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The idea of replacing the US contingent in Syria with Saudi troops is doomed to failure

By Dmitry MININ | Strategic Culture Foundation | 25.04.2018

The White House has had a hot new idea – to leave Syria but also stay there at the same time by deploying an Arab contingent to US military bases, primarily from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA). So to Arabize one of the bloodiest wars of our time in keeping with the bitter memory of Vietnamization.

It seems that the plan was worked out during the almost month-long stay of Saudi Arabia’s defence minister, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, in America. And the plan’s existence was announced on 17 April by Saudi Arabia’s foreign minister, Adel al-Jubeir, during a joint press conference with the UN secretary general, António Guterres. Following the missile attack on Syria, the White House press secretary, Sarah Sanders, reiterated that President Donald Trump still wants an early withdrawal of US troops from the country. The introduction of a Saudi contingent in their place seems to Washington to be in the interests of the United States. And the US government has not just suggested to Saudi Arabia that it replace the American contingent, but to Qatar and the United Arab Emirates as well. They would take a back seat to the Saudis, however. There is also talk of these regimes providing money to rebuild Syria’s destroyed north. It seems they wouldn’t just be counting on military force, but on “buying” the local population as well.

It does raise a question, of course: have the Americans asked the Syrian government or its own allies – the Kurds and, at the very least, Turkey, Russia and Iran – about the desirability of such a replacement? No, of course they haven’t. Even while withdrawing, the US is unable to forget about its “exclusivity”. For many reasons, however, the idea of replacing Americans with Arabs is doomed to failure.

That Damascus will resolutely resist the proposed reoccupation of its territory by the forces of a “fraternal country” is obvious. It can only lead to more fighting and a rise in regional tensions. Almost as well-equipped as the Americans, the Saudis will never be a worthy opponent of the battle-hardened Syrian army. They have already shown what they’re capable of in the endless war in Yemen, where barefoot Houthis are inflicting one embarrassing defeat after another. Riyadh’s intention to fight a “decisive battle” against Iran on foreign soil will not be realised, either. With its ally Iraq behind it, Tehran would soon have the advantage.

All in all, not a single one of Syria’s neighbours is in favour of the arrival of Saudi troops to replace the Americans except Israel. Iraq is categorically against the idea, since it wants to avoid having to deal with an upsurge in fighting between Sunnis and Shi’ites on its borders. Turkey has no need for the Saudis either, because they would undermine its influence in the Ankara-controlled area of northern Syria. Suffice it to say that the nearly 30,000 troops now under Turkey’s wing from Eastern Ghouta, which was recently liberated by government troops, have been on Riyadh’s payroll for the entire war. Turkey has every reason to fear that Saudi Arabia will use these and other groups to assert its dominance over the area. Libya is also against the appearance of Saudi Arabia on the Syrian stage, fearing that clashes between Sunnis and Shi’ites will move to within its own borders. Even Jordan, which is dependent on Washington and London, is weary of the initiative. As a pragmatic politician, King Abdullah II of Jordan has a good idea of all the possible negative repercussions of such an undertaking.

The proposals have also been criticised by Egypt, which has completely ruled out its involvement in their realisation. Mohammad Rashad, a senior official in Egypt’s General Intelligence Directorate, expressed himself in no uncertain terms: “The Egyptian Armed Forces are not mercenaries and cannot be leased or ordered by foreign states to deploy in a certain area.” Rashad continued: “This is not acceptable. No one should dare to direct or give orders to Egypt’s army.” The statement is an indirect response to an appeal by the US president’s new national security advisor, John Bolton, to the head of Egypt’s intelligence services, Abbas Mustafa Kamil, inviting Cairo to be involved in the project.

Just as many problems await the Saudis in and around the area of their proposed location. To begin with, the Kurds from the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) who control the area with the help of the US will certainly not welcome their arrival. It would mean the Kurds giving up control of the local Arab population in favour of the incoming contingent and losing most of the power they have won. It is quite possible that the Americans are secretly pushing for a scenario in which, as well as Arabization, there will also be a “dekurdization” of northern Syria, but at someone else’s hands. Then it would seem as if they are not betraying the Kurds, while calming Arab national feelings and ironing out differences with the Turks at the same time. Don’t think that the Kurds will remain passive bystanders in this situation, however. Chances are they will occupy the vacated US bases and refuse to let anyone in. It is even possible they will finally realise that, in the current situation, the most sensible course of action to resolve the Kurdish national question would be an alliance with Damascus. For the time being, Damascus is prepared to extend the rights of Kurds, but should they find themselves on the losing side later on, their window of opportunity will gradually close.

And for Saudi Arabia, a direct clash with the Islamic State (IS), which, according to the official version, is the terrorist group that the Saudis must go to Syria to fight, could prove fatal. The truth is that many of the IS militants still fighting in Syria are mujahideen from Saudi Arabia and their ability to indoctrinate their fellow countrymen should not be underestimated. It could happen that any direct contact between the Saudi contingent and IS militants will eventually extend the latter’s influence to the Kingdom, something that the Islamic State has long dreamed of. In the countries of the Persian Gulf, there are already some who think it would perhaps be better to hire Sudanese nationals, Pakistanis or some other poor souls for the operation.

The new plan for America to save face in the Middle East is just as chimerical as all of America’s previous attempts at a global reorganisation of the region. The outcome of Arabization will not be any better than the outcome of Vietnamization was all those decades ago. And this will continue to be the case until Washington starts taking into account the positions of all interested parties, including Damascus.

April 26, 2018 Posted by | Illegal Occupation, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Qatari 9/11 suspect says he was tortured on US soil

Press TV – April 26, 2018

A former Qatari detainee, accused by the US government of being involved in the planning of the September 11 attacks in 2001, says he had been tortured and abused during 13 years of incarceration on American soil.

Speaking for the first time after his release three years ago, Ali al-Marri said his FBI interrogators would restrain him using duct tape and subjecting him to what he described as “dry-boarding,” a torture technique which includes having socks stuffed down the throat.

“I have never experienced death, but I assume this is the nearest thing to dying,” he told the ITV News on Wednesday.

“You’re suffocating, you can see your life coming out of your face and you cannot even move,” he said.

The Qatari man alleged that threats were made to his wife and children while being held in solitary confinement.

“Threatening to sodomize me, threatening to rape my wife, threatening to bring in my kids, that’s torture. Threatening to send me to a black site, to become a military lab rat, choking me to near death. This is torture,” he said.

The former detainee also said he was subjected to sleep deprivation and forced nudity, among other extreme measures.

Al-Marri, who was in solitary confinement without charge for six years at a naval brig in South Carolina, said he was innocent and wanted his interrogators brought to account.

Al-Marri had traveled to the US with his wife and five children legally on 10 September 2001, the day before the attacks, to attend graduate school in Illinois.

He was initially charged with fraud based on information found on his computer, but the then-president George Bush declared him an “enemy combatant.”

Al-Marri has never answered the allegations. In 2009, he pleaded guilty in a civilian court to conspiracy to provide material support to al-Qaida and was jailed for 15 years, a sentence that took into account his previous captivity.

US government documents seen by ITV News said “On 11 March 2004, in response to al-Marri’s continuous chanting in Arabic, the lead interrogator wrapped duct tape over al-Marri’s mouth on three occasions.”

In a statement released to ITV News, the FBI said it “does not engage in torture and we maintain that rapport-building techniques are the most effective means of obtaining accurate information in an interrogation.”

Al-Marri was the only al-Qaeda-linked prisoner held outside the infamous Guantanamo Bay prison following the September 11 attacks.

His allegations of torture are supported by detention logs which are set to reignite the controversy over the US handling of al-Qaeda suspects.

US officials assert that the 9/11 attacks were carried out by 19 al-Qaeda terrorists but many experts have raised questions about the official account.

They believe that rogue elements within the US government, such as former Vice President Dick Cheney, orchestrated or at least encouraged the 9/11 attacks in order to accelerate the US war machine and advance the Zionist agenda.

In several cases, hundreds of victims’ relatives and injured survivors, along with insurance companies and businesses say, the Saudi government assisted the attacks through a variety of activities in support of al-Qaeda over a number of years.

April 26, 2018 Posted by | Subjugation - Torture, Timeless or most popular | , , | Leave a comment

The League of Assad-Loving Conspiracy Theorists

By C.J. Hopkins • Unz Review • April 26, 2018

So the global capitalist ruling classes’ War on Dissent is now in full swing. With their new and improved official narrative, “Democracy versus the Putin-Nazis,” successfully implanted in the public consciousness, the corporatocracy have been focusing their efforts on delegitimizing any and all forms of deviation from their utterly absurd and increasingly paranoid version of reality.

The Democratic Party is suing Russia, the Trump campaign, and Wikileaks (seriously … they’ve filed an actual lawsuit in an actual court of law an everything) for launching “an all-out assault on democracy” by publishing the DNC’s emails, “an act of unprecedented treachery,” according to Party Chairman Tom Perez. Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, having already spent the last six years in a room in the Ecuadorian embassy in London to avoid being arrested by the British authorities, extradited to the United States, and imprisoned for the remainder of his natural life, has been cut off from the outside world in order to prevent him from further “interfering” with democracy by expressing his opinions.

In Syria, where the “international community” has been battling the “global terrorist threat” by supporting moderate jihadist militias intent on overthrowing the government and establishing a fundamentalist theocracy, the corporate media have been hard at work sanctifying the official story of the “chemical weapons attack” in Douma. According to this story, Bashar al-Assad, an uncooperative brutal dictator whom the corporatocracy has been trying to replace with a more cooperative brutal dictator, dropped a lot of chlorine gas bombs (and possibly sarin, the deadly nerve agent), onto a house full of innocent babies. He did this on the eve of victory over those moderate jihadist militias the “international community” has been supporting in their eight-year attempt to take over his country, slaughter him and his entire family, mount their severed heads on spikes, implement nationwide Sharia law, and then go out hunting homosexuals and heretics to gruesomely behead on YouTube. The evacuation of these freedom fighters was already being negotiated, but Assad didn’t want to miss his last chance to sadistically gas a lot of women and children and have the Western corporate media broadcast his war crimes throughout the world, or something more or less along those lines.

This gratuitous baby-gassing massacre could not be allowed to go unpunished, so Emmanuel Macron and other senior members of the “international community” hauled Trump in off a golf course somewhere (or wrestled him away from the Gorilla Channel) and ordered him to order a completely pointless one hundred fifty million dollar series of “retaliatory” missile strikes on assorted uninhabited buildings containing zero chemical weapons and of absolutely no strategic value. The corporate media and their paid menagerie of military experts and other talking heads took to the airwaves to celebrate this demonstration of international “resolve,” as did investors in Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, and General Dynamics.

The celebrations were short-lived, however, as the corporate media needed to immediately turn their attention to aggressively countering the malicious disinformation campaign being waged by the infamous International Putin-Nazi Propaganda Network (i.e., anyone capable of critical thinking). Reports by journalists actually in Syria, like Robert Fisk of The Independent, casting doubt on the official story needed to be strenuously ignored, ridiculed, and delegitimized. Fisk, a respected, award-winning journalist who has covered the Middle East for over four decades, had clearly been duped by his Putin-Nazi minders into publishing pro-Assad propaganda. Just as clearly, any actual Syrians contradicting the official story (which the corporate media had scrupulously fact-checked with the US military and intelligence agencies) had been intimidated into doing so by Putin-Nazi-Assadist death squads.

But Fisk and the Syrians are small potatoes compared to the discord-sowing threat posed by the International League of Assad-Loving Twitter Conspiracy Theorists, a decentralized network of “anti-Western,” “pro-Assad,” extremist traitors led by people like Sarah Abdallah, a shadowy figure whose current whereabouts the BBC is still trying to pinpoint (and presumably report to MI6), and Vanessa Beeley, an independent journalist who writes about Syria for an “extreme right” website, speaks to “fringe groups,” and has appeared on RT, which the BBC is at pains to remind us is a “state-owned” media organization.

This nefarious network of dissension-sowers is also responsible for the “4000 percent increase” in Putin-Nazi propaganda in the wake of the Poisoned Porridge Attack that “Russia” carried out in Salisbury in March, in which operatives allegedly smeared the doorknob of a former Russian intelligence officer and his daughter with oatmeal laced with Novichok, “the deadliest nerve agent ever devised,” instead of, well, you know, just shooting the guy, or throwing him out of an upper-floor window. Despite the potency of this lethal nerve agent, which, for some reason, “can only be made in Russia,” both victims are expected to completely recover. Tragically, their cat and guinea pigs, having also managed to survive the attack, were slowly starved to death by the police, presumably out of an abundance of caution.

In any event, according to the diligent, authoritative investigative journalists at The Guardian, following this brazen porridge attack, “automated bots” “based in Russia,” like @Partisangirl and @Ian56789, spread Putin-Nazi disinformation to millions of unknowing Twitter users in an attempt to “undermine the international system” (whatever that’s supposed to mean). As it turns out, @Partisangirl is just a human being and not a robot at all, and @Ian56789 is just a feisty British pensioner who is tired of being routinely lied to by the government and the corporate media … unless, of course, he’s a sleeper agent just posing as a feisty pensioner, which he hasn’t been able to conclusively disprove to the satisfaction of the corporate media. (Watch Ian being interrogated by a Sky News Russian Bot-Hunting Team and judge his loyalties for yourself!)

These are just a few examples of how the global capitalist ruling classes and their mouthpieces in the corporate media have been generating an atmosphere of mindless hysteria and paranoia in the service of drawing “a line in the sand” between neoliberalism (i.e., global capitalism) and any and all forms of dissent therefrom. They’ve been at this, relentlessly, for almost two years now, since they recognized they were being confronted with a bona fide widespread “populist” insurgency against the hegemony of global capitalism, not just in the Greater Middle East, but right in the heart of the Western empire.

I’ve been writing about this since 2016, so I’m not going to try to rehash all that here. The short version is, Western societies are being divided into two opposing camps … two extremely broad ideological camps, both of which encompass the traditional political division into left and right. Let’s call camp number one “the Normals” (i.e., those who support and conform to the values and ideology of global capitalism, regardless of whether they identify as conservatives, liberals, neoliberals, neoconservatives, or anything else). Let’s call camp number two “the Extremists” (i.e., those opposing global capitalism, or not conforming to its ideology, regardless of whether they identify as socialists, communists, anarchists, fascists, anti-fascists, jihadists, or whatever).

While, of course, real political conflict still takes place within each of these two broad camps, the global capitalist ruling classes are less concerned with the “left/right” equation than they are with “Normal/Extremist” equation. This is the battle they are fighting currently. Short some sort of miraculous event, it is a battle they are going to win. They are going to win it by demonizing anyone opposing global capitalism as one or another form of “extremist” … an Islamic terrorist, an Antifa terrorist, a white supremacist, a Black identity extremist, an anti-Semite, a conspiracy theorist, an Assad apologist, a Russian bot, a Putin-Nazi propagandist … or whatever. It doesn’t really matter which labels they use. The point is, anyone not conforming to the global capitalist version of reality is an enemy of all that is normal and good.

In an atmosphere of mass hysteria and paranoia (like the one we’re living in at the moment), the authorities’ narratives do not have to make sense, or stand up to any type of real scrutiny. Their primary purpose is not to deceive, but rather, to demarcate an ideological territory of acceptable belief, expression, and emotion to which “normal” people are expected to conform. Beyond the boundaries of that territory lies the outer darkness of “abnormality” and “extremism,” which no “normal” person wants anything to do with. To avoid being cast into this outer darkness, people will conform to the most absurd and paranoid nonsense you can possibly imagine. The global capitalist ruling classes know this, which is why they don’t care if you disprove their narratives on Twitter or some “disreputable” website they’ve rendered virtually invisible anyway. They are not debating the facts or the truth … they are marking the boundaries of that “normal” territory, and herding frightened people into it.

This article in Haaretz by Alexander Reid Ross, a lecturer at Portland State University who has been publishing (or attempting to publish) a series of rather paranoid pieces smearing people he disagrees with as neo-Strasserist sleeper agents, provides an extreme but clear example of what Western governments and the corporate media have been doing, albeit on a much subtler level. Read the piece through if you can possibly stand it. You will be told how people like Michael Savage, Rania Khalek, Alex Jones, Breitbart’s entire UK office, Cenk Ugyur, Max Blumenthal, Caitlin Johnstone, Glenn Greenwald, The Nation‘s Stephen F. Cohen, Tucker Carlson, Vanessa Beeley (again), various British fascists, Jeremy Corbyn, and that modern-day Rasputin, Lyndon LaRouche, are all parts of the insidious Putin-Nazi plot to … well, I’m not sure, exactly, but I’m pretty sure it has something to do with killing Jews and gassing babies.

Would you like to be associated with people like that … Assad-loving, Putin-supporting Nazis? No? Then stop and think very carefully before sharing, “liking,” or commenting on this essay.

C. J. Hopkins is an award-winning American playwright, novelist and satirist based in Berlin. His plays are published by Bloomsbury Publishing (UK) and Broadway Play Publishing (USA). His debut novel, ZONE 23, is published by Snoggsworthy, Swaine & Cormorant. He can reached at cjhopkins.com or consentfactory.org.

April 26, 2018 Posted by | Deception, Fake News, False Flag Terrorism, Full Spectrum Dominance, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Russophobia, Timeless or most popular | , | Leave a comment

I Predict: The CIA’s JFK Cover-Up Will Continue Tomorrow

By Jacob G. Hornberger | FFF | April 25, 2018

Tomorrow, April 26, is the new deadline set by President Trump for the release by the National Archives of JFK-assassination-related records of the CIA and other federal agencies. Despite all the hoopla in the mainstream press last fall about how the National Archives had released some of the records, many in redacted form, it is estimated that the National Archives is keeping more than 368,000 pages still secret from the American people.

Keep in mind that the reason the JFK Records Act was enacted in the first place in 1992 was to bring an end to this secrecy. That’s why the Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB) was brought into existence — to force the CIA and other federal agencies to do what they had fiercely resisted doing for some 30 years back then — disclose their JFK-assassination-related records to the public.

But someone slipped a provision into the law that gave the CIA and other federal agencies another 25 years of secrecy. In 1992 CIA officials must have breathed a big sigh of relief. Twenty-five years is a long time. Many of them would undoubtedly be dead by the time the new deadline was reached.

That legal deadline was reached last October. Nonetheless, the CIA went to President Trump and either requested or demanded more time for secrecy. They said that “national security” was at stake. After more than 50 years of secrecy, Trump gave them another six months of secrecy.

That period expires tomorrow. Will President Trump and the National Archives comply with the law deadline and release those 368,000 pages of 50-year-old secret records?

My prediction: It’s not going to happen. Those records have been kept secret for more than 50 years for a reason. And that reason has nothing to do with “national security,” no matter what definition one puts on that nebulous term.

The reason those records have been kept secret for more than 50 years is the same reason why the CIA wants them to continue to be kept secret: Because they will fill in more pieces of the overall mosaic that has developed as more and more circumstantial evidence has been uncovered in the JFK assassination — a mosaic that points to a national-security domestic regime-change operation on November 22, 1963, one that removed a president from office who was perceived to be a grave threat to national security and replaced with a president whose Cold War, anti-communist, anti-Soviet Union mindset was the same as that of the CIA, the Pentagon, and the rest of the national-security establishment.

Keep in mind what these people were able to keep secret for decades: that they were at war with John F. Kennedy over the future direction of the United States. In their eyes, Kennedy was a coward and a traitor for refusing to provide air support for the CIA’s invaders at the Bay of Pigs in Cuba, which was ruled by a pro-Soviet communist regime that the Pentagon, the CIA, and the NSA were convinced constituted a grave threat to national security. During the Cuban Missile Crisis, Kennedy refused to accede to Pentagon demands to bomb and invade the island. To resolve the crisis, Kennedy agreed that the U.S. would no longer invade Cuba, which meant that the communist dagger would remain pointed at America’s neck on a permanent basis. The Joint Chiefs of Staff considered Kennedy’s action to be a disastrous military defeat at the hands of the communists.

Later, after the crisis was resolved, Kennedy openly declared an end to the era of anti-Soviet, anti-communist fervor that had guided the national-security establishment since World War II. He began pulling U.S. troops out of Vietnam, which, in the eyes of the Pentagon and CIA, would cause the dominoes in Asia to begin falling to the communists. Worst of all, from the standpoint of the national-security establishment, he entered into secret, personal negotiations with Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev to normalize relationships between their two nations, which, needless to say, would have ended the justification for converting the federal government from a limited-government republic to a national-security state after WW II and would have threatened ever-growing budgets for the ever-expanding military-industrial complex.

All of that was anathema to the U.S. national-security establishment. They were convinced that America was in grave danger of falling to the communists if Kennedy was permitted to remain in power. But they had no way to remove him by impeachment or through an independent counsel. They also knew that he was likely to win the 1964 election. The only way to save America from a communist takeover at the hands of a naïve, incompetent, philandering president was through a regime-change operation consisting of assassination.

In the 1990s, the CIA was forced to reveal an assassination manual that it began developing in 1954, as part of its regime-change operation against Guatemala, where it planned to assassinate Guatemalan President Jacobo Arbenz, another president who was considered to be a grave threat to U.S. national security. The manual revealed that the CIA was studying and specializing in the art of assassination. Among the recommended methods was by killing a person with a high-powered weapon.

Equally significant, the manual revealed that the CIA was studying and specializing in ways to avoid detection — that is, ways to ensure that no one suspected that the CIA had committed the assassination.

Although a frame-up was not mentioned in the assassination manual in that early state of development, it obviously would have been considered at some point as a way to avoid detection in a state-sponsored assassination.

That’s what Lee Harvey Oswald was alleging after his arrest. That’s what he meant when he declared “I’m a patsy.” He was declaring that he was being framed for committing a crime he didn’t commit.

One of the allegations against Oswald was that he was a communist. The very first organization to publicize Oswald’s communist bona fides was an organization in New Orleans called the DRE. Immediately after the assassination, the DRE issued a press release telling everyone that Oswald was a communist. What no one knew at the time — and for more than 30 years — was that the DRE was being generously funded and supervised by the CIA.

Why didn’t anyone — including the Warren Commission in the 1960s, the House Select Committee in the 1970s, and the ARRB in the 1990s — know about the CIA’s connection to the DRE? Because the CIA kept that fact secret from everyone. It wasn’t until former Washington Post reporter Jefferson Morley discovered it that it came to light.

To this day, the CIA steadfastly refuses to reveal its files relating to the CIA agent who was supervising the DRE, George Joannides. In fact, the CIA didn’t even turn over its Joannides/DRE files to the National Archives back in the 1990s, when the JFK Records Act required it to do so. That’s why those files are not in the records that are supposed to be released tomorrow. The CIA needs to continue keeping the Joannides/DRE files secret from us. “National security,” they say, requires it.

The circumstantial evidence overwhelmingly points to a frame-up in the Kennedy assassination, especially since the evidence incriminating Oswald is a bit too pat, as it would be in a frame-up. After all, how many communist Marines have you ever heard of? Why would a supposed communist join a military organization that hates communists and kills communists? Don’t forget: the Marines had just killed hundreds of thousands of communists in the Korean War. It was entirely possible that the Marines, including Oswald, could be suddenly called back into Korea to kill more communists.

The circumstantial evidence overwhelmingly establishes that former U.S. Marine Oswald was working as a U.S. intelligence agent whose cover was posing as a communist. As such, he would have made for the perfect “patsy” because only a few people within the CIA would know his real identity.

As part of creating this false identity, Oswald was sent down to Mexico City to visit the Soviet and Cuban embassies. But obviously everything went wrong with that part of the frame-up operation. That’s why they quickly shut down that part of the post-assassination investigation and never returned to it. For example, they came up with a photograph of someone they said was Oswald but turned out to be someone else. FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover told President Kennedy that they had audio recordings of what were supposed to be Oswald in Mexico City but the voice was someone other than Oswald. The CIA later said that its cameras overseeing the Cuban embassy were broken during that time.

At least some of the CIA’s records relating to Oswald’s trip to Mexico City are among those 368,000 records slated to be released tomorrow. Don’t hold your breath. They have kept that part of their regime-change operation secret for more than 50 years. They simply cannot afford to let people see them now. Whatever it takes, the CIA will not permit President Trump to release those records. “National security” is at stake. If Americans were permitted to see those records, the argument goes, the United States would fall into the ocean or the federal government would be taken over by the communists.

For more information, read:

The Kennedy Autopsy by Jacob Hornberger
JFK’s War with the National Security Establishment: Why Kennedy Was Assassinated by Douglas Horne (who served on the staff of the ARRB)
Regime Change: The JFK Assassination by Jacob G. Hornberger
The CIA, Terrorism, and the Cold War: The Evil of the National Security State by Jacob Hornberger
CIA & JFK: The Secret Assassination Files by Jefferson Morley.

April 25, 2018 Posted by | Deception, Timeless or most popular | , , | Leave a comment

Landmark bill restricting criticism of Israel sneaks through South Carolina Senate

Landmark bill restricting criticism of Israel sneaks through South Carolina Senate
South Carolina State Representative Alan Clemmons, a real estate attorney who has been called “Israel’s biggest supporter in a U.S. state legislature,” tells Representatives that his bill won’t interfere with free speech. Many experts disagree.

South Carolina is poised to be the first state to pass legislation to adopt an Israel-centric definition for “anti-Semitism.” This will then apply to the state’s campuses, potentially limiting discussion of Israel-Palestine to one-sided information that fosters U.S. policies that provide Israel $10 million per day. The bill has been heralded in Israel as a “a landmark bill” that will lead change across the U.S. and the world.

By Alison Weir | If Americans Knew | April 25, 2018

The South Carolina Senate has recently passed legislation that changes the definition of anti-Semitism to include criticism of Israel, and then applies this new definition to college campuses in a manner that experts say will impede free academic inquiry. The U.S. gives Israel over $10 million per day, and Congress frequently approves increases to that amount; restricting discussion on this issue could serve to bolster and increase these expenditures.

The legislation codifies a definition of anti-Semitism that significantly changes the meaning of the word, and it requires the state’s colleges to use this new definition when determining whether an action is “discriminatory” and therefore prohibited. This new definition declares statements that are critical of Israel—even when factual“anti-Semitic” and therefore impermissible.

A bill on this passed in the state House of Representatives, but when promoters failed to pass it in the state Senate, they resorted to a parliamentary maneuver that may have broken their own rules. They inserted the text at the last minute in South Carolina’s 545-page General Appropriations bill, which is considered a “must-pass” bill because it is required for state government to function. The insertion is on page 348, sandwiched between a section on “Statewide Higher Education Repair and Renovation” and a section that specifies the amount of money appropriated to one of the state’s colleges.

Since the inserted text (section 11.22) does not appear germane to the bill in which it was inserted (and was ruled out of order on the first attempt to add it), the maneuver may have broken legislative rules.*

However, it appears unlikely that the sponsors will be held to account, for two reasons: 1. In Israel the bill is considered extremely important, and some powerful organizations both in the U.S. and internationally support it. 2. However, in South Carolina, legislators tend to consider it insignificant legislation that will have little, if any, impact and therefore see no reason to expend political capital in questioning it. (More on this below.)

Not Law Yet

While pro-Israel groups are celebrating the passage as a “monumental” victory, there are actually two more steps before it becomes state law.

First, the bill must be reconciled with a previous appropriations bill passed by the House. This bill also contains an amendment redefining anti-Semitism and applying it to colleges, but uses different wording. Representatives of the two chambers will meet in the next week or so to create a compromise bill. After that has been accomplished, the Governor must sign it into law.

It is safe to assume neither of these steps will constitute obstacles, however. The governor is in an 8-candidate gubernatorial race where campaign donations are critical, and examination of campaign finance records indicate that pro-Israel donors, often from out of state, frequently play an outsized role in such elections. If history is any predictor, neither he nor any challengers are likely to oppose the legislation.

The Law Will Have Major Impact

The inserted legislation does several things:

First, it vastly expands the traditional, very clear meaning of anti-Semitism—hostility to or prejudice against Jewish people on the basis of their being Jewish—to a new definition that includes certain types of information about Israel.

The Senate bill spells out a long, hazy definition that consists of an array of types of actions, “certain perceptions,” “rhetorical manifestation,” etc., that would now legally constitute “anti-Semitism.” Half a dozen of them are related to the modern state of Israel.

The House bill, rather than spelling out the definition itself, codifies a definition adopted by a State Department special envoy in 2010, which also changed the traditional meaning of anti-Semitism to include statements critical of Israel. (Full text of both are below.)

The Senate bill requires South Carolina’s Commission on Higher Education to print copies of this new, Israel-centric definition of anti-Semitism and distribute them to all South Carolina public colleges and universities.

Finally, both bills mandate that academic institutions use this definition in deciding whether someone has violated a school’s policy prohibiting discrimination.

If the legislation goes through and becomes law, as proponents appear certain it will, the consequences could be two-fold: a significant loss of academic freedom at South Carolina colleges, and, indirectly, continued one-sided U.S. Middle East policies and massive expenditures.

But first let’s look at the historic and geopolitical background of this new definition.

Origin of the New Definition

The basic outline of this new, Israel-centric definition of anti-Semitism was first created by an Israeli minister in 2004. Israel partisans have successfully pushed its adoption by numerous entities around the world ever since, building on even the smallest endorsements to create momentum and a snowballing effect. (See this for details.)

In the U.S., a two-step process has achieved partial success in getting the nation to legally adopt the new definition, but the effort is ongoing—South Carolina’s law would be a major step forward for proponents of the definition, and the accompanying censorship of certain types of information.

The first step that would enable the adoption of the definition in the U.S. also occurred in 2004: Pro-Israel groups successfully promoted federal legislation to create a “special envoy” and State Department office to monitor anti-Semitism. This was done over the objections of state department officials, who said it was unnecessary.

The second step was accomplished by one of these envoys, who unilaterally adopted the new, Israel-centric definition in 2009. (All three envoys have been demonstrably pro-Israel, two later working for the Israel lobbying organization AIPAC—the American Israel Political Action Committee. President Trump, as part of his general cost-cutting measures, has not yet appointed a new envoy, causing many pro-Israel groups to call him anti-Semitic for this failure.)

Anti-Semitism Special Envoy Hannah Rosenthal (above) adopted the Israel-centric definition in 2009.

Since that time, Israel partisans have introduced legislation in the federal government and state legislatures—and even on some college campuses—to adopt this definition, which they call the “state department definition.” South Carolina, if the bill becomes state law, will be their first success in this effort.

Curtailing Freedom of Speech and Academic Inquiry

These bills usually contain a final sentence that says they don’t violate the Constitutional guarantee of free speech, and their sponsors make this claim to the people voting for them.

However, the reality seems to be the opposite.

Legal experts say the legislation will do just that, and there is a history of university administrators around the country censoring protected speech on the basis of such definitions.

In fact, the author of the definition adopted by the State Department anti-Semitism envoy has vehemently opposed legislating the definition into law, specifically writing that applying it to colleges “is a direct affront to academic freedom.”

Kenneth Stern, who helped write the new definition, says legislation that imposes it on campuses is “unconstitutional and unwise.” Stern was employed by the American Jewish Committee as its expert on anti-Semitism for 25 years.

In a letter opposing federal legislation to codify the definition as law, author Kenneth Stern stated: “The definition was never intended to be used to limit speech on college campuses; it was written for European data collectors to have a guide for what to include and what to exclude in their reports.”

Stern, the American Jewish Committee’s expert on anti-Semitism for 25 years, opposed  incorporating the definition into law in a way that he called “unconstitutional and unwise.” Stern warned that this would “actually harm Jewish students and have a toxic effect on the academy.”

Other legal experts agree with Stern.

An analysis by the Center for Constitutional Rights and other groups that examined the proposed federal bill (not yet passed) found that not only would it interfere with freedom of speech, but that such censorship was the motivation for the legislation: “The Act purports to address rising anti-Semitism on college campuses, but a close reading reveals that its true purpose is to silence campus advocacy for Palestinian rights and censor any criticism of Israeli government policies.”

The document continues: “This vague and overbroad re-definition conflates political criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism, infringing on constitutionally protected speech.”

Finally, the paper specifically emphasizes: “The re-definition is especially detrimental to universities, where freedom of speech, critical inquiry, and unfettered debate are integral.”

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) also actively opposes such legislation, stating that the federal bill poses “a serious threat to the First Amendment free speech rights of those on campus who may hold certain political views.”

In its letter of opposition to the federal bill, the ACLU stated: “The First Amendment prevents the federal government from using its great weight to impose severe penalties on a person simply for sharing a political viewpoint critical of Israel.”

The chief of staff of the ACLU’s legislative office in Washington said that the legislation “opens the door to considering anti-Israel political statements and activities as possible grounds for civil rights investigations.”

How the Law Will Limit Free Speech in South Carolina

The legislation could mean that University of South Carolina students will only hear one side on the Israel-Palestine issue, helping Israel partisans continue the over $10 million per day that the U.S. gives Israel.

An examination of the South Carolina situation indicates how the new law could play out.

University of South Carolina guidelines contain the laudable statement that “all students should be able to learn and live” in an environment that is “free from discrimination … in all programs, activities, and services of the University.”

Since the new legislation defines many statements about Israel, no matter how factual, as “anti-Semitic” and therefore constituting discrimination, Israel partisans can be expected to invoke the law: to prevent public speakers from discussing information on Palestine, to prevent professors from educating students fully and accurately on the Middle East, and/or to punish professors or students who provide facts that Israel and its partisans don’t wish students to know. Anti-Palestinian activists have invoked the definition to accomplish all of these things elsewhere, in a number of instances.

In addition, the legislation could interfere with student groups’ ability to bring speakers to campus. While student groups are normally allowed to use student fees to bring outside speakers, under the new legislation this could change. While students could bring pro-Israel speakers without problems, groups wishing to bring speakers with different perspectives might not have an equal ability to do so. Ironically, a bill that many of its supporters intended to be against discrimination, might actually create discrimination against certain students, including those from ethnic or religious minorities.

By blocking such speakers and information, the “free marketplace of ideas” would be severely limited on South Carolina campuses when it comes to Israel-Palestine—one of the most significant issues in today’s world, a critical factor in Middle East wars, and the core issue of the Middle East.

For decades, the U.S. has given Israel far more of our tax money than to any other nation (on average, 7,000 times more per capita than to other people), as well as massive diplomatic cover. Most of the rest of the world therefore considers the U.S. as the sponsor responsible for Israel’s actions. Therefore, it is particularly crucial that Americans be fully informed on Israel and its actions. No one, including the most committed supporter of Israel, benefits from one-sided, incomplete information. Friends don’t let friends bury their heads in misinformation while supporting ethnic cleansing.

“Momentous” Breakthrough

Brandeis Center’s Kenneth Marcus commended Representative Alan Clemmons, Representative Beth Bernstein, Senator Larry Grooms, the Israel Allies Foundation, the Columbia Jewish Federation, the Charleston Jewish Federation, CUFI, StandWithUs, and the Israel Project for helping promote the bill.

Pro-Israel groups, both international and domestic, have been watching—and participating in—the South Carolina situation with great eagerness. Now that South Carolina seems poised to adopt the “anti-Semitism” legislation, many hope that “as goes South Carolina, so goes the nation”—and the world.

Israel’s Jerusalem Post newspaper called the South Carolina legislation “a landmark bill that is set to be the model for states across America and countries around the world.”

The pro-Israel Brandeis Center, which helped promote the legislation, declared: “Just as two dozen states followed South Carolina’s lead on legislation condemning the movement to boycott certain countries [Israel], we are hoping this momentous step will result in another national wave to, once and for all, begin defeating rising anti-Semitism.” Anti-Semitism, that is, defined to include many forms of criticism of Israel.

Supporters of these bills claim their efforts are necessary to battle rising anti-Semitism. Therefore, it is important to realize and scrutinize what they mean by “anti-Semitism.”

The much-cited Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and another group, AMCHA, classify many actions in support of international law and Palestinian human rights as supposedly “anti-Semitism.” Both organizations actively advocate for Israel. The ADL, which is often perceived as a civil rights organization, has been connected to some initiatives promoting Islamophobia, and it produced a campus guide describing how to block events about Palestine.

Despite what the legislation’s supporters would have us believe, a 2017 report found that Jewish students “reported feeling comfortable on their campuses, and, more specifically, comfortable as Jews on their campuses.” Fewer than 10 percent of the students articulated the belief that anti-Israel sentiment is anti-Semitism. Even some Israel partisans have said that reports of alleged anti-Semitism on campuses are inaccurate.

Barry Trachtenberg, who teaches in the Jewish Studies Department at Wake Forest University, said it was a “factual distortion” to call colleges “hotbeds” of anti-Semitism, and said that that criticism of Israel is part of healthy academic debate.

“Students who engage in speech critical of Israeli policy are largely motivated by their concern for Palestinian human rights,” Trachtenberg said. “They are not motivated by anti-Semitic hate, but its opposite — a desire to end racial and religious discrimination of all kinds.”

The reality is that students who support Israel are extraordinarily well supported on American campuses. There are over two dozen organizations that collectively contribute millions of dollars to campaigns to promote Israel on campuses. Casino magnate Sheldon Adelson reportedly has raised at least $20 million to quash student speech critical of Israeli policies. Sheldon, who has said he wished he had served in the Israeli military rather than in the U.S. army, has created a task force that funds pro-Israel students to organize events on campuses, with the funding per campus reportedly in the six figures per year on at least forty campuses.

Israel has long recognized the need to promote its interests on campuses. The Israeli minister who created the original formulation for the new anti-Semitism definition said that college campuses were “one of the most important battlefields” for Israel.

An Israel lobby leader announced some years ago, after student government at U.C. Berkeley considered taking some measures to boycott Israel: “We’re going to make certain that pro-Israel students take over the student government. That is how AIPAC operates in our nation’s capitol. This is how AIPAC must operate on our nation’s campuses.”

Organizations & individuals behind the bill

A number of pro-Israel organizations took credit for helping on South Carolina’s anti-Semitism legislation.

The Brandeis Center, named after former Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis (who for a period headed the world Zionist movement) announced that its representatives “testified at multiple South Carolina hearings on the bill and have been working closely with state legislators to ensure passage.”

Another group that helped promote the bill was the Israel Allies Foundation. Its U.S. executive director Joseph Sabag stated: “The IAF was honored to help lead the advocacy and surrounding educational efforts, as well as provided policy and legal resources to legislators for this effort.”

Israel Allies Director Joe Sabag speaks at Standing with Israel event in Texas, where he praises the South Carolina bill.

IAF is a multi-million dollar international organization that promotes Israel around the world. Sabag explained that the mission of IAF, “via its 37 pro-Israel Caucuses worldwide, and in the U.S. Congress and state legislatures, is to provide policymakers with the resources they need to craft sound public policy.” IAF particularly works to create support for Israel among Christians, putting on events at churches and other venues throughout the United States.

Sabag said that the Israel Allies Foundation “couldn’t be prouder of what’s been accomplished here in South Carolina.”

The Israel Project, with a budget of about $8 million, is another organization that helped on the legislation. Founded 16 years ago to support Israel, The Israel Project focuses on “informing the media and public conversation about Israel and the Middle East.” Its website proclaims that it “is the only organization dedicated to changing people’s minds about Israel through cutting-edge strategic communications. We don’t attack the media, we become a trusted partner and resource.”

Israel Project President Josh Block (annual salary half a million dollars) praised South Carolina: “South Carolina was the first state to pass anti-BDS legislation and now has become the first state in the nation to pass uniform definition of anti-Semitism legislation.” (BDS—boycott, divestment, sanctions—is an economic campaign to pressure Israel to end its violations of international law, U.S. law, and human rights.).

The Brandeis Center also credited CUFI (Christians United for Israel) and StandWithUs for their help on the legislation.

David Brog, the “powerhouse” behind CUFI, previously worked for Democrat Arlen Specter. His cousin is former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak.

Founded in 2006, CUFI claims to have 3-4 million “members,” though this seems to actually be the number of emails the organization has gathered; the number of active supporters may be closer to 30,000 to 50,000. CUFI lobbies on behalf of Israel and disseminates pro-Israel spin on diverse issues to Americans and Canadians.

Charisma News reports: “It’s no secret that one of the most powerful lobbying groups in Washington, D.C., the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), has long wanted a ‘Gentile arm,’ and some believe they now have it in CUFI.”

While CUFI’s head is megachurch pastor and celebrity John Hagee, its executive director and co-founder David Brog may be the organization’s real mover and shaker. According to Charisma News, “Brog is the powerhouse behind the Christian organization, yet he’s also a conservative (non-Messianic) Jew.” The article reports: “Brog, who was chief of staff to liberal Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania for seven years, is said to run CUFI like a political campaign. He has talking points, stays focused and rallies his constituency.” Prime Minister Ehud Barak is his cousin.

Stand With Us is an international organization supporting Israel headquartered in Los Angeles that works in the U.S., Canada, Israel, England, South Africa, China, Europe, and Australia. CEO Roz Rothstein commended South Carolina’s legislation, saying: “Just as South Carolina took the lead in passing anti-BDS legislation, we hope that the passage of H3643 will be the first of many states to follow suit.”

Over 1,000 people helped StandWithUs celebrate its 16th anniversary at its 2017 gala at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills. The event raised more than $3 million.

The Brandeis Center also credited the Jewish Federations of Columbia and Charleston, South Carolina with helping on the legislation.

Representative Alan Clemmons

The official author of the House bill was Representative Alan Clemmons, known for his Israel advocacy. South Carolina’s Post and Courier newspaper reports that Clemmons is “Israel’s biggest supporter in a U.S. state legislature.”

Alan Clemmons (right) with Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu & wife; insert shows Clemmons with Israeli soldiers. [From Clemmons Twitter account.]

Clemmons, a Mormon, has traveled to Israel four times, met with Prime Minister Netanyahu, sometimes leads South Carolina delegations to Israel, and was a drafter of the 2016 national Republican Party platform on Israel, parts of which have been adopted by the Trump administration. In 2017 Clemmons joined U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. and former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley at special U.N. event sponsored by the World Jewish Congress.

Clemmons sometimes meets with extremist Israeli settlers (Israeli settlements are illegal under international law), and calls them his “great tutors” on the issue of Israel-Palestine. (But Clemons ignores the statements of religious leaders such as Dead Sea scholar Millar Burrows, Naturei Karta rabbis, and the American Council on Judaism, who have long opposed Israeli confiscation of Palestinian land.)

Alan Clemmons’ delegation to Israel spent much of its time in Israeli settlements, where their “eyes were opened” by Israeli settlers (sometimes from the U.S.) who claim they have the right to confiscate land belonging to Christians, Muslims, and others.

There is no record of Clemmons and his delegations ever traveling to Gaza or the West Bank on independent, fact-finding trips or having unscripted meetings with Palestinian Muslims and Christians.

Opposition to the Legislation

A number of South Carolinians objected to the legislation for diverse reasons.

Children in Gaza after an invasion by Israeli forces. More information here.

Some argued it could “restrict thoughtful critiques of Israeli policy.” A Palestinian student activist wrote a letter to the editor in which she explained that her group, which included  Jewish members, “fully acknowledge and sympathize with the Jewish history, but assert our right to criticize the actions of Israel.”

South Carolina’s State newspaper reported on opponents who testified against the House bill: “Speaking hurriedly to meet a two-minute time limit lawmakers had imposed, they said the bill would discourage college discussions on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and gag pro-Palestine student groups.”

The paper reported that Caroline Nagel, an associate professor of geography at the University of South Carolina, said she feared that the bill would “silence professors and student groups who are trying to explain and to give voice to a diversity of opinions about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.”

“I am frankly baffled,” Nagel said, “as to why any legislator would consider an idea to curtail our freedom of speech.”

Israel was created through the expulsion of hundreds of thousands of the original Muslim and Christian inhabitants. Under the new law such information might be considered “anti-Semitic” and prohibited.

Some opponents felt that the House members who signed onto it had been “hoodwinked.”

“They just think it’s something that’s nice for Israel,” said David Matos, president of Carolina Peace Resource Center. “They don’t realize it’s a pretty nasty attempt to suppress free speech on college campuses … to suppress debate on college campuses on Israel and Palestine.”

“It’s clearly unconstitutional,” Matos said. “The intent is to suppress political speech and smear it as anti-Semitism.”

Some State Legislators Raise Questions

SC Senator Brad Hutto considers anti-Semitism “horrible” but questioned the need for the bill. (photo from 2014)

South Carolina State Senator Brad Hutto held up the Senate bill, leading its sponsors to slip it into the appropriations bill instead. Hutto said: “I have heard not one university trustee that I know come up here and tell me that they were having any problems understanding how to read the dictionary or make up their own mind and needing our help on it.”

The Israel Allies Foundation, angered at Hutto’s action, blasted Hutto, a longtime liberal who calls anti-Semitism “horrible,” for allegedly working “to benefit the forces of bigotry and intolerance.”

In reality, however, Hutto had explained that he would support the legislation if it applied to “all races, ethnicities and gender identities.”

In an interview for this article, Hutto said that he was opposed to the bill for several reasons.

Hutto felt there was no need for the legislation. While he emphasized that “anti-Semitism is a horrible thing,” he pointed out that the universities have an elected board of trustees fully capable of managing any complaints or problems. He said there was no need for the State Assembly to “micromanage conduct on campuses.”

Hutto also disliked that the bill focused on only one type of bigotry, and in only one place. He emphasized that “all bigotry of every kind is bad,” and said “it’s bad everywhere, in housing, at work, everywhere.” Hutto said he might consider supporting a broader bill that made a general statement against all bigotries in all their various forms and locations.

Hutto also felt it was a mistake to inject foreign policy into the state legislature when there are numerous pressing issues in South Carolina that the legislature needs to address.

The bottom line, however, was that Hutto didn’t think the law would have any impact, “other than getting one or two members free trips to Israel.”

For that reason, he said, most Senators considered the legislation unimportant. While some other Senators also opposed the legislation, he said—mostly out of freedom of speech concerns—they didn’t see the need to expend “political capital” on a law that they felt would “do nothing.”

Hutto, focused on South Carolina and the needs of his constituents, seemed surprised that the bill is considered so significant elsewhere.

A few people in the state house also opposed the bill.

One of them, Josiah Magnuson, said in an interview for this article that he supports Israel, but thought that the bill was “probably not the right approach” and was concerned that it might limit free speech. Like Hutto, though, he didn’t think the legislation was important or would do much.

Representative Jonathan Hill took his name off the bill. “The First Amendment is a pretty big deal,” Hill said. “At the end of the day the government can’t start micromanaging the things that you say.”

Representative Jonathan Hill, a former sponsor who took his name off the bill, said that he thought it was wrong to apply to U.S. citizens a State Department definition of anti-Semitism intended for use abroad: “It does not necessarily account for the rights of American citizens to free speech. It’s designed for application in a geopolitical context.”

In an interview for this article, Hill noted that the State Department definition “was created for diplomatic purposes, not for use in the U.S.” and was concerned that applying it to colleges “could interfere with the Constitutional rights of Americans.”

Hill emphasized that he finds anti-Semitism “reprehensible,” but is focused on “the most appropriate way to handle the situation.” He said, “I’m not against what Senator Clemmons is trying to accomplish, but I feel that he is going about it the wrong way.”

“The First Amendment is a pretty big deal,” Hill said. “At the end of the day the government can’t start micromanaging the things that you say.”

Jewish Academics Oppose the Legislation

Alan Brownfeld of the American Council on Judaism, says: “Real problems must be addressed with real discussion and debate. Only those who have something to lose by open debate would use the tactics we have seen deployed by Israel and its most fervent American supporters.” (Photo is from 2014 talk)

Some Jewish groups and individuals also opposed the new definition and codifying it in federal law or state law.

The American Council on Judaism’s Allan Brownfeld recently wrote: “There is a campaign to redefine anti-Semitism to mean criticism of Israel and opposition to Zionism. This campaign has as its goal the silencing of those who are critical of Israel’s 50-year occupation of Palestinian territories and are engaged in activities such as support for the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement.”

Brownfeld concluded: “Real problems must be addressed with real discussion and debate. Only those who have something to lose by open debate would use the tactics we have seen deployed by Israel and its most fervent American supporters.”

Over 60 Jewish scholars signed a letter calling the federal bill “misguided and dangerous.”

Another 300 Jewish students signed a letter objecting that the federal bill conflated “legitimate criticism of the policies of the Israeli government with anti-Semitism, using a problematic definition of anti-Semitism never intended for use on college campuses … At a time when freedom of expression is under threat across the country, we need to be protecting and expanding speech, not restricting it.”

The letter said that such legislation would “limit our freedom of expression around the vital issues of our time.”

Truly a Vital Issue

The issue of Israel-Palestine is particularly relevant right now.

In the last few weeks there has been a massive uprising by men, women, and children in Gaza against the theft of their homes, their virtual imprisonment by Israel, and the decade-long blockade against them that has caused malnutrition among their children and severe hardship for their whole population.

Israeli forces have injured approximately 5,000 of the demonstrators, including a child who was shot in the head. During Easter, Israeli forces blocked hundreds of Palestinian Christians in Gaza from praying at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem.

These are not pleasant facts to disseminate or to know. Israel partisans may wish to dispute details, and have the right to do so. But the proper way to go about this is with civil, open, fair debate—not by suppressing information, breaking the rules, cheating students of their rights, and violating a Constitution that has served the United States well for over 200 years, as we have striven ever closer to the ideal of equal rights for all.

Allowing a special interest group to censor important information from our country’s students, even for the most benign of motivations, is unfair to our young people, damages our way of government, and causes profound harm to all of us.

Let us hope that South Carolina’s legislators rethink their support for this bill. If they don’t, let us hope that other states don’t follow in a direction that violates some of our nation’s most fundamental principles. Our students and our nation deserve better.


Alison Weir is executive director of If Americans Knew, president of the Council for the National Interest, and author of Against Our Better Judgment: The Hidden History of How the U.S. Was Used to Create Israel.


* The first attempt to insert the text into the Senate appropriations bill, Amendment No. 49, was ruled not germane and ruled out of order. Supporters of the text then came back with Amendment No. 74, which added the requirement that the new definition be printed and distributed. Because this required an expenditure, this time the amendment squeaked through. Both amendments were introduced by Senator Larry Grooms, who had shepherded the bill in the Senate.

 

House Appropriations bill 4950

Below is the section about anti-Semitism:

117.149. (GP: Prohibition of Discriminatory Practices) (A) In the current fiscal year and from the funds appropriated to public colleges and universities, when reviewing, investigating, or deciding whether there has been a violation of a college or university policy prohibiting discriminatory practices on the basis of religion, South Carolina public colleges and universities shall take into consideration the definition of anti-Semitism for purposes of determining whether the alleged practice was motivated by anti-Semitic intent.

(B) Nothing in this proviso may be construed to diminish or infringe upon any right protected under the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States or Section 2, Article I of the South Carolina Constitution, 1895.

(C) For purposes of this proviso, the term ‘definition of anti-Semitism’ includes:

(1) the definition of anti-Semitism set forth by the Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism of the Department of State in the fact sheet issued on June 8, 2010; and

(2) the examples set forth under the headings ‘Contemporary Examples of Anti-Semitism’ and ‘What is Anti-Semitism Relative to Israel?’ in the fact sheet.

Senate General Appropriations bill 4950

Below is the text on pages 348-9 of General Appropriations bill 4950 passed by the Senate on April 12, 2018:

11.23. (CHE: Prohibition of Discriminatory Practices) (A) In the current fiscal year and from the funds appropriated to the 16 Commission on Higher Education, the commission shall print and distribute to all South Carolina public colleges and universities 17 the definition of anti-Semitism. 18 (B) For purposes of this proviso, the term “definition of anti-Semitism” includes: 19 (1) a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations 20 of anti-Semitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions 21 and religious facilities; 22 (2) calling for, aiding, or justifying the killing or harming of Jews; 23 (3) making mendacious, dehumanizing, demonizing, or stereotypical allegations about Jews as such or the power of Jews 24 as a collective; 25 (4) accusing Jews as a people of being responsible for real or imagined wrongdoing committed by a single Jewish person 26 or group, the state of Israel, or even for acts committed by non-Jews; 27 (5) accusing the Jews as a people, or Israel as a state, of inventing or exaggerating the Holocaust; 28 (6) accusing Jewish citizens of being more loyal to Israel, or to the alleged priorities of Jews worldwide, than to the interest 29 of their own nations; 30 (7) using the symbols and images associated with classic anti-Semitism to characterize Israel or Israelis; 31 (8) drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis; 32 (9) blaming Israel for all inter-religious or political tensions; 33 (10) applying double standards by requiring of it a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation; 34 (11) multilateral organizations focusing on Israel only for peace or human rights investigations; and 35 (12) denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, and denying Israel the right to exist, provided, however, that 36 criticism of Israel similar to that leveled against any other country cannot be regarded as anti-Semitic. SECTION 11 – H030 – COMMISSION ON HIGHER EDUCATION PAGE 349 1 (C) South Carolina public colleges and universities shall take into consideration the definition of anti-Semitism for purposes of 2 determining whether the alleged practice was motivated by anti-Semitic intent when reviewing, investigating, or deciding whether 3 there has been a violation of a college or university policy prohibiting discriminatory practices on the basis of religion. 4 (D) Nothing in this proviso may be construed to diminish or infringe upon any right protected under the First Amendment to the 5 Constitution of the United States or Section 2, Article I of the South Carolina Constitution, 1895.

Below is the earlier bill, that had been held up in the Senate:

South Carolina Bill 3643

 

TO AMEND THE CODE OF LAWS OF SOUTH CAROLINA, 1976, BY ADDING SECTION 59-101-220 SO AS TO DEFINE CERTAIN TERMS CONCERNING ANTI-SEMITISM, TO PROVIDE INSTITUTIONS OF HIGHER LEARNING IN THIS STATE SHALL CONSIDER THIS DEFINITION WHEN REVIEWING, INVESTIGATING, OR DECIDING WHETHER THERE HAS BEEN A VIOLATION OF AN INSTITUTIONAL POLICY PROHIBITING DISCRIMINATORY PRACTICES ON THE BASIS OF RELIGION, AND TO PROVIDE NOTHING IN THIS ACT MAY BE CONSTRUED TO DIMINISH OR INFRINGE UPON ANY RIGHTS AFFORDED BY THE FIRST AMENDMENT TO THE UNITED STATES CONSTITUTION OR SECTION 2, ARTICLE I OF THE CONSTITUTION OF THIS STATE.

Be it enacted by the General Assembly of the State of South Carolina:

SECTION    1. Article 1, Chapter 101, Title 59 of the 1976 Code is amended by adding:

“Section 59-101-220.    (A) For purposes of this section, the term ‘definition of anti-Semitism’ includes:

(1)    the definition of anti-Semitism set forth by the Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism of the Department of State in the fact sheet issued on June 8, 2010; and

(2)    the examples set forth under the headings ‘Contemporary Examples of Anti-Semitism’ and ‘What is Anti-Semitism Relative to Israel?’ in the fact sheet.

(B)    In reviewing, investigating, or deciding whether there has been a violation of a college or university policy prohibiting discriminatory practices on the basis of religion, South Carolina public colleges and universities shall take into consideration the definition of anti-Semitism for purposes of determining whether the alleged practice was motivated by anti-Semitic intent.

(C)    Nothing in this section may be construed to diminish or infringe upon any right protected under the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States or Section 2, Article I of the South Carolina Constitution, 1895.”

SECTION    2. This act takes effect upon approval by the Governor.

April 25, 2018 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance, Timeless or most popular | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

No Remorse For Hillary

By Craig Murray | April 25, 2018

I am hopeful that the commendable discovery process involved in US litigation will bring to light further details of the genesis of Christopher Steele’s ludicrous dossier on Trump/Russia, and may even give some clues as to whether Sergei Skripal and/or his handler Pablo Miller were involved in its contents.

The decision by the Democratic National Committee to sue the Russian Government, Wikileaks, Julian Assange personally and the Trump campaign is an act of colossal hubris. It is certain to reveal still more details of the deliberate fixing of the primary race against Bernie Sanders, over which five DNC members, including the Chair, were forced to resign. It will also lead to the defendants being able to forensically examine the DNC servers to prove they were not hacked – something which astonishingly the FBI refused to do, being instead content to take the word of the DNC’s own private cyber security firm, Crowdstrike. Unless those servers have been wiped completely (as Hillary did to her private email server) I know that is not going to go well for the DNC.

I cannot better Glenn Greenwald’s article on why it is a terrible idea to sue Wikileaks for publishing leaked documents – it sets a precedent which could be used to constrain media from ever publishing anything given them by whistleblowers. It is an astonishingly illiberal thing to undertake. Nor is it politically wise. The media has done its very best to ignore as far as possible the actual content of the leaks of DNC material, and rather to concentrate on the wild accusations of how they were obtained. But the fundamental crookedness revealed in the emails is bound to get some sort of airing, not least as the basis of a public interest defence.

I have often been asked if I regret my association with Wikileaks, given they are held responsible for the election of Donald Trump. My answer is that I feel no remorse at all.

Hillary Clinton lost because she was an appalling candidate. A multi-millionaire, neo-con warmonger with the warmth and empathy of a three week dead haddock and an eye for the interests of Wall Street, who regarded ordinary voters as “deplorables” (a term she used not just once, but frequently at fund-raisers with the mega-wealthy). Hillary Clinton conspired with the machine that was supposed to be neutrally running the primaries, to fix the primaries against Bernie Sanders. The opinion polls regularly showed that Sanders would beat Trump, and that the only Democratic candidate who Trump could beat was Clinton. Egomania and a massive sense of entitlement nevertheless led her not just to persist to get the candidacy, but persist to rig the candidacy. She then proceeded to ignore major urban working class battleground states in her campaign against Trump and focus on more glamorous places. In short, Hillary was corrupt rubbish. Full stop, and not remotely Wikileaks’ fault.

Wikileaks did not go out to get the evidence against Hillary. They were given it. Should they have withheld the knowledge of the rigging of the field against Bernie Sanders from the American people, to let Clinton benefit from the corruption? For me that is a no-brainer. It would have been a gross moral dereliction to have done so. It is also the case that Wikileaks can only publish what they are given. Had they been given dirt on Trump, they would have published. But they were not given any leaks on Trump.

I should put in an aside here which might surprise you. I like Anthony Weiner. I have never met him, but I watched the amazing 2016 fly on the wall documentary Weiner and he came across as a person of genuine goodwill, passion and commitment, undermined by what is very obviously a pathological illness. I realise that was not the general reaction, but it was mine.

But – and now I am going to really annoy people – I have to say that from an international perspective, rather than an American domestic perspective, I am also not in the slightest convinced that Trump has been worse for the World than Clinton would have been. Trump has not, to date, initiated any new military intervention or substantially increased any military conflict during his Presidency. In fact his current actions more closely match his words about non-intervention during his election campaign, than do his current words. Despite hawkish posturing, he has not substantially increased American military intervention in Syria.

My reading of the reported chemical weapon attack on Douma is this. Whether it was a false flag chemical attack, a pro-Assad chemical attack, or no chemical attack at all I do not know for sure. But whichever it is, it was used to attempt to get Trump to commit to a major escalation of American involvement in the war in Syria. So far, he has not done that. The American-led missile attack was illegal, but fortunately comparatively restrained, certainly in no way matching Trump’s rhetoric. All the evidence is, and there is a great deal of evidence from Libya and Afghanistan, that Clinton would have been far more aggressive.

That leaves the dichotomy between Trump’s rhetoric and his actions. Certainly there is every sign of a sharp tilt to the neo-cons. His apparent preference in his press conference with Macron today for an extended presence of France, the former colonial power, and US troops in Syria is deeply troubling. His sacking of the sensible Tillerson from the State Department, and his appointment of the odious John Bolton as National Security Adviser all appear to be terrible signs. But still, nothing has actually happened. There is a reading that Trump is placating the neo-cons with position and rhetoric while his actions – in Syria and in what a hating political class fails to acknowledge has all the makings of a diplomatic coup in North Korea – go in a very different direction.

It is beyond doubt that Hillary, who cannot open her mouth without denouncing Russia for causing her own entirely self-inflicted failure – would be taking the new Cold War to even worse extremes than it has already reached, to the delight of the military-industrial complex and her Wall Street friends. It is open to debate, but I would contend that it is very probable that President Hillary would have launched a major attack on Syria by now, just like she presided over as Secretary of State in Libya.

So my answer is this. Firstly, Clinton caused her own downfall by arrogance, and by failing to grasp the alienation of ordinary people from neo-liberal policies that impoverished them while the rich grew massively richer. Secondly, I strongly suspect that if Hillary were President, more people would be dead now in the Middle East.

So no, I have no regrets at all.

Support Craig Murray’s continued writing.

April 25, 2018 Posted by | Corruption, Militarism, Timeless or most popular | , , , , | Leave a comment

Dear World, The United States Is Just Not That Into You

By David Swanson | American Herald Tribune | April 24, 2018

In the United States, politicians talk about the legality of war without ever mentioning that it is illegal, that there are laws that every other nation is supposed to obey. There’s no articulation of a double standard. Other nations are just not mentioned at all.

From outside the United States, the U.S. government looks like an endless war machine. And in fact about 60% of the funding that the U.S. Congress oversees goes to militarism. But it’s hard to find a candidate for U.S. Congress who even admits that the rest of the world exists, has any foreign policy whatsoever, has any list of wars they would end or escalate, has any list of wars they are even aware are happening, or has any basic outline of what they think the federal budget should look like. The “progressive” candidate whom people tell me I should support in my district is no exception. I ask her for her positions and she doesn’t answer. I ask peace “activists” who are campaigning for her rather than trying to end any wars what her foreign policy is, and they have no idea and no interest in knowing.

My kid’s school teaches him that the U.S. Civil War was the deadliest war in U.S. history, exactly as if Filipinos, Vietnamese, Iraqis, and many other people don’t exist at all. When I point out this error, people in the United States generally think it a silly quirk to act as if human beings exist outside U.S. borders. The same war is used as an argument for more wars on the basis of the moronic claim that you cannot end slavery without a war. The fact that other places did so is only relevant to weirdoes who are indulging in the pretense that other places exist.

This is the U.S. attitude toward you, dear world. It’s not hatred or animosity. Its annoyance that you exist and intent pursuit of the ability to act as if you don’t. What does the U.S. public think of your country? The U.S. public cannot find your country on a map, name the continent it is in, or distinguish between it and the names of ingredients in stuff the U.S. public eats. The United States is just not that into you.

April 24, 2018 Posted by | Militarism, Timeless or most popular | | Leave a comment

Scarier Than John Bolton?

Think of Nikki Haley for President!

By Philip Giraldi • Unz Review • April 24, 2018

The musical chairs playing out among the senior officials that make up the President Donald Trump White House team would be amusing to watch but for the genuine damage that it is doing to the United States. The lack of any coherence in policy means that the State Department now has diplomats that do not believe in diplomacy and environment agency heads that do not believe in protecting the environment. It also means that well-funded and disciplined lobbies and pressure groups are having a field day, befuddling ignorant administrators with their “fact sheets” and successfully promoting policies that benefit no one but themselves.

In the Trumpean world of all-the-time-stupid, there is, however, one individual who stands out for her complete inability to perceive anything beyond threats of unrelenting violence combined with adherence to policies that have already proven to be catastrophic. That person is our own Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley, who surfaced in the news lately after she unilaterally and evidently prematurely announced sanctions on Russia. When the White House suggested that she might have been “confused” she responded that “With all due respect, I don’t get confused.” This ignited a firestorm among the Trump haters, lauding Haley as a strong and self-confident woman for standing up to the White House male bullies while also suggesting that the hapless Administration had not bothered to inform one of its senior diplomats of a policy change. It also produced a flurry of Haley for higher office tweets based on what was described as her “brilliant riposte” to the president.

One over-the-top bit of effusion from a former Haley aide even suggested that her “deft rebuttal” emphasizes her qualities, enthusing that “What distinguishes her from the star-struck sycophants in the White House is that she understands the intersection of strong leadership and public service, where great things happen” and placing her on what is being promoted as the short list of future presidential candidates.

For sure, neocon barking dog Bill Kristol has for years been promoting Haley for president, a sign that something is up as he was previously the one who “discovered” Sarah Palin. Indeed, the similarities between the two women are readily observable. Neither is very cerebral or much given to make any attempt to understand an adversary’s point of view; both are reflexively aggressive and dismissive when dealing with foreigners and domestic critics; both are passionately anti-Russian and pro-Israeli. And Kristol is not alone in his advocacy. Haley regularly receives praise from Senators like South Carolina’s Lindsey Graham and from the Murdoch media as well as in the opinion pages of National Review and The Weekly Standard.

The greater problem right now is that Nikki Haley is America’s face to the international community, even more than the Secretary of State. She has used her bully pulpit to do just that, i.e. bully, and she is ugly America personified, having apparently decided that something called American Exceptionalism gives her license to say and do whatever she wants at the United Nations. In her mind, the United States can do what it wants globally because it has a God-given right to do so, a viewpoint that doesn’t go down well with many countries that believe that they have a legal and moral right to be left alone and remain exempt from America’s all too frequent military interventions.

Nikki Haley sees things differently, however. During her 15 months at the United Nations she has been instrumental in cutting funding for programs that she disapproves of and has repeatedly threatened military action against countries that disagree with U.S. policies. Most recently, in the wake of the U.S. cruise missile attack against Syria, she announced that the action was potentially only the first step. She declared that Washington was “locked and loaded,” prepared to exercise more lethal military options if Syria and its Russian and Iranian supporters did not cease and desist from the use of chemical weapons. Ironically, the cruise missile attack was carried out even though the White House had no clue as to what had actually happened and it now turns out that the entire story, spread by the terrorist groups in Syria and their mouthpieces, has begun to unravel. Will Nikki Haley apologize? I would suspect that if she doesn’t do confusion she doesn’t do apologies either.

Haley, who had no foreign policy experience of any kind prior to assuming office, relies on a gaggle of neoconservative foreign-policy “experts” to help shape her public utterances, which are often not cleared with the State Department, where she is at least nominally employed. Her speechwriter is Jessica Gavora, who is the wife of the leading neoconservative journalist Jonah Goldberg. Unfortunately, being a neocon mouthpiece makes her particularly dangerous as she is holding a position where she can do bad things. She has been shooting from the lip since she assumed office with only minimal vetting by the Trump Administration, and, as in the recent imbroglio over her “confusion,” it is never quite clear whether she is speaking for herself or for the White House.

Haley has her own foreign policy. She has declared that Russia “is not, will not be our friend” and has lately described the Russians as having their hands covered with the blood of Syrian children. From the start of her time at the U.N., Haley has made it clear that she is neoconservatism personified and she has done nothing since to change that impression. In December 2017 she warned the U.N. that she was “taking names” and threatened retaliation against any country that was so “disrespectful” as to dare to vote against Washington’s disastrous recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, which she also helped to bring about.

As governor of South Carolina, Haley first became identified as an unquestioning supporter of Israel through her signing of a bill punishing supporters of the nonviolent pro-Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, the first legislation of its kind on a state level. Immediately upon taking office at the United Nations she complained that “nowhere has the U.N.’s failure been more consistent and more outrageous than in its bias against our close ally Israel” and vowed that the “days of Israel bashing are over.” On a recent visit to Israel, she was feted and honored by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. She was also greeted by rounds of applause and cheering when she spoke at the annual meeting of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) in March, saying “When I come to AIPAC I am with friends.”

Nikki Haley’s embrace of Israeli points of view is unrelenting and serves no American interest. If she were a recruited agent of influence for the Israeli Mossad she could not be more cooperative than she apparently is voluntarily. In February 2017, she blocked the appointment of former Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad to a diplomatic position at the United Nations because he is a Palestinian. In a congressional hearing she was asked about the decision: “Is it this administration’s position that support for Israel and support for the appointment of a well-qualified individual of Palestinian nationality to an appointment at the U.N. are mutually exclusive?” Haley responded yes, that the administration is “supporting Israel” by blocking every Palestinian.

Haley is particularly highly critical of both Syria and Iran, reflecting the Israeli bias. She has repeatedly said that regime change in Damascus is a Trump administration priority, even when the White House was saying something different. She has elaborated on an Administration warning that it had “identified potential preparations for another chemical weapons attack by the Assad regime” by tweeting “… further attacks will be blamed on Assad but also on Russia and Iran who support him killing his own people.”

At various U.N. meetings, though Haley has repeatedly and uncritically complained of institutional bias towards Israel, she has never addressed the issue that Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians might in part be responsible for the criticism leveled against it. Her description of Israel as a “close ally” is hyperbolic and she tends to be oblivious to actual American interests in the region when Israel is involved. She has never challenged the Israeli occupation of the West Bank as well as the recent large expansion of settlements, which are at least nominally opposed by the State Department and White House. Nor has she spoken up about the more recent shooting of three thousand unarmed Gazan demonstrators by Israeli Army sharpshooters, which is a war crime.

Haley’s hardline on Syria reflects the Israeli bias, and her consistent hostility to Russia is a neoconservative position. Earlier, on April 12, 2017 after Russia blocked a draft U.N. resolution intended to condemn the alleged Khan Shaykhun chemical attack, which subsequently turned out to be a false flag, Haley said, “We need to see Russia choose to side with the civilized world over an Assad government that brutally terrorizes its own people.”

Haley sees Iran as the instigator of much of the unrest in the Middle East, again reflecting the Israeli and neocon viewpoints. She claimed on April 20, 2017 during her first session as president of the U.N. Security Council, that Iran and Hezbollah had “conducted terrorist acts” for decades within the Middle East, ignoring the more serious terrorism support engaged in by U.S. regional allies Saudi Arabia and Qatar. She stated in June 2017 that the Security Council’s praise of the Iran Nuclear Agreement honored a state that has engaged in “illicit missile launches,” “support for terrorist groups,” and “arms smuggling,” while “stok[ing] regional conflicts and mak[ing] them harder to solve.” All are perspectives that might easily be challenged.

So, Nikki Haley very much comes across as the neoconservatives’ dream ambassador to the United Nations–full of aggression, a staunch supporter of Israel, and assertive of Washington’s preemptive right to set standards for the rest of the world. And there is every reason to believe that she would nurture the same views if she were to become the neocon dream president. Bearing the flag for American Exceptionalism does not necessarily make her very good for the rest of us, who will have to bear the burdens and risks implicit in her imperial hubris, but, as the neoconservatives never feel compelled to admit that they were wrong, one suspects that Haley’s assertion that she does not do confusion is only the beginning if she succeeds in her apparent quest for the highest office in the land. Worse than John Bolton? Absolutely.

Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is http://www.councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is inform@cnionline.org.

April 24, 2018 Posted by | Corruption, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Russophobia, Timeless or most popular | , , , , | Leave a comment

Is the U.S. Government Evil? You Tell Me

By John W. Whitehead | The Rutherford Institute | April 23, 2018

Is the U.S. government evil?

You tell me.

This is a government that treats its citizens like faceless statistics and economic units to be bought, sold, bartered, traded, tracked, tortured, and eventually eliminated once they’ve outgrown their usefulness.

This is a government that treats human beings like lab rats to be caged, branded, experimented upon, and then discarded and left to suffer from the after-effects.

This is a government that repeatedly lies, cheats, steals, spies, kills, maims, enslaves, breaks the laws, overreaches its authority, and abuses its power at almost every turn.

This is a government that wages wars for profit, jails its own people for profit, and then turns a blind eye and a deaf ear while its henchmen rape and kill and pillage.

No, this is not a government that can be trusted to do what is right or moral or humane or honorable but instead seems to gravitate towards corruption, malevolence, misconduct, greed, cruelty, brutality and injustice.

This is not a government you should trust with your life, your loved ones, your livelihood or your freedoms.

This is the face of evil, disguised as a democracy, sold to the people as an institution that has their best interests at heart.

Don’t fall for the lie.

The government has never had our best interests at heart.

Endless wars. The government didn’t have our best interests at heart when it propelled us into endless oil-fueled wars and military occupations in the Middle East that wreaked havoc on our economy, stretched thin our military resources and subjected us to horrific blowback.

A police state. There is no way the government had our best interests at heart when it passed laws subjecting us to all manner of invasive searches and surveillance, censoring our speech and stifling our expression, rendering us anti-government extremists for daring to disagree with its dictates, locking us up for criticizing government policies on social media, encouraging Americans to spy and snitch on their fellow citizens, and allowing government agents to grope, strip, search, taser, shoot and kill us.

Battlefield America. Certainly the government did not have our best interests at heart when it turned America into a battlefield, transforming law enforcement agencies into extensions of the military, conducting military drills on domestic soil, distributing “free” military equipment and weaponry to local police, and desensitizing Americans to the menace of the police state with active shooter drills, color-coded terror alerts, and randomly conducted security checkpoints at “soft” targets such as shopping malls and sports arenas.

Secret human experimentation. One would also be hard-pressed to suggest that the American government had our best interests at heart when it conducted secret experiments on an unsuspecting populace—citizens and noncitizens alike—making healthy people sick by spraying them with chemicals, injecting them with infectious diseases and exposing them to airborne toxins. The government reasoned that it was legitimate (and cheaper) to experiment on people who did not have full rights in society such as prisoners, mental patients, and poor blacks.

For instance, there was the CIA’s Cold War-era program, MKULTRA, in which the government began secretly experimenting on hundreds of unsuspecting American civilians and military personnel by dosing them with LSD, some having the hallucinogenic drug secretly slipped into their drinks, so that the government could explore its uses in brainwashing and controlling targets. The CIA spent nearly $20 million on its MKULTRA program, reportedly as a means of programming people to carry out assassinations and, to a lesser degree, inducing anxieties and erasing memories, before it was supposedly shut down.

Sounds like the stuff of conspiracy theorists, I know, but the government’s track record of treating Americans like lab rats has been well-documented, including its attempts to expose whole communities to various toxins as part of its efforts to develop lethal biological weapons and study their impact and delivery methods on unsuspecting populations.

John Lennon was right: “We’re being run by maniacs for maniacal ends.”

Unfortunately, the more things change, the more they stay the same.

Just recently, for example, a Fusion Center in Washington State (a Dept. of Homeland Security-linked data collection clearinghouse that shares information between state, local and federal agencies) inadvertently released records on remote mind control tactics (the use of “psycho-electronic” weapons to control people from a distance or subject them to varying degrees of pain).

Mind you, there is no clear evidence to suggest that these particular documents were created by a government agency. Then again, the government—no stranger to diabolical deeds or shady experiments carried out on an unsuspecting populace—has done it before.

After all, this is a government that has become almost indistinguishable from the evil it claims to be fighting, whether that evil takes the form of terrorism, torture, drug traffickingsex trafficking, murder, violence, theft, pornography, scientific experimentations or some other diabolical means of inflicting pain, suffering and servitude on humanity.

For too long now, as I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American Peoplethe American people have been persuaded to barter their freedoms for phantom promises of security and, in the process, have rationalized turning a blind eye to all manner of government wrongdoing—asset forfeiture schemes, corruption, surveillance, endless wars, SWAT team raids, militarized police, profit-driven private prisons, and so on—because they were the so-called lesser of two evils.

No matter how you rationalize it, the lesser of two evils is still evil.

So how do you fight back?

How do you fight injustice? How do you push back against tyranny? How do you vanquish evil?

You don’t fight it by hiding your head in the sand.

Stop being apathetic. Stop being neutral. Stop being accomplices.

Start recognizing evil and injustice and tyranny for what they are. Demand government transparency. Vote with your feet (i.e., engage in activism, not just politics). Refuse to play politics with your principles. Don’t settle for the lesser of two evils.

As British statesman Edmund Burke warned, “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men [and women] to do nothing.”

It’s time for good men and women to do something. And soon.

April 23, 2018 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Corruption, Militarism, Subjugation - Torture, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , | Leave a comment

‘I’ve seen the censorship’: Syrian blogger tells RT how she was labeled a ‘Russian bot’

How to get a ‘Russian Bot’ label, 101: Just cast doubt on mainstream line on Skripal and Syria!

“They could have stopped and realised the fact if they attacked all the anti-war voices at once it looked suspicious. But no, they’re still going.”

RT | April 23, 2018

Maram Susli, also known as Partisangirl, is a Syrian living in Perth, Australia. If you ask the British government, though, she’s a ‘Russian bot.’ London bases these claims on dodgy numbers from shady sources, Susli tells RT. … transcript/article

April 23, 2018 Posted by | Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance, Timeless or most popular, Video | , , | Leave a comment

What Will Weapons Inspectors Find in Syria… And Does it Matter?

By Ron Paul | April 23, 2018

Inspectors from the Organization for the Prevention of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) have finally arrived in Douma, Syria, to assess whether a gas attack took place earlier this month. It has taken a week for the inspectors to begin their work, as charges were thrown back and forth about who was causing the delay.

Proponents of the US and UK position that Assad used gas in Douma have argued that the Syrian and Russian governments are preventing the OPCW inspectors from doing their work. That, they claim, is all the evidence needed to demonstrate that Assad and Putin have something to hide. But it seems strange that if Syria and Russia wanted to prevent an OPCW inspection of the alleged sites they would have been the ones to request the inspection in the first place.

The dispute was solved just days ago, as the OPCW Director-General released a statement explaining that the delay was due to UN security office concerns for the safety of the inspectors.

We are told that even after the OPCW inspectors collect samples from the alleged attack sites, it will take weeks to determine whether there was any gas or other chemicals released. That means there is very little chance President Trump had “slam dunk” evidence that Assad used gas in Douma earlier this month when he decided to launch a military attack on Syria. To date, the US has presented no evidence of who was responsible or even whether an attack took place at all. Even right up to the US missile strike, Defense Secretary Mattis said he was still looking for evidence.

In a Tweet just days ago, Rep. Thomas Massie expressed frustration that in a briefing to Congress last week the Director of National Intelligence, the Secretary of State, and the Secretary of Defense “provided zero real evidence” that Assad carried out the attack. Either they have it and won’t share it with Congress, he wrote, or they have nothing. Either way, he added, it’s not good.

We should share Rep. Massie’s concerns.

US and French authorities have suggested that videos shared on the Internet by the US-funded White Helmets organization were sufficient proof of the attack. If social media postings are these days considered definitive intelligence, why are we still spending $100 billion a year on our massive intelligence community? Maybe it would be cheaper to just hire a few teenagers to scour YouTube?

Even if Assad had gassed his people earlier this month there still would have been no legal justification for the US to fire 100 or so missiles into the country. Of course such a deed would deserve condemnation from all civilized people, but Washington’s outrage is very selective and often politically motivated. Where is the outrage over Saudi Arabia’s horrific three-year war against Yemen? Those horrors are ignored because Saudi Arabia is considered an ally and thus above reproach.

We are not the policemen of the world. Bad leaders do bad things to their people all the time. That’s true even in the US, where our own government steadily chips away at our Constitution by setting up a surveillance state.

We have neither the money nor the authority to launch bombs when we suspect someone has done something wrong overseas. A hasty decision to use force is foolish and dangerous. As Western journalists reporting from Douma are raising big questions about the official US story of the so-called gas attack, Trump’s inclination to shoot first and ask questions later may prove to be his downfall.

April 23, 2018 Posted by | False Flag Terrorism, Militarism, Timeless or most popular | , | Leave a comment