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Catalan Police in Israel: repression courses #TestedInCombat

October 9, 2017 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Subjugation - Torture, Timeless or most popular, Video, War Crimes | , , | Leave a comment

Antifa in Theory and in Practice

By Diana Johnstone | CounterPunch | October 9, 2017

“Fascists are divided into two categories: the fascists and the anti-fascists.”

– Ennio Flaiano, Italian writer and co-author of Federico Fellini’s greatest film scripts.

In recent weeks, a totally disoriented left has been widely exhorted to unify around a masked vanguard calling itself Antifa, for anti-fascist.  Hooded and dressed in black, Antifa is essentially a variation of the Black Bloc, familiar for introducing violence into peaceful demonstrations in many countries. Imported from Europe, the label Antifa sounds more political.  It also serves the purpose of stigmatizing those it attacks as “fascists”.

Despite its imported European name, Antifa is basically just another example of America’s steady descent into violence.

Historical Pretensions

Antifa first came to prominence from its role in reversing Berkeley’s proud “free speech” tradition by preventing right wing personalities from speaking there. But its moment of glory was its clash with rightwingers in Charlottesville on August 12, largely because Trump commented that there were “good people on both sides”. With exuberant Schadenfreude, commentators grabbed the opportunity to condemn the despised President for his “moral equivalence”, thereby bestowing a moral blessing on Antifa.

Charlottesville served as a successful book launching for Antifa: the Antifascist Handbook, whose author, young academic Mark Bray, is an Antifa in both theory and practice. The book is “really taking off very fast”, rejoiced the publisher, Melville House. It instantly won acclaim from leading mainstream media such as the New York Times, The Guardian and NBC, not hitherto known for rushing to review leftwing books, least of all those by revolutionary anarchists.

The Washington Post welcomed Bray as spokesman for “insurgent activist movements” and observed that: “The book’s most enlightening contribution is on the history of anti-fascist efforts over the past century, but its most relevant for today is its justification for stifling speech and clobbering white supremacists.”

Bray’s “enlightening contribution” is to a tell a flattering version of the Antifa story to a generation whose dualistic, Holocaust-centered view of history has largely deprived them of both the factual and the analytical tools to judge multidimensional events such as the growth of fascism. Bray presents today’s Antifa as though it were the glorious legitimate heir to every noble cause since abolitionism. But there were no anti-fascists before fascism, and the label “Antifa” by no means applies to all the many adversaries of fascism.

The implicit claim to carry on the tradition of the International Brigades who fought in Spain against Franco is nothing other than a form of innocence by association. Since we must revere the heroes of the Spanish Civil War, some of that esteem is supposed to rub off on their self-designated heirs. Unfortunately, there are no veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade still alive to point to the difference between a vast organized defense against invading fascist armies and skirmishes on the Berkeley campus. As for the Anarchists of Catalonia, the patent on anarchism ran out a long time ago, and anyone is free to market his own generic.

The original Antifascist movement was an effort by the Communist International to cease hostilities with Europe’s Socialist Parties in order to build a common front against the triumphant movements led by Mussolini and Hitler.

Since Fascism thrived, and Antifa was never a serious adversary, its apologists thrive on the “nipped in the bud” claim: “if only” Antifascists had beat up the fascist movements early enough, the latter would have been nipped in the bud. Since reason and debate failed to stop the rise of fascism, they argue, we must use street violence – which, by the way, failed even more decisively.

This is totally ahistorical. Fascism exalted violence, and violence was its preferred testing ground. Both Communists and Fascists were fighting in the streets and the atmosphere of violence helped fascism thrive as a bulwark against Bolshevism, gaining the crucial support of leading capitalists and militarists in their countries, which brought them to power.

Since historic fascism no longer exists, Bray’s Antifa have broadened their notion of “fascism” to include anything that violates the current Identity Politics canon: from “patriarchy” (a pre-fascist attitude to put it mildly) to “transphobia” (decidedly a post-fascist problem).

The masked militants of Antifa seem to be more inspired by Batman than by Marx or even by Bakunin.

Storm Troopers of the Neoliberal War Party

Since Mark Bray offers European credentials for current U.S. Antifa, it is appropriate to observe what Antifa amounts to in Europe today.

In Europe, the tendency takes two forms. Black Bloc activists regularly invade various leftist demonstrations in order to smash windows and fight the police. These testosterone exhibits are of minor political significance, other than provoking public calls to strengthen police forces. They are widely suspected of being influenced by police infiltration.

As an example, last September 23, several dozen black-clad masked ruffians, tearing down posters and throwing stones, attempted to storm the platform where the flamboyant Jean-Luc Mélenchon was to address the mass meeting of La France Insoumise, today the leading leftist party in France. Their unspoken message seemed to be that nobody is revolutionary enough for them. Occasionally, they do actually spot a random skinhead to beat up. This establishes their credentials as “anti-fascist”.

They use these credentials to arrogate to themselves the right to slander others in a sort of informal self-appointed inquisition.

As prime example, in late 2010, a young woman named Ornella Guyet appeared in Paris seeking work as a journalist in various leftist periodicals and blogs. She “tried to infiltrate everywhere”, according to the former director of Le Monde diplomatique, Maurice Lemoine, who “always intuitively distrusted her” when he hired her as an intern.

Viktor Dedaj, who manages one of the main leftist sites in France, Le Grand Soir, was among those who tried to help her, only to experience an unpleasant surprise a few months later. Ornella had become a self-appointed inquisitor dedicated to denouncing “conspirationism, confusionism, anti-Semitism and red-brown” on Internet. This took the form of personal attacks on individuals whom she judged to be guilty of those sins. What is significant is that all her targets were opposed to U.S. and NATO aggressive wars in the Middle East.

Indeed, the timing of her crusade coincided with the “regime change” wars that destroyed Libya and tore apart Syria. The attacks singled out leading critics of those wars.

Viktor Dedaj was on her hit list. So was Michel Collon, close to the Belgian Workers Party, author, activist and manager of the bilingual site Investig’action. So was François Ruffin, film-maker, editor of the leftist journal Fakir elected recently to the National Assembly on the list of Mélenchon’s party La France Insoumise. And so on. The list is long.

The targeted personalities are diverse, but all have one thing in common: opposition to aggressive wars. What’s more, so far as I can tell, just about everyone opposed to those wars is on her list.

The main technique is guilt by association. High on the list of mortal sins is criticism of the European Union, which is associated with “nationalism” which is associated with “fascism” which is associated with “anti-Semitism”, hinting at a penchant for genocide. This coincides perfectly with the official policy of the EU and EU governments, but Antifa uses much harsher language.

In mid-June 2011, the anti-EU party Union Populaire Républicaine led by François Asselineau was the object of slanderous insinuations on Antifa internet sites signed by “Marie-Anne Boutoleau” (a pseudonym for Ornella Guyet). Fearing violence, owners cancelled scheduled UPR meeting places in Lyon. UPR did a little investigation, discovering that Ornella Guyet was on the speakers list at a March 2009 Seminar on International Media organized in Paris by the Center for the Study of International Communications and the School of Media and Public Affairs at George Washington University. A surprising association for such a zealous crusader against “red-brown”.

In case anyone has doubts, “red-brown” is a term used to smear anyone with generally leftist views – that is, “red” – with the fascist color “brown”.  This smear can be based on having the same opinion as someone on the right, speaking on the same platform with someone on the right, being published alongside someone on the right, being seen at an anti-war demonstration also attended by someone on the right, and so on.  This is particularly useful for the War Party, since these days, many conservatives are more opposed to war than leftists who have bought into the “humanitarian war” mantra.

The government doesn’t need to repress anti-war gatherings. Antifa does the job.

The Franco-African comedien Dieudonné M’Bala M’Bala, stigmatized for anti-Semitism since 2002 for his TV sketch lampooning an Israeli settler as part of George W. Bush’s “Axis of Good”, is not only a target, but serves as a guilty association for anyone who defends his right to free speech – such as Belgian professor Jean Bricmont, virtually blacklisted in France for trying to get in a word in favor of free speech during a TV talk show. Dieudonné has been banned from the media, sued and fined countless times, even sentenced to jail in Belgium, but continues to enjoy a full house of enthusiastic supporters at his one-man shows, where the main political message is opposition to war.

Still, accusations of being soft on Dieudonné can have serious effects on individuals in more precarious positions, since the mere hint of “anti-Semitism” can be a career killer in France. Invitations are cancelled, publications refused, messages go unanswered.

In April 2016, Ornella Guyet dropped out of sight, amid strong suspicions about her own peculiar associations.

The moral of this story is simple. Self-appointed radical revolutionaries can be the most useful thought police for the neoliberal war party.

I am not suggesting that all, or most, Antifa are agents of the establishment. But they can be manipulated, infiltrated or impersonated precisely because they are self-anointed and usually more or less disguised.

Silencing Necessary Debate

One who is certainly sincere is Mark Bray, author of The Intifa Handbook. It is clear where Mark Bray is coming from when he writes (p.36-7): “… Hitler’s ‘final solution’ murdered six million Jews in gas chambers, with firing squads, through hunger an lack of medical treatment in squalid camps and ghettoes, with beatings, by working them to death, and through suicidal despair.  Approximately two out of every three Jews on the continent were killed, including some of my relatives.”

This personal history explains why Mark Bray feels passionately about “fascism”. This is perfectly understandable in one who is haunted by fear that “it can happen again”.

However, even the most justifiable emotional concerns do not necessarily contribute to wise counsel. Violent reactions to fear may seem to be strong and effective when in reality they are morally weak and practically ineffectual.

We are in a period of great political confusion. Labeling every manifestation of “political incorrectness” as fascism impedes clarification of debate over issues that very much need to be defined and clarified.

The scarcity of fascists has been compensated by identifying criticism of immigration as fascism. This identification, in connection with rejection of national borders, derives much of its emotional force above all from the ancestral fear in the Jewish community of being excluded from the nations in which they find themselves.

The issue of immigration has different aspects in different places. It is not the same in European countries as in the United States. There is a basic distinction between immigrants and immigration. Immigrants are people who deserve consideration. Immigration is a policy that needs to be evaluated. It should be possible to discuss the policy without being accused of persecuting the people. After all, trade union leaders have traditionally opposed mass immigration, not out of racism, but because it can be a deliberate capitalist strategy to bring down wages.

In reality, immigration is a complex subject, with many aspects that can lead to reasonable compromise. But to polarize the issue misses the chances for compromise. By making mass immigration the litmus test of whether or not one is fascist, Antifa intimidation impedes reasonable discussion. Without discussion, without readiness to listen to all viewpoints, the issue will simply divide the population into two camps, for and against. And who will win such a confrontation?

A recent survey* shows that mass immigration is increasingly unpopular in all European countries. The complexity of the issue is shown by the fact that in the vast majority of European countries, most people believe they have a duty to welcome refugees, but disapprove of continued mass immigration. The official argument that immigration is a good thing is accepted by only 40%, compared to 60% of all Europeans who believe that “immigration is bad for our country”. A left whose principal cause is open borders will become increasingly unpopular.

Childish Violence

The idea that the way to shut someone up is to punch him in the jaw is as American as Hollywood movies. It is also typical of the gang war that prevails in certain parts of Los Angeles. Banding together with others “like us” to fight against gangs of “them” for control of turf is characteristic of young men in uncertain circumstances. The search for a cause can involve endowing such conduct with a political purpose: either fascist or antifascist. For disoriented youth, this is an alternative to joining the U.S. Marines.

American Antifa looks very much like a middle class wedding between Identity Politics and gang warfare. Mark Bray (page 175) quotes his DC Antifa source as implying that the motive of would-be fascists is to side with “the most powerful kid in the block” and will retreat if scared. Our gang is tougher than your gang.

That is also the logic of U.S. imperialism, which habitually declares of its chosen enemies: “All they understand is force.” Although Antifa claim to be radical revolutionaries, their mindset is perfectly typical the atmosphere of violence which prevails in militarized America.

In another vein, Antifa follows the trend of current Identity Politics excesses that are squelching free speech in what should be its citadel, academia.  Words are considered so dangerous that “safe spaces” must be established to protect people from them. This extreme vulnerability to injury from words is strangely linked to tolerance of real physical violence.

Wild Goose Chase

In the United States, the worst thing about Antifa is the effort to lead the disoriented American left into a wild goose chase, tracking down imaginary “fascists” instead of getting together openly to work out a coherent positive program. The United States has more than its share of weird individuals, of gratuitous aggression, of crazy ideas, and tracking down these marginal characters, whether alone or in groups, is a huge distraction. The truly dangerous people in the United States are safely ensconced in Wall Street, in Washington Think Tanks, in the executive suites of the sprawling military industry, not to mention the editorial offices of some of the mainstream media currently adopting a benevolent attitude toward “anti-fascists” simply because they are useful in focusing on the maverick Trump instead of themselves.

Antifa USA, by defining “resistance to fascism” as resistance to lost causes – the Confederacy, white supremacists and for that matter Donald Trump – is actually distracting from resistance to the ruling neoliberal establishment, which is also opposed to the Confederacy and white supremacists and has already largely managed to capture Trump by its implacable campaign of denigration. That ruling establishment, which in its insatiable foreign wars and introduction of police state methods, has successfully used popular “resistance to Trump” to make him even worse than he already was.

The facile use of the term “fascist” gets in the way of thoughtful identification and definition of the real enemy of humanity today. In the contemporary chaos, the greatest and most dangerous upheavals in the world all stem from the same source, which is hard to name, but which we might give the provisional simplified label of Globalized Imperialism. This amounts to a multifaceted project to reshape the world to satisfy the demands of financial capitalism, the military industrial complex, United States ideological vanity and the megalomania of leaders of lesser “Western” powers, notably Israel. It could be called simply “imperialism”, except that it is much vaster and more destructive than the historic imperialism of previous centuries. It is also much more disguised. And since it bears no clear label such as “fascism”, it is difficult to denounce in simple terms.

The fixation on preventing a form of tyranny that arose over 80 years ago, under very different circumstances, obstructs recognition of the monstrous tyranny of today. Fighting the previous war leads to defeat.

Donald Trump is an outsider who will not be let inside. The election of Donald Trump is above all a grave symptom of the decadence of the American political system, totally ruled by money, lobbies, the military-industrial complex and corporate media. Their lies are undermining the very basis of democracy. Antifa has gone on the offensive against the one weapon still in the hands of the people: the right to free speech and assembly.

Notes.

* «Où va la démocratie?», une enquête  de la Fondation pour l’innovation politique sous la direction de Dominique Reynié, (Plon, Paris, 2017).

Diana Johnstone is the author of Fools’ Crusade: Yugoslavia, NATO, and Western Delusions. Her new book is Queen of Chaos: the Misadventures of Hillary Clinton. She can be reached at diana.johnstone@wanadoo.fr

October 9, 2017 Posted by | Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Timeless or most popular | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

REVEALED: U.S. Tested Carcinogenic Chemicals On Unknowing Canadian Civilians During The Cold War

By Aaron Kesel | Activist Post | October 6, 2017

The U.S. Army secretly tested carcinogenic chemicals on unknowing residents of Canada in Winnipeg and Alberta during the Cold War in testing linked to weaponry involving radioactive ingredients meant to attack the Soviet Union, according to classified documents revealed in a new book Behind the Fog: How the U.S. Cold War Radiological Weapons Program Exposed Innocent Americans by Lisa Martino-Taylor, an associate professor of sociology at St. Louis Community College.

The incidents occurred between July 9, 1953 and Aug 1, 1953 when they sprayed six kilograms of zinc cadmium sulfide onto unsuspecting citizens of Winnipeg from U.S. Army planes. The Army then returned 11 years later in 1964 and repeated the experiments in other parts of Canada including  Suffield, Alta. and Medicine Hat, Alta., according to Martino-Taylor, National Post reported.

“In Winnipeg, they said they were testing what they characterized as a chemical fog to protect Winnipeg in the event of a Russian attack,” Martino-Taylor said. “They characterized it as a defensive study when it was actually an offensive study.”

Canada knowingly participated in this experiment as part of an agreement it held with the U.S. and England but was allegedly not told about what was being sprayed on its citizens, according to Martino-Taylor.

In 1964, a memo from Canadian officials expressed concern that an “American aircraft was emitting distinctly visible emissions,” Martino-Taylor said.

In Canadian and U.S. documents, the tests were referenced as biological and chemical when documents suggest they actually involved combining the two with radiological components to form a combined weapon.

The U.S. was working on producing a radioactive nerve agent that combined the dangerous phosphorus-32 and VX chemical compounds.

“The zinc cadmium sulfide acted as a fluorescent tracer which would help the U.S. Army determine how the radioactive fallout from a weapon used on the Soviets would travel through wind currents,” Martino-Taylor said.

An additional 1964 memo from Suffield mentions that the U.S. Army wanted to travel Suffield to “discuss the use of radioactive tracer techniques in chemical weapons trials.” While preparing for other tests involving BG, a bacteria, the U.S. Army drafted the number of hospitals and hospital beds available in the area, showing a potential further connection to the CIA’s human experimentation MK-Ultra project.

It’s a known fact the Allan Memorial Institute in Royal Victoria Hospital is seen as the cradle of modern torture, and that Scottish-born Dr. Donald Ewen Cameron was heavily involved in subproject 68. Cameron also had partial funding funneled by the CIA (approx. $62,000) and the Canadian government for its brainwashing experiments and torture, according to The McGill Daily.

So was the U.S. planning on expanding its torture experiments into Suffield?

For decades the massive Suffield Base in Alberta was one of the largest chemical and biological weapons research centers in the world. A 1989 Peace Magazine article explained, “For almost 50 years, scientists from the Department of National Defence have been as busy as beavers expanding their knowledge of, and testing agents for, chemical and biological warfare (CBW) in southern Alberta,” Global Research reported.

“The U.S. was very aggressive,” Martino-Taylor said. “Canada seemed less on board as I read through the documentation.”

Until now it was thought the U.S. only experimented on its own people, but it’s now known that they also experimented on their neighbors in Canada and tried to expand that experimentation to the levels it did in the U.S.

The CIA did several unethical human experiments in the United States. In one instance they injected radioactive material into hospital patients without their consent at all. While other experiments were performed on pregnant women in Nashville who were given a radioactive iron cocktail to ingest so that researchers could determine if cancer could be passed on to their offspring. Even children were fed radioactive oatmeal as part of a “science club,” Martino-Taylor said.

Yes, this is your secret history of previous deep state experiments. Another by the U.S. Army inside the continental United States revealed by Martino-Taylor also involved spraying the same zinc cadmium sulfide particles over much of the U.S. across several cities including  St. Louis and Texas; that project was known as Operation LAC (Large Area Coverage.)

The public was tricked and told the experiment was to set up smokescreens that the Army could deploy to shield the U.S. from any nuclear assault by Russia at the time. In reality, they were testing biological agents on the population harming their health.

“The study was secretive for a reason. They didn’t have volunteers stepping up and saying yeah, I’ll breathe zinc cadmium sulfide with radioactive particles,”  St Louis Professor, Martino-Taylor told KSDK. “This was a violation of all medical ethics, all international codes, and the military’s own policy at that time.”

The report didn’t note whether the experiments in Canada were connected to Operation LAC, though it has several similarities to the project, or whether this was a bigger part of Project 112. However, for years the Canadian government has denied that it tested any bioweapons in Alaska and Alberta as well as spraying “simulated bio-weaponry across North American cities, including Winnipeg.”

Pathogens for War, by University of Western Ontario historian Donald Avery, notes that Canadian scientists were intimately involved in U.S. bioweapons research until 1969, when then-president Richard Nixon unilaterally ended the program. Significant quantities of toxins, including sarin and the nerve agent VX, were stockpiled at Suffield until at least 1989, The Star reported.

The U.S. government has a longstanding policy for human experimentation, experimenting on its civilian population for decades since the 1950s (Cold War) doing a total of 239 “germ-warfare” tests over populated areas.

The United States scrapped its biological weapons program in the late 1960s and agreed in a 1997 treaty, the “Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production, Stockpiling and Use of Chemical Weapons” to destroy all its chemical weapons.

The goal “was to deter the use of biological weapons against the United States and its allies and to retaliate if deterrence failed,” the government explained. “Fundamental to the development of a deterrent strategy was the need for a thorough study and analysis of our vulnerability to overt and covert attack.”

A 1997 report from the National Research Council concluded that the Army’s secret tests “did not expose residents of the United States and Canada to chemical levels considered harmful.” However, the same report admitted that there was little research on the chemical used and mostly based on very limited animal studies.

Three House Democrats who represent areas where testing occurred — William Lacy Clay of Missouri, Brad Sherman of California and Jim Cooper of Tennessee — have expressed outrage by the revelations, NY Post reported.

Cooper’s office plans to seek more information from the Army Legislative Liaison, spokesman Chris Carroll said.

“We are asking for details on the Pentagon’s role, along with any cooperation by research institutions and other organizations,” Carroll said. “These revelations are shocking, disturbing and painful.”

“I join with my colleagues to demand the whole truth about this testing and I will reach out to my Missouri Delegation friends on the House Armed Services Committee for their help as well,” Clay said in a statement.

Yet the government today still denies spraying death dumps of chemicals across the sky and calls the belief a conspiracy theory, ridiculing those who accuse such practice as a “conspiracy theorist,” despite the fact that they did unethical human experimentation through the spraying of chemicals 50 years ago.

Follow Aaron Kesel at Twitter and Steemit.

Image Credit: Natural Blaze

October 7, 2017 Posted by | Book Review, Deception, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , | Leave a comment

Vladimir Putin’s 17 years in power: the scorecard

By Alex Krainer | The Naked Hedgie | June 7, 2017

Mr. Putin can’t seem to get a break in the western media. I watched his recent interview with CBS’s Megyn Kelly with her tiresome, boring questions like, “did Russia interfere in our election,” “did your ambassador meet with Trump’s election officials,”  “isn’t it true that you’re a corrupt murderous thug,” etc. Only in response to Kelly’s last question did Mr. Putin get to name a handful of his achievements in Russia. But someone ought to better prepare his talking points on this score. The below excerpt from my upcoming book summarizes how Russia has changed during the 17 years since Mr. Putin has been at helm.

On 26th July 2014 British magazine “The Economist” published an article titled “A web of lies,” opening with the following two sentences: “In 1991, when Soviet Communism collapsed, it seemed as if the Russian people might at last have the chance to become citizens of a normal Western democracy. Vladimir Putin’s disastrous contribution to Russia’s history has been to set his country on a different path.” Well, we have already seen how Russia fared in the 1990s after Soviet communism collapsed. For some reason, the bright minds at The Economist thought this path was so promising, it was a real shame – a disaster, no less – that Vladimir Putin took Russia on a different one. Let’s take a closer look, shall we, at Mr. Putin’s “disastrous contribution.”

To start with, Putin played the pivotal role in keeping the country from disintegrating. When he came to power, Russia’s regional governors were writing their own laws, disregarded presidential instructions and were not even returning their republics’ tax receipts to the Federation’s purse. Mikhail Gorbachev stated that Putin “saved Russia from the beginning of a collapse. A lot of the regions did not recognize our constitution.” [1] But this historical feat was only the starting point of the subsequent renaissance of the nation. Its economy returned to growth and became more vibrant and diverse than it had been perhaps since the reforms of Pyotr Stolypin of the early 1900s.

Economic reforms

In 2000, Russia was one of the most corrupt countries in the world. Without instituting draconian purges Putin took on the oligarchs and steadily curtailed their power, gradually returning Russia to the rule of law. By 2016 his government reduced corruption to about the same level as that of the United States. That was the empirical result of the annual study on corruption published in 2016 by Ernst & Young.[2] The global auditing consultancy asked respondents around the world whether in their experience, corruption is widespread in the business sector. Their survey, which was conducted in 2014, indicated that only 34% of their Russian respondents thought so, the same proportion as in the United States, and below the world average of 39%. Things have probably improved further since then as Vladimir Putin stepped up a high-profile anti-corruption campaign that led to investigations and prosecution of a number of high level politicians around Russia. Even highly ranked members of Putin’s own political party were not spared.[3] The unmistakable message of such campaigns was that corruption would not be tolerated and that it would be aggressively investigated and prosecuted. Some of the best evidence that Putin’s various anti-corruption measures have had effect can be found in World Bank’s Enterprise Surveys which ask businessmen the question, “was a gift or informal payment expected or requested during a meeting with tax officials?” In 2005, nearly 60% of respondents answered affirmatively. By 2009 this number was 17.4% and by 2012 it had dropped to only 7.3%.

VVP_CorruptionTrends

Putin’s government also made impressive advances in making it easier for entrepreneurs and small businesses to set up shop, raise capital and operate in Russia. According to World Bank’s annual “Doing Business” report, which ranks 190 world economies on a set of attributes such as the ease of starting a business, obtaining construction permits, obtaining electricity, raising credit, and enforcing contracts. On all the metrics combined, Russia managed to climb from 124th place in the world in 2012 to 40th in 2017.[4] Thus, within only five years, Russia had vaulted an impressive 84 positions in World Bank’s ranking. This was not a random achievement but the result of President Putin’s explicit 2012 directive that by 2018 Russia should be among the top 20 nations in the world for ease of doing business.

One of the strategically important sectors where Russia has made striking progress is its agricultural industry. After the disastrous 1990s when she found herself dependent on food imports, Russia again became self-sufficient in food production and a net food exporter. By 2014, Russian exports of agricultural products reached nearly $20 billion, almost a full third of her revenues from oil and gas exports. Not only is Russia now producing abundant food for its own needs, the government is explicitly favoring production of healthy foods, a strategy which includes a ban on the cultivation of genetically modified (GMO) crops, introduced by the State Duma in February of 2014. According to official Russian statistics, the share of GMO foods sold in Russia declined from 12% in 2004 to just 0.1% by 2014.

These and many other constructive reforms have had a very substantial impact on Russia’s economic aggregates as the following examples show:

  • Between 1999 and 2013, Russia’s gross domestic product (GDP) leaped nearly 12-fold from $1,330 per capita to more than $15,560 in 2013, outpacing even China’s remarkable economic growth.
  • Russia reduced its debt as a percentage of GDP by over 90%, from 144% in 1998 to less than 14% in 2015!
  • Gross national income per capita rose from $1,710 in 2000 to $14,810 in 2013.
  • Unemployment fell from 13% in 1999 to below 5% in 2014. Among the working population (those aged 15-64), 69% have a paid job (74% of men).
  • Only 0.2% of Russians work very long hours, compared to 13% OECD average
  • Poverty rate fell from 40% in the 1990s to 12.5% in 2013 – better than U.S. or German poverty rates (15.6% and 15.7%, respectively)
  • Average monthly income rose from around 1,500 rubles in 1999 to nearly 30,000 rubles in 2013.
  • Average monthly pensions rose from less than 500 rubles to 10,000 rubles.

Social and demographic improvements

Putin’s economic reforms included also a more equitable distribution of wealth. As hopelessness faded and standard of living improved, Russian society started to heal: suicides, homicides, and alcohol poisonings declined dramatically. Over the twenty-year period between 1994 and 2014, suicides declined by 56%, homicide rate by 73%, and alcohol poisonings by 83%!

VVP_MiseryStats

The chart below shows the evolution of these improvements over time:

VVP_SuicidesHomicidesEtc

As we can see, these misery statistics rapidly deteriorated with the introduction of shock therapy in 1992, but the trend sharply reversed soon after Putin took charge. By 2014, these figures reached their lowest values since even before 1992. Along with these improvements, the nation’s demographic trends also experienced a dramatic turnaround. Russian life expectancy, which sunk to an average of barely 64 years (57 for men), rose steadily from the early 2000s to reach almost 72 in 2016, the highest it has ever been in Russia’s history.

VVP_LifeExpectancy

Looking at the way life expectancy in Russia changed over time, we see again that it had collapsed in the early 1990s but the trend turned around sharply under Vladimir Putin’s leadership of the country. Similarly fertility rate, which dropped to 1.16 babies per woman in 1999, increased by almost 50% to 1.7 babies by 2012, comparing favorably to European Union’s average of 1.55 babies per woman of childbearing age. Abortions declined 88% from a harrowing 250% of live births in 1993 to 31% in 2013.

VVP_Fertility

Not only are Russians living longer than ever before and enjoying much better quality of life, they also feel freer and happier. In 2014, Gallup Analytics reported that 65% of Russians, more than ever before, answered “Yes” when asked, “are you satisfied … with your freedom to choose what you do with your life?” Meanwhile, Russia’s happiness index rose more than tenfold, from 6 in 1992 to 70 in 2015. Happiness index, compiled by VCIOM[5] adds the proportion of the respondents reporting that they feel decidedly happy or generally happy and deducts those that report feeling generally unhappy or decidedly unhappy.

VVP_Happiness

The next chart further corroborates the idea that under Putin’s leadership, Russia has been developing as a sane and prosperous society, not only for the benefit of a narrow ruling class and at everyone else’s expense, but for the vast majority of ordinary Russians.

VVP_Satisfaction&Direction

By 2014, the great majority of Russians felt satisfied with their lives and believed that things in Russia were moving in the right direction. These figures only tapered off after the 2014 western-sponsored coup in Ukraine and the subsequent economic sanctions imposed on Russia. At the same time, the price of oil – still one of Russia’s largest export – collapsed from over $100 per barrel to under $40. Economic sanctions and the oil price collapse triggered a significant crisis in Russia’s economy. However, in spite of the continuing sanctions regime imposed on the country, its economy started improving again in 2016, thanks to its diverse industrial base that includes a developed commercial and consumer automotive industry, advanced aircraft and helicopter construction based largely on domestic technologies, world’s leading aerospace industry building satellites and top class rocket engines, and advanced industries in pharmaceutical, food processing, optical device, machine tools, tractors, software and numerous other branches. Indeed, Russia is far from being just the “Nigeria with missiles,” or a “gas station with an army,” as many western leaders like to characterize it.

Insofar as a population’s sentiment is a valid measure of its leadership’s performance, Russia’s development under Vladimir Putin stands in sharp contrast with the weak performance of most other developed nations, including those that most vehemently criticize Russia and its president. According to polls conducted by Ipsos Public Affairs in 25 different countries in November 2016 and published by the World Economic Forum, almost two thirds of the people in the world believed that their countries were moving in the wrong direction. The leading western nations scored just as badly, while some among them did flat out dismally.

VVP_RussiaRightDirection

Evidently, Russians feel much better about the way their nation is shaping up than do constituents of many western nations[6] whose sanctimonious leaders like to lecture their Russian counterparts about prosperity, freedom, democracy and other exalted values they purport to cherish.[7] It may thus only surprise the most credulous consumers of western propaganda that a high proportion of Russian people trust Vladimir Putin and approve his job performance. In the early 2017, Putin’s job approval stood between 80% and 90% and has averaged 74% over the eleven years from 2006. During this period, no western leader has come even close to measuring up with Vladimir Putin.

VVP_Trust&Approval

Over the years, I’ve heard depressingly many intellectuals attempt to dismiss Putin’s achievements and Russian people’s contentment as the product of Russian government propaganda. Putin the autocrat, you see, keeps such tight control over the media that he can deceive his people into believing that things in the country are much better than they really are. But the idea that government propaganda can influence public opinion in this way is just silly. If the majority of people thought their lives were miserable, state propaganda could not persuade them that everything is great. On the contrary, most people would conclude that the media is deceiving them and might feel even less positive about things as a result.[8] It is sillier still to think that western intellectuals should have a better appreciation of what it is like to live in Russia than the Russian people themselves. Rather than buying the truth from their media, such intellectuals would do well to take a trip and visit Russia, speak to ordinary people there, and reach their own conclusions. My own travels in Russia, as well as reports from other visitors largely agree with the positive picture that emerges from the statistics we’ve just examined.

Notes:

[1] (Gorbachev: Putin saved Russia from disintegration 2014)

[2] (Stulb 2016)

[3] Some of the names arrested in 2016 surprised even the Russian public as they included such high caliber individual as the Mayor of Vladivostok, Igor Pushkarev; Governor of the Kirov region, Nikita Belykh; Governor of the Sakhalin region, Alexander Khoroshavin, Deputy Minister of Culture Grigory Pirumov and Minister for Economic Development, Aleksey Ulyukaev.

[4] (Romer 2016)

[5] ВЦИОМ – Russian Center for Research on Public Opinion

[6] A different, Associated Press – GfK poll in July of 2016 uncovered an even darker public sentiment in the United States: “A stunning 79 percent of Americans now believe the country is heading in the wrong direction, a 15-point spike in the past year…” (J. Pace 2016)

[7] VCIOM’s figures for November 2016 are somewhat higher than those of Ipsos (62% vs. 58%).

[8] This, for instance, was the situation in the late 1990s when only 5 to 10 percent of Russians thought that the country was heading in the right direction in spite of the ruling elite’s nearly total control of the media.

Alex Krainer is an author and hedge fund manager based in Monaco. Recently he has published the book “Mastering Uncertainty in Commodities Trading“. The above article is an excerpt from his upcoming book (really, any day now…) whose working title is “The Killing of William Browder”

October 7, 2017 Posted by | Economics, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Timeless or most popular | | Leave a comment

Israeli ambassador pushes potential war to elite U.S. powerbrokers

Israeli ambassador pushes potential war to elite U.S. powerbrokers

Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. Ron Dermer gives address Sept. 12, 2017 to Washington D.C. movers and shakers: Wolf Blitzer and other journalists, government officials, think tank heads, philanthropists – almost all with significant ties to Israel (see list below).

By Alison Weir and Kathryn Shihadah | If Americans Knew | October 5, 2017

A select assembly of Washington D.C. heavy hitters recently attended a Rosh Hashanah event at which Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. spoke. Ron Dermer discussed alleged dangers posed by Iran, Syria, and Russia. In some places Dermer appeared to be laying out a rationale for another Israeli war.

According to JTA (Jewish Telegraphic Agency), the event is an annual affair “to which the embassy invites the U.S. Jewish leadership.” Dermer’s speeches typically seem intended to create a feeling of shared concern for Israel, saying, for example, “Let us all raise a glass and toast the fact that the Jewish people are voiceless no more. Israel has provided us with a shofar, with a sovereign voice among the nations.” Dermer himself was born and raised in the U.S.

Among those attending the invitation-only gathering this year were approximately 20 journalists, many connected to top U.S. print and broadcast media (including Wolf Blitzer, Eli Lake, Cliff May); numerous government officials and politicians (Congressmen, diplomats, White House insiders, senior staff, political operatives); and heads of major U.S. national organizations, philanthropists, and influential religious leaders (see list with biographical details below).

Dermer’s speech began on a convivial note – “Remember, on Rosh Hashana, you’re allowed to eat, drink and even laugh”– but soon became serious as he gave dire warnings about alleged dangers Israel faces, and the need for Americans to help.

Iran was the main villain to be protected against, with Syria and Russia allegedly dangerous abettors that also need to be addressed.

“The past year has posed many critical challenges for Israel,” Dermer intoned. “Foremost among those challenges has been the rising power of Iran.”

(This is very much in line with Israeli thinking; Israel’s Jerusalem Post newspaper recently reported: “Iran is the primary target of the Mossad’s actions, which number in the hundreds and thousands each year.” Netanyahu reportedly calls the Mossad Israel’s “synchronized fist.”)

Dermer claimed that the Iran deal had been a “double jackpot” for Iran (many U.S. analysts disagree, including some Israel partisans and top U.S. generals). Dermer charged that the deal had enabled Iran to spend “much of the past year consolidating its power across the Middle East.”

Next came the not-so-subtle call to action.

“Israel hopes that the coming weeks will bring about a dramatic change in the trajectory of that deal that will ultimately either fix it or cancel it,” Dermer said, making clear what was required of Americans who care about Israel.

Dermer and Debbie Wasserman Schultz at 2014 Israel Embassy Rosh Hashanah event; Dermer also warned about Iran at that event.

Dermer also focused on Syria, speaking of a potential Iranian “terror front against Israel” being established in Syria.

“Iran has been feverishly working  to win the spoils of the imminent defeat of ISIS,” Dermer said, suggesting that such a defeat could be harmful to Israel.

Dermer’s statements reflect Israeli concern about U.S. efforts to end the war in Syria, leaving Russia, Assad – and by extension Hezbollah – in place. As JTA explains:

The Netanyahu government has been wary of what the end-game could be of U.S. efforts to end the war in Syria. There is a concern among Israelis — articulated most often by the defense minister, Avigdor Liberman — that the Trump administration might defer to Russia, which is allied with the Assad regime. Russia’s Assad alliance means it is in a de facto alliance with Iran and its Lebanese ally, Hezbollah, because they also are allied with the Assad regime.

Recent ongoing efforts in the U.S. to force the Trump administration to avoid diplomatic ties with Russia (despite the paucity of evidence for the accusations) may help remove that obstacle to keeping the U.S. in Syria.

Dermer said that Netanyahu had set “red lines” regarding Syria and that Israel will enforce them: “Israel will act to prevent Iran from supplying game changing weapons to Hezbollah. And Israel will act to prevent Iran from establishing another terror front against Israel in Syria.”

Israel has been stating these red lines for several years, and its escalating sabre rattling suggests that it may be planning another of its wars. Israel analyst Larry Derfner recently published an article entitled “A plea to Israel: Don’t start the third Lebanon War.”

Derfner states: “By continuing to bomb Syrian arms destined for Hezbollah – which Israel has admittedly done nearly 100 times in the last five years – as well as periodically killing Hezbollah and other pro-Syrian fighters along with the occasional Iranian general, Israel is making the next very, very ugly war in the north a self-fulfilling prophecy.”

A recent article in the very pro-Israel Atlantic (editor Jeffrey Goldberg served in the Israeli army) states: “for nearly two years now, Israeli military and intelligence officials have been warning every American official who comes through Tel Aviv and Jerusalem that the next war is coming. Israel has methodically prepared its allies—and most especially the Americans— for a very, very ugly war on the horizon.”

These wars have created massive carnage and suffering. even the Atlantic acknowledges that the 2006 Israeli assault “leveled entire neighborhoods in Beirut.”

Beirut, August 20, 2006. 1,100 Lebanese civilians died, 4,000 were injured, and over one million were temporarily displaced; 116 Israeli soldiers & 43 civilians died. Researchers found pro-Israel bias in U.S. media coverage of the war.

While Dermer tried to sell his audience on the claim that Israel is at existential risk, Derfner points out: “The idea that Hezbollah, Iran and Syria are itching for a war with Israel, that they’re just waiting to attack, is a delusion. Absent Israeli provocation, such an attack would have no parallel in the world or in history.”

Nevertheless, some influential media reports largely purvey Israeli spin, and it’s likely that Dermer’s speech was intended to influence the many journalists at his reception to take a similar line. As a Foreign Policy article reports: “When it comes to Washington, Israel’s task is to locate or induce a more coherent American strategy to counter advance of the Iranians in the Levant.”

This is particularly important, since some Trump officials don’t always march to the Israeli tune. U.S. National Security Advisor General H.R. McMaster recently told Israeli officials that Hezbollah was not a terrorist group. (Other reports claim he has called Israel an occupying power.)

Another point Dermer made to his audience was the value of U.S. strategies to help Israel bring some Arab countries into an alliance against Iran.

Dermer called the new allignment a “silver lining” and said he was “deeply grateful” to the current administration for “methodically working to advance a serious process that can move the entire region forward” – i.e. in Israel’s direction.

Dermer is no doubt pleased that, as in the past, the U.S. negotiator for Israel-Palestine is an Israel partisan; he called for applause for Jason Greenblatt, who he noted was present – one of the many “senior officials from all three branches of the U.S. government” attending the event.

Attendees

Jewish Insider provided a list of opinion makers spotted at the event, which included both liberals and conservatives, members of both political parties, and representatives of diverse positions along the pro-Israel spectrum. Below is the list, with added information on each.

We have listed each individual under one category below, although in many cases they would fit into several sectors given the revolving door that often exists between media, government, and pro-Israel organizations.

Journalists/Media Pundit

Wolf Blitzer, CNN lead political anchor, anchor of The Situation Room and Wolf. Blitzer began his career in 1972 with Reuters in Tel Aviv, before becoming a Washington DC correspondent for Israel’s Jerusalem Post. He also worked as editor of AIPAC’s monthly newsletter and edited “Myths and Facts 1976, A Concise Record of the Arab-Israeli Conflict” (Near East Research, AIPAC’s monthly publication), a volume described by Mondoweiss as “one piece of Zionist propaganda after another [that] denounced Palestinian views of [events surrounding the 1948 war] as ‘spurious myths.’”

Blitzer authored Between Washington and Jerusalem: A Reporter’s Notebook (Oxford University Press, 1985) and Territory of Lies (Harper and Row, 1989), about Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard, of which reviewer Robert I. Friedman wrote in the New York Review of books that Blitzer played down the damage caused by Pollard. Friedman stated:  “Senior Israeli Defense Department officials are understandably pleased with Blitzer’s book about Pollard.” Friedman reported: “Currently, he travels the American TV talk show circuit as the ‘voice of Israel.’ Territory of Lies is a slick piece of damage control that would make his former employers at AIPAC (not to mention Israel’s Defense Ministry) proud.”

In 1990 Blitzer went to CNN, where his career skyrocketed. During Israel’s 2014 invasion of Gaza, Blitzer covered the conflict by embedding with the Israeli army. As part of “the most trusted name in news,” he maintains a pro-Israel bias (see this and this, for example). In 1989 he took part in a debate in which he largely repeated Israel’s talking points.

Sam Feist, CNN Washington Bureau Chief and senior vice-president. He oversees daily operations, leads all newsgathering and Washington-based programming, as well as campaign and election coverage. Feist was the founding executive producer of Wolf Blitzer’s The Situation Room, and has produced and managed CNN political programming including Crossfire, The Capital Gang, and State of the Union. He has been with CNN since 1991.

Danielle Heyman Feist, wife of Sam Feist. Director of Camp Rodef Shalom, a Virginia day camp that has a number of activities related to Israel, including a program in which scouts from Israel “run their own specialty area during camp, playing Israeli games, teaching a few Hebrew words, and helping bring their Israeli culture all the way to Virginia!”

Howard Friedman is director of Sinclair Media, the nation’s largest owner of local TV stations. He has served on the board of pro-Israel lobbying organizations such as AIPAC.

Howard Friedman has served on boards for many foundations, including the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America (which advocates for Israel and brought “tens of thousands” of its members and “hundreds of rabbis” to lobby Congress against the Iran deal). He was twice named by Washington Life Magazine as one of the 100 most powerful people in Washington DC. Formerly he was President of JTA – The Global News Service of the Jewish People.

Perhaps most significantly, Friedman is currently Director of the Sinclair Broadcast Group, the nation’s largest owner of local TV stations, and likely to become even larger, as it is in the process of buying Tribune Media for $3.9 billion.

Sinclair insists on conservative content on its local news programs, and even produces its own commentary pieces as “must-run” segments on every one of its stations . These include a daily “Terror Alert Desk” segment, which was recently exposed by political humorist John Oliver  as an occasional vehicle for conflating terrorism with Islam. The “newscasters” include regulars from the Fox News Channel (like Sara Carter), contributors to conservative publications like the Washington Examiner (like Mark Hyman), and at least one former Trump staffer (Boris Epshteyn – see below).

Sinclair already owns 170 TV stations, which gives it access to 38% of American households—just shy of the cap of 39% put in place by Congress in 2004. Tribune Media is set to hand over another 42 stations (which includes stations in New York City, Chicago, Los Angeles), which would give Sinclair access to a full 72% of US households—nearly double what is allowed by law. This was made possible thanks to a move by Trump-appointed FCC Chairman Ajit Pai. Pai, heir apparent to the chair of the FCC, was wooed by Sinclair starting right after Trump’s election. Soon after his appointment, Pai unexpectedly revived an outdated regulatory loophole. About two weeks later, Sinclair announced its acquisition of Tribune.

Norman Eisen currently works with think tank Brookings Institution, does political commentary on CNN, and chairs Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), a Democratic Party leaning nonprofit he co-founded in 2003 with Louis Mayberg, a financier who donates to Jewish causes (his wife says: “I invest in Jewish people” and partners with the Israeli Ministry of the Diaspora to bring thousands of women from 25 countries on visits to Israel). Previously, Eisen served as special council for ethics and government reform to President Obama. From 1985 to 1988, he was Assistant Director of the ADL’s Los Angeles office, where he investigated anti-semitism and other civil rights issues, promoted Holocaust education, “and advanced US-Israel relations.” He backed Tom Perez over Keith Ellison for Democratic National Committee chair, citing Perez’ “warm feelings for Israel.” As a student he had worked for Israel partisan Alan Dershowitz, who once said: “Our union was made in heaven. He was a natural guy for me to hire because he was brilliant and shared many of the same liberal democratic, pro-Israel values that I did and that he still represents.”

Eisen has also served as U.S. Ambassador to the Czech Republic, during which time bilateral trade between the U.S. and the Czech Republic almost doubled. Earlier in his career he was a partner in the Zuckerman Spaeder law firm, where he worked on cases such as Enron and Whitewater. Washingtonian Magazine listed Eisen as one of Washington’s top lawyers.

Talk show host Tom Rose (right) volunteered for the Israeli military during the first Gulf War. In 2014 he travelled to Israel with his longtime friend Mike Pence (left), in the company of Ambassador Dermer.

Tom Rose, journalist and unofficial Vice Presidential surrogate. Formerly editor/publisher of the Jerusalem Post, during which he and his family lived in Israel. Although he is an American citizen, during the Gulf War he volunteered for service in the IDF. More recently, he has co-hosted a Sunday morning satellite radio program with conservative Christian Gary Bauer. Their show, The Bauer & Rose Show, is known for its “robust defense of Judeo-Christian civilization, the US/Israel alliance, and the need for a strong America in the world.” The show ended in April 2017 when Rose took a position as assistant and advisor to Vice President Mike Pence, Rose’s “closest personal friend for 25 years.” In 2014, Rose and Pence visited Israel together, in the company of Israel’s Ambassador to the US, Ron Dermer.

Kenneth Weinstein, President and CEO of the Hudson Institute, which honored PM Benjamin Netanyahu with the Herman Kahn Award (see Roger Hertog entry below)—which is conferred on “leading public servants who exemplify a commitment to Western alliances as the bedrock of global security, prosperity, and freedom.” Hudson “seeks to guide public policy makers and global leaders in government and business.” It frequently holds conferences on topics such as defense, international relations, and economics (dozens of which have been pro-Israel) and disseminates research and analysis articles (hundreds of which have been pro-Israel). Weinstein is President and CEO of the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), whose mission is “to inform, engage, and connect people around the world in support of freedom and democracy.” BBG oversees U.S. government civilian international media: Voice of America, Radio Free Europe, Office of Cuba Broadcasting, Radio Free Asia, Middle East Broadcasting Networks.

AP reporter Josh Lederman began his journalism career working in Israel, where he had spent a year as a child. He credits that year and his attendance at Tucson Hebrew Academy, whose core values include “supporting Israel,” with informing his reporting.

Josh Lederman, Associated Press reporter; started his journalism career in the AP Jerusalem bureau; he had previously lived in Israel in seventh grade (it is unknown whether he has Israeli citizenship). Lederman credits that year, combined with his education as student at Tucscon Hebrew Academy (among its “Core Values” is “Supporting Israel: We support Israel and foster close relationships with Israeli students and educators”) with helping him “connect the dots” as he reported on Israel. Now based in Washington DC, Lederman covers foreign affairs, national security and U.S. diplomacy for AP ; appears frequently on television and radio, including on MSNBC, Fox News, NPR and others. He covered 2012 presidential campaign for The Hill newspaper in Washington. From 2013 to 2017, Lederman was a White House reporter for AP. He also writes for the Times of Israel.

Media pundit Cliff May founded Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), a neoconservative organization created “to enhance Israel’s image in North America.”

Clifford D. May, weekly “Foreign Desk” columnist of The Washington Times, and frequent analyst on diverse TV and radio news programs. His articles have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, National Review, Commentary, USA Today, The Atlantic and other publications. May is the founder of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), a pro-Israel neoconservative organization – May said its purpose was “to enhance Israel’s image in North America.” Some suggested it was the new Project for a New American Century. Right Web reports:

FDD grew out of a right-wing pro-Israel initiative launched in early 2001 called EMET. Reports Slate: “On April 24, 2001, three major pro-Israel donors incorporated an organization called EMET (Hebrew for ‘truth’). In an application to the Internal Revenue Service for tax-exempt status, [FDD president Clifford May] explained that the group ‘was to provide education to enhance Israel’s image in North America and the public’s understanding of issues affecting Israeli-Arab relations.’”[3]

“… Shortly after its founding, FDD quickly became a prominent member of a group of neoconservative think tanks and advocacy groups—including the American Enterprise Institute and the Hudson Institute—that were influential in shaping the early foreign policy priorities of the George W. Bush administration. At the height of the “war on terror,” FDD also absorbed the Committee on the Present Danger, a Cold War-era anticommunist group that been reconstituted to push for hardline policies in the Middle East.”

“FDD’s president, Clifford May, is a former writer for the New York Times who once served as director of communications for the Republican National Committee. May is also a former editor of the party’s official magazine (Rising Tide), a former vice chair of the Republican Jewish Coalition, and a member of the Committee on the Present Danger.”

“FDD has been a vocal advocate of confrontational policies on Iran.”

Slate reports that FDD runs tours of Israel for American academics (with most of their expenses paid) similar to those run for journalists and politicians by AIPAC and other groups.”

May was an advisor to the Iraq Study Group; served on the Advisory Committee on Democracy Promotion (2007-2009), reporting to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice; served on the Broadcasting Board of Governors, the entity responsible for all U.S. government and government sponsored, non-military, international broadcasting; and on the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (2016).

Evan May, bio is unavailable, probably  relative of Cliff May.

Boris Epshteyn, an investment banker; born in Russia and came to the U.S. in 1993 at the age of 11. Previously, he worked on Sen. John McCain’s 2008 presidential campaign. He was a top communications aide for Donald Trump’s campaign; appeared as a Trump surrogate over 100 times on major TV networks between the election and the inauguration. In April, Epshteyn left the White House and became chief political analyst for Sinclair Broadcast Group (see Howard Friedman, above), a conservative company that owns a multitude of local TV stations.

Lauren Gorlin Tanick, wife of Boris Epshteyn, a strategy executive at Google.

Journalist Eli Lake speaks at event organized by the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, Aug. 13, 2014. Observers describe him as a neoconservative “pro-Israel” ideologue.”

Eli Lake, Bloomberg journalist, former senior national security correspondent for The Daily Beast and Newsweek. He worked for a range of news outlets, including The Daily Beast, Newsweek, The Washington Times, The New Republic, New York Sun. Lake has often worked with and shared bylines with Josh Rogin (see entry below); known as extremely pro-Israel. Below are exerpts from Right Web:

Eli Lake is a well-known writer and columnist whose track record on U.S. foreign policy has led some observers to describe him as a neoconservative and “pro-Israel” ideologue. …

His writings focus on national security issues, particularly with respect to the Middle East, and he has a lengthy record of advocating for aggressive U.S. foreign policies in the region. One commentator has quipped that Lake has a “career pattern of credulously planting dubious stories from sources with strong political agendas.”

A frequent subject of Lake’s writings is U.S. policy on Iran. Generally hawkish in his critiques of U.S. engagement with Tehran… most observers agree [that his analysis] is really intended to kill negotiations…

After a nuclear agreement was reached between Iran and the P5+1 in July 2015, Lake went on the attack…. In a March 2015 commentary, Lake criticized Iran’s foreign minister Javad Zarif, a Western educated diplomat widely regarded as a moderate within Iran’s establishment… Former British diplomat Peter Jenkins criticized Lake’s article on Zarif as taking “many liberties with the truth.”

… Lake was “an open and ardent promoter of the Iraq War and the various myths trotted out to justify it, contributing to the media drumbeat that helped the Bush Administration sell the war to the public and to Congress.” Leading up to the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, Lake reported extensively on Saddam Hussein’s alleged weapons mass destruction and ties to Al-Qaeda…

After the war and the subsequent failure to discover any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, Lake contended that the weapons had been moved to Syria…

In a December 2001 article for the National Review, Lake argued that with its invasion of Afghanistan completed, the United States should move on to take military action against Iraq, Yemen, and Somalia. “There are very good arguments why all three should be the next target,” he opined. “Iraq after all has been developing nuclear and biological weapons …

In 2009, Lake gained notoriety for his role stirring up opposition to the nomination of Chas Freeman, a veteran diplomat and former U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia, to be the chairman of the National Intelligence Council. Freeman ultimately withdrew his name from consideration and blamed the controversy over his nomination on the “Israel lobby.”… [See Freeman’s statement.]

Josh Rogin, Journalist who often works closely with Eli Lake, sharing bylines on news articles. He is a CNN political analyst and columnist on foreign policy and national security for Bloomberg View. Previously, Rogin covered foreign policy and national security for Newsweek, The Daily Beast, Foreign Policy, The Washington Post, Federal Computer Week and Japan’s Asahi Shimbun. His work has been featured on CNN, FOX, MSNBC, ABC, NBC, NPR, PBS, and several other outlets. He is married to Ali Weinberg (see below); their wedding guests included journalists Eli Lake, CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, CNN’s Jake Tapper, NPR’s Michael Goldfarb, NBC News Political Director and Meet the Press host Chuck Todd, Jamie Kirchick, Jonathan Karl, and NBC’s Alex Moe.

Ali Rogin (aka Ali Weinberg), ABC journalist, married to Josh Rogin. She is the daughter of Max Weinberg (see below). Her Linkedin entry reports that she covers the State Department for ABC News, producing pieces for broadcast and reporting for ABCNews.com and ABC News Radio. She formerly worked at NBC.

Max Weinberg, Drummer for Bruce Springstein and on Conan O’Brian show, father of journalist Ali Rogin (see above). His net worth is reportedly $35 million.

Joel Mowbray, Fellow, Foundation for Defense of Democracies, 2005-2014; formerly syndicated columnist with articles in Wall Street Journal, Washington Times, NY Post, The New Republic, L.A. Times, Philadelphia Inquirer, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, San Diego Union Tribune, Las Vegas Review Journal, Sacramento Bee, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Investors Business Daily, Arizona Republic, San Francisco Chronicle, and FoxNews.com. In 2002, Mowbray founded Fourth Factor Consulting, LLC: “Fourth Factor advises Silicon Valley tech companies and pro-Israel and national security-oriented think tanks. The bulk of the work is strategic government affairs, which supplements lobbying efforts by being proactive instead of reactive.” He was a Hudson Institute Adjunct Fellow from 2003 – 2005, where he “conducted research into terror networks and Islamic radicalization, investigated Saudi influence in America, and scrutinized State Department’s handling of national security.” Mowbray is the author of Dangerous Diplomacy: How the State Department Threatens America’s Security.” His Linkdin bio lists AIPAC as one of his interests.

Rabbi Shmuley Boteach at the 2012 “Christians United for Israel” conference. Newsweek lists Boteach as one of America’s “most influential rabbis.”

Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, founder of The World Values Network, “the leading organization spreading universal Jewish values and defending Israel in American media” (see video); frequent guest on CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, the BBC, NBC, CBS, as well as The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Time Magazine, Breitbart News, and The Washington Post. Rabbi Boteach’s personal site pictures him with his book: “The Israel Warrior: Fighting Back for the Jewish State from Campus to Street Corner.” Newsweek has repeatedly listed him in “The 50 Most Influential Rabbis in America. He ran for Congress in New Jersey, receiving an endorsement from House Majority Leader Eric Cantor. His site states:

“Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, “America’s Rabbi,” whom is for many the very face of Judaism in global media.

“The international best-selling author of 31 books, Rabbi Shmuley’s works have been translated into 20 languages. A world-renowned relationships expert, his book Kosher Sex is regarded as a modern classic and he has won numerous awards including The London Times Preacher of the Year Competition, The National Fatherhood Award, and The American Jewish Press Association’s Highest Award for Excellence in Commentary…

“Labeled ‘a cultural phenomenon’ by Newsweek and a man with ‘his scholarly finger on the pulse of the nation’ by Slate, Rabbi Shmuley is revolutionizing the place of Judaism and spirituality in modern culture and politics, and is one of the world’s most accomplished defenders of the State of Israel.”

At the 2015 Israel Day Concert In New York City Boteach said, to loud applause: “We are connected to Israel because it’s Jewish… we love Israel because Israel is good. We love Israel because it is the foremost protector of human rights in the world’s most troubled region. There is a war going on. There is a battle for the future of the Jewish state and each and every one of you is a soldier in that fight.”

Noah Pollak, Pollak’s bio describes him as a “political writer on foreign policy, Israel, and the Jewish people.” Pollak has written for Commentary, the Weekly Standard, National Review, the Wall Street Journal, Politico, and appeared on Fox News, PBS Newshour, and CNN. He is executive director of the Emergency Committee for Israel, a neoconservative political advocacy organization whose board members include neocons William Kristol and Rachel Abrams, wife of Elliott Abrams. Pollak helped promote the Taylor Force Act.

Ron Kampeas’ Linkedin entry reports: “Ron Kampeas is JTA’s [Jewish Telegraphic Agency ] Washington bureau chief, responsible for coordinating coverage in the U.S. capital and analyzing political developments that affect the Jewish world. He comes to JTA from The Associated Press, where he worked for more than a decade in its bureaus in Jerusalem, New York, London and, most recently, Washington. He has reported from Northern Ireland, Afghanistan, Bosnia and West Africa. While living in Israel, he also worked for the Jerusalem Post and several Jewish organizations.” Kampeas graduated from Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Nathan Guttman, the Forward’s Washington bureau chief. He joined the staff in 2006 after serving for five years as Washington correspondent for the Israeli dailies Ha’aretz and The Jerusalem Post. Guttman was born in Canada and grew up in Israel. He is a graduate of Hebrew University.

Government, Politics

Congressman Eliot Engel has been in Congress since 1988 as a Democrat representing the Bronx. He has traveled to Israel many times, and says, “I remain committed to the unbreakable bond between the United States and Israel.” On another occasion, he opined, “We don’t want one party to be pro-Israel; we want both parties to be pro-Israel” because the state is “our best friend in the Middle East, and – I’d even argue – in the world.” Engel favors recognition of Jerusalem as the undivided capital of Israel, and is uncritical in his support.

Congressman Lee Zeldin (right), member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee and Co-Chair of the House Republican Israel Caucus, meets in his Washington, DC office with Yoav Kisch, member of the Israeli Knesset, Feb. 1, 2017.

Congressman Lee Zeldin previously served in the New York State Senate, and is now in the U.S. House of Representatives. As Co-Chair of the House Republican Israel Caucus, he spoke on the issue of the U.N. “anti-Israel resolution” of December 2016: “Pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel nations are continuing their fanatical efforts at the United Nations to delegitimize [Israel]… Their disparaging, divisive and dangerous tactics will be met with zero tolerance. Continued unilateral concessions by Israel in exchange for no promises or follow through towards peace on the part of others would be as ill-advised as it is unfeasible.” Zeldin also wrote, regarding the U.N. resolution, that it “further cements President Obama’s legacy as one of the worst presidents in the history of the United States… [He] chose to embrace a pro-Palestinian attempt to ethnically cleanse East Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria.” Zeldin is also passionately in favor of moving Israel’s capital to Jerusalem.

Congressman Henry Waxman, Democratic Congressman from southern California, 1975 – 2015. The Forward calls him “one of the most influential liberals, and one of the most skilled legislators, of his generation.” In the Times of Israel report, “Jewish lawmaker, who maintains close ties to Israel, has represented Los Angeles district for 40 years,” Waxman was named “the dean of Jewish lawmakers in the U.S. House of Representatives.”

Waxman said that he had “worked throughout my career to strengthen the US-Israel relationship. I have traveled to Israel on numerous occasions…” Waxman once stated: “…it is with pride that I have seen my daughter thrive in Israel and my grandchildren serve in the Israeli army.”

Janet Kessler, Waxman’s wife; founder of Congressional Wives for Soviet Jewry.

Jason Greenblatt, formerly executive vice president and chief legal officer to Trump and the Trump Organization, and his advisor on Israel; currently special envoy to the Israeli-Palestinian peace process for President Trump, charged with facilitating “the ultimate deal.”  According to NPR, Greenblatt once studied in a  yeshiva – a Jewish religious seminary – in a West Bank settlement. He has recently met with senior settler leadership in preparation for negotiations. In fact, Greenblatt and Trump’s administration are more sympathetic toward settlements than any previous administration, much to the delight of Israel. The Palestinian Authority, on the other hand, is not optimistic: Greenblatt has yet to even commit to helping create a Palestinian state.

U.S. Secretary of Veterans Affairs David Shulkin (left) meets with Israeli Deputy Defense Minister Eli Ben-Dahan, March 2017. The Israeli government has used Shulkin to build a closer relationship between Israel and the U.S. After the meeting, the VA purchased medical equipment from an Israeli company.

David Shulkin, current U.S. Secretary of Veteran Affairs; he was recommended to President Trump by U.S. Ambassador to Israel David Friedman, even though Shulkin is not a veteran. (Veterans had wanted the position to be filled by a military veteran, the normal procedure; some lobbied for then VA Secretary Robert McDonald to be named.) Israel sees veterans affairs as a new means of bringing the U.S. and Israel closer together, as JNS (Jewish News Service) reports: “While US-Israeli military ties have long focused on foreign aid packages, intelligence-sharing and jointly developed missile defense technology, veterans affairs could become a major new frontier in that relationship.” JNS writes that the selection of Shulkin, “a Jewish doctor and administrator,” for Secretary of veterans affairs, was an important development in the process. Within weeks of Shulkin’s confirmation, the Israeli Deputy Defense Minister asked Shulkin for a meeting. The meeting was the first of its kind between American and Israeli officials responsible for the care of injured and released soldiers. After the meeting, Veterans Affairs purchased Israeli medical equipment. U.S. officials sometimes provide Israelis the opportunity “to make presentations during international conferences at which Israel is not yet participating.” JNS notes: “Such opportunities will allow the Israelis to showcase their knowledge on a world stage to which they have, until now, largely been denied access.’

Shulkin and his wife Merle Bari (below) are currently under investigation for taxpayer funding of a recent trip to Europe.

Merle Bari, wife of David Shulkin, physician specializing in general and cosmetic dermatology. Recently she has been criticized for reports that “the government covered the cost of Bari’s airfare and gave her a per diem for meals” when she accompanied her husband on a trip to Europe. She seems to have close ties to Israel. In 1977 Bari was a youth participant in Israel’s Maccabiah Games, and in 2013 her daughter similarly participated in the Games during a year she spent in Israel, and was a delegate to the AIPAC national convention.

Aaron David Miller worked at the State Department for 25 years as a Middle East negotiator and adviser on Arab-Israeli affairs. He is currently a vice president at the Wilson Center; he says he believes “in the importance of a strong U.S.-Israeli relationship.” In an article for the Washington Post Miller admitted that he and other U.S. mediators had actually like “Israel’s lawyer.”

“With the best of motives and intentions, we listened to and followed Israel’s lead without critically examining what that would mean for our own interests, for those on the Arab side, and for the overall success of the negotiations. The “no surprises” policy, under which we had to run everything by Israel first, stripped our policy of the independence and flexibility required for serious peacemaking.”

“What we ended up doing was advocating Israel’s positions before, during and after the summit.”

Matt Nosanchuk was Jewish Liaison under Obama; said he had very strong relationships with pro-Israel organizations across the political spectrum. He has worked in the White House, Congress, the State Department, Justice Department, and Homeland Security on a range of domestic and foreign issues arising at the intersection of policy, law, advocacy, legislation, strategic communications, and outreach and engagement. He described President Obama’s views (and said he agreed with them):

“The president [Obama] said he wouldn’t be where he is today without the support of the Jewish community in Chicago. He believes in Zionism. He believes we have shared values. He shows strong, unwavering support for Israel. He says he did the Iran deal partially to protect Israel’s security, that it would be a ‘moral failing’ not to protect Israel’s security.”

(L-R) Aaron Keyak, William Daroff and Steve Rabinowitz at the launch of Bluelight Strategies, a consulting group at the “nexus of political Washington and the Jewish and pro-Israel world.” Keyak was previously a senior Congressional staffer and executive director of the National Jewish Democratic Council.”

Aaron Keyak, Co-owner of a Washington DC PR firm; he was a senior staffer for some Congressional representatives and communications director and interim executive director for the National Jewish Democratic Council. Keyak has said that strengthening the U.S.-Israel relationship is one of the values he most cares about. Washington Jewish Week reported about the 2015 launch of Keyak’s public relations firm:

“The official announcement was made at the “Latkes & Vodkas” party at their swanky downtown office on Dec. 15. Steve Rabinowitz, founder and president of the mostly progressive and Judeocentric Washington, D.C.-based political public relations firm, Rabinowitz Communications – the former Clinton White House staffer who produced the famed photograph of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and PLO leader Yasser Arafat shaking hands on the White House South Lawn – would no longer be flying solo. Aaron Keyak, 29, would become his partner in a new PR company called “Bluelight Strategies.”

“… recently, communications director and senior Middle East policy advisor for Jewish Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.), who represents one of the most heavily Jewish districts in the country. He previously served in a similar role with Rep. Steve Rothman (D-N.J.).

“According to Keyak, the idea for the partnership arose out of the successful working relationship he and Rabinowitz enjoyed during the 2012 presidential election, when the two collaborated on a venture they called the “Hub,” an effort aimed to organize Jewish voters for Democratic candidates.”

Avi Goldgraber, wife of Aaron Keyak, is manager at Accenture; previously she was confidential secretary to Deputy Secretary, Department of  Health and Human Services. Goldgraber attended Israel’s Hebrew University of Jerusalem, received her B.A. from Washington University in Political Science and Jewish, Islamic, and Near Eastern Studies. She is the  daughter of Moshe B. Goldgraber who endowed a fellowship for Israeli physicians.

Josh Raffel currently leads the communications team for Jared Kushner and is his principal spokesman. Raffel is “often the primary route for delivering Mr. Kushner’s message to the news media, and he also handles communications on issues like Israeli-Palestinian negotiations.” He was formerly a publicist, whose clients included Hollywood horror films, Glenn Beck, and Jared Kushner’s family business.

Top Democratic strategist Ann Lewis declared that “the role of the president of the United States is to support the decisions that are made by the people of Israel.”

Ann Lewis, leading Democratic Party strategist and communicator. In one public meeting of Jewish leaders before the 2008 election, Lewis declared that “the role of the president of the United States is to support the decisions that are made by the people of Israel. It is not up to us to pick and choose from among the political parties.” This was after some discussion that “there’s something wrong with Senator Obama’s views about Jews, about Israel” – referring to Obama’s pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s, preaching that Israel is committing “state terrorism against the Palestinians,” as well as Obama’s apparent sympathy for Palestinians. Lewis’ pro-Israel clout as leading Democratic Party strategist and communicator is clear in how she was able to change the Israel policy of the Center for American Progress, a powerful progressive research and advocacy organization. She made it clear that criticism of Israel, AIPAC, and American Jewish groups is forbidden. CAP was quick to self-censor, removing or cleaning up tweets and articles.

David Milstein, Research Analyst for Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX), primarily focusing on issues related to Israel. “He played a leadership role with an organization called Young Jewish Conservatives whose mission is to build a community of politically conservative young Jews who strongly support Israel; co-organized its annual Shabbat Event at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), the largest annual gathering of conservative activists.”

ThinkTanks, NGOs, Funders

Morton Klein has been national president of the Zionist Organization of America for 24 years. When President Obama abstained from voting in the U.N. Security Council resolution condemning Israeli settlements, Klein opined, “Obama has made it clear that he’s a Jew-hating anti-Semite.” He agreed with candidate Trump’s plan for profiling Muslims: “We should adopt the same profiling policies as Israel and be more thorough in vetting Muslims,” adding, “it’s not the worst thing to do.” Klein criticized Secretary of State Rex Tillerson for using the word “Palestine,” claiming that it sends a message to the Arab world that “this administration is biased to their side.” Going even further, Klein called for Tillerson to be fired when the State Department published its annual terror report, which suggested (as it had the previous year) that Israeli settlements and Palestinian hopelessness are factors contributing to Palestinian terrorism. Klein indicated that the State Department had “put out reports that give excuses for Palestinian murder of Jews.” The ZOA organized a letter opposing the Iran deal.

Abe Foxman worked at the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) for 50 years. After retiring he joined Israel’s Institute for National Security Studies (INSS).

Abe Foxman, former National Director of the Anti-Defamation League; currently ADL National Director Emeritus and fellow at Israel’s Institute for National Security Studies (INSS), a Tel Aviv-based think tank for issues of security and Middle East policy. He is also head of the Center for the Study of Anti-Semitism at the Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York City. Foxman is known as the “Jewish Pope” thanks to his 28-year leadership of the Anti-Defamation League. INSS director Amos Yadlin called him “an undeclared leader of the American Jewish community and a leading global figure on matters of human dignity and moral conduct.” Foxman believes that the BDS movement is anti-Semitic “99% of the time.”

Stacy Burdett, Vice President, Government Relations, Advocacy & Community Engagement at Anti-Defamation League. He has participated in the international campaign to change the definition of anti-Semitism to include many statements about Israel.

Loribeth Weinstein, CEO of Jewish Women International (JWI) for over 15 years. JWI works to “end violence, ensure economic security, and spotlight leadership and mentoring.” She has also served American Jewish World Service, dedicated to “ending poverty and promoting human rights in the developing world.” Weinstein has also been on the Regional Council of the New Israel Fund, which includes as its mission statement, achievement of “equality for all the citizens of the state… protection of Palestinian citizens… opposition to all forms of discrimination and bigotry… a just society at peace with itself and its neighbors.” The New Israel Fund has supported B’tselem to the tune of $2.2 million over the last ten years.

Howard Kohr, executive director of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). Analysts write: “AIPAC, which is a de facto agent for a foreign government, has a stranglehold on the U.S. Congress.”

Howard Kohr, executive director of AIPAC since 1996. Under his supervision, Congresspeople have been given all-expenses-paid trips to Israel to “discover their own personal connection to the land…and to understand the issues more clearly.” Kohr has turned AIPAC into “the most influential foreign policy lobbying organization” in Washington, and promises to keep it that way with the help of 4,000 pro-Israel student leaders across the country. “Mr. Kohr [representing AIPAC] has helped to navigate congressional passage of the annual U.S. Foreign Aid bill by historic, record-breaking margins — accomplishments achieved often in the midst of a hostile, budget-cutting environment.”

In his testimony to Congress in April 2017, as Kohr requested $3.1 billion in foreign military aid, he reminisced about the “close strategic relationship between the United States and Israel” that began with sharing of key intelligence in 1967 – the same year that Israel attacked the USS Liberty with napalm, gunfire, and missiles, even machine-gunning three lifeboats. The Moorer Commission found that the attack constituted “an act of war against the United States.” Professors John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago and Stephen Walt of Harvard state: “AIPAC, which is a de facto agent for a foreign government, has a stranglehold on the U.S. Congress.”

Fortune magazine has ranked AIPAC the number two most powerful lobbying group in Washington D.C., after the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP)

Bob Cohen, Chairman of the Board of Directors of AIPAC (American Israel Political Affairs Committee), former President of AIPAC (2014). Cohen is considered one of AIPAC’s six key leaders.

Jason Isaacson of the American Jewish Committee (AJC) speaks at the National Leadership Assembly for Israel at the National Press Club, July 28, 2014. (Video here.)

Jason Isaacson, Director of Government and International Affairs at the American Jewish Committee (AJC). The AJC website announces:

“Around the world—from the hallways of the U.N. in New York, to the corridors of the European Union in Brussels, and to the countries of Asia—AJC advocates for Israel at the highest levels. And when Israel is under assault, whether from the terrorist organizations on her doorstep or the global BDS movement, AJC helps bring the world the truth about Israel.”

The AJC is an American nonprofit organization. Donations to it are tax-deductible.

Daniel S. Mariaschin, CEO of B’nai B’rith International, “a national and global leader in…Israel advocacy.” His B’nai B’rith bio reports: “Mr. Mariaschin has met with countless heads of state, prime ministers, foreign ministers, opposition leaders, influential members of the media and clerical leaders. Each time, his goal has been to advance human rights, help protect the rights of Jewish communities worldwide and promote better relations with the state of Israel.” Mr. Mariaschin represented the organization at numerous international conferences, many of which helped to establish a new, Israel-centric definition of anti-Semitism, including the International Conference on Holocaust Education, Remembrance and Research; and the State Department’s 1998 Washington Conference on Holocaust-Era Assets. Mariaschin served as part of the U.S. delegation to the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) conference on anti-Semitism in Vienna in 2003; was public advisor to the U.S. delegation at the 2004 conference in Berlin, the 2005 conference in Cordoba, Spain, and the 2007 meeting in Bucharest, Romania. In 2009 he was a member of the U.S. delegation to the Warsaw Human Dimension Implementation meeting of the OSCE.

Mariaschin began his professional Jewish life in 1973 as community relations associate for the Jewish Community Council of Boston. Two years later, he became director of the New England office of the American Zionist Federation and Zionist House in Boston. In 1977, he joined the Anti Defamation League (ADL) of B’nai B’rith as director of its Middle East Affairs Department. From 1979 to 1986, he served as assistant to ADL’s national director, the late Nathan Perlmutter, and as director of its National Leadership division, responsible for ADL’s nationwide program of leadership development. He then became director of the Political Affairs Department of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), where he supervised political action activities and grassroots organization programs.

Prior to joining B’nai B’rith, Mr. Mariaschin served as director of communications and principal spokesman for former Secretary of State Alexander M. Haig, Jr. during his 1987-88 presidential campaign.

Mariaschin has written numerous articles for such publications as The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, The Washington Times and Newsday, and appears frequently as a foreign affairs analyst on television and radio programs. He has lectured on foreign and defense affairs at the U.S. State Department’s Foreign Service Institute, the Marine Corps Command and Staff College, and at other military installations across the country. He has also worked as a radio announcer and news commentator and has lectured widely in the U.S. and abroad.

Rabbi Levi Shemtov, Shemtov has been called “the rabbi of Capitol Hill.” The Washingtonian states: “Rabbi Levi Shemtov is a Washington institution.” It reports that Shemtov

“is among the country’s best-connected and most politically savvy rabbis. Shemtov has supervised the koshering of the White House kitchen, lit the National Menorah alongside Vice President Joe Biden, and for more than two decades has run American Friends of Lubavitch (AFL), the Washington arm of the world’s most successful Jewish outreach organization.”

“It’s hard for me to think of any political Jewish person in Washington that doesn’t have a relationship with him,” says Steve Rabinowitz, a PR executive and longtime friend of the rabbi’s.”

His bio on the Rabbinical Council of Greater Washington reports:

“Rabbi Shemtov is also the Executive Vice President of American Friends of Lubavitch (Chabad) and serves the daily governmental and diplomatic needs of the international Chabad-Lubavitch movement, the world’s largest and fastest growing Jewish network of educational and social service institutions, with over 3,500 centers in 49 states and over 80 countries. He maintains close relationships with numerous members of the United States Congress, senior Administration officials and leaders in the international community, including a number of heads of state and government. Rabbi Shemtov chairs the organizing committee of the International Chabad-Lubavitch Conference – Living Legacy, which facilitates high-level interaction between rabbis and communal leadership from around the globe and prominent US and international figures in the arenas of government, diplomacy, academia and the arts.

“Programs he organizes include several signature events such as the annual lighting ceremony of the National Chanukah Menorah drawing thousands to The Ellipse (across from the White House) every year, and seen by millions more via various media and the internet. In addition, he founded and directs the Capitol Jewish Forum, which is the largest (apolitical) Jewish group on Capitol Hill, designed to “create and enhance a sense of identity and community among Jewish Congressional staffers and members of Congress” and which enjoys strong support of the Leadership and members of both parties in the US Senate and House of Representatives. Rabbi Shemtov is often at the White House, Pentagon, United States Department of State and other venues in official Washington, seen by many as an effective, bipartisan unifier and premier Jewish resource.”

Shemtov is a passionate Israel defender who used the national menorah lighting awhile ago to complain about a U.N. resolution saying that Israeli settlements are illegal. In 2014 he gave a speech at a Stand With Us rally in Washington DC:

(Jared Kushner and Ivanka attend his synagogue.)

Nathan Diament previously served on President Obama’s Faith Advisory Council; his writing has appeared in The Washington Post, The Forward, and other publications, he has appeared on CNN, FOX News, NPR, and other broadcasts. Currently he is Executive Director for the Orthodox Union Advocacy Center, “public policy arm of the nation’s largest Orthodox Jewish organization‚ representing nearly 1,000 congregations nationwide.” One of its main issues is “supporting Israel.” The Orthodox Union website never uses the word Palestine when referring to the modern-day state, without using quotation marks (i.e. “Palestine”); it states that “historically, there was never an indigenous Palestinian people”; its Newsroom and Campus Life sections are anti-Palestine; and it features a Birthright travel agency. Diament himself is a strong advocate of an “undivided Jerusalem” as capital of Israel.

Roger Hertog, “strategic philanthropist” and chairman of the Tikvah Fund, with Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu at a gala ceremony at Manhattan’s Plaza Hotel where Netanyahu received an reward from the Hudson Institute.

Roger Hertog, vice-chair emeritus of Alliance-Bernstein L.P., an investment firm which was reportedly valued in 2002 at $100 billion that was investigated for “improper trading moves.” Hertog practices what he calls “strategic philanthropy.” He has funded many pro-Israel organizations: the Anti-Defamation League; American Friends of Shalva; Tikvah (he is chairman); in 2005, gave $5 million to Taglit-Birthright Israel; he founded Israel’s Shalem Center; is on the boards of Commentary magazine and the American Enterprise Institute; and is a member of what Ha’aretz called Netanyahu’s “billionaire’s club.” Inside Philanthropy reports:

“involved in philanthropy for decades. Hertog was previously chairman of New York Historical Society and the Manhattan Institute, each of which has received large support. As well, the couple has given tens of millions to the New York Public Library over the years. The Hertog Foundation has given away around $10 million annually in recent years, mainly toward Jewish causes, conservative policy issues, education (both higher education, and school reform), and arts and culture. The Hertog Foundation also runs educational programs for students in areas such as politics, war, and economics…

“served as chairman emeritus of the conservative think tank Manhattan Institute, as well as served on the board of the American Enterprise Institute (AEI). He was also a backer of the right-leaning New York Sun newspaper. Hertog and Susan have also supported outfits like the Thomas Jefferson Foundation, the Alexander Hamilton Society, the Brookings Institution, the Hudson Institute, the Claremont Institute, the Washington Institute, and the Institute for the Study of War.

Involved in Israeli archaeology projects (for info on their agenda see this); funded an excavation by Israeli archaeologist Eilat Mazar and provided resources for multi-volume scholarship to interpret and publish the Temple Mount Excavation.

Hertog has also been involved in media ventures: he was co-owner of The New Republic for a period; supplied the seed money for the now-defunct New York Sun, and guaranteed the $2 million bail for pro-Israel media baron Conrad Black when he was charged for defrauding shareholders.

Lindsay Kaplan, wife of Norman Eisen, Georgetown University English Department.

Sander Gerber was a low profile New York hedge fund CEO and AIPAC national board member who heard about the death of American Taylor Force in Israel and investigated the Palestinian Authority’s budget with the help of a top intelligence Israeli general and an Israeli research institute. Gerber and his associates discovered the Palestinian Authority’s social safety net program which provides a stipend for families of men who have been injured, killed, or imprisoned by Israel.  He dubbed the program “pay to slay,” and began to lobby Congress and the media to stop the practice. The Taylor Force Act would slash aid to the PA unless it stops the stipend program for widows and children.

Israelis & Israeli media

Danny Ayalon, Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister of Foreign Affairs; formerly Israeli ambassador to the U.S. In 2005 Ayalon received the Brandeis award from the Jewish Community in Baltimore. He is the  founder of “Truth About Israel,” an Israeli organization known for its short videos, which is registered as a nonprofit, tax-deductible organization in the U.S., and is also present in Singapore. (We have not yet been able to find the organization’s 990 tax form, which suggests that it’s registered under a different name.)

Yarden Golan, Chief of Staff at the Israeli Embassy.

Ron Prosor, former Israeli ambassador to the UN.

Sarah Abonyi, Special Projects Manager for the Ambassador of Israel. From New Mexico.

Miriam Smallman, Director of Media Relations at Israeli embassy.

Michael Wilner, A native New Yorker who is the Washington bureau chief and White House correspondent for Israel’s The Jerusalem Post. 


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. Her upcoming book talks are listed here. Kathryn Shihadah is a staff writer for If Americans Knew. She recently wrote “How Israel Weaponizes Archeology.”

October 5, 2017 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Neocons and Israelis Are Pushing America into Perpetual wars

Rumble

October 5, 2017 Posted by | Militarism, Timeless or most popular, Video, War Crimes, Wars for Israel | , , , | Leave a comment

ISIS attacked Syrian positions from US-controlled area, used sophisticated data – Moscow

RT | October 4, 2017

A series of recent Islamic State attacks against Syrian forces used sophisticated intelligence and originated from a US-controlled area near al-Tanf on the Syria-Jordan border, Russia’s Defense Ministry said.

“We have repeatedly pointed out that the major obstacle to the complete elimination of IS (Islamic State, formerly ISIS/ISIL) in Syria lies not in the fighting capability of the terrorists but [in the fact] that American colleagues are supporting them and are ‘flirting’ with them,” the Russian Defense Ministry’s spokesman, Major General Igor Konashenkov, said in a statement.

He went on to say that the successful advances of the Syrian Army, supported by the Russian Air Force, as well as the “rapid liberation” of the Euphrates Valley from Islamic State are “apparently at odds with the plans of US colleagues.”

The ministry’s spokesman then said that the recent well-coordinated actions of the terrorists indicate that they possess intelligence data that can only be obtained as a result of air reconnaissance. He noted that all the terrorist attacks originated from the same US-controlled area.

The extremists attempted to carry out an attack against the Syrian governmental forces, which was “coordinated in time and place,” in the Syrian Homs province on September 28, Konashenkov said.

He drew attention to the fact that a large terrorist unit “successfully bypassed” all the Syrian Army’s hidden outposts in the area. That, the official noted, could have been done only if the extremists had precise coordinates of each governmental forces’ position obtained through air reconnaissance data, which were analyzed by some specialists in advance.

The major-general said that, on the same day, the jihadists also attacked the Syrian Army positions along the highway linking the Syrian cities of Palmyra and Deir ez-Zor, which plays a crucial role in supplying the governmental forces in the Euphrates Valley.

The Syrian Army had to “make significant efforts” to repel these attacks, but the terrorists were eventually driven back.

All those attacks “have only one thing in common: all of them originated from a 50-kilometer zone surrounding the city of al-Tanf on the Syria-Jordan border,” Konashenkov said, adding that it is precisely the same area, where the US military mission’s base is located.

In his statement, Konashenkov doubted that all those incidents could be described as just “mere coincidences” by saying that, “if the US side considers such operations as “’unforeseen’ contingencies, the Russian Air Forces in Syria are ready to eliminate” them in an area they control.

It is not the first time, when the Russian officials suspected the US-led coalition of having links to some radical groups in Syria and the Al Nusra Front, a local Al Qaeda branch, in particular.

In early September, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said that the situation around Al Nusra in Syria remains “highly ambiguous” as it was repeatedly spared in the operations conducted by the US-led coalition and its allies.

On September 20, the Russian Defense Ministry said it obtained data indicating that an offensive launched by Al Nusra terrorists and their allies seeking particularly to capture a unit of the Russian military police was orchestrated by the US security services.

Just four days later, the ministry released aerial images, which they said showed US Army Special Forces equipment in an ISIS-held area to the north of the city of Deir ez-Zor. The US, however, denied having any links to the jihadists.

On October 3, Lavrov once again raised the issue of the US-led coalition’s alleged links to the extremist groups as he criticized the US for playing dangerous games by inspiring “terrorists to attack strategic locations” held by the Syrian governmental forces or staging “fatal provocations against our [Russian] military personnel.”

October 4, 2017 Posted by | Illegal Occupation, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

‘British police must arrest Ehud Barak’

MEMO | October 4, 2017

The London based Arab Organisation for Human Rights (AOHR) in the UK has stated that London has become a safe haven for war criminals visiting the city.

According to the AOHR these individuals come to the city because law enforcement has failed to take any measures to arrest them.

The organisation added that Britain is one of the countries that adopts clear laws regarding global jurisdiction that allow the police to arrest the perpetrators of certain crimes, if they are on British soil, regardless of the suspect’s nationality and where the crime was committed.

The AOHR stated that these laws are not enforced when it comes to Israelis who have committed war crimes documented on a global level. These suspects are regularly given special diplomatic immunity on the grounds that they’re on an official visit.

The organisation noted that former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak was seen walking around London last night with his wife, despite the fact police have files and documentation proving he has committed war crimes against Palestinians.

Barak was Israel’s Minister of Defence during the attack on the Mavi Marmara convoy.

NGOs have previously tried to have an arrest warrant issued for Barak for his role in the 2008 Gaza War but have had requests rejected in court.

The AOHR urged the war crimes team of the Metropolitan Police Counter Terrorism Command (SO15) to do its duty, arrest Barak, and prohibit him from leaving the country.

The main reason international jurisdiction exists is to eliminate the phenomenon of impunity granted to criminals who have committed such dangerous crimes.

[Photo credit – Ynhockey/Wikipedia]

October 4, 2017 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

Israeli war minister: Next war will not spare population centers

Palestine Information Center – October 3, 2017

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM – Israel’s war minister Avigdor Lieberman warned on Monday that the next war is likely to feature attacks on population centers and civilians, according to Haaretz daily.

Avigdor Lieberman, who took part on Monday evening in a ceremony in which certificates of honor were awarded to 31 Israeli officers and soldiers from various units in the army, said: “The next confrontation, if it breaks out, will take on a completely different character, when our enemies will try to strike first at population centers and civilian infrastructure. So we will not have the luxury to wage a long war.”

“We live in a new reality of a new Middle East, which is much worse than the old Middle East. And in this terrible new reality, we have yet to face difficult tests,” he added.

“Any confrontation will have to be conducted from the very first moment in the highest profile, using all the army’s strengths,” Lieberman continued. “If there is a crossing of red lines, the other side must know in advance that it is going to pay very heavy prices.”

“The sovereign, too, regardless of whether he controls his territory or not – as soon as a hostile action takes place, the sovereign will also bear all the responsibility,” the war minister further threatened.

The international community has ceaselessly sounded alarm bells over the Israeli aggression on civilian homes, infrastructure, and unarmed communities across the occupied Palestinian territories and the blockaded Gaza Strip, in aggressions deemed by the international law as crimes against humanity.

October 3, 2017 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

Whose Bright Idea Was RussiaGate?

By Paul Craig Roberts | Institute For Political Economy | October 3, 2017

The answer to the question in the title of this article is that Russiagate was created by CIA director John Brennan.The CIA started what is called Russiagate in order to prevent Trump from being able to normalize relations with Russia. The CIA and the military/security complex need an enemy in order to justify their huge budgets and unaccountable power. Russia has been assigned that role. The Democrats joined in as a way of attacking Trump. They hoped to have him tarnished as cooperating with Russia to steal the presidential election from Hillary and to have him impeached. I don’t think the Democrats have considered the consequence of further worsening the relations between the US and Russia.

Public Russia bashing pre-dates Trump. It has been going on privately in neoconservative circles for years, but appeared publicly during the Obama regime when Russia blocked Washington’s plans to invade Syria and to bomb Iran.

Russia bashing became more intense when Washington’s coup in Ukraine failed to deliver Crimea. Washington had intended for the new Ukrainian regime to evict the Russians from their naval base on the Black Sea. This goal was frustrated when Crimea voted to rejoin Russia.

The neoconservative ideology of US world hegemony requires the principal goal of US foreign policy to be to prevent the rise of other countries that can serve as a restraint on US unilateralism. This is the main basis for the hostility of US foreign policy toward Russia, and of course there also is the material interests of the military/security complex.

Russia bashing is much larger than merely Russiagate. The danger lies in Washington convincing Russia that Washington is planning a surprise attack on Russia. With US and NATO bases on Russia’s borders, efforts to arm Ukraine and to include Ukraine and Georgia in NATO provide more evidence that Washington is surrounding Russia for attack. There is nothing more reckless and irresponsible than convincing a nuclear power that you are going to attack.

Washington is fully aware that there was no Russian interference in the presidential election or in the state elections. The military/security complex, the neoconservatives, and the Democratic Party are merely using the accusations to serve their own agendas.

These selfish agendas are a dire threat to life on earth.

October 3, 2017 Posted by | Corruption, Deception, Militarism, Russophobia, Timeless or most popular | , | Leave a comment

US congressmen want answers on claims of secret Cold War radiation tests

RT | October 3, 2017

Three US Congress members have demanded answers from Washington after a new book claims to reveal details of how the government secretly sprayed, injected, and fed radiation and other hazardous materials to “vulnerable” people during the Cold War.

The congressmen’s outrage comes in response to the book ‘Behind the Fog: How the US Cold War Radiological Weapons Program Exposed Innocent Americans,’ which is said to have revealed the practices when it was published in August.

Author Lisa Martino-Taylor, an associate professor of sociology at St. Louis Community College, said the radiological weapons program was a top priority for the government at the time.

According to the author, unsuspecting people across the United States – and even in England and Canada – were subjected to potentially deadly material through open-air spraying, ingestion, and injection.

“They targeted the most vulnerable in society in most cases,” Martino-Taylor said, as quoted by AP. “They targeted children. They targeted pregnant women in Nashville. People who were ill in hospitals. They targeted wards of the state. And they targeted minority populations.” The testing took place in various locations throughout the United States.

Tests in Nashville in the late 1940s saw 820 poor and pregnant white women receive a mixture during their first pre-natal visit which included radioactive iron, Martino-Taylor said. The expectant mothers were unknowingly chosen to take part in the program.

Blood tests were apparently used to determine how much radioactive iron had been absorbed by the women, and the babies’ blood was tested at birth. Similar tests also took place in Chicago and San Francisco, according to Martino-Taylor.

In St. Louis, the government was busy testing a spray which it claimed was for a smoke screen which could shield the city from aerial observation in case of a Soviet attack. However, evidence now shows that the spray included radioactive material, according to the associate professor.

In California, investigators installed a radiation field inside a building at North Hollywood High School in 1961. Similar testing was performed at the University of California Los Angeles and at a Los Angeles Police Department building.

Martino-Taylor has revealed that other tests in Chicago; Berkeley, California; Rochester, New York; and Oak Ridge, Tennessee, involved injecting people with plutonium-239.

The author used Freedom of Information Act requests to obtain previously unreleased documents, including Army records, which revealed the government’s practices. She also reviewed public records and published articles.

She also told AP that she found that a small group of researchers aided by academic institutions worked to develop radiological weapons and “combination weapons” using radioactive materials along with chemical or biological weapons.

‘Why would you do that to people?’

Any negative health effects of the testing have not been proven, with Martino-Taylor admitting that tracing diseases like cancer to specific causes is difficult. However, Mary Helen Brindell, now 73, can remember playing baseball on a street in St. Louis as a child in the 1950s. Suddenly, a squadron of planes flew low overhead, covering her and her friends in a fine powdery substance that stuck to her skin.

She has suffered from breast, thyroid, skin, and uterine cancers, and her sister died of a rare form of esophageal cancer. “I just want an explanation from the government,” Brindell said. “Why would you do that to people?”

Doris Spates, now 62, was born on the top floor of the Pruitt-Igoe low-income building in St. Louis, where the Army sprayed material from the roof. Just three months after her birth, her father suddenly died. Four of her 11 siblings died from cancer at relatively young ages, and she herself has survived cervical cancer and suffers from skin and breathing issues.

“It makes me angry,” Spates said. “It’s wrong to do something like that to people who don’t have any knowledge of it.”
‘Shocking & disturbing’

Responding to the revelations, three congressmen who represent areas where the testing took place have expressed outrage at the practices.

Lacy Clay (D-MO) said he was angry that Americans were used as “guinea pigs.”

He was joined by Jim Cooper (D-TN), whose office plans to seek more information from the Army Legislative Liaison.

“We are asking for details on the Pentagon’s role, along with any cooperation by research institutions and other organizations,” office spokesperson Chris Carroll said. “These revelations are shocking, disturbing and painful.”

Meanwhile, Brad Sherman (D-CA) – whose district includes North Hollywood High School, site of a radiation field – called the government’s actions an “incredibly stupid, reckless thing to do.”

He said he wants a survey of people who graduated from the school around that time, to see if there was a higher incidence of illness, including cancer, and has vowed to seek more information from the Department of Energy.

Martino-Taylor says her book speaks of the mostly young scientists tasked with developing radiological weapons, noting that they were mostly unsupervised from anyone “who could say, ‘this isn’t right,’ or put some sort of moral compass on it.”

The book is a follow-up to Martino-Taylor’s 2012 dissertation, which found that the US government conducted secret testing of zinc cadmium sulfide in a poor area of St. Louis in the 1950s and 1960s. Although her 2012 report prompted an Army investigation, the probe determined that no evidence had been found to prove that the St. Louis testing posed a health threat.

October 3, 2017 Posted by | Militarism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , | Leave a comment

The Skewed Depiction of Colonialism in “Victoria and Abdul”

By Kate Harveston | American Herald Tribune | October 3, 2017

Some will tell you that we should no longer be obligated to bear the sins of our nation’s past, playing the masochistic martyr and ignoring any spatiotemporal context. However, what they don’t understand is that it’s less about bearing responsibility for something in the past and more about being balanced when portraying it and bringing it back to life. The real issue comes into play when a past contentious issue is exploited and monetized with bias. Colonialism in today’s supposedly civilized society is a caricature of inequality and what progressive culture is against.

The movie Victoria and Abdul was recently released. In it, Stephen Frears tells the story of Queen Victoria, who is played by Dame Judi Dench, and her unlikely friendship with Abdul, who is played by Ali Fazal. What follows is an intentionally romanticized version of an otherwise unsettling story within tragic circumstances.

The Matter of the Movie

Queen Victoria is introduced to Abdul, an Indian servant who is shipped from India without any choice, to gift the queen with a coin. The queen is characterized as an exceptionally enlightened monarch and, ironically, almost as an egalitarian. In one scene, she accuses her court of being racialists, therefore doubtlessly endearing the character to a 21st-century audience.

Abdul, on the other hand, has barely any character at all. He’s objectified as a mere prop to only reflect the wonder of the queen and the glory of the Empress of India. Treated as some sort of bright and sparkly new toy or exotic pet, Abdul is portrayed as eternally grateful for having been brought to England for the great privilege of being part of this glorious people.

What is even more peculiar is that Frears’ Abdul seems to absolve any wrongdoing by the Queen — even when his fellow Indian servant dies as an ill-treated slave to the British. This all culminates in the final shot which epitomizes everything absolutely ill-considered and just frankly wrong about the film. It shows Abdul, having returned to India, kissing the feet of Queen Victoria’s statue in front of the Taj Mahal.

The overriding issue with period dramas such as Victoria and Abdul is that they romanticize colonialism and sell it to the masses as light entertainment. This is a direct insult against the historic abuse and injustices that colonized countries faced at the hands of the ruling empire of the time. Unfortunately, it’s not only the media. Even the royals, to this day, should be more cautious of how they represent their past link with India.

The Darker Reality

The reality was that the Victorian era was accountable for horrific atrocities in India, both on a humanitarian and an economic level. Shashi Tharoor has been particularly vocal about how Britain furthered its own industrial revolution by decimating India’s accrued share of the world economy. The nature of this profiteering had appalling and disastrous consequences.

Through Britain’s exploitation of India’s agricultural products like grain, the Indian people found themselves in unimaginable poverty — an epidemic of poverty in which 20 million people are thought to have died. The Great Famine and the Indian Famine, however, are rarely talked about.

Furthermore, the evils that India suffered under the British Raj were not only confined to tragedies that resulted from consequences of otherwise economically motivated actions, but also through direct aggression and violence driven by racism. The Amritsar massacre in 1919 saw a major murder spree of peaceful, nonviolent protestors. Over 1,000 Indians perished by gunfire at the hands of the British army.

How, then, can the film and television world and British media in general so easily gloss over such unimaginable injustices with nostalgia, romanticism and even comedy? Well, the problem goes slightly deeper than just monetization. Even though Frears knew what he was doing and will doubtless enjoy a profit from appealing to the audience via this whitewashed and jewel-encrusted version of colonialism, far too few people will even identify a problem with it. This is due to Britain’s own brand of causal propaganda.

British history — where Britain institutionalized pain and suffering of seemingly lesser peoples — has barely been featured in the country’s history books. It wasn’t only injustices in India that have been ignored in both media as well as education. Britain invented the world’s first concentration camps in South Africa, where Boer settlers were incarcerated, raped and worked to death. When referring to the deaths of over 25,000 Boer women and children, Lloyd George, future Prime Minister of Great Britain, said, “We are simply ranging the deepest passions of the human heart against British rule in Africa.” However, today’s generation only hears of how Britain stood against the Afrikaners during Apartheid.

Given that it’s now 2017, and that Britain is one of the forerunners in the international fight against illiberal governing, surely admitting your own nation’s past and bearing your mistakes by way of example is the more inclusive route to encouraging true democracies. In that way, producers, writers and directors of British film and television have a real responsibility here, and need to examine the racist injustices Britain has built itself upon. The victims of the past, current and future would be less offended, and healing and peace processes could begin to be brokered.

October 3, 2017 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Film Review, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Timeless or most popular | , | Leave a comment