. When the Cold War calmed down after America evacuated its troops from Vietnam in 1973, and the CIA produced reassuring analyses of the USSR’s military capabilities and ambitions, Rumsfeld (as Secretary of Defense) and Cheney (as Chief of Staff) persuaded Ford to appoint an independent committee, known as Team B, to revise upward the CIA estimates of the Soviet threat, and reactivate a war attitude in public opinion, Congress, and Administration. Team B was chaired by Richard Pipes and co-chaired by Paul Wolfowitz, both introduced by Richard Perle.
During the Democratic parenthesis of the Carter presidency (1976–80), the neoconservatives worked at unifying the largest number of Jews around their policies, by founding the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA), which became the second-most powerful pro-Israel lobby after AIPAC. According to its “mission statement”, it is “dedicated to educating Congressional, military and civilian national security decision-makers on American defense and strategic interests, primarily in the Middle East, the cornerstone of which is a robust U.S.-Israeli security cooperation.” In 1980, the neocons were rewarded by Ronald Reagan for their support by a dozen posts in national security and foreign policy: Richard Perle and Douglas Feith to the Department of Defense; Richard Pipes at the National Security Council; Paul Wolfowitz, Lewis “Scooter” Libby, and Michael Ledeen in the State Department. They helped Reagan escalate the Cold War, showering billions of dollars on the military-industrial complex.
The long term planning of 9/11 probably started then. Isser Harel, founder of Israeli secret services (Shai in 1944, Shin Bet in 1948, Mossad until 1963) is reported as prophesizing in 1980, in an interview with Christian Zionist Michael Evans, that Islamic terrorism would end up hitting America in their “phallic symbol”: “Your biggest phallic symbol is New York City and your tallest building will be the phallic symbol they will hit”.[10] (A whole article would be needed to document and explain the revival of the Jewish gift of apocalyptic prophecy in recent decades.)
In 1996, during the Clinton years, the neoconservatives threw all their weight into their ultimate think tank, the Project for the New American Century (PNAC), directed by William Kristol and Robert Kagan. PNAC recommended taking advantage of the defeat of communism to reinforce American hegemony by preventing the emergence of any rival. Their Statement of Principlesvowed to extend the current Pax Americana, which entailed “a military that is strong and ready to meet both present and future challenges.” In its September 2000 report entitled Rebuilding America’s Defenses, PNAC anticipated that US forces must become “able to rapidly deploy and win multiple simultaneous large-scale wars.” This required a profound transformation, including the development of “a new family of nuclear weapons designed to address new sets of military requirements.” Unfortunately, according to the authors of the report, “the process of transformation […] is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event—like a new Pearl Harbor.” It is certainly no coincidence that the three-hour-long blockbuster Pearl Harbor was released in the summer 2001, conveniently entrenching the “New Pearl Harbor” meme into the minds of millions.
PNAC’s architects played the American hegemony card by draping themselves in the super-patriotic discourse of America’s civilizing mission. But their duplicity is exposed in a document brought to public knowledge in 2008: a report published in 1996 by the Israeli think tank Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies (IASPS), entitled A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm, written specifically for the new Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. The team responsible for the report was led by Richard Perle, and included Douglas Feith and David Wurmser, who figured the same year among the signatories of PNAC. As its title suggests, the Clean Break report invited Netanyahu to break with the Oslo Accords of 1993, which officially committed Israel to the return of the territories it occupied illegally since 1967. The new prime minister should instead “engage every possible energy on rebuilding Zionism” and reaffirm Israel’s right to the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
In November 2000, Bush Jr. was elected under conditions that raised protests of electoral fraud. Dick Cheney, who had directed his campaign, named himself vice-president and introduced two dozens neoconservatives in foreign policy key positions. The State Department was entrusted to Colin Powell, but he was surrounded with neocon aides such as David Wurmser. As National Security Adviser, Condoleezza Rice, a specialist of Russia with no expertise in the Middle East, was entirely dependent on her neocon adviser Philip Zelikow. William Luti and Elliott Abrams, and later Eliot Cohen, were also tasked with steering Rice. But it was mainly from within the Defense Department under Donald Rumsfeld that the most influential neocons were able to fashion US foreign and military policy. Richard Perle occupied the crucial position of director of the Defense Policy Board, responsible for defining military strategy, while Paul Wolfowitz became the “soul of the Pentagon” as deputy secretary with Douglas Feith as under secretary.
The Hanukkah miracle to start WWIV
After eight months in the presidency, Bush was confronted with the “catastrophic event,” the “new Pearl Harbor” that PNAC had wished for a year earlier. 9/11 was a real “Hanukkah miracle” for Israel, commented Mossad chief Ephraim Halevy and Israeli National Security Council chairman Uzi Dayan. Netanyahu rejoiced: “It’s very good […] it will generate immediate sympathy […], strengthen the bond between our two peoples, because we’ve experienced terror over so many decades, but the United States has now experienced a massive hemorrhaging of terror.” On September 21, he published an op-ed in the New York Post entitled “Today, We Are All Americans,” in which he delivered his favorite propaganda line: “For the bin Ladens of the world, Israel is merely a sideshow. America is the target.” Three days later the New Republic responded with a headline on behalf of the Americans: “We are all Israelis now.” Americans experienced 9/11 as an act of hatred from the Arab world, and they felt an immediate sympathy for Israel, which the neoconservatives relentlessly exploited. One of the aims was to encourage Americans to view Israel’s oppression of the Palestinians as part of the global fight against Islamic terrorism.
It was a great success. In the years preceding September 11, Israel’s reputation had bottomed out; condemnations had been raining from around the world for its policy of apartheid and colonization, and its systematic war against Palestinian command structures. Increasing numbers of American voices questioned the merits of the special relationship between the United States and Israel. From the day of the attacks, it was all over. As Americans now intended to fight Arab terrorists to the death, they would stop demanding from Israel more reasonable, proportionate retaliation against Palestinian suicide bombers and rockets.
Instead, the president’s speeches (written by neocon David Frum) characterized the 9/11 attacks as the trigger for a world war of a new type, one fought against an invisible enemy scattered throughout the Middle East. First, vengeance must come not only against bin Laden, but also against the state harboring him: “We will make no distinction between those who committed these acts and those who harbor them” (Sept. 11). Second, the war extends to the world: “Our war on terror begins with Al Qaeda, but it does not end there. It will not end until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped and defeated” (Sept. 20). Third, any country that does not support Washington will be treated as an enemy: “Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists” (Sept. 20).
In an article in the Wall Street Journal dated November 20, 2001, the neoconservative Eliot Cohen dubbed the war against terrorism as “World War IV,” a framing soon echoed by other American Zionists (the odd choice of the name WWIV rather than WWIII comes, I suspect, from the neocons’ ethnocentric worldview, in which every world war is a step toward Greater Israel; since one major step was accomplished in 1967, the Cold War counts as WW3). In September 2004, at a conference in Washington entitled “World War IV: Why We Fight, Whom We Fight, How We Fight,” Cohen said: “The enemy in this war is not ‘terrorism’ […] but militant Islam.” Like the Cold War, the imminent world war, according to Cohen’s vision, has ideological roots, will have global implications, and will last a long time, involving a whole range of conflicts. The self-fulfilling prophecy of a new World War centered in the Middle East has also been popularized by Norman Podhoretz, in “How to Win World War IV” (Commentary, February 2002), followed by a second article in, “World War IV: How It Started, What It Means, and Why We Have to Win,” (September 2004), and finally a book titled World War IV: The Long Struggle Against Islamofascism (2007).[11]
The hijacked conspiracy and the controlled opposition
In the case of 9/11 as in the case of Kennedy, controlled opposition operates on many levels, and many honest scholars now realize that the 9/11 Truth movement itself is partly channeled by individuals and groups secretly aiming at drawing suspicions away from Israel. Such is certainly the case of the three young Jews (Avery, Rowe, and Bermas) who directed the film Loose Change (2005), the most widely watched 9/11 conspiracy film since its first version in 2005. They hitched their whole thesis on a comparison with the never carried-out false flag project Operation Northwoods (timely revealed to the public in May 2001 in James Bamford’s book Body of Secrets, written with the support of former NSA director Michael Hayden, now working for Michael Chertoff), but they failed to mention the attack on the USS Liberty, a well-documented false flag attack by Israel on its U.S. ally. They did not breathe a word about the neoconservatives’ loyalty to Israel, and treat anyone who cited the Israeli role in 9/11 as anti-Semitic. The same can be said of Bermas’s more recent film Invisible Empire(2010), also produced by Alex Jones: a compilation of anti-imperialist clichés focusing on the Bushs and the Rockefellers, without a single hint of the (((Others))).
It is interesting to note that the 9/11 scenario put forward by Loose Change had actually been prewritten by Hollywood: on the 4th of March, 2001, Fox TV broadcast the first episode of the series The Lone Gunmen, watched by 13 million Americans. The plot is about computer hackers working for a secret cabal within the U.S. government, who hijack a jet by remote control with the intent to crash it into one of the Twin Towers, while making it appear to have been hijacked by Islamic terrorists. At the last seconds, the pilots manage to regain control of the plane. The purpose of the failed operation was to trigger a world war under the pretext of fighting terrorism. Truthers of the “inside job” school fancy that this episode must have been written by some whistleblower inside Fox. Unlikely!
There is, of course, some truth in the “inside job” theory, as I said at the beginning. Israel (in the wider sense) would not be able to pull such an operation and get away with it, without complicity at the highest level of U.S. government. How does that work? Pretty much like for the Kennedy assassination, if you consider that the country was then ruled by its vice-president Dick Cheney, the president being a mere dummy (see Lou Dubose and Jake Bernstein, Vice: Dick Cheney and the Hijacking of the American Presidency, Random House, 2006). In my book JFK-9/11, I have proposed a plausible scenario of how Israel had in fact hijacked a smaller false flag attack on the Pentagon fabricated by the American Deep State, for the limited purpose of justifying the overthrow of the Talibans in Afghanistan, a goal fully supported by such “Great Gamers” as Zbigniew Brzezinski, but which didn’t in itself interest the neocons.
What the neocons wanted was a new war against Iraq and then a general conflagration in the Middle East leading to the crumbling of all the enemies of Israel, with Syria and Iran high on the list. So they outbid everyone and gave the operation the scale they wanted with the help of their New York super-sayan Silvertein. George W. Bush, Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice, and other goyim who had been kept out of the loop, finding themselves embroiled in geopolitical machinations of global scope, could merely try to save face. On September 19 and 20, Richard Perle’s Defense Policy Board met in the company of Paul Wolfowitz and Bernard Lewis (inventor of the self-fulfilling prophecy of the “clash of civilizations”) but in the absence of Powell and Rice. They prepared a letter to Bush, written on PNAC letterhead, to remind him of his historic mission: “Even if evidence does not link Iraq directly to the attack, any strategy aiming at the eradication of terrorism and its sponsors must include a determined effort to remove Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq. Failure to undertake such an effort will constitute an early and perhaps decisive surrender in the war on international terrorism.”[12] This was an ultimatum. Bush was certainly aware of the leverage that the neocons had acquired over the major print and television media. He was obliged, under penalty of ending in the proverbial trash bin of history, to endorse the invasion of Iraq that his father had refused the Zionists ten years earlier.
As for Brzezinski and other genuine U.S. imperialists, their support for the invasion of Afghanistan made their timid protests against the Iraq war ineffective. It was a little late in February 2007 when Brzezinski denounced before the Senate “a historical, strategic and moral calamity […] driven by Manichaean impulses and imperial hubris.” In 2012 he declared, regarding the risk of conflagration with Iran, that Obama should stop following Israel like a “stupid mule.” He soon disappeared from the MSM, as a useful idiot no longer useful.
The “half truth” of the exclusively “inside job” theory, which denounces 9/11 as a false flag operation perpetrated by the American state on its own citizens, functions like a secondary false flag hiding the real masters of the operation, who are in fact agents in the service of a foreign nation. One of the aims of this inside-jobish controlled opposition is to force American officials to maintain the “bin Laden did it” masquerade, knowing that tearing apart the fake Islamic flag would only reveal the U.S. flag, not the Israeli flag. No longer controlling the media, they would not have the means to raise this second veil to expose Israel. Any effort to get at the truth would be political suicide. Everyone understands what is at stake: if one day, under mounting pressure from public opinion or for some other strategic reason, the mainstream media abandons the official bin Laden story, the well-rehearsed slogan “9/11 was an inside job” will have prepared Americans to turn against their own government, while the neocon Zionists will remain untouchable (Machiavelli’s method: make another accomplish your dirty ends, then turn popular vengeance against him). And God knows what will happen, if the government has not by then succeeded in disarming its citizens through Sandy Hook-type psy-ops. Government officials have little choice but to stick to the Al-Qaeda story, at least for the next fifty years.
After reaching this conclusion in JFK-9/11, I had the satisfaction of finding that Victor Thorn, in a book that had eluded me (Made in Israel: 9-11 and the Jewish Plot Against America, Sisyphus Press, 2011), had already expressed it in harsher terms: “In essence, the ‘9-11 truth movement’ was created prior to Sept. 11, 2001 as a means of suppressing news relating to Israeli complicity. By 2002–2003, ‘truthers’ began appearing at rallies holding placards that read ‘9-11 was an inside job.’ Initially, these signs provided hope for those who didn’t believe the government and mainstream media’s absurd cover stories. But then an awful realization emerged: The slogan ‘9-11 was an inside job’ was quite possibly the greatest example of Israeli propaganda ever devised. […] The mantra, ‘9-11 was an inside job’ is only partially true and is inherently damaging to the ‘truth movement’ because it shifts all attention away from Israel’s traitorous assault against America. […] Leaders of these fake 9-11 groups know the truth about Israel’s 9-11 barbarity. Their willingness to perpetuate or cover it up ultimately makes them as guilty and vile as those who launched the attacks. There are no degrees of separation in this matter. It’s a black-and-white issue. Tell the entire truth about Israel’s Murder, Inc. cabal, or sleep in the same infected bed as these murdering dogs lie in. […] Faux conspiratologists complain about the government and news sources not telling the truth, yet they’ve erected an utter blackout on data regarding Israel and 9-11.”
The missing .3 trillion
Some readers will complain that I am making a very complex operation appear too simple. I plead guilty: I have merely tried here to outline the case against Israel in the short scope of an article. But I am fully aware that creating Greater Israel through a world war fought by the U.S. might not have been the only consideration in the preparation of 9/11. Many private interests had to be involved. Yet I believe none of them interfered with Israel’s plan, and most of them supported it.
There is, for example, the missing gold in the WTC basement : $200 million were recovered from the estimated $1 billion stored: who took the rest? But that is nothing compared to the $2.3 trillion that were missing from the accounts of the Department of Defense for the year 2000, in addition to $1.1 trillion missing for 1999, according to a televised declaration made on September 10th, 2001, the day before the attacks, by Donald Rumsfeld. Just for comparison, this is more than one thousand times the colossal losses of Enron, which triggered a chain of bankruptcies that same year. All this money evaporated into thin air under the watch of William Cohen, Defense Secretary during Bill Clinton’s second term. In 2001, the man who was tasked to help track down the missing trillions was Under Secretary of Defense (Comptroller) Dov Zakheim, a member of PNAC and an ordained rabbi. Practically, the mystery had to be resolved by financial analysts at Resource Services Washington (RSW). Unfortunately, their offices were destroyed by “al-Qaeda” the following morning. The “hijackers” or Flight AA77, rather than hitting the command center on the eastern side of the Pentagon, chose to attempt a theoretically impossible downward spiral at 180 degrees in order to hit the west side of the building precisely at the location of the accounting offices. The 34 experts at RSW perished in their offices, together with 12 other financial analysts, as is noted in the biography of the team leader Robert Russell for the National 9/11 Pentagon Memorial: “The weekend before his death, his entire office attended a crab feast at the Russell home. They were celebrating the end of the fiscal-year budget completion. Tragically, every person that attended that party was involved in the Pentagon explosion, and are currently missing”.
By an incredible coincidence, one of the financial experts trying to make sense of the Pentagon financial loss, Bryan Jack, was reported to have died at the precise location of his office, not because he was working there that day, but because he was on a business trip on Flight AA77. In the words of the Washington Post database: “Bryan C. Jack was responsible for crunching America’s defense budget. He was a passenger on American Airlines Flight 77, bound for official business in California when his plane struck the Pentagon, where, on any other day, Jack would have been at work at his computer”. Yahweh must have a sense of chutzpah!
Footnotes
[1] Philippe Broussard, “En dépit des déclarations américaines, les indices menant à Ben Laden restent minces,” Le Monde, September 25, 2001.
[2] Gilad Atzmon, Being in Time: a Post-Political Manifesto, Interlink Publishing, 2017 , p. 142.
[3] David Ray Griffin, 9/11 Contradictions, Arris Books, 2008, pp. 170-182; Webster Griffin Tarpley, 9/11 Synthetic Terror Made in USA, Progressive Press, 2008, pp. 321-324.
[4] Christopher Bollyn, Solving 9-11: The Deception That Changed the World, C. Bollyn, 2012, pp. 278–280.
[5] It is quoted here from Bollyn’s book and from Justin Raimondo, The Terror Enigma: 9/11 and the Israeli Connection, iUniverse, 2003.
[6] Christopher Bollyn, Solving 9-11: The Deception That Changed the World, C. Bollyn, 2012, p. 159.
[7] Justin Raimondo, The Terror Enigma: 9/11 and the Israeli Connection, iUniverse, 2003, p. 3.
[8] Christopher Bollyn, Solving 9-11: The Deception that Changed the World, 2012 , pp. 278-280.
[9] Quoted by Andrew Cockburn, who claims to have heard the anecdote from “friends of the family”, in Rumsfeld: His Rise, His fall, and Catastrophic Legacy, Scribner, 2011, p. 219.
[10] Michael Evans told of this prophecy in an interview with Deborath Calwell and in his book The American Prophecies, Terrorism and Mid-East Conflict Reveal a Nation’s Destiny), quoted in Christopher Bollyn, Solving 9-11: The Deception That Changed the World, C. Bollyn, 2012, p. 71.
[11] Stephen Sniegoski, The Transparent Cabal: The Neoconservative Agenda, War in the Middle East, and the National Interest of Israel, Enigma Edition, 2008, p. 193.
[12] Stephen Sniegoski, The Transparent Cabal: The Neoconservative Agenda, War in the Middle East, and the National Interest of Israel, Enigma Edition, 2008, p. 144.
The lessons of the 1953 coup d’etat in Iran remain unlearned by the US leadership, Iranian scholars told Sputnik. Washington has adopted old methods of psychological warfare and economic pressure to manipulate Tehran into making concessions; however, over the past 65 years the Islamic Republic of Iran has dramatically changed, they said.
The Trump administration has adopted the methods Washington resorted to 65 years ago to carry out a coup d’etat in Iran, Professor Seyed Mohammad Marandi, an expert on American studies at the University of Tehran, told Sputnik Persian.
“In my opinion, now the situation in Iran is not very similar to that time,” he said. “But the methods used by the US are similar. This is an oil boycott and a psychological war. Then the Persian BBC radio service was engaged in this, now it is BBC television and social networks in Persian sponsored by the West, and thousands of people who conduct psychological cyberwar from Iran to the morning. But, I repeat, now the situation is completely different. The current leadership of Iran is very different from the government of Dr. Mossadegh.”
Marandi’s comment came on the heels of a statement made by Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, who accused the US of carrying out “actions,” which could lead to yet another coup d’etat in the country.In 1953, the CIA-backed coup d’etat led to the ousting of the legitimately-elected cabinet headed by Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh, replacing it with the government of General Fazlollah Zahedi.
According to Marandi, one of Mossadegh’s grave mistakes was that he was “naïve” and “trusted the United States.” At the same time, the former prime minister tried to preserve the pro-Western Iranian monarchy, he added. “In addition, Dr. Mossadegh could not stand being reprimanded, which led him to isolation within the country,” he noted, adding that the United States had used “these numerous internal contradictions.”
“Now the leaders of our country are not so naive and do not cherish illusions about the intentions of the United States,” the Iranian professor emphasized. “Even those who looked optimistically at the future of US-Iranian relations following the signing of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) realized that they could not trust the US and its allies, witnessing [Barack] Obama’s complete inactivity with regard to the JCPOA and Trump’s aggressive policy towards Iran.”
Fuad Izadi, an Iranian researcher specializing in American affairs and a member of the scientific council of the department of US studies at the University of Tehran, shares Marandi’s stance.He stressed that a potential coup d’etat involving the Iranian military under the command of the United States, Britain or another country in Iran is absolutely impossible.
“The senior leadership of the Shah army was educated in America and the Shah himself was an American-British apprentice,” Izadi said. “Today, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and other units of the Iranian army are trained in their country and belong to the people of Iran. Our army will never go against its people.”
He noted that although numerous US programs aimed at regime change in the Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI) and other countries had never declared their genuine goals openly, their incentives and motivation were clear.
“For example, in the US budget for 2017 such actions were not called as a preparation for a coup, instead they were dubbed “democracy programs,” the researcher remarked, explaining that these endeavors were targeting the states not bowing before Washington, namely Iran, Russia and China.
According to Izadi, the Iranian people should keep in mind the events of 1953 and “closely monitor every step of American officials and their proteges.”Commenting on Washington’s unilateral withdrawal from the JCPOA in May 2018 and the resumption of anti-Iranian sanctions, he noted that the Trump administration’s primary aim is to trigger civil unrest in the country. However, these efforts will prove futile, the researcher foresees, as the people of the IRI know that the real “culprit” behind the sanctions is Trump, not Iranian President Hassan Rouhani.
For his part, Marandi highlighted that Washington’s attempts to limit Iran’s access to the US dollar prompted Tehran and other countries to seek alternatives to the greenback.
“It seems that over the past 65 years the Americans have failed to understand how they should deal with the Iranian people,” Izadi concluded.
If this week’s media broadside on Trump were a Deep State hit job, then this is how it would proceed. First, an award-winning journalist of Bob Woodward’s august reputation publishes a searing book seemingly substantiating long-held accusations of “dysfunction” in the White House.
Then the next day to consolidate the book’s lurid claims, the New York Times, America’s so-called “paper of record” publishes an oped allegedly by an administration insider essentially “confirming” Woodward’s tell-all account.
What’s more, the sense of paranoia within the Trump administration will now be ratcheted up to levels which make normal staff working and communications almost paralyzed. It’s a perfect psy-ops to explode chaos and mistrust among Trump’s inner circle.
But who really is Bob Woodward? He is famed as one of the Washington Post reporters who exposed the Watergate affair in 1974 which forced then President Richard Nixon to quit office in ignominy. The exposé of Nixon’s wiretapping on Democrat rivals is commonly seen as the high-point of American journalism, and thus Woodward as a paragon of journalistic integrity.
But as Russ Baker contends in his groundbreaking book, Family of Secrets: The Bush Dynasty, the Watergate and Nixon affair is not all that it seems. And neither is Woodward. There is credible evidence that the American Deep State of the military-intelligence apparatus used the Watergate scandal as a way to get rid of Nixon whose febrile mental state was becoming a concern to them. Woodward, who had a background in Navy intelligence was suspiciously a prodigy journalist who rapidly rose to cover what became the scandal that ended Nixon’s presidency.
Woodward’s newly published book on the Trump White House makes a damning case of a president who is allegedly despised and feared by his inner circle. It claims that staff have engineered an “administrative coup” against Trump, preventing him from taking key decisions, and generally portraying him as a farcical figure. The book seeds the concept among the public of a necessary coup against Trump.
This is where Woodward’s prestigious Watergate reputation comes into play. His role in that affair as a supposed champion of truth and of holding power to account is then invoked to give the seal of accuracy to his book on Trump. If Woodward says the president is a basket case, then it must be so, so goes the anticipated general public reaction.
In order to drive the message home, the New York Times follows up with an oped claiming to be written by an anonymous official within the Trump administration who “confirms” what Woodward’s book is claiming.
When the Woodward book came out, there were staunch rebuttals of its claims from senior White House officials. In particular the Defense Secretary James Mattis, who was supposedly one of Woodward’s main sources, saying that Trump was an idiot who wanted to assassinate Syrian President Bashar al Assad. Mattis dismissed the book and its author as having a “rich imagination”. There were also similar putdowns from Trump’s Chief of Staff John Kelly and his ambassador the United Nations Nikki Haley.
Trump himself scorned Woodward’s book, ‘Fear’, as a shoddy “work of fiction”. Thanks to the publicity, the title has become a “best-seller” within days of being published.
The pushback from the Trump White House was of course to be expected, given the claims from such an imminent journalist. That’s why the New York Times oped is a crucial capping on the claims, especially since the oped is supposedly written by a senior administration official.
The New York Times says it knows the name of the official who wrote the piece. But it is not disclosing his or her identity, as the supposed author requests.
The public therefore can’t know the authenticity of the oped. Was it really written by a Trump administration senior official? Or some low-level staff? Or maybe not even an actual member of staff? The author of the oped claims: “I work for the president but like-minded colleagues and I have vowed to thwart parts of his agenda and his worst inclinations.”
But the main purpose is the sowing of grave doubt in the public mind and among Trump’s senior staff at the White House. The oped appears to confirm the claims made by Woodward about a dysfunctional president who is being handled by staff working in “resistance” to his “impetuousness” for the “safety of America”. It also goes further by saying that the dysfunction ultimately stems from Trump’s “immorality”.
Ultimately, it is virtually impossible to prove the veracity of Woodward’s book and the subsequent “confirmatory” article in the New York Times. Woodward’s book has been denied by supposedly “key sources”. The authenticity of the author of the New York Times oped is a matter of trust in that newspaper’s editors. The so-called paper of record has lately been a massive purveyor of baseless scare stories slandering Russia. For many critics it is not a reliable nor ethical source, as is claimed.
But the point is that a gravely damaging impact has been inflicted on the Trump presidency. His ability to rebuff critics with his customary braggadocio of slamming “fake news” appears this time to be mortally wounded.
This is not meant to be a defense of the Trump administration nor of this president. Trump’s White House certainly appears to be an unorthodox place, as indicated by the high turnover of senior staff over the past two years since his election.
Trump’s personality certainly comes across as impetuous and petty. His personal also life seems tainted with deceit and lewd scandals.
Nevertheless he is the president that Americans voted for. And so far, he has not done anything out of the ordinary for American presidents. He is the usual run-of-the-mill guardian of big business and the oligarch system of enriching the super wealthy. Trump, like most [?] of his predecessors, should also be prosecuted for war crimes over his bombing of Syria and Yemen. But all those misdemeanors and crimes are par for the course for US presidents.
The one thing that Trump has done out of the ordinary, as far as the Deep State opponents are concerned, is his refusal so far to ramp up aggression with Russia. That has always been the unacceptable problem with Trump as president for the unelected imperial planners of the Deep State.
The so-called “Russiagate” charade has failed to oust Trump due to its embarrassing dearth of evidence on alleged collusion with Russian leader Vladimir Putin. The wider American public have simply not bought into that drama which has been concocted by political and media elites to nix Trump.
Given the futility of those efforts, the Deep State may have now found at last the effective instrument with which to eliminate Trump from the White House. You enlist a “star journalist” with yesteryear’s Deep State operative experience, get the supposed paper of record to quickly “confirm” the salacious details, and then wait for the desired “administrative coup” to become a popularly demanded reality.
If you had any lingering doubt that Facebook has become little more than a vehicle for US government censorship and Western propaganda, a recent Washington Post op-ed by Mark Zuckerberg should remove any ambiguity.
In his short and snappy op-ed, Mark Zuckerberg admits that “protecting democracy” is an “arms race” and reaffirms Facebook’s commitment to winning. Put another way, Zuckerberg is telling us that social media is a weapon — and that he has picked a side.
Because, let’s not labor under the false illusion that Facebook cares about democracy everywhere. In Zuckerberg’s world, there are bad guys and good guys — and he’s relying on the good guys to tell him what’s what.
The problem is that, coincidentally, the good guys always seem to be tied to Western or Western-aligned governments — and the bad guys always just happen to be the ones those governments don’t seem to like very much. A conundrum which I’m sure was totally unintentional and which Facebook is no doubt working very hard on figuring out. As he says in the Post, Facebook is working very hard to “improve its defenses” against any kind of unfair or nefarious influence and it has been doing its very best to remove “fake accounts and bad content” in recent months.
The military comparisons (“arms race” and “improving our defenses”) are perhaps more apt than Zuckerberg even intended, given that for some of this work, he has chosen to partner up with the Atlantic Council, which operates essentially as a soft-power lobbying wing for NATO, campaigning vociferously on behalf of the US-led military organization and championing its wars and “interventions” across the world.
In a roundabout sort of way, Zuckerberg’s op-ed is unintentionally honest, because a huge amount more can be inferred from what he doesn’t say than what he does say.
Funnily enough, despite offering a list of actions Facebook has taken against what Zuckerberg calls “bad actors” online, the psyops and social media manipulation orchestrated by Western governments — chiefly, the US, UK and Israeli governments — don’t get so much as a passing mention in his op-ed. This is odd, given his sincere and deep commitment to combating fake news and misinformation. Clearly, the little democracy fairies that whisper orders in his ear every day must have forgotten to mention them. I mean, let’s give the guy a break. It’s a big responsibility to have the fate of democracy resting on your shoulders.
But let’s say someone did slip a note onto Zuckerberg’s desk about some really nefarious stuff that’s been going on under his nose for years. What might it say?
Well, it might mention a 2011 report in the Guardian newspaper which exposed that the US government was at that time developing a ‘sock puppet’ software program, designed by the US military, to “fake online identities” for the purpose of influencing online conversations and spreading pro-American propaganda. What’s worse, this wasn’t even really a secret.
To build its influence campaign, United States Central Command (Centcom) awarded a contract to a California-based company to develop an “online persona management service” allowing one serviceperson to control up to ten different fake identities, which the contract stated must have convincing and believable background stories. But don’t worry, CENTCOM said it was all about combating terrorism, that they were not targeting Facebook or Twitter and they were only trying to fool foreigners who speak languages like “Arabic, Farsi, Urdu and Pashto” — so, no problem then. I mean, if they say it, it must be true.
The note to Zuckerberg might also mention that in 2015, the British Army proudly announced it was developing a new brigade to specialize in psychological warfare on social media. The ‘77th Brigade’ employs social media “warriors” (the Russians have “trolls” and “bots” — but the UK has “warriors”) who use “non-lethal engagement and legitimate non-military levers as a means to adapt behaviours” online — a fairly long-winded way to say: “We do propaganda.”
It is also known that the British GCHQ and the NSA in the US operate entire programs dedicated to discrediting adversaries online through sophisticated disinformation campaigns involving fake emails and blog posts.
At the beginning of this year, the Israeli Army set up its “Center for Consciousness Operations” which was described by Haaretz as “a new ‘soft power’ psychological warfare unit”. Of course, this was not Israel’s first attempt at manipulating opinion online. The Israeli Army has previously invested in similar programs, with the government announcing in 2013 that it was willing to pay Israeli students to circulate pro-Israeli information online. The IDF is known to be active on 30 platforms including Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Instagram and operating in six languages. But the centre of “consciousness operations” was part of a new push to “influence the enemy and Western opinion over Israel’s military moves” through social media and other online platforms.
Zuckerberg’s mind will be blown when he hears about all this. No doubt he would march straight back to Capitol Hill and demand an immediate explanation.
Facebook has steadfastly ignored any evidence that these governments are engaged in massive online influence campaigns because they’re the ‘good’ guys so what they do online doesn’t matter. In fact, it’s worse than that. Facebook not only does not care what these governments do, it actively helps them do it.
One recent example was the temporary removal of the Telesur English page on Facebook without explanation. It just so happens that Telesur is one of the only English-language sources of news on Venezuela that offers a perspective which differs from Washington’s view. A coincidence, surely.
Then there’s the fact that Facebook has been deleting the accounts of Palestinian activists at the behest of the Israeli government, as the Interceptreported last year. Over one four-month period, Facebook removed 95 percent of the accounts that Tel Aviv demanded to be taken down. It’s important to note that “demanded” is the correct word here, given that Israel threatened Facebook with new laws which would have forced them to comply with deletion orders if they did not do so voluntarily.
In his op-ed, Zuckerberg claims (correctly) that social media platforms like Facebook are targeted by “sophisticated, well-funded adversaries” who are getting smarter about covering their tracks. But he simply can’t be taken seriously while ignoring the clear evidence that the very governments and ‘fact checkers’ he is so keen to work with to ‘combat’ disinformation are knee-deep in this exact activity.
In reality, we can’t expect Zuckerberg to start caring about any of this. During a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on Wednesday, Facebook’s Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg all but confirmed that Facebook willingly acts on behalf of the US government when she assured senators that the platform would never take action to favor a “hostile foreign power” over the US or its military.
But Facebook executives are one thing and the media is another. While Western journalists have sought to wrangle as many headlines as possible out of stories about “Russian meddling” online, they have shown curiously little interest in online propaganda campaigns run by their own governments.
Danielle Ryan is an Irish freelance writer based in Dublin. Her work has appeared in Salon, The Nation, Rethinking Russia, teleSUR, RBTH, The Calvert Journal and others. Follow her on Twitter @DanielleRyanJ
The first wrote a piece about the United States in which he argued that the country was irredeemably stuck in a schizophrenic mind-set formed before the abolition of slavery. This had allowed slavery to continue despite a bill of rights guaranteeing freedom to everyone. The present disproportionate number of blacks in prison was a direct consequence.
This analysis was met with a chorus of disapproval, but the usual pontificators on public morality, many of whom happened to be Jewish, ruled that free speech was a right which took precedence over all others.
The second commentator wrote a piece about the United Kingdom in which he argued that the country had been a failed concept since the act of union tried to mould two quite distinct peoples into one nation. Moreover, the UK was irredeemably flawed by being built on the proceeds of the lucrative slave trade.
This analysis, though getting some support, was widely criticised, but the usual pontificators on public morality, many of whom happened to be Jewish, ruled that free speech was a right which took precedence over all others.
The third commentator wrote a piece about Israel in which he argued that Theodor Herzl’s concept of a Jewish state was inherently inequitable, and that until that concept was changed not only on paper but in the minds of a majority of Jews, there would be no peace.
This analysis provoked a hurricane of protest. But the pontificators, many of whom happened to be Jewish, now joined in; indeed they cheer-led the rumpus. It was left to a few still small voices, among them a sprinkling of Jewish ones, to stand like trees bent double by the wind, and argue that Jews and Israel should not be treated exceptionally.
Needless to say, the third commentator lost his job and has recently been seen begging in the streets of Brighton.
UN Ambassador and Clairvoyant Prognosticator of the Transmundane Nikki Haley has foreseen that, if there are any future chemical weapons attacks in the Syrian province of Idlib, it will most definitely be the Syrian government that is responsible and not the multiple terrorist factions in the area.
“If they want to continue to go the route of taking over Syria, they can do that,” said Nikki Haley at a UN press conference today, without explaining how a nation’s only recognized government can ‘take over’ the country it governs. “But they cannot do it with chemical weapons. They can’t do it assaulting their people. And we’re not gonna fall for it. If there are chemical weapons that are used, we know exactly who’s gonna use them.”
Haley was referring to the Syrian government’s impending push to complete its military campaign of recapturing its land from the terrorist factions and militias who, with extensive help from the US and its allies, have been holding communities hostage in a failed attempt to take over Syria. Her supernatural prophecy is just the latest in an increasingly bizarre string of claims being advanced by political figures and establishment media that the Assad government is planning to use chemical weapons to complete that campaign in Idlib.
Their narrative is that the Russian government’s warnings of a plot by the Al Qaeda-linked terrorist factions occupying the region to stage a chemical weapons attack and frame the Syrian government for it are actually just a preemptive “smoke screen” to allow them to get away with committing war crimes. When Haley said “we’re not gonna fall for it,” this is the ‘it’ she was referring to.
So let’s unpack that a bit. I’m going to propose two different possibilities to you, and you decide for yourself which one is the more likely event to occur in the future:
Possibility 1: The actual, literal terrorist factions occupying Idlib are on the cusp of defeat with nowhere to escape to. They know for a fact that the US and its allies have launched repeated attacks on the Syrian government following chemical weapons allegations without first waiting for an investigation into those allegations. They also know for a fact that multiple high level officials in the western alliance have stated they will carry out aggressive attacks against the Syrian government in retaliation for any perceived chemical weapons attacks, and, thanks to the public prognostications from Madame Haley’s crystal ball, they also know that the Syrian government has already been assigned blame for any such attack in advance. Knowing all of these things, with their backs against the wall with the absolute certainty that getting the western military alliance on their side is their last and only chance, they get their hands on some chemical weapons and kill some of the civilians they’ve captured.
Possibility 2: On the cusp of victory, the Assad government decides to do the one thing that risks a US-led regime change military intervention in order to accomplish the crucial strategic masterstroke of killing a few kids with chlorine or sarin in front of a bunch of White Helmets cameras.
While you are weighing those two options, consider for a moment the fact that the US and its allies have an extensive history of attempting to control who governs Syria, and indeed plotted to create a violent uprising exactly as it occurred in 2011. Not after the violence had already started, but years in advance.
This is not my opinion, and it is not a conspiracy theory. It is a known fact that you can verify for yourself:
Here is a 2006 WikiLeaks cable in which the US government is seen exploring possible factions which could be incentivized to rise up against Assad, and ways in which psyops could be used to ensure widespread violence.
Here is a declassified CIA memo from 1986 in which the Central Intelligence Agency is seen exploring ways in which sectarian tensions can be inflamed to provoke a violent uprising in Syria. Here is a useful article featuring excerpts from the memo showing some jarring parallels between what was being planned and what happened a quarter century later.
Here is a video clip of General Wesley Clark naming Syria among the countries scheduled by the Pentagon for regime change in the wake of 9/11.
Here is a video clip of the former Foreign Minister of France stating in plain language that he was informed by British government insiders in 2009 that a violent Syrian uprising was being planned, two years before the violence erupted.
Here is an article featuring a video of the former Qatari Prime Minister stating that the US and its allies were involved in the violence from the very beginning.
Here is an article from May of 2011 reporting on some of the extremely suspicious provocations that led to the outbreak of widespread violence. Here’s another from March 2011. Here’s another from December 2011.
You get the picture. If a man had documented his plans to murder his wife with an axe, and those plans were found after his wife turned up dead of axe wounds exactly as he’d planned them, and multiple people in the area said they’d heard him murdering her with an axe, the primary suspect in that case would not be the neighbor’s cat.
The violence in Syria was planned and orchestrated years in advance, and now hundreds of thousands of human beings are dead as a direct result. And these monsters are now pretending to be concerned about human rights?
No. Get out of Syria, you absolute ghouls. Everyone responsible for perpetrating and sustaining these horrors should spend the rest of their lives in a Hague cell. If there is a chemical weapons attack as the Syrian government moves to recapture Idlib, the last people anyone should believe is the psychopathic governments who are responsible for this catastrophe in the first place.
The United States collectively speaking lost its mind last week during a multi-day orgy of smug self-satisfaction centered on the obsequies culminating in the state funeral of Senator John McCain. McCain became the Everyman American-style, embodying virtues that all red-blooded lovers of freedom should aspire to, a hero who fought“for the life and liberty of other people’s in other lands.” He was a man, according to the media, of matchless nobility who endured torture for love of country, a war hero who put down his sword before starting a long career in government service where he selflessly defended liberty and justice worldwide.
Unfortunately, very little of the story is true. The entire hagiographic saga of the warrior prince that has been woven around McCain by those in the media and the political world that want to use him to demonstrate the deficiency of those qualities in Donald Trump is little more than a work of fiction. John McCain was a monster, betraying his country while a prisoner in Hanoi and then his former comrades-in-arms after the war ended. From Vietnam he learned nothing, saying “I hate the gooks. I will hate them as long as I live.”
McCain subsequently embraced every war that came his way while also promoting regime change and doing his best to start new wars in places where America had no interests. Think Afghanistan, Iraq, Georgia, Ukraine, Somalia and Syria just for starters. A prosperous Libya was bombed into anarchy and is now ruled by gangs who have reopened slave markets. McCain was also an opportunist par excellence, parlaying his dubious war record into a political career and at the same time ditching a first wife whom he considered a liability to marry the daughter of a multi-millionaire Arizona beer distributor to finance his personal ambitions.
The number of politicians of all stripes and media hacks eager to climb on the McCain bandwagon is quite astonishing, particularly as the Senator’s real track record is well known inside the beltway. Songs of praise were of course expected from leading Establishment and Deep State toadies completely lacking moral compasses, to include George W. Bush, Barack Obama and Joe Biden, but even Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, self-described socialist and darling of America’s progressives, enthused over the “maverick” warrior, whom she never had met, whose “… legacy represents an unparalleled example of human decency and American service.” Another leftist who should know better, Senator Elizabeth Warren, recalled fondly how McCain advised her “To always get in the fight and throw some punches.”
Only the honest and honorable ex-President Jimmy Carter has had the courage to buck the trend and tell it like it is regarding McCain, describing him in 2014 as a “warmonger.” Hanging the human decency label on McCain is the ultimate travesty as he is a man who actively promoted the policies that have killed millions around the world, to include thousands of his own countrymen. Indeed, he was a symbol of American interventionism, having led the Republican wing of the National Endowment for Democracy, a US government funded democracy promotion engine which has interfered in more elections and governments than even the CIA did in its heyday.
So who is the real John McCain? A credible case has been made that McCain, who was shot down while bombing a civilian target, almost certainly crossed the line and collaborated extensively while a prisoner in North Vietnam before being exonerated through a Navy Department cover-up of his behavior after his release from captivity. His own subsequent actions as a congressman to block any inquiry into the status of possible US prisoners of war remaining in Indochina have also been examined in some detail by prize winning journalist Sydney Schanberg and quite appropriately condemned.
But McCain is perhaps best known for his recent efforts to increase US involvement in Syria and also instigate war with Russia and Iran. Fighting between Georgia and Russia broke out in 2008 when Tbilisi threatened and then attacked Russian peacekeepers in Abkhazia and South Ossetia. McCain responded, “We are all Georgians now,” urging that the US enter the conflict on behalf of Georgia. He later was present in Maidan Square in Kiev together with the odious Victoria Nuland, stirring up opposition to the regime in power that was friendly to Russia. When regime change subsequently took place and fighting broke out, McCain led congressional moves to actively support the new Ukrainian government against Moscow. And who can forget the good Senator’s photo-op with ISIS terrorists in Syria as well as his sparkling rendition of “bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb Iran” on the Howard Stern radio program?
So it is goodbye to John McCain. And I would add, good riddance.
Praise be to God, Lord of the Worlds, and prayers and salutations be upon our Master and Prophet, the Seal of the Prophets Muhammad, upon his pure and noble family, his chosen and faithful companions and all the Prophets and Messengers.
Peace be upon you all, and God’s mercy and His blessings.
O my brothers and sisters, I congratulate you on this day, the day of our historic and divine victory that God, in His benevolence, has granted you and Lebanon, the peoples of our region and the (Arab and Muslim) Community, thus registering a clear victory that upset many equations.
First, my thanks to God the Most High, who has protected us, supported us and granted us victory, pouring on us His Benefits that are impossible to count. And I thank and salute all those who have shaped this victory and took part (in one way or another) in shaping and achieving it, be they men of the Resistance, of the army and security forces, of the various factions of the Resistance, martyrs, wounded, prisoners and their families, refugees, steadfast and patient people and all those who made sacrifices, current and past Presidents, religious, political, military and security leaders, parties, forces, movements, committees, organizations, media, all the brave people of Lebanon and of the entire Arab and Islamic world, and all around the world. And special thanks are due to those who firmly stood by our side during this war, namely the Islamic Republic of Iran and the Syrian Arab Republic for their historical position alongside us.
O my brothers and sisters… I read the thanks quickly, and by the grace of God, the titles will be inclusive [of all those who contributed to the victory] so I’m not forced to mention (them one by one) in detail.
We celebrate this anniversary today (the victory of 2006), which is dear to us. It’s been twelve years since we won this victory, and we emphasize the importance of the celebration of this occasion. Similarly, God willing, we will celebrate in a few days in the city of Hermel the first anniversary of the Second Liberation (of Lebanon) –we must also hold the celebration of this date dear– against terrorism and takfiri groups.
And just as we were victorious during the July (2006) War, I wish to state that what happened for seven years and until now is a Great July (2006) War on the entire region, aiming to achieve the same objectives, the same project and the same hopes that the July 2006 War endeavoured to achieve. And as we came out of the July 2006 war victorious, we will come out soon, with God’s grace, victorious in this Great (World) War against our region and against the Resistance Axis in our region, to celebrate this divine, historical and major victory, which is close, very close, and will happen very soon.
We stress the importance of this celebration in order to emphasize the importance of the feat accomplished, to honor those who shaped this feat –the fighters, the martyrs, those who have made sacrifices and their leaders, the honorable, loyal and sincere people–, to root this victory in the feelings, culture and (collective) consciousness, to open the horizon and give new hopes against the waves of despair and humiliation, in the face of the inhibition of wills and appeals to surrender, to draw lessons and to consolidate our points of strength.
Today… As I speak today and I am going to make another speech in a few days (dedicated to the August 2017 Liberation from ISIS), I will discuss the 2006 war and the regional situation together as a single point, with a part I will complete in my next speech in Hermel, and I will say a few words about the internal situation (in Lebanon), and I also will complete them in my speech in Hermel.
If we go back to 2006, everyone remembers that the objectives of the war were to achieve the American project at the time, which was led by George Bush and his administration, after they occupied Afghanistan and Iraq and arrived at the borders of Syria and the Islamic Republic (of Iran). There was a major project in the region, for which targets were set. The 2006 war was fundamental in this project, and when it failed, the project collapsed with it.
Of course, afterwards, they made new studies and new careful calculations, and have engaged in a new plan. So there was a plan for the US hegemony project aiming to crown Israel as a fundamental, leading and axial element in the (project of a) New Middle East. The plan fell apart when we came out victorious in the 2006 war, when the Resistance in Gaza came out victorious, when Syria and Iran stood steadfast, and they then developed a new plan, the one against which we have fought in recent years and to this day.
Let us return to the 2006 plan. I am not doing a journalistic analysis, I am talking about things we have experienced and which were required from us. Remember, the purpose of this war was to end the Resistance once and for all, to annihilate it, either militarily or by forcing us to surrender, and that is what was required from us during the first days of the war: “Give up your weapons, all your weapons for the war to end.” But we were not only required to disarm. “Accept multinational forces…” Not international forces, not forces from the United Nations, but forces directly dependent on the US administration, like those who occupied Iraq in 2003. “Accept multinational forces at the Lebanese border with (occupied) Palestine, multinational forces at Lebanon’s border with Syria, and multinational forces at the airport and port of Beirut. In short, accept a new occupation that will be designated as the multinational forces, and hand us over both (Israeli soldiers) prisoners unconditionally.”
If Lebanon had fallen, it was planned to continue the project in the same year in Syria in 2006, and against the Palestinian Resistance in Gaza. But the (victorious) Resistance of Lebanon postponed the war against Gaza by two years. And it was planned to besiege Iran to isolate it and then strike it and put an end to this (Resistance) Axis, and forever. Such was (the plan) in 2006.
The (victorious) Resistance of Lebanon made these objectives and plan collapse, and pushed back the aspirations of the United States and Israel in our region for several years, taking us into a new battle, and caused very significant developments: it not only foiled the objectives (of the enemy), but it caused very important developments. It increased the power of the Resistance in Lebanon, Gaza, Palestine, Syria, Iran, Iraq, and (all) the region.
This victory took place, and no one (kindly) granted it to us: it is neither the Security Council, nor the UN, nor the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, nor the Arab League nor the Arab regimes that shaped this victory, but it was a blessing of God Almighty and Exalted and of the sacrifices of our people, of his patience and of his (victorious) Resistance, and thanks to the fact that he stayed on his land and came back to it (very promptly, as soon as the cease-fire was declared), thanks to the blood of its martyrs, the courage of its Mujahideen and fighters, and the steadfastness of the political position. We arrived at a new stage. I will not talk (any longer) about 2006, and I now turn to the current situation.
Well, today, during these “seven terrible years” (cf. Qur’an 12, 48), they brought the region into war, and even into several wars, all aimed at achieving the same previously stated objectives. And their axis is Israel, their goal is Israel and the strengthening and rooting of Israel (in the region) and his consecration as the (undisputed) master of this region. Therefore I will allow myself to speak (at length) about the situation in the region in relation to Israel. That is to say, where are they today, and where do we stand, even if it takes a bit of time, because we lead a battle for awareness, for will, for hope: today, these are the real titles of the battle waged in recent years, during those years and in the coming years.
So we will consider Lebanon in terms of the fight against Israel, as well as Syria, Palestine, Gaza and (all) the region. For all that happened aimed to serve Israel and its interests. I will not talk about the situation seven years ago (beginning of the war in Syria), but from where we are after those seven years, that also are seven years of steadfastness, strength, endurance, sacrifice and bloodshed (for our cause). Where is their project, where are they, and where are we, what are the position and situation of the Resistance Axis?
Let’s start with Israel and Lebanon. How are things between Israel and Lebanon since 2006 to date, in 2018? It is clear that Israel is deterred (from any aggression against Lebanon). This Israel who, all his life, was attacking Lebanon for the most trivial reasons –its planes were bombing the south, the Bekaa, the North, Mount Lebanon, even the heart of the capital. You all remember the situation before 1982 and after 1982. But things have changed, and Israel does no such thing today. And it’s not because of good manners (allegedly acquired by) Israel, but thanks to the (deterrent) equation imposed by the Resistance.
Today, Israel, since 2007 to date, continually rebuilds and refounds itself in the light of its (2006) defeat and of the consequences of this defeat. They reviewed their combat doctrine, their military strategies and tactics –each time a new Chief of staff takes office, he writes a new strategy for the Israeli army–, their structure, the training of their forces, they have reconsidered their facilities and equipment and weapons, they continually hold maneuvers since 2006 and until yesterday, yesterday, there were maneuvers in the north.
Why? Why all these maneuvers, these reconsiderations, etc.? Because they consider that in Lebanon, there is a force that worries them (greatly), and that is to them, in their words, a “great threat” the “main threat”, and they are preparing to face it (at their best). (Throughout its history), when did we find Israel behaving this way towards Lebanon? (Never before 2006).
Israel hides itself behind the walls (it erected at the border) with Lebanon. They work constantly on their home front, and set out their fears at this level. Today, in every action –and I am not revealing secrets, even their media speak of it–, Israel considers (the risks of strikes against) the electricity, gas, oil, its gas facilities, the colonies, the depth, etc., because they know that in front of them, there is a serious, powerful and capable enemy. And I will conclude on this in a decisive sentence.
Israel carries out a (diligent) monitoring of the forces of the Resistance. Since 2006, they gather information about us, our weapons, the number of our fighters, our actions, our expertise. And when we went to Syria, they watched us (constantly), (worried) about our new acquisitions in experience and expertise in Syria. And as regards Lebanon (Hezbollah), it takes a very serious and very important place in their calculations.
Until we come to… Throughout its existence, Israel had never erected defenses in northern (occupied) Palestine. If defensive measures were required, it was in southern Lebanon (because Israel was always on the offensive). For the first time in the history of the Zionist entity, defensive lines are built in the north of Palestine to face the project of Liberation of Galilee (announced by Hezbollah). And Israel holds annual military exercises to prepare for that prospect. And field measures are taken and constantly reviewed and improved.
Until a few days ago, as part of the (recent) maneuvers in the north (of occupied Palestine), a senior officer in the Israeli army –this is reported by Israeli newspapers, not myself– said: “Hezbollah is the most powerful army in the Middle East after the Israeli army, because it has this, this, this and that.” Of course, I do not agree with him on this estimate. We do not consider that Hezbollah is the most powerful army in the Middle East after the Israeli army, but this statement expresses how the Israeli enemy sees this Resistance he wanted to eradicate during the July 2006 war.
Today, in 2018, this Resistance is, as I have always said and repeated every year, and allow me to repeat it again today, and the important thing is that the Israeli enemy knows very well that it is the strict, the undeniable truth: yes, the Resistance in Lebanon today, in its arms, its equipment, its capabilities, the number of its fighters, its cadres, its power, its expertise, its experiences, its faith, its determination, its courage and its will is stronger than ever since its launch in this region (in 1982)!
Certainly, Israel can threaten (us with war) every day. Remember, just weeks after the end of the July (2006) war, Israel threatened Lebanon with a vengeful war that was (supposedly) approaching fast. But you can count (the years of peace) with me: where is this war that Israel (continually) threatened us with and for which it asserted itself ready, having supposedly fixed all its shortcomings and faults, promising that it would shortly launch a new war against Lebanon? They threatened us (with war) in 2007, and 2007 has passed (peacefully). (Same thing in) 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, etc., until 2018. For 12 years, Israel has threatened us (permanently) to launch a war (imminently). But while they threaten to launch a war (against us), at the same time, they continue to evoke the fact that the Resistance becomes stronger (by the day) and that its (fire)power is increasing, until one of their officers said that Hezbollah is the most powerful army in the region after the Israeli military.
I want to tell him that we are not the most powerful army in the region after the Israeli military, leave this subject aside, because it is not precise, and we do not want to create problems (by competing) with the armies of the region. But let me say to that senior Israeli officer, on (the date of the commemoration of) the July (2006) War, that Hezbollah is stronger than the Israeli army! The Resistance in Lebanon is stronger than the Israeli army!
For either in 2000 or in 2006, it was never a question of manpower, equipment, quantity, capabilities, weapons or rockets / missiles. Today we have more faith in the righteousness of our cause than you have in your false, usurping cause. Today we are more willing to sacrifice than your miserable army and society, living in worry with many problems and in many files. Today we have more faith and confidence than ever in our God, our Creator and He who granted us victory, ever since God the Almighty and Majestic created us. Today we have more faith, trust and confidence in His Promise of victory addressed to the patients and sincere fighters. This sincerity, this faith and patience, we have them more than ever because of the accumulation of experiences.
When the Commander of the Faithful, Imam Ali –peace be upon him–, said in one of his maxims: “War is (like) a debate, sometimes we have the advantage, and sometimes the enemy has the advantage, until God sees our sincerity, then He gives us victory and defeats our enemy.” He did not say “until God sees our weapons, our missiles / rockets, our equipment and our fighters”, but “until God sees our sincerity”. This sincerity, this authenticity and this faith, with which the people of the Resistance, the men of the Resistance and the families of the Resistance fought in 2006, today are bigger, stronger and more rooted (than ever).
And so your calculations are wrong (O Israel): we are not (necessarily) stronger than the other armies (of the region), but we are stronger than you. That’s all regarding Israel (and Lebanon).
Secondly, Israel and Syria. (The United States and Israel) had planned to topple Syria in 2006 if the Resistance in Lebanon had fallen (in the July war). For if the Resistance had been defeated in 2006, they planned to bring multinational forces in Lebanon –because the Israeli army could not have stayed after the war–, US, French, English, Italian forces, etc. These forces were supposed to settle in Lebanon, close the border between Lebanon and Syria and besiege Syria to make it fall. This did not happen. The past seven years (of war) have therefore befallen in order to topple Syria in another way, namely the global war that was launched against Syria.
I will mention only Syria from Israel’s point of view. Israel is a full partner of the project of war against Syria since 2011, and fully participates in decision-making and in the US-Saudi-Western plan. On the ground, Israel has provided all the necessary support to the armed groups in southern Syria, all the logistical & medical support, weapons, food and information, up to occasional military interventions to help these groups. And we all remember, during the last seven years, the statements by Israeli officials who said that President Assad would fall within 3 or 5 months and that the interest of Israel was the fall of the regime. Today, there are people (analysts, journalists, officials) in the Gulf or elsewhere who philosophize about the fact that Israel would never have said anything like that, but anyone can refer to the archives of the past seven years, during which all the leaders of the usurper entity, without exception, expressed hopes that President Assad and the Syrian regime would fall, and that they’d see these (terrorist) groups replace them. The Syrian opposition, who visited the Zionist entity, brought pledges (of friendship), and regarded Israel as a friend, and Israel hoped to see Damascus become an allied or friendly capital instead of being an enemy capital. All this is common knowledge.
Israel had high hopes, during the last seven years of war against Syria, (betting) on the fall of the regime and its replacement by a regime that would hasten towards resolution of disputes with Israel. Israel built hopes on the destruction of the Syrian Army in a way that it could not recover from in the future. Israel built hopes on the fact that the Syrian opposition, which according to their calculations was to seize power, would hasten to conclude (peace) agreements with it. Israel built hopes on the fact that those Syrians who self-identify as “opposition” would give up the Golan Heights (to Israel) in a future agreement. And Israel built hopes on the fact that the international community would give it the Golan and would recognize it as belonging to it because of the developments in Syria, whether the war continued or the regime was overthrown. But what is the situation today? Because we speak about the present.
Such were their hopes, and they worked (relentlessly) to achieve them for seven years, but today, those hopes have been scattered to the four winds. The world is not prepared to give them the Golan –maybe Trump would be willing to recognize (the Golan as Israel’s) but the international community and the world today are (humbly) standing in line to restore relations with Syria and the Syrian State. And for your information, in this line, security services worldwide outnumber diplomats, because today, the world is afraid of the return to their country of tens of thousands (of terrorists) that they have brought to Iraq and Syria from all the over world. What will they do there (attacks, etc.)? That’s why they need Syria and security cooperation with Syria. The world will not give the Golan to Israel nor recognize it as Israel’s, neither in a unilateral gesture, nor under pressure from Trump.
Israel built its hopes on the fall of the Syrian State, but the State maintained itself. Israel hoped the Syrian army would crumble, but yesterday, (Avigdor) Lieberman (Israeli Minister of War) himself said that –these are his words, not mine– it seems that the Syrian Army will return a larger and more powerful army than ever, and during these seven years, it tremendously gained in experience. And everyone knows that the battles fought in Syria (against terrorists) require great minds, unalterable wills and colossal capabilities.
Moreover, before the war, Israel feared the Syrian Army in Syria –there was also the Syrian people that they underestimate, but they are mistaken–, but after the war, Iran and Hezbollah are now added to them. Iran and Hezbollah (are now in Syria). This is a (stunning) failure for Israel. This poses a (huge) problem for Israel. And that is why today, Netanyahu, every day, absolutely every day, (when he speaks) about Syria, he now accepted as a fact the maintenance of the Syrian regime, leaders and even Army, but the battle he leads today, the political battle that he is currently leading like a beggar, is that Iran should not remain in Syria, and Hezbollah should not remain in Syria. And I saw that some journalists and analysts claimed that I was about to announce today the withdrawal of Hezbollah from Syria. Tell me, in what (illusory) world do you live? What (kind of nonsense) do you read or watch (on TV)? If someone gives you such information, then he is making fun of you. Such is the problem of Israel today. How is he going to get Iran out of Syria? How will he get Hezbollah out of Syria?
And see the degree of impudence. Israel, who is defeated Syria, seeks to impose its conditions and requirements! You lost. You are defeated. You failed. You lost your bet. Your hopes are scattered to the four winds. And you (think you can) impose your conditions? Of course, I can not say “my dear” to Israel (even ironically). You think you can impose your own terms? On whom do you think you can impose them? On the victorious Syrian leaders? On Iran, on Hezbollah, on the Resistance Axis?
So much for Syria regarding Israel. Now let us speak about Israel in (occupied) Palestine…. Because all this war was fought for Israel, and such is Israel’s situation today. They (miserably) failed here and there, they are (very) worried about this and that, this and that frightens them, they beg for such and such thing…
For example, to return to Lebanon, behind the scenes, you know that there is a lot of US pressure on the Lebanese State to settle the issue of the land and maritime boundary with Israel. But in whose interest? In the interest of Lebanon? No way. They want to settle the issue of the (Lebanese-Israeli) land and maritime boundary in the (exclusive) interest of Israel. And when we speak of the maritime boundary, it also means (the resources in) oil and gas. But that time is over. The time when Israel was imposing its conditions on Syria, the time when Israel was imposing its conditions in Lebanon (is over), even if Israel is (fully) supported by the United States and one hundred United States. This is not an impulsive or emotional statement. This is confirmed by the facts during decades of confrontation, of victorious Resistance, of sacrifice and blood spilled.
Now let us consider (the situation) in Gaza, in Palestine and primarily in Gaza. Despite the destructive war, despite the severe blockade… The United States, Israel and their allies expected Gaza to surrender, and that in exchange for food, medicine, electricity and (drinkable) water, Gaza gives them absolutely everything and accepts the “Deal of the century” and anything else required from them, and accepts any resolution (of the conflict), even at the expense of Palestinian rights. But Gaza has not submitted, has not surrendered and has not signed (the Deal), despite the fact that the whole world has forsook them. The whole world has abandoned them.
And more, Gaza reinstated and upheld the equation of the Resistance, responding to (missile) strikes with strikes, to blood with blood, to fire with fire This is why today, this Israel that strives to convince us that he is the strongest and is about to attack us so that we accept all that he wants to impose, is in a major deadlock even against Gaza. During the debates within the enemy government (in restricted committee), the Ministers are killing and insulting each other because they are lost in their choices against Gaza. Against Gaza the besieged, Gaza the starved, Gaza the abandoned by the whole world, Israel that you claim to be the most powerful army in the Middle East is completely disoriented. One of them said it is best to uphold a truce, even at the cost of concessions (easing of the blockade) to Gaza because we can not move towards war. Another retorted that if one moves towards a truce and grants concessions (to Gaza), maybe the same thing as with the Lebanon will happen, and Gaza will become stronger year after year. Yet another –of course they are all Ministers– exclaims that they must launch a destructive war against Gaza, but someone asks if he considered the retaliation (of the Resistance in Gaza) and recalled that wars were conducted without achieving any results. Yet another promotes the invasion of Gaza and a new occupation, and someone reminds him that they have left Gaza recently. Israel is completely lost, confused and deadlocked. And this is against Gaza. Why? Because Gaza resists, as one man, despite the existing disputes (between Palestinian factions). Gaza makes sacrifices every day, especially every Friday. All this is happening against Gaza.
And it confirms the limits of the power of Israel. Even if they have an (over-armed) military and the most powerful Air force in the region, it does not mean that Israel is almighty. It does not mean that he can do whatever he wants. It does not mean that we are nothing, that we are zero, that they can erase us, that we are out of the equation. Never. Things are not so.
As for Israel, and the Deal of the century, with the arrival in power of Trump, –in this topic, allow me to express myself with even more frankness than I usually do–, with the arrival of Trump in power in the United States, and of Mohammad Bin Salman in power in Saudi Arabia, and with the assumption that the region was heading towards collapse and that the Resistance Axis was going to be eradicated, they concocted the odious Deal of the century, that we all know today, and the best that Israel could ever dream of is that this agreement is realized. For it gives them Al-Quds (Jerusalem) in a final and everlasting way, irrespective of what is located above or below ground, what is east or what is west, they take all Al-Quds, the refugee issue is erased, the existence of Israel in the region is normalized (by relations with all Arab countries) and the Palestinians get a State which is not a State, within a small and narrow extent of territory.
For two years, some have been trying to impose on the peoples and governments of our region the idea that the Deal of the century is a Decree impossible to escape, and that we cannot but accept it. But who says that? Every time they were making agreements and were developing catastrophic solutions (for Palestine), they came to the peoples of the region, to the Resistance movements and governments in the region, stating that this was an inevitable Decree that nobody could prevent. But the truth is quite different.
Today, in light of the developments that have occurred so far… Some believe –and this is an opinion that matters, issued by leading experts and political and strategic thinkers– that the deal of the century is over, that it failed, and that we are just waiting for this to be announced. For my part, I will not say that, because the issue needs further reflection, study and time, but I can tell you that this Deal of the century that Trump wants to impose with all his arrogant strength, and in which he wants to swing a big country in the region that is the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, along with other countries, this agreement faces real problems. And there’s a very good chance, if we insist on the equations (of Resistance) which we always talk about, that this agreement will collapse, now more than ever. What are the proofs of this? Why (is it that I can say that)?
First, the unanimous rejection of the Palestinian people towards the Deal of the century. Throughout Palestine, there is no faction, authority, power or popular Resistance, no Palestinian or Palestinian side that supports this agreement. That’s the first point. There is no Palestinian leader, man or representative of the Palestinian people that would agree to sign an agreement giving Al-Quds (Jerusalem) to Israel and making it the eternal capital of Israel. No way. And they (all) announced that. An agreement without Palestinian signature (has no value). Even if they were to impose it by force. If Palestine does not sign, the agreement can not function. And it (really) surprised them. They may have counted on the fact that by putting pressure on the Palestinians, terrorizing them and starving them, or by promising them money or some projects (port, airport…), some Palestinian would come sign such a Deal. (But they were bitterly disappointed).
Second, the fact that the Resistance Axis stood steadfast, that Iran resisted, the victory of Iraq against ISIS crazies & Wahhabi movements funded by the United States and Saudi Arabia, the victory of Syria, the fact that Yemen stood firm, all this extended Axis (from Palestine to Iran), not to mention the developments in Lebanon (victory of the Hezbollah alliance in the elections). All this has its influence. You were getting ready to impose an agreement on the assumption that there would be no more Resistance, Resistance Axis or countries of the Resistance. This is what you imagined a few years ago. But now, the facts are very different from your expectations.
And third, the crisis in the United States themselves, who figure they can come and impose the Deal of the century on the peoples and governments of the region, while they have (serious) problems even with their allies and friends, whether Europe or Turkey –you follow the evolution of this crisis every day–, not to mention Russia and China.
Also, among the most important things that push the Deal of the century to fail, and here I ask you to be pay attention, (I have to mention) the decline of the regional Axis led by Saudi Arabia in the region. This Axis is pushed back and it weakens. What is the proof of that? I speak only of (undeniable) facts, they are accessible, and field data reported by the media. Why?
First, this regional Axis failed completely in Syria, it’s over. It’s (game) over for them. Yes, there is still Idlib, and if it is not over by then, I will speak about it on Sunday (August 26) in Hermel. This Axis has failed in Iraq. This Axis has failed to push the world to besiege Iran and to impose (international) sanctions on Iran with Trump. And this Axis has failed in its war in Yemen.
Today, let me tell you, from my Dahiyeh (southern suburb of Beirut) in Lebanon, to the innocent victims (Dahyan) of Sa’dah, Yemen. O dear, noble and worthy people, especially the families of children who were martyred, know with certainty that those who killed you are the same as those who killed our children in Dahiyeh and in Qana. Those who have shed the blood of your wives and children are the same as those who have shed our blood in Lebanon. The same weapons, the same Axis, the same countries, the same determination, the same decision, and the same behavior. And just as the blood of our children and women triumphed in Lebanon, the blood of your children and wives will triumph in Yemen. Because behind this blood stand truth and justice, as well as (real) men and (authentic) leaders who will not forgive these criminals and bloodthirsty murderers, those who behead all feelings, all morality and all honor. When this Axis arrives at this level of atrocious massacres in Yemen, this is a clear message that militarily, it has failed, that the military option is over. They lost the war, but they want to avenge themselves on the people who inflicted this defeat on them.
And internal crises in Saudi Arabia, the crisis in the Gulf and within the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC)… The open crisis is with Qatar, but there are also hidden crises within the OIC. (And see the situation) with Canada, because of a minor problem. Now, whether it is because of this problem or in order to please Trump (who is in conflict with Canada), this question should be studied more closely (to respond). Canada has merely raised the issue of human rights and political prisoners with Saudi Arabia, and it caused (an indignant reaction like) Judgment Day in Saudi Arabia, which has denounced interference in its internal affairs, recalled its ambassador and expelled Canada’s, ended the scholarships… They geared up for confrontation and turned everything upside down because of this (alleged) Canada interference in Saudi internal affairs. And this while Saudi Arabia intervenes, fights and supports fighters in Syria and Iraq, is interfering in Iranian affairs, openly announces a war without mercy against Yemen and interferes in all the details of Lebanese affairs –and we all remember the day they arrested the constitutional Prime Minister of Lebanon, just like that. They allow themselves to interfere (wherever they want), but if anyone in the world dares to say: “Respect human rights and release those political prisoners”, they dump on him all the thunders of heaven. What is this mentality? Where are they going?
Anyway, they are experiencing (major) crises. Even with Turkey, they have a serious problem. Because Turkey is convinced that Saudi Arabia and the UAE were involved in the recent coup. Even with the Muslim world, they are in crisis. I give you an example, so that you understand what will happen to the Deal of the century.
In Malaysia, there was a head of government who was with the Saudi dynasty, an instrument of Saud, to whom they gave huge sums of money, and who worked for them for many years, but he was defeated in the elections, and is now behind bars, accused of corruption. And a new government is now in place, with a position (very) different vis-à-vis Saudi Arabia, the war against Yemen, sanctions against Iran, relations with Iran, the US administration, the Palestinian cause, the issue of Al-Quds (Jerusalem). Members of the Malaysian government have a (very) different position (towards all these issues).
And it is the same situation in Pakistan, the country where Saudi Arabia has also spent billions of dollars: the leader of the previous government, who was an instrument of Saudi Arabia, is behind bars, charged with corruption. And provided they do not foment a coup against them, a government will be formed and it will have a very different position (from that of Saudi Arabia) on the issue of Al-Quds, Palestine, Gaza, Yemen, Iran and the United States. This is the situation. This (Saudi-Israeli-American) Axis is (clearly) in decline. Let no one give us headaches with the daily lies of TV satellite channels from the Gulf. Lies, lies, lies, lies, lies, lies, until eventually people believe them. Such is the real regional situation. This Axis is declining.
The image of Saudi Arabia today in the Arab-Muslim world and elsewhere, for which it has spent billions of dollars, so that it is presented as the Kingdom of Good, today, in the consciousness of the world, what is it the Kingdom of? The Kingdom of those who sent these ISIS-crazies and takfiris, movements who destroyed the Arab and Muslim world, who perpetrated the most heinous crimes in the Arab and Muslim world and threaten the safety worldwide. What is their image with the war in Yemen? The siege, cholera, famine… And then they dare to say they provide (Yemen) with support on the issue of cholera, opening a corridor so that (the sick) can be treated. And up to their support for the Deal of the century, about which it is said that they would have backed off. Very good. Why are they backing off? Because they understood that (signing) this agreement would be a suicidal action.
Two more words about the regional situation. Israel and its internal crises: the corruption of the Prime Minister (Netanyahu), the disappearance of the historical leaders, persistent conflicts between parties, generalized anxiety, lack of confidence in the future. The atmosphere created by the media is only intended to reassure them and to keep them in the land they usurped. And also their Nation-State Law (institutionalizing the superiority of Jews). I do not have time to comment it in detail, but it will have a major impact on this entity.
In light of all these facts, we develop our position today. What happened in 2006 and what happened for 7 years aimed to allow the United States to seize this region, to root Israel permanently and to impose a resolution (of the Palestinian issue). Today, in 2018, I claim that this project has failed, or is about to fail definitively, with the Grace of God.
What is the lesson to draw from all that (I have just described)? Now I come to the conclusion. (The United States) have now only one way (to attack us). They know that wars lead to no result. Yesterday, His Eminence Imam (Khamenei), the Leader, may God preserve him, as he was speaking about the United States, said there would be no war. The US, Israel and this (Saudi) Axis know well that wars lead to no result, and they know that they will be defeated in any war they’d launch (against us), because they were defeated in the current wars and continue to be defeated.
The US-Saudi alliance, assisted by (Gulf and West) States, failed (miserably) in Yemen against the Yemeni people, who has modest resources, but great men and women. This alliance, which also failed in Iraq, Syria and Lebanon, and has succeeded nowhere, knows that (any war will be disastrous). One of the benefits of the current situation is that wars are (now) left aside. Let no one threaten us with war, or believe he can scare us by evoking the prospect of wars. Anyway, if someone wants to start a war, he is most welcome. He will be well received. We are not afraid of war, it does not worry us. We are ready and we shall come out victorious with the Grace of God. It’s a certainty. Therefore it seems that the idea of resorting to war was discarded. What do they want to do instead? Two things, and the first leads to the second.
The first is sanctions. Within the Resistance Axis, Iran is today the main force. Iran stood alongside the Iraqi people against ISIS, and in Iraq, ISIS was a Saudi-American project. Iran stood by Syria against all the takfiri movements who fought as part of a US-Saudi project. Iran stood by Lebanon during the 2006 war, before 2006 and after 2006. And Iran has stood by Palestine and Gaza and continues to stand by their side. And the position of Iran with regard to what is happening in Yemen and in the region is clear. (The Saudi-Israeli-American axis) therefore wants to target Iran. It is not possible for them to launch a war against Iran, so they imposed sanctions on Iran, in the hope that the Iranians are affected, the currency collapses, the social and economic situation becomes difficult, that disturbances are fomented inside Iran and that the Iranian people be pushed to overthrow the regime, so that the US can present themselves as the saviors and redeemers. And they think that if they pressure Iran, the whole (Resistance) Axis will weaken, (all) those who rely on Iran, count on it and are supported by it. Iran will get isolated, Hezbollah will be subjected to sanctions, as well as Syrian and Iraqi officials, something they have already done, etc., in order to besiege them financially, economically, etc. And this is supposed to weaken them and force them to back off and renounce (the Resistance).
And the second thing is to push to internal unrest in Iran, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and elsewhere. In Lebanon, I say it between brackets, and I will return to it in a moment in my last section on the internal situation, you must know that everything that is written in social networks and in the media, all the requests addressed to Hezbollah (to act) in the sectors of economy, development, finances and services, those who make them do not all have good intentions. There are people who have different intentions. There are people who try to make us bear the responsibility for this situation of which we are not responsible, or if we are responsible of it, it is only to a certain extent, in order to stir up trouble in our popular base and in our society. Therefore, the last hope of Trump, Israel and all those who stand with them is sanctions.
And about sanctions, there is a great effort in the media, and the image (of the potential impact of sanctions) that is presented is not realistic. And on August 14, the day of commemoration of the victory, my duty is to clarify this point to you and to all who listen to me, wherever they are. This Iran to which Trump imposes economic sanctions, I say this on the basis of information and very precise data in my possession, I tell you that they build their dreams, their strategy and project on the fact that this will lead Iran to internal unrest and the overthrow of the regime. But these are illusions, chimeras that have no place in reality. I remind you that in 1979, when the Islamic Revolution led by Imam Khomeini, may God sanctify him, triumphed, the arrogant Western world said that the regime would collapse within 6 months, but it stood 6 months despite sanctions and the global blockade. Then they said it was going to collapse in a year, but it stood firm. Then they said two years, but it stood. Then they imposed the 8 years war (launched by Iraq). And the whole world was with Saddam Hussein, except Syria and a small number of countries. The whole world (was against Iran). Even those who are now our allies in Syria. Even the Soviet Union was with Saddam Hussein. Even China was with Saddam Hussein. The whole world was with Saddam Hussein. And Iran fought for 8 years, with its bare chest and its empty hands, but with faith and popular will. Iran is under sanctions since the triumph of the Islamic Revolution in 1979. True, Trump strengthens the sanctions, but sanctions date from 1979. And Iran has remained, and will soon celebrate the 40th anniversary of the triumph of the Islamic Revolution, despite all the conspiracies of the world and the (hostile) neighborhood (Saudi Arabia, Gulf).
I say this (with certainty) o my brothers and sisters, o those who profess and believe in the posture of justice and truth of the Islamic Republic of Iran in the equations of the region, in the fate of the region and its future, the Islamic Republic of Iran in our region today is stronger than ever, and it is even the first power. And they can not reduce its power or presence or hurt it. The regime of Iran is powerful, strong, determined and rooted, and protected by its people. Those who nourish these hopes (to end the regime) are dreaming awake and do not know the Iranian people. They have failed to know this people for 40 years and will not succeed in 100 years. And they do not know His Eminence Imam (Khamenei), the Leader, and they do not know the officials of the Islamic Republic. They are still ignorant, foolish and stupid.
And all their past actions have not led to the weakening of Iran; on the contrary, Iran has continued to strengthen. All the stupid actions of the US administration and their instruments in the region against Iran or the region led Iran to become increasingly powerful both inside and in the region. To prove it in detail would be long, but the evidence is clear for all.
And also in our case, regarding all our (Resistance) Axis in the region, I do not claim that the sanctions have no impact, of course they have an impact, we should not deny it. But sanctions will have no impact on our determination, our will and steadfastness, nor diminish our strength. Impose all the sanctions you want. Today, we possess in terms of strength –and they begin to wonder what will be the effect of sanctions on the financial situation of Hezbollah–, we possess in terms of strength, infrastructure, cadres, men and capacity which will allow us to overcome these difficulties, with the Grace of God.
In light of all that I have just presented, I conclude before saying a few words about the internal situation in Lebanon, to draw the lesson from all this. The lesson of all this, all the past, present, and what is to come, I want to say on this August 14, 2018, 12 years after the 2006 war: O Lebanese, O honorable people, O the noblest people, most worthy and most glorious of peoples, O peoples and masses of the Resistance, we were (already) stronger (than our enemies) and we became (even) stronger. Let no one try to make us believe that we are weak. Let no one imagine that if a crisis happens, or if we have a problem here or there, and some nonsense and insults appear (in the media and social networks), it may alter our soul, our determination, our will and our strategy.
These United States, whose projects and actions turned out to be failure after failure, I say to you today, (you) are unable to launch wars like the ones they have launched in the past (Iraq, Afghanistan…). And this Israel is unable to launch wars like the ones he has launched in the past (Lebanon, Gaza, Syria, Egypt…). And now, with our victory in Iraq, with our victory in Syria coming very soon, as the fighting will end in a few days, weeks or months (at most), with the heroic resistance of Yemen, with all the developments in our region, and with the leaders and people in Iran holding out, remaining firmly attached to their position, their foundations, their principles and their doctrine, we are now stronger than ever, and capable of shaping more victories and (positive) developments, with the help of God Almighty and the Exalted. […]
Full transcript (except for the last section about Lebanon’s internal affairs).
Tawergha is a small Libyan coastal town roughly 300 kilometres east of the capital Tripoli. Its estimated that 40,000 of its inhabitants are black Libyans who have lived there for hundreds of years and never had any problem integrating into the rest of the country and were never discriminated against. They are as Libyan as any other citizen in any part of the country. Historically, their ancestors are believed to be part of the salve trade from sub-Saharan Africa.
Before 2011 the town used to be just like any other Libyan town; it benefited from free education, free health care, public services, government subsidised housing, infrastructure, businesses and above all security. The town was famous for its handcrafts of clay and handmade home furniture and used to be a hub for trade as it sits on the highway junction that connects the south, east and west of Libya. No one discriminated against the town and its inhabitants, and Libya’s successive governments, since independence in 1951, always considered Tawerghans as Libyans.
All that changed in August 2011 when the NATO supported rebels of armed militias, including terrorist groups, toppled the Gaddafi regime and in the final days of the civil war forced whoever remained in the town to flee at gun point and never allowed them to return.
Since then an estimated 40,000 inhabitants, the entire population of Tawergha, have been living as refugees in dozens of camps scattered around Libya with little hope of peaceful return any time soon. At one point roughly 2,000 people of 355 families lived in a make shift camp on the airport highway just south of the capital Tripoli. When I visited the camp the people I spoke to only wished for one thing – to be allowed to go back to their town and be left alone to live in whatever remained of their homes. It is true that most people of Tawergha cherish the late Gaddafi but the overwhelming majority took no part in the civil war of 2011 at all. One elderly person told me that he remembers how Gaddafi used to stop his convoy at Tawergha and chat with people every time he passed by as he shuttled between Tripoli and Sirte, his hometown.
In August 2011, hundreds of Tawerghan young men were jailed and an unknown number still missing with little information available to their families. International rights groups, including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, have published well documented reports of what happened in August 2011 and how Tawerghans were forced into internal exile inside Libya.
Libya’s successive governments since 2011 have so far failed miserably to tackle the tragedy either, because the militias, who dominated all governments, do not want to provide practical arrangements to help people return to their homes.
In the early days of the war in 2011 the regime was accused of using paid black African mercenaries to fight the NATO supported rebels but like many other wild accusations it turned out to be part of a propaganda campaign to further demonise the regime. Since Tawerghans are black skinned Libyans it was easy to portray them as mercenaries making them legitimate targets by the rebels even after they fled their town. The whole town was destroyed and its entire buildings, including schools and mosques, were deliberately and extensively damaged. Today, Tawargha is not only a ghost town but an open landfill as nearby Misrata militias deliberately make the town uninhabitable again.
Between 2012 and 2014 it was almost a taboo to talk about Tawergha openly inside Libya but the atmosphere relaxed in later years as it became apparent that the so-called revolution is no more than a disaster for Libya as whole, not just for Tawergha.
So why are Tawerghans still displaced after so many years and who could be held responsible for their misery? The primary responsibility for this crime rests with militias and politicians of the city of Misrata which is less than 30 kilometres west of Tawergha and whose militias took the initiative in forcing the civilian population out in 2011. They still refuse to allow them to go back in peaceful manner despite agreements worked out between the two sides between 2015 and June 2018.
In justifying their criminal position Misrata militias claim that people from Tawergha committed heinous crimes, including mass rape, within Misrata itself during the war. However no proof has been produced to support such a claim and not a single judiciary proceeding has ever been initiated against any person from Tawergha based on such allegations.
Misrata recently accepted a deal whereby it allows Tawerghans to return home but only if, among other conditions, the Government of National Accord (GNA) agree to compensate Misrata for the suffering it claims to have endured during the 2011 war, despite the fact that Tawerghans are not collectively responsible for whatever crimes claimed to have been committed.
According to the latest deal, signed last June between the local councils of both Misrata and Tawergha with the help of the GNA, Misrata accepted the return of civilians to Tawergha while receiving an undisclosed sum thought be worth millions of US dollars in compensation. The deal was hailed as a good step on the long road to national reconciliation in war shattered Libya. However, three months later and the number of returnees is far smaller than expected.
Marbuk Eswasi, an activist from Tawergha and director of a local charity named Patience, told me that no more than 100 people have actually returned and all of them live in a school yard as their homes are uninhabitable. He also pointed out that over 90 per cent of homes and business in town are damaged beyond repair and have to be rebuilt if they are ever to be used again.
Some observers also believe that NATO is partially responsible for this humanitarian disaster and is an accessory to such crime against humanity. They say, had it not been for the huge military help provided by NATO to the rebels they would not have been able to win the war and eventually displace thousands of civilians.
Others think that Misrata will never allow the return of the Tawerghan to live next to them simply because the accusations against Tawerghans for being mercenaries for the former Gaddafi regime is still widely believed as an important source of legitimacy for the entire so-called revolution of Libya in 2011, however false it has been proved.
From 1992, this documents what can only be described as State terrorism.
This scenario has been continually repeated as we seem to be involved in every thing, everywhere, with over 900 military bases in 140 different countries or so.
Innocent blood requires justice, pretending this stuff doesn’t happen is not helping.
The ending says it all as the congress cheers a ‘Liberated Panama”.
Ever since the last presidential election the words “populist” and “populism” have been widely bandied about, mostly as pejorative terms. A populist politician, we often hear, is a demagogue who wins votes by inflaming the resentments and emotions of ordinary people at the expense of rational thought. Those who fall prey to populism are no more to be trusted, critics suggest, than the politicians said to manipulate them.
It’s a curious feature of populism that it defies the normal left-right political spectrum. These days we have left-wing and right-wing populists. In the last election, Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump were both called populists. And historically, we’ve had left-wing populists like Huey Long, and right-wing populists like George Wallace.
It is the corrupt elites, populists argue, who are to blame for the insecurities and troubles of the middle-class. If you’ve lost your job, are over your head in debt, can’t pay your bills, don’t have adequate health care, lack a decent pension, and feel that your values are being undermined, populists say, it’s because of them. The elitist agenda, they say, is what drives inequality, including the outsourcing of jobs, corporate globalization, union-busting, deregulation, and the machinations of the deep state. All this, in their view, represents the tyranny of the one percent, not the welfare of the ninety-nine percent.
It doesn’t require a demagogue to convince people that these are real problems, not paranoid fears. The trouble with modern left and right wing demagogues is their unwillingness or inability to get at the root of the problems which they try to leverage for votes. It’s telling that politicians accused of populism today don’t call themselves populists, as well they shouldn’t. They’re faux-populists who stop short of challenging the status quo of continuing inequality.
Some history might be useful here. It’s largely forgotten that there was a vibrant populist movement in nineteenth century America. It was represented first by the Farmers Alliance after the Civil War, and then by the People’s party in the 1890s. The People’s Party candidate for president in 1892, James B. Weaver, got over a million votes and carried four states. Over 40 populists were elected to Congress in the 1890s, including six United States Senators, along with numerous governors and mayors.
Today such a populist wave would be totally shocking, which is a measure of how narrow our political options have become. The classic nineteenth century American populists were the last serious political movement in this country to defy the duopoly of the two major parties and lock-step left-right thinking. Their defeat in the 1890s by their better-funded and organized opponents ensured that the issues they tried to raise would henceforth be excluded from national political debate–as indeed they have been down to the present day.
What were those issues? Classic populists–unlike their modern faux-populist successors–rejected the two options that even then defined American political discourse: corporate capitalism and state socialism. Corporate capitalism consolidates economic and political power into giant top-down structures controlled by a handful of rich investors and executives. State socialism consolidates economic and political power into giant top-down structures controlled by a handful of politicians and bureaucrats. You see the similarity.
Classic populists rejected both socialism and capitalism as tyrannical absolutist ideologies. Instead they tried to balance the need for collective action with individual freedom. They sought to maximize equality by making sure that private property was widely distributed, and that concentrations of economic power were highly regulated, if not eliminated. They were advocates of small, independent producers: farmers, artisans, fabricators, and generally owners of moderate-scale, local, independent enterprises. They aimed to relocalize democratic government in the decentralized Jeffersonian tradition of home rule. You can have genuine free markets and real democracy, they argued, only when citizens enjoy individual economic security as independent owners of productive property, and can practice meaningful local democracy.
Classical populists weren’t led by demagogues–who flourish in modern, impersonal, mass politics–but by a variety of grassroots activists (as we would say today) who focused on the issues then crucial to economic and political independence, especially the regulation and decentralization of corporate power (especially in government, finance, transportation, and communications). They advocated public banking as a way of redistributing capital to individuals and small businesses by allowing easy public access to credit at low interest rates. (More about populism can be found in my book, Fixing the System: A History of Populism Ancient & Modern.)
The politicians who try to exploit populist concerns today aren’t really populists. They’re usually left-wing state socialists (Bernie Sanders) or right-wing corporate capitalists (Donald Trump). They advocate more big socialism or more big capitalism to solve our problems. But neither socialism nor capitalism is likely to produce the kind of individual economic and political freedom the original populists envisioned. The problems they raised are with us more than ever. Maybe it’s time to take their solutions seriously.
Adrian Kuzminski is a scholar, writer and citizen activist who has written a wide variety of books on economics, politics, and democracy.
A few years ago in Portland, a pro Palestinian activist told me that he was a bit uneasy. A recent study of Portland’s demography had found that the number of Jews in the city had doubled overnight. This concerned my activist friend for the obvious reasons. Jewish migration is often attached to political and cultural transitions. He asked me, as an expert on Jewish affairs, what is it that brings so many Jews to his northern American city. I thought about it for maybe 30 seconds and, even without examining the evidence, I offered a possible answer. “It is certainly easy to imagine that many Jews migrated to your city, but it is more likely that what happened is that many more people, Jews and gentiles, have chosen to identify themselves as Jews.”
Jewish identification in the 21st century is an obvious privilege, some might claim, the ultimate political privilege. As we know, Judeo-centric exceptionalist politics are protected from criticism by different legal and cultural instruments such as the bogus IHRA definition of antisemitism and the tyranny of correctness. If you are a Jew, you are perceived as a well-connected character, probably slightly more ‘sophisticated’ than the average American. Whether we like to admit it or not, a young law school graduate, may benefit from appearing to be Jewish as he interviews for his first job at a NY law firm.
Last year in San Diego, an astute Palestinian- American friend, loudly joked during the Q&A following my talk: “I really don’t understand my people. All we have to do is to convert en mass into Judaism and then make Aliya and take our land back.”
It is hardly a secret. In the world in which we live, the ultimate political privilege is reserved for Jewish ID politics. The Jewish Identitarian ethos goes far beyond Jewish political orientation. It is the piece that unites the Jewish right and left. The Zionists claim the right to live ‘in peace’ on someone else’s land. The so-called ‘anti’ Zionists insist that their Jewishness places them in the very special position to “kosher” the entire pro Palestinian movement.
N.Y. State Senate hopeful Julia Salazar is just 27 years old, but she has clearly grasped the universe around her. She wants to be elected and she understands that being a Jew is the quickest path to her goal. The Brooklyn candidate stated that her Jewishness is based largely on “family lore,” but to her great surprise, the Jews weren’t happy to take her in. Haaretz quickly pointed out that Salazar doesn’t belong to the chosen people. A Jewish ex-friend told the Israeli paper Salazar had “admitted she couldn’t go on Birthright trip because she wasn’t Jewish.”
Apparently the ‘ex friend’ told the Israeli paper that “As someone who values and cherished my Jewish identity, I’m incensed at the idea of another person fabricating a similar identity for political gain, for the purposes of recognition and to get ahead in life.” The message here is unambiguous although hardly news. Jewish identity is an exclusive tribal setting that is racially defined. Unless Salazar can show her mother’s Jewish racial purity, she is basically out of the Jewish club and can’t be a beneficiary of the Jewish privilege.
The Zionist outrage around Salazar is to be expected. For whatever political reasons, Salazar who runs in Brooklyn, decided to adopt the Jewish pro BDS position. In the eyes of Israel firsters she committed two crimes: she ‘pretends’ to be a Jew and then, if this were not enough, she actually pretends to be a ‘self hating’ one.
The good news for humanity, however, is that Salazar, like many others, can read the political transition in the west. She probably sees how popular Corbyn is in Britain despite the relentless and duplicitous campaign against him. Salazar may understand that many people see Israel as the ultimate evil. She may even believe that Trump won the election because he was “dog whistling” by pointing at Soros, the Fed, Goldman Sachs, etc. But it goes further. Salazar is living in NYC and she may well sense or even share her neighbours’ renewed anger every year when the list of “NYC 100 Worst Landlords” is published. Perhaps Salazar believes that the only chance to survive in American politics in the current climate is to become a Jew. To oppose Israel as a Jew, to oppose NYC slumlords as a Jew, to oppose AIPAC as a Jew. Perhaps Salazar believes that the only way to emancipate America from what may seem to some as Jewish hegemony, is to become a Jew. If you can’t beat them, join them.
Here is the bad news for Salazar, it is not going to work. The Jews have rejected the young Latina. Apparently she isn’t racially qualified.
The Jewishpress writes today. “There are, at least, three reasons why many of us (Jews) find her vaguely annoying. These are:1) Her apparently untrue claims to be Jewish. 2) Her antisemitic anti-Zionism. 3) Her anti-democratic socialism.”
But it isn’t only the Zionists who reject the young Latin Jewish candidate, the so-called ‘Jewish Progressives’ do not really want her either. The Jewish ‘progressive’ Forward isn’t pleased with Salazar either. Mijal Bitton writes “… the Salazar dustup revealed a fundamental and seldom explored paradox in the liberal discourse on identity: the tension between essential and exclusive identity politics predicated on group experiences on the one hand, and notions of identity that validate choice and malleability in how individuals self-identify on the other.”
Not surprisingly, Bitton, like most Identitarians, doesn’t understand the crux of ID politics. The so called ‘paradox’ she refers to is actually inherent in the dialectic tension that forms the core of the Identitarian discourse.
Identitarianism doesn’t reveal ‘what people are,’ instead it tells what people ‘identify as.’ John identifying himself ‘as a gay’ doesn’t necessarily mean that John is a homosexual. It only reveals that John likes to see himself and to be seen by others ‘as gay.’ This essential understanding of the misleading nature of the Identitarianism was explored by the comic ‘Daffyd Thomas – The only Gay in the village.’ Thomas identifies as ‘a gay.’ He adopts gay symbolic identifiers, he speaks as one, he demands the attention and the privilege of one, but at the same time he is totally removed from the sexuality that has traditionally been the crux of ‘being’ gay.
In an attempt to resolve Salazar’s Jewish identity complex, Bitton argues that Salazar’s defenders have two arguments: “The first defends her on the grounds that she represents a hybrid identity distinctly Latin/Sephardi/non-white, and as such inaccessible and misunderstood by her white, Ashkenazi, American critics. The second defends her on the grounds that Jewish identity, like Salazar’s, is malleable and does not fit into one mold.”
Both arguments can be summed into a single intellectually duplicitous doctrine that is set to block criticism of any given Identitarian discourse. It attributes blindness to the Other. But isn’t this exactly what Jewish institutions are doing routinely? Just a month ago, in a letter to the Labour Party ruling Body, British Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis wrote “It is astonishing that the Labour Party presumes that it is more qualified than… the Jewish community to define antisemitism.” Essentially, the Chief Rabbi is complaining that a bunch of Goyim in the Labour party see themselves as qualified to decide what antisemitsm is for the Labour party.
So, while the British Chief Rabbi claims that ‘antisemitsm’ is a Jew -protected discourse, Bitton complains that Salazar’s identity as Latina, Sephardi, or as a Jew of Color, intrudes on protected property; “it can only be understood, and interrogated, by the small number of those born into similar identities.”
In fact, Salazar has been copying Rabbi Mirvis’ tactics. This doesn’t only confirm that she is a Jew, it may qualify her to become Brooklyn’s chief Rabbi.
Bitton says of Salazar defenders that, “According to them, Salazar’s minority group identity confers upon her certain inalienable rights of representation inaccessible to others, but she can also legitimately choose to be Jewish in her own individual way.”
This may seem a contradiction to some. But this is exactly the primary rule of Jewish ID politics. Jewish identification is largely a racially exclusive club. But those who manage to fit in are totally free to choose their own way; they can be orthodox, conservative, reform, secular, atheist, self loving, self hating, Zionists, anti or even AZZ (anti Zionist Zionists). The members of the Jewish Identitarian club are welcome to select any combination of the above while knowing that any criticism from an outsider can be dismissed as a form of ‘antisemitsm.’ But candidate Salazar can’t take part in this Identitarian exercise. Why? Because she isn’t racially qualified.
Whether Bitton understands it or not, her futile attempt to deconstruct Salazar reveals that the Jewish Identitarian concept is, in practice, an exercise in Jewish racial classification. There is no difference between Salazar’s identitarian choice and JVP or other Jewish progressive schools of thought. None of the Jewish progressive schools is asked to clear its contradictions. The JVPs are not asked to source the so called ‘Jewish values’ that stand at the core of their ‘Jewish activism.’ The only difference is that Salazar isn’t racially Jewish. Her mother’s blood is not of the right kind. She is, accordingly, rejected.
Bitton herself seems to grasp that her attempt at deconstruction of Salazar achieves little. Bitton ends her Forward article by admitting that “Salazar’s story demands that we (Jews, presumably) explore the way in which we approach identity. Is it malleable, individual and pro-choice, or it is essential, exclusive and inherited? And if it can be both, then those who choose a selective approach to identity must demonstrate moral consistency in their rhetoric.”
I guess that the answer is really simple. Jewish identity is both malleable and racially exclusive. It is elastic enough to fit different Jewish tribal interests. Salazar, I believe, would face no problem whatsoever in becoming a ‘Jew’ if she were a supporter of Israel and an enemy of BDS. Israeli patriots are noticeably racially tolerant of Goyim who support the Jewish national project as many Russians immigrants to Israeli could happily attest.
The history of ideas provides us with the names of those few men and women who challenged the boundaries of tolerance. Professor Robert Faurisson was one such man. Faurisson, who died last Sunday at age 89, was a French academic who didn’t believe in the validity of parts of the Holocaust narrative. He argued that gas chambers in Auschwitz were the “biggest lie of the 20th century,” and contended that deported Jews had died of disease and malnutrition. Faurisson also questioned the authenticity of the Diary of Anne Frank many years before the Swiss foundation that holds the copyright to the famous diary “alerted publishers that her father (Otto Frank) is not only the ‘editor’ but also legally the ‘co-author’ of the celebrated book” (NY Times ).
In the France of the late 1960s-1970s Faurisson had reason to believe that his maverick attitude toward the past would receive a kosher pass. He was wrong. Faurisson may have failed to grasp the role of the Holocaust in contemporary Jewish politics and culture. And he did not grasp that Jewish power is literally the power to silence opposition to Jewish power.
In 1990 France made holocaust revisionism into the crime of history denial. Faurisson was repeatedly prosecuted, beaten and fined for his writings. He was dismissed from his academic post at Lyon University in 1991.
I am bothered by the question of why Jews and others attached to their politics are desperate to restrict the story of their past. This question extends far beyond the holocaust. … continue
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Classical populists weren’t led by demagogues–who flourish in modern, impersonal, mass politics–but by a variety of grassroots activists (as we would say today) who focused on the issues then crucial to economic and political independence, especially the regulation and decentralization of corporate power (especially in government, finance, transportation, and communications). They advocated public banking as a way of redistributing capital to individuals and small businesses by allowing easy public access to credit at low interest rates. (More about populism can be found in my book, Fixing the System: A History of Populism Ancient & Modern.)
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