Not long ago I came across an image—don’t remember where or why—in which celebrated writer and feminist Lena Dunham was clad in a red, white and blue shirt emblazoned all over with the name “Hillary.” It struck me as curious that someone held up publicly as an example of enlightened 21st century thought (I’m not aware of whether Dunham considers herself as such; perhaps she doesn’t) would feel comfortable broadcasting so unabashedly her affinity for Mrs. Clinton, so I looked into it further.
“Nothing gets me angrier,” Dunham said in January to a crowd in Iowa prior to that state’s caucus, “than when someone implies I’m voting for Hillary Clinton simply because she’s female.”
Fair enough; it must be insulting to have strangers imply, or otherwise assert, that her endorsement of Clinton can be reduced to a sort of blind gender loyalty. And to Dunham’s credit, she has attempted to spell out exactly what is it about Clinton she finds so enchanting. The least we can do is consider her own words on the matter.
It shouldn’t come as any surprise that Clinton’s “commitment to fighting for women” is at the top of the list. After all, it’s an important issue, one about which Dunham is ostensibly serious and which Clinton allegedly “comes at … from every direction.” For example: She “fights for equal pay”; she says she will “fight for more funding” of Planned Parenthood; she “stays current on prenatal-nutrition research”; and she “flies to countries where women are routinely denied basic freedoms … and puts their leaders on blast.”
Summing it up: “In a million ways, for women and girls in every walk of life, Hillary does the damn thing.”
Dunham is also fetched by Clinton’s alleged opposition to racism. “I’ve been moved,” she writes, “by the stories of people across the country who attest to Hillary’s decades of working for social justice in their communities.”
Gun control, “a feminist issue,” factors into the equation as well: “Hillary has a plan specifically to keep guns out of the hands of domestic abusers.”
And lest her audience mistakenly perceive that she finds no fault in her favored candidate, Dunham would like us to know that she recognizes that Hillary has “made mistakes.” One such mistake, as Dunham sees it, is Hillary’s vote in favor of Bush’s invasion of Iraq. But while this was a “huge miscalculation,” Dunham is encouraged by her belief that Hillary “worked her heart out as secretary of state to make up for it.”
“Wouldn’t it be cool,” Dunham inquires rhetorically, “if everyone else who voted for that war did as much to promote peace and human rights around the world?”
One charitably assumes that Dunham either doesn’t know what she’s saying or doesn’t mean it. Otherwise she can and should be disregarded as yet another vulgar propagandist whose supposed empathy doesn’t extend beyond the margins of her own very narrow perspective.
Before continuing, I’ll make a distinction that shouldn’t have to be made because it’s self-evident: we are dealing with someone of a degree of cultural significance who has been enthusiastically campaigning for Clinton from the beginning; we are not dealing with someone prepared to cast a vote for Clinton because they are persuaded by the lesser-evil argument. These are two very different casts of mind and are not equally assailable.
There’s no question that Clinton professes to care about women, just as Barack Obama professes to oppose the proliferation of nuclear weapons, or Mrs. Clinton’s husband professed to believe that the Sudanese pharmaceutical plant he blew up was used by terrorists to produce chemical weapons. The question, of course, is whether we’re justified in taking them at their word. The historical record, as well as common sense, suggest that we’re not.
Dunham’s remark about Hillary flying around “to countries where women are routinely denied basic freedoms” to put “their leaders on blast” is interesting. There are two possibilities: either she fails to recognize the inanity of her own comment, or else she’s trusting that her audience will fail to recognize it. In the former case, she’s ignorant and irresponsible; in the latter she’s dishonest and hypocritical, and should be exposed as such.
Saudi Arabia, as all but the most uninformed of people fully understand, is world’s leading exporter of Wahhabism, the radical Islamic ideology that reduces women to chattel. According to this ideology—which, thanks to US foreign policy, can now be observed all over the Middle East and elsewhere—women are fit to be kept as sex slaves, fit to be genitally mutilated, fit to be punished for exposing their skin in public, fit to be punished (or killed) for resisting an arranged marriage, fit to be punished for being gang raped. With that said, the misogynistic thugs governing Saudi Arabia produce oil [and more importantly transfer global revenues from the sale of petroleum to Wall st.] and are hostile to Iran; ergo they are a crucial US ally.
As such, while serving as secretary of state, Clinton facilitated billions of dollars in munitions sales to Saudi Arabia; in fact, US arms exports to Saudi Arabia increased by 97 percent during this time. (Recall that, according to Dunham, Clinton is very concerned about keeping weapons out of the hands of those who are liable to use them against women.) These weapons are now being used to massacre civilians—including, of course, women and children—in Yemen and to bolster Saudi Arabia’s regional (and thus global) influence. When said influence increases, so too does Wahhabi-style persecution of women, a circumstance any feminist—indeed, any decent human—finds utterly despicable and ought to resist.
This, presumably, is one way in which Hillary “worked her heart out as secretary of state to make up for” her Iraq war vote.
Another way is perhaps her support for the 2009 military coup in Honduras, whereby, according to Greg Grandin of The Nation, “Clinton allied with the worst sectors of Honduran society.” Grandin’s article, a eulogy for a female activist in Honduras who was gunned down by political opponents, is of particular relevance considering Dunham’s assertion that Hillary is dedicated “to women’s reproductive health and rights” and moreover has a “holistic approach to protecting the vulnerable.”
Consider the following details regarding the rights of women following the military coup Mrs. Clinton helped to consolidate:
Despite the fact that he was a rural patriarch, [toppled president Manuel Zelaya] was remarkably supportive of “intersectionality” (that is, a left politics not reducible to class or political economy): He tried to make the morning-after pill legal. (After Zelaya’s ouster, Honduras’s coup congress—the one legitimated by Hillary Clinton—passed an absolute ban on emergency contraception, criminalizing “the sale, distribution, and use of the ‘morning-after pill’—imposing punishment for offenders equal to that of obtaining or performing an abortion, which in Honduras is completely restricted.”)
Elsewhere, Honduran feminists have spoken plainly about the devastating effects of the US-sponsored coup in their country. Believe it or not, many of them reject the idea that Clinton empathizes with their plight. Take for instance the words of Neesa Medina, of the Honduran Women’s Rights Center:
The 2009 coup had repercussions for sexual and reproductive rights for Honduran women…. As a member of a feminist organization severely affected by the support of the U.S. for militaristic policies of recent governments, I must say that it is important that voters take the time to do a critical structural analysis of all of the information in the campaign proposals and previous actions of those running for president. United States support for militarily invasive policies in other countries has a negative impact on the women in these countries.
The current dictatorship under [President Juan Orlando] Hernandez is part of [Hillary Clinton’s] creation. The misery doesn’t just affect women with more brutality, but also our bodies are exposed to the militarist ideology with which they uphold poverty and kill us; to the conservative fundamentalism with which they deny the exercise of our sexual autonomy; and to the possibility of being creative people and not just workers for their factories and way of life.
Clinton, to my knowledge, has yet to put the Hernandez regime, for which she and President Obama bear major responsibility, “on blast” for its abominable treatment of women.
There is also, of course, NATO’s military bombardment of Libya, a horrific and illegal policy decision—spearheaded by Clinton’s State Department—which effectively invited an assortment of misogynistic Islamic gangs to reap the benefits of the chaos sown by the removal of Muammar Gaddafi from power.
According to a March report by Human Rights Watch, Libyan women living in Sirte (now ISIS-controlled territory) endure extraordinary repression. The rule of the land is a hardline interpretation of Sharia Law, imposing unprecedented restrictions on Libyan women’s freedom. For instance, “all women and girls as young as 10 or 11” are required by law “to cover themselves from head to toe in a loose black abaya outside their homes, and to never leave without … a male relative such as a husband, brother or father.” If a woman is caught violating the dress code, her husband is either fined or flogged. Furthermore, “shop owners are whipped and fined and their shops are closed if they receive an unaccompanied woman.” And it perhaps goes without saying that men residing in Sirte are coerced into surrendering their daughters over to ISIS militants, who then force marriage and God knows what else upon the girl.
No doubt the women of Libya can appreciate Clinton’s image, in the eyes of the West, as a model feminist. Remember: she “does the damn thing” for “women and girls in every walk of life.”
In Gaza, where the Israeli government (with unilateral US support) has imposed an illegal siege for nearly a decade, 36 percent of pregnant women suffer from anemia, a direct result of the fact that a staggering 80 percent of Gaza’s Palestinian population is dependent on food-aid. Moreover, owing to regular IDF aggression against the besieged territory, as well as the Israeli government’s practice of administrative detention, women in Gaza are often left to support their families by themselves, all while being unable to find work.
“The siege affects us all, but it especially affects women,” said Tagreed Jummah, director of Gaza City’s Union of Palestinian Women Committees. “In recent years, more women have been forced to become heads of the family because their husbands have been killed, are in Israeli prisons, or are unemployed as a result of the siege. But the majority of these women have no means of earning money.”
In the summer of 2014, while Israeli missiles rained down on the people of Gaza (killing well over 1,000 civilians), Clinton gave an interview in which she dismissed international condemnation of Israel’s military aggression as “uncalled for and unfair”—just one of countless examples of her apologetics for Israeli terror. On that note, Hillary has promised that, should she win the election, she will invite Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (described by Middle East scholar Norman Finkelstein as a “certifiable maniac”) to the White House in her first month in office. Such is her empathetic concern for the men, women and children writhing under the heel of Zionist brutality.
All of this is readily available to anyone mildly curious about Clinton’s humanitarian credentials. One wonders, then, how someone like Lena Dunham, whose primary concern (ostensibly) is the oppression of women, can laud Mrs. Clinton as a person genuinely troubled by and committed to eradicating that very oppression wherever it exists. How, for instance, could she seriously characterize Clinton as a politician who fights to “promote peace and human rights around the world”? Could Dunham be that confused? Or is she merely ignoring facts inconsistent with her argument? Does she understand that her comments could easily (and not illogically) be construed as evidence of a racist disdain for people who happen to have been born outside of the United States?
Dunham ought to clarify whether she believes Palestinians, Hondurans, Libyans, Yemenis, etc. to be somehow unworthy of the human rights she speaks and writes so passionately about. If this is indeed the case, then her arguments in favor of Hillary Clinton, while morally and intellectually bankrupt, make perfect sense.
If, however, she is appalled to learn of her chosen candidate’s (at best) callous indifference to the fate of women in other parts of the world, Dunham should revise her position accordingly. After all, she communicates not only to a broad audience, but a broad audience of young people who by and large represent the future of Western liberalism. By simply ignoring the reality of Hillary Clinton’s worldview (and all of this could just as easily have been said of Barack Obama), Dunham is assisting the corporate media in breeding a generation of “liberals” whose compassion is terribly shortsighted, and who are thus liable to stand back and observe their leaders’ crimes with equanimity—so long as progress is being made on other fronts. When this sort of truncated empathy reigns, as history has repeatedly shown, there’s virtually nothing a wayward government can’t do. And as Orwell demonstrated, there is perhaps nothing more terrifying than an omnipotent state.
I’ll say it again, since reading comprehension varies: this was not written as a rejoinder to the argument that Clinton is preferable to Donald Trump or any other opponent; it was written in response to a relatively influential celebrity who has repeatedly attempted to cast Hillary Clinton as a champion of human rights, which is manifestly preposterous and, in my view, ultimately dangerous. Any number of individuals (celebrities, journalists and pundits alike) could have been substituted for Dunham in this context. One can vote for Hillary Clinton without telling half-truths about her sordid record.
Are anarchists carrying water for Uncle Sam? SubMedia, a website that publishes “anarchist news and resistance updates” in video form, is now featuring a 5 minute video, “What Is Mutual Aid?” Toward the end of the video the narrator tells us that “glimpses of the anarchist ideal of mutual aid can be seen in . . . the bravery of the White Helmets of Aleppo who risk their lives to pull children from the collapsed ruins of buildings hit by Assad’s barrel bombs.” Really? This is hard to square with reporting from journalists like Vanessa Beeley, who has researched the White Helmets on the ground in Syria, and found that most people there have never heard of them, that they are a creation of western propaganda.
Vanessa Beeley reports that “with over $60 million in their back pocket courtesy of USAID, the UK Foreign Office and various EU nations like the Netherlands, this group is possibly one of the most feted and funded entities within the west’s anti-Syrian NGO complex, a pivotal part of the clandestine shadow state building enterprise inside of Syria. Like many other ‘NGOs’, the White Helmets have been deployed by the west to derail the Syrian state, first by undermining existing civic structures and by disseminating staged PR to facilitate regime change propaganda, through western and Gulf state media outlets.”
Felicity Artbuthnot in another recent article quotes the Ron Paul Institute as saying: ”We have demonstrated that the White Helmets are an integral part of the propaganda vanguard that ensures obscurantism of fact and propagation of Human Rights fiction that elicits the well-intentioned and self righteous response from a very cleverly duped public. A priority for these NGOs is to keep pushing the No Fly Zone scenario which has already been seen to have disastrous implications for innocent civilians in Libya, for example.”
SubMedia has not responded to a query as to whether it was simply mistaken in promoting the White Helmets, nor has it edited the video. As things now stand, it appears SubMedia is part of an effort to promote these poseurs as humanitarians, coincidentally in sync with that much larger other video outlet, Netflix, who has just rolled out an exclusive documentary promoting the White Helmets as heroes. According to Rick Sterling, the group Code Pink actually put out a press release promoting the Netflix movie.
Where there are PR campaigns, there are suddenly awards. According to Sterling,
“on 22 September 2016 it was announced that the Right Livelihood Award, the so called ‘Alternative Nobel Prize’, is being given to the US/UK created White Helmets ‘for their outstanding bravery, compassion and humanitarian engagement in rescuing civilians from the destruction of the Syrian civil war.’ Sterling continues: “
The Right Livelihood organizers may come to regret their selection of the White Helmets because the group is not who they claim to be. In fact, the White Helmets are largely a propaganda tool promoting western intervention against Syria. Unlike a legitimate rescue organization such as the Red Cross or Red Crescent, the ‘White Helmets’ only work in areas controlled by the armed opposition.”
One must beware of radicals sneaking a bit of poison into an otherwise good message. The famous anarchist Noam Chomsky decried the NATO attack on Yugoslavia in 1999, but agreed with the major premise of that attack, which was that Slobodan Milosevic was a brutal dictator who had to be stopped. This went a long way to defusing an antiwar effort leading up to the NATO bombing campaign. Likewise, SubMedia has lots of good information on anarchist principles, but inserts talking points straight out of the US State Department, like the one about “Assad’s barrel bombs.” We are led down a moral road, only to be confused.
In another SubMedia video, “Requiem for Syria“, an anonymous narrator called “Stimulator” would have us believe that an anarchist revolution is struggling to be born in Syria, on a par with that in 1930′s Spain, and that Bashar al-Assad is responsible for destroying that revolution. According to Stimulator, “leftists believe that Assad has been targeted for regime change by the United Snakes and its allies and that Syria is being protected by staunchly anti-imperialist homies, Russia and Iran. But putting aside the fact that Russia and Iran are both gangsta imperialist states in their own right who oppress the fuck out of their own citizens, there’s an even more obvious flaw in this logic — the fact that the United States isn’t trying to overthrow Assad at all. The real threat to Assad’s fascist fucking regime has come from Syrians themselves, who, after growing sick and motherfucking tired of having their peaceful protests bombed and machine-gunned, launched a popular fucking uprising, and it’s racist as fuck to ignore that.”
Hidden amid the hip language is another US State Department talking point — that the war in Syria was started by Assad attacking his own people. SubMedia is attempting to deny the fact that Israel, the US, Saudi Arabia, and NATO are indeed seeking regime change and have demonized Assad in order to bring that about. Stimulator is in perfect agreement with the main premise of the aggressors: Assad is a brutal dictator, killing legitimate protestors trying to free themselves from his oppression. According to Stimulator, “there’s only one person who can end this civil war in Syria – I’m talking about Syria’s greasy, sunken-eyed, goose-necked dictator himself, Bashar al-Assad.” We are led to believe that one man is the sole cause of this country’s problems. We heard the same with Milosevic, Saddam, and Gaddafi.
Stimulator goes on to interview Robin Yassin-Kassab, British author of Burning Country: Syrians in Revolution and War, who agrees with Stimulator that the left has been duped into believing “that this is a regime change plot directed by the United States against the glorious resistance regime in Syria, and the facts don’t bear that out at all.” The people of Syria are in revolt, he claims, and Assad is trying to put down the revolt. Yassin-Kassab asserts, without evidence, that “women have been subjected to a mass rape campaign which the regime organized.” This was a propaganda talking point in the attack on Libya, and, for that matter, Yugoslavia.
People living outside Syria lack first-hand knowledge, but a number of sources in Syria have said that Assad actually has the support of the majority of the people there. Lily Martin writes that
“as an eye witness to the entire war in Syria, from March 2011 to present, I can state this was no revolution. I am an American citizen living permanently in Syria, which is my husband’s birthplace. I have been here 24 years. A real revolution would have the support of the people, inside Syria, not Syrians living in Paris and London for the past 40 years. To have a real grassroots uprising, you need the support of the people living inside Syria, who would share your views. If it had been a real uprising/revolution, the whole process could have taken 3-6 months, because the Army would have followed the will of the people, given the fact the Syrian Army is made up of Syrians of all ethnic and religious sects. The Syrian Army is a true representative of the Syrian population. If the population wanted the goals stated by the ‘protesters’, which was to establish Islamic law in Syria, and to abolish the current secular government, the Army would have eventually followed along, expressing the will of the people.”
Lily Martin and Vanessa Beeley are, finally, more credible than the anonymous figures at SubMedia. SubMedia is also, like Chomsky, silent about Israeli and US government partnership in the September 11, 2001 attacks, when such perceptive radicals as these should certainly know better. It is not above the practitioners of deception to create an opposition that says a lot of the right things, but does the essential dirty work. Indeed, this is an important part of their trade. The avalanche of lies provided in the mainstream media can be organized by run-of-the-mill propagandists. The real propagandists are the ones who cultivate people who actually look like they’re on our side.
If there ever was a revolution in Syria, it was quickly overwhelmed by Zionist manipulation of the United States into destroying yet another country on the list of nations that threaten Israel, and, for good measure, getting the US and Russia to destroy each other so that Israel will emerge as the world’s new superpower, presiding over the ashes. Such is the insanity of current world events.
The Death Caravan was the name of a military operation that killed almost 100 political prisoners in Chile beginning on Sept. 30, 1973.
Former Army Commander Juan Emilio Cheyre and six military officials were arrested July 7 in Chile for their involvement in the death of 15 people as part of an operation known as the Death Caravan, launched the same month as the military coup that overthrew President Salvador Allende.
The Death Caravan was the name of a military operation that killed and disappeared almost 100 political prisoners in Chile beginning on Sept. 30, 1973, following General Augusto Pinochet’s coup, with the support of the United States. The military ruled the country with an iron fist for 17 years, until 1990.
Judge Mario Carroza told La Tercera that the decision to arrest the former commander-in-chief of the Chilean army was based on “knowledge of what happened during the three hours in La Serena,” where the killing took place.
Carroza added that “testimonies of direct observers during the reconstruction of the scene” coincided with other elements of the investigation, and will be an important factor in the trial.
The arrests followed a complaint filed by the Human Rights Program affiliated with the interior ministry.
Cheyre was named commander-in-chief of Chile’s army in 2002, one year before he was publicly accused of participating in the murder of a couple and stealing their 2-year-old child in La Serena back in 1973. Chile’s justice eventually filed a case without finding Cheyre responsible for the act.
Serving in the top-ranking military role until 2006, Cheyre was appointed as president of Chile’s electoral body in 2013 by the neoliberal President Sebastian Piñera.
Cheyre jailed an estimated 80,000 people, tortured 30,000 and murdered around 3,200. Only 75 of more than a thousand of his former agents are serving prison sentences for human rights violations.
Underground it was still so hot that molten metal dripped down the walls… Ken Holden, director NY Dept of Design & Construction, excerpted in video above
This video shows John Gross, a NIST engineer who played a central role in the investigation of the WTC collapses, claiming he has seen no evidence of molten steel or excessively high temperatures in the WTC rubble. His interview – in which he displays obvious signs of discomfort – is intercut with eyewitnesses at Ground Zero describing red-hot, white-hot, or specifically “molten” steel in the rubble.
Such eye-witnesses are numerous, too numerous to all be quoted in the video, and they include firefighters, structural engineers and physicists. Dr Abolhassan Astaneh-Asl was one. Permitted to examine some of the structural steel before it was taken away for melting down, he reported many anomalies:
If you remember the Salvador Dali paintings with the clocks that are kind of melted–it’s kind of like that… That could only happen if you get steel yellow hot or white hot–perhaps around 2,000 degrees Dr Abolhassan Astaneh-Asl, professor of civil and environmental engineering UCal Berkeley,
And he was far from being a lone witness:
The debris pile at Ground Zero was always tremendously hot. Thermal measurements taken by helicopter each day showed underground temperatures ranging from 400oF to more than 2,800oF. Jeffrey W. Vincoli CSP, CHCM et al
Typically, when steel bends, it buckles and tears. The smooth bend on this piece shows the steel became malleable — a pretty good indication of how hot it was. Mark Wagner, architect
It looked like an oven, just roaring inside… firefighter, interviewed in video above
Eight weeks later we still got fires burning… at one point I think they were about 2800 degrees firefighter, interviewed in video above
Underground it was still so hot that molten metal dripped down the walls… Ken Holden, director NY Dept of Design & Construction, excerpted in video above
Are we supposed to conclude all these observers, including respected professionals, were mistaken? This is a vital question because ordinary fires can’t reach temperatures sufficient to produce the effects on steel observed by these witnesses. So, if their observations and recordings are true there is clearly some phenomenon going on at Ground Zero unaccounted for by simple office fires.
It’s not necessary to espouse a conspiracy theory in order to recognise more investigation is needed.
An ambassador is a … gentleman sent to lie abroad for the good of his country.
— Attributed to Sir Henry Wotton, 1568-1639
When Vitaly Churkin, Russia’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations (“We the people of the United Nations, determined to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war …”) rose to speak at the UN to address Syria’s ongoing tragedy, on Sunday September 25th, US Ambassador to the UN, Samantha Power, François Delattre, Permanent Representative for France and British Permanent Representative, Matthew Rycroft, metaphorically threw their toys out of the pram and walked out. Anything more infantile and further away from the UN’s founding aspirations would be hard to find.
They would have done well to hear Mr Churkin’s full address. It lays out home truths and the reality of international State sponsored terrorism – resulting in Syria’s living nightmare – in succinct detail. He began:
It is the sixth year that the Syrian people have been suffering a grave tragedy. In 2011, Washington and some other Western capitals decided to continue the reshaping of the geopolitical space of the Middle East and North Africa, which started with the US and UK criminal invasion in Iraq in 2003. Besides, both in Libya and Syria they continued to ‘use an axe’ without any disdain for the support of terrorist groups … consequences of countries’ break-ups and flows of millions of refugees were qualified as an unforeseen ‘irritant’.
Samantha Power, however, has never seemingly found a conflict she would not embrace (safely, from afar, of course.) The Balkans, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and now Syria, “liberation” by annihilation seemingly ever her preferred option. The UN welcomes some unlikely Representatives to uphold its founding aspirations.
“What Russia is sponsoring and doing in Aleppo is not counter terrorism, it is barbarism”, railed Ms Power. Clearly she has forgotten the US led, multi-country barbarisms above and further that Russia has been invited to work with Syria to attempt to resolve the country’s terrorist crisis. The US and their “allies” – in the air and on the ground – are illegals, in contravention of a swathe of international law.
She appears to also have forgotten the numerous substantiations of the US (and allies) funding and arming the head chopping, organ eating, child murdering and other illegal immigrants from over one hundred foreign countries, according to varying analysts. Another irony is America appointing itself the “world’s policeman” – as the world is seeing what its policemen are doing at home.
Also dropped through Ms Powell and her fellow UN absconders memory hole seems to be General Wesley Clark’s near immediate post 9/11 revelation from a Pentagon colleague that:
… we’re going to take out seven countries in five years, starting with Iraq, and then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and, finishing off, Iran.” Moreover, not to be forgotten is that the plans for Syria’s destruction were plotted in detail from within the then US Embassy in Damascus.
Interesting is also the UK walkout Representative’s background, recalling that the UK is ever a willing killer-in-arms with the US. Matthew Rycroft has trailed around varying war zones or war enablers in a “diplomatic” capacity since graduation from Oxford University in 1989.
An early placement was at the NATO desk in the British government’s bailiwick, Whitehall. After various Foreign Office placements he joined the British Embassy in Washington in 1998, from where he was seconded to both the US State Department and US Congress. On returning to the UK he became, in February 2002, Private Secretary Foreign Affairs, to the then Prime Minister, Tony Blair, according to his evidence to the Chilcot Inquiry on Iraq.
February 2002 was, of course, the time the planning in the Foreign Office was concentrating on Tony Blair’s now infamous meeting with George W. Bush in Crawford Texas in the coming April. Rycroft denied having any involvement in those plans; however, he had integral involvement in the infamous Downing Street memo of July 23rd, 2002.
The memo related to the plans to overthrow Saddam Hussein, discussed at a meeting held by Tony Blair at which Rycroft was one of the attendees. His memo began:
“SECRET AND STRICTLY PERSONAL – UK EYES ONLY
“DAVID MANNING
From: Matthew Rycroft
Date: 23 July 2002
S 195 /02
cc: Defence Secretary, Foreign Secretary, Attorney-General, Sir Richard Wilson, John Scarlett, Francis Richards, CDS, C, Jonathan Powell, Sally Morgan, Alastair Campbell
IRAQ: PRIME MINISTER’S MEETING, 23 JULY
Copy addressees and you met the Prime Minister on 23 July to discuss Iraq.
This record is extremely sensitive. No further copies should be made. It should be shown only to those with a genuine need to know its contents.
John Scarlett summarised the intelligence and latest (Joint Intelligence Committee) assessment. Saddam’s regime was tough and based on extreme fear. The only way to overthrow it was likely to be by massive military action …
C reported on his recent talks in Washington. There was a perceptible shift in attitude. Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy. The NSC had no patience with the UN route, and no enthusiasm for publishing material on the Iraqi regime’s record. There was little discussion in Washington of the aftermath after military action. (Emphasis added.)
In the memo’s “Conclusions” Rycroft’s first is:
(a) We should work on the assumption that the UK would take part in any military action …
The rest is Nuremberg’s “supreme international crime …” and bloody, genocidal history. Ongoing.
Rycroft has now turned his attentions to Syria. On walk-out day, September 25th, in a speech to the UN which includes too many inaccurate and misleading statements (many might say mistruths) to address here, he includes:
… the death and destruction that the sectarian Assad regime has unleashed upon them. Nor will they forget that Russia aided and abetted this ruthless sectarian dictator in waging war against his own people.
Goodness, word for word out of the US-UK Saddam Hussein hand book – “waging a war against his own people”, “sectarian dictator.” As Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, Syria is secular and the government is fighting a war to rid the country of the terrorists who flooded in as a result of the fruition of the US plans formulated in 2006.
Rycroft also alleged the use by the government of chlorine bombs – he had clearly not read, or chosen to ignore the various reports, including by the UN, categorically disproving this.
Iraq had the US inspired “Iraq Liberation Act” of 1998 held over the nation’s head until destroyed by the US and UK in 2003. Syria has the “Syria Accountability and Liberation Act” of July 2009. Apart from imposing draconian sanctions of the sort that resulted in the deaths of half a million children between August 6th 1990 and May 12th 1996 in Iraq, the Act:
Sets forth diplomatic measures intended to isolate the government of Syria.
And:
Authorizes the (US) President to provide assistance to support a democratic transition in Syria.
In another re-run of the Iraq lies, Rycroft adapts the “Saddam starves his own people” line – when, in fact, the US-UK driven embargo even denied baby formula – and accuses President Assad of “failing to stop starvation.”
Incidentally, in 2003, after the invasion of Iraq, Matthew Rycroft was awarded the CBE: “… an honour awarded to an individual by the Queen for a leading role at a regional level or a prominent … role at a national level in any activity. The definition of CBE is Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire.” The cynic might speculate that his part in “Empire’s” Iraq slaughter might have been a contributory factor.
But he has not lost talent for plotting and economy with the truth, it would seem. But then, between experience in the Foreign Office, the State Department and Congress would be a peerless education. An example:
On 12 September, the eve of the ill-fated ceasefire:
President Dr. Bashar Al-Assad vowed to regain every inch of Syria from the terrorist forces.
The Syrian President made this promise during his visit to the rural Damascus town of Darayya on Monday.
In addition to his promise to recover every inch of the country, the Syrian President stated that his government will rebuild Darayya after the four year long battle left the town in ruins.
On September 15th, Matthew Rycroft translated this statement in a address to the UN as:
Earlier this week, Assad said it was his objective to regain the entire country by force …
He surely learned well from his part in Iraq plotting.
Meanwhile, on September 25th (clearly a very busy plotting day) the UK’s new Foreign Secretary (it is hard to think of anyone less suitable to be a diplomat) was in Turkey. He tweeted:
Boris Johnson
@BorisJohnson
Follow #Turkey is a vital partner to the UK. Pleased to visit for first time as Foreign Sec for talks with Govt, civil society & #Syrian Opposition 9:34 AM – 25 Sep 2016
Meeting “opposition” head choppers, eh? Another shocking international conspiracy against a small, proud nation, which threatens no one. The onslaught against Syria, the betrayal of a fellow Member of the United Nations will be added to the list of crimes of enormity laid at the feet of the “Special relationship” – the barbarism of the US-UK alliance.
Incidentally, diplomacy: “The art of dealing with people in a sensitive and tactful way.”
FBI Director James Comey went before the House Judiciary Committee to discuss the Hillary Clinton email investigation after new evidence emerged which suggested Hillary Clinton’s IT specialist, Paul Combetta (under the “Stonetear” moniker), sought advice on Reddit on how to cover her tracks. He addressed claims about the FBI’s treatment of Hillary Clinton and whether or not the they were biased in her favor. He was angered by such claims, yet continued to make up excuses for Hillary Clinton.
It might sound paranoid. It might sound anti-government. But as famous civil rights lawyer Harvey Silverglate says, it’s actually just practical advice: Don’t talk to the FBI without your lawyer present, ever. You may think you have nothing to hide. You may think your refusal to cooperate with agents’ demands will somehow hurt you. But there’s nothing you can do to better protect yourself from FBI manipulation than to refuse to say anything to FBI officials without your lawyer in the room.
The latest example of why comes in the form of a federal indictment in Atlanta, Georgia, of Ibragim Todashev‘s widow, a woman named Reniya Manukyan. She’s facing years in federal prison on a charge of lying to federal agents. Todashev, remember, was a former friend of Tamerlan Tsarnaev. An FBI agent killed Todashev in May 2013 in the Chechen immigrant’s Orlando, Florida apartment, in shady circumstances.
No one is accusing Ms. Manukyan of having had anything to do with the Boston marathon bombings, just as her late husband was never accused of complicity in the attacks. No one is accusing her of having anything to do with any violence. Nonetheless, she’s become the latest person connected to Todashev to face harsh government action; other people he knew in Florida, including his girlfriend, were deported in the wake of his killing.
It’s unclear why FBI and DOJ officials waited so long to go after Ms. Manukyan on the charge of lying to federal agents. But one thing is clear: She may have avoided this fate had she refused to talk to the FBI without her lawyer present. Be sure you protect yourself and don’t make the same mistake.
Watch the video below to learn more about how the FBI puts people in a vice—and how to avoid becoming a victim of this tactic.
Please note that by playing this clip YouTube and Google will place a long term cookie on your computer.
A commander of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) has officially asked for forgiveness days after signing a peace treaty that has brought a new spirit of reconciliation to the nation.
“We ask for you to forgive us and that you give us the hope of a spiritual path, allowing us to move forward together with you,” FARC commander Ivan Marquez said Thursday in the town of Bojaya, the site of a deadly 2002 attack by the rebels.
FARC had already offered an apology for the Bojaya attack in 2014 in the Cuban capital, Havana, where peace talks had been underway for almost four years, but this time the commanders did so at the site of the attack itself.
“Once again, we offer an infinite apology, Bojaya,” Marquez said on Thursday.
On May 2, 2002, FARC guerrillas seized Bojaya in an attempt to take control of the Atrato River region from the paramilitary forces stationed there. The operation failed, and approximately 119 civilians were killed, 48 of them children, in the apparently indiscriminate firing of improvised mortars by the FARC rebels.
During a visit to a church that was destroyed in the Bojaya attack, Marquez asked the local community for reconciliation.
“Reconciled, we will move toward an era of fairness, for which humble people from every corner of Colombia have yearned for so much,” he said.
FARC’s highest commander Rodrigo Londono Echeverri, aka Timoleon Jimenez or Timochenko, asked the nation for forgiveness at the peace signing ceremony on Monday.
Timochenko and Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos signed the peace deal in the Caribbean city of Cartagena, formally ending 52 years of a conflict.
However, the deal remains to be implemented until after it is approved in a referendum, which is to be held on Sunday.
Analysts believe that the majority of Colombians will easily vote in favor of the peace deal, which will see the rebel group laying down arms and the government facilitating their incorporation into the political scene.
The Marxist group, which took up weapons in 1964 to fight social inequalities, exerts notable influence across some poverty-stricken areas of the country.
The decades-long conflict with the central government has left as many as 260,000 people dead, more than six million others displaced, and 45,000 other still missing.
The FARC peace deal has prompted Colombia’s second-largest rebel group, the leftist National Liberation Army (ELN), to also express readiness to engage in their own peace talks with the central government, but Bogota has yet to begin formal peace talks with the group.
“De mortuis nil nisi bene” is commonly translated in English with “Speak no ill of the dead”. The headlines of German obituaries on Shimon Peres outbid themselves in adulation. President Obama, however, outbid even the Germans. He praised Peres without irony as “a champion of peace. […] As Americans, we are indebted to him”, he said. He even got metaphysical: “A light has gone out, but the hope he gave us will burn forever.” The US president should have really known better, that even “Peace Angel” Peres was only interested in peace with the Palestinians on Israeli conditions, namely, their subjugation under an Israeli peace diktat. Obama’s hypocrisy was topped off by Israel’s Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu, who had fought fiercely against the “peace policy” of Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres.
Two Germans, former Germany’s President Christian Wulff and Charlotte Knobloch, former President of the Central Council of Jewry in Germany, outbid even the general adulation of Peres. Christian Wulff wrote: “[Peres] outshone his time, with his empathy, his great heart, his philanthropy and his courage, his apparently unshakeable belief that Good is possible. Shimon Peres has shown what the world so desperately needs and what it simultaneously so sorely lacks.” Ms. Knobloch said: “He was a symbol of the Zionist dream”, undoubtedly believing that she was thereby praising the deceased. This “dream” had however turned out to be a nightmare for the Palestinians. Peres’ entire political life was, according to her, a “struggle for peace”. Was he really a “smart bearer of hope, a tireless reconciler”? It seems that such delusions characterize the public image of a politician, the reality of which he had created on the ground had nothing, absolutely nothing, to do with such eulogies. I need not dwell here upon the assessments of the official political class, as they are drafted in the same vein.
Peres’ career is well known to everybody: He drew his nimbus as a confidant of David Ben-Gurion; he was the main initiator of the Israeli nuclear program, friend of German CSU leader Franz Josef Strauss; he spent two stints as Israel’s Prime Minister; he held almost every government post, crowning his long career as “President of the State of Israel”. He was not elected to this function by the population but by the Israeli parliament, the Knesset. In each election, Peres always came out second. He was nicknamed by the public the “eternal loser”. An important reason for that, is that Israelis deeply distrusted him.
Without much ado, it can be said that he has served the Zionist entity until the last breath. This is not to be equated with the cause of peace with the Palestinians. His image in the West has always been that of a “liberal” or a “good Israeli”. Less known is the fact that Peres was a Zionist hardliner who managed to garb his ideas in the rhetoric of the so-called “Zionist Left”. His vision was not different than that of Ariel Sharon or Netanyahu, but he knew how to present it in a less confrontational manner, designed for a Western audience. On this point, the contrived visions of Peres resemble political obituaries of political leaders in the US and Germany.
In Peres’ various political positions, he always supported the colonization of the occupied territories. After his “partner in peace”, Premier Minister Yitzhak Rabin, was assassinated in November 1995 by Yigal Amir, a Jewish right-wing extremist, Peres followed Rabin in the Premiership. Peres had never served in the Israeli military, hence, in the May’s election of 1996, opposing Netanyahu, he tried to make a showing of a “strong” leader by, inter alia, authorizing Operation “Grapes of Wrath” against the Hezbollah movement in Lebanon. In that operation Israel’s army bombed the UN base at Qana. In this attack, 106 Lebanese were killed and an equal number were injured. As usual, the Peres government “regretted” the massacre. Despite playing the strongman, Peres lost the elections for Netanyahu.
Ten years earlier, in 1985, Peres as the then serving Prime Minister of Israel, was responsible for an act of aggression against Tunisia that killed 75 Tunisians and Palestinians. According to international law, Israel’s aggression violated “the sovereignty, territorial integrity or political independence of another State, or (was) in any other manner inconsistent with the Charter of the United Nations”, wrote Elias Davidsson, a native of Palestine, as far back as 1993. As there existed no international enforcement mechanism at the time, which would allow “the arrest, trial and punishment of criminals such as Mr. Peres”, Davidsson urged “authorities of civilized nations to refuse any official dealings with persons for which there is prima facie evidence of implication in such crimes”, including Shimon Peres.
Shimon Peres received together with Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat the Nobel Peace Prize for the so-called Oslo peace process, which brought only havoc and desperation upon the Palestinian people. It’s not unusual in our world that former terrorists such as Menachem Begin or war criminals such as Henry Kissinger will be bestowed with this distinction. Immediately after taking office, Barack Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, i.e. before he reneged on his promise to close Guantánamo and started extra-judicial executions around the world.
In obituaries, only good and beautiful things are written about the deceased. May mine only serve to complete the picture of a man who authentically personified Zionism.
The investigation into the downing of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 over two years ago always had the flavour of pre-emption, caked with assumptions of premature adjudication. Neither side, be it the assembled Joint Investigation Team, nor those on the Russian side, was going to budge on the issue of the material. In the world of the post-factoid, what matters is the sale of what we believe to be facts.
In this marketplace of saleable facts, the issue becomes how fabulous the narrative can be. Find your audience, and the relevant pitch, and half your work is done. Discoveries are made at short notice, be it data captured by a smart phone, intercepts of conversations, or radar data of the raw sort revealed with impeccable timing.
What is lost in this agitated discussion are the bloody realities of conflict, the hideous nature of those last moments when 298 civilians lost their lives over a war zone. It took a decision, made on the spur, to end the lives of those people. What we have gotten, instead of a broader reflection of the conflict that caused those deaths, not to mention thousands of others, is a deeper quagmire, a furiously ideological joust between detractors and participants.
The cruel and broadly sobering picture of those moments in July 2014 did not seem to have much truck in the JIT display. In the presentation, the JIT makes it clear that it was presenting “the first results of the criminal investigation into the downing of flight MH17 on 17 July 2014.”[1]
This was meant to be a show by the avengers of objectivity, coming to the rescue with clarity and positivist reassurance. “The big difference with a journalistic commentary or an internet-based investigation report,” went the presentation, “is that in our case conclusions based on probability will not suffice.” There was, in fact “legal and convincing evidence.” Helped along, of course, with the bells and smells of modern animation and social media.
That convincing evidence supposedly found the culprit: “that flight MH17 was shot down… by a missile of the 9M38 series, launched by a BUK-TELAR, from farmland in the vicinity of Pervomaiskiy (or: Pervomaiskyi).”
At that time, the area was under pro-Russian rebel control, while the BUK-TELAR had been “brought in from the territory of the Russian Federation and subsequently, after having shot down flight MH-17, was taken back to the Russian Federation.”
For such pomp and certainty, much of the detail remained as before, with similar questions left tantalisingly dangling in the aftermath. For instance, an acknowledgment is made about the role played by the generous supply line from Bellingcat, which purports to use readily available open source material in the name of citizen journalism.
The lingering sense of a conspiratorial design to murder, a point that has been unequivocally embraced by such figures as former Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott, was never dispersed. A hundred persons had been identified “who in one way or the other can be linked to the crash of flight MH17 or the transport of the BUK.” Their identity, the JIT noted smugly, had been established.
As Editor-in-Chief at Fort Russ explained to Russia Today, the origins behind the makeup of the JIT lay in a NATO ploy, creating an inquiry team that was always compromised for its raison d’être. What mattered was how Russia was involved, not the question of who actually pulled the trigger.[2] This very point was amply illustrated by the dominant role played by Ukraine on the JIT, when its absence might have been contemplated along with that of Russia.
Bathed in the aura of criminality, the note of the report never loses the whodunit sense, the forensic pursuit of twenty weapons systems, the perusal of five billion internet pages, the inspection of dozens of containers “with thousands of wreckage parts” all examined by an army of some 100 to 200 investigators.
Absent in the JIT presentation was one glaring elephant waiting to stomp in the room. Where, for instance, did Ukraine figure in this? This is not to even take the line, as has been put forth by the Russian Defence Ministry, that there had been no signs of a missile being fired at MH17 from rebel controlled territory. (This was deemed “raw data” newly unearthed by Almaz-Antey.)
The broad issue of Ukrainian culpability in permitting MH17 to be in the vicinity of a conflict area when there had been prior knowledge of targeted flights, was not a point the JIT considered. Ukrainian criminal law was mentioned in so far as it might be useful in prosecuting any personnel who had manned the BUK, but not the violations of an assortment of aviation conventions and protocols. What we saw instead was the relentless cold march of minutiae.
The sense of creeping under a shroud of international deception, releasing the missile with callous calculation, then moving back into Russian territory, suggested a trick of terrorist import, a mission of the damned. By the JIT conveying such a tone, the sense that a war of tragic miscalculation and foolishness, along with the bloody mistakes that came with it, and continue to do so, was lost.
Without any skepticism, the West’s mainstream media is embracing the new allegations implicating Russia in the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, but there are key evidentiary and logical gaps including the presumed route followed by the supposed Buk missile convoy.
According to the Joint Investigation Team (JIT), which while “led” by the Dutch was guided by the Ukrainian SBU intelligence service, the Russians delivered the Buk anti-missile battery at a border crossing about 30 miles southeast of Luhansk on the night of July 16-17, 2014. From that point, there would have been an easy and logical route to the JIT’s claimed firing site.
Screen shot from the Joint Investigation Team’s video report citing where a Russian Buk missile battery allegedly crossed into eastern Ukraine
The convoy would have followed one of two roads west to H21 and then taken H21 southwest to the area around Snizhne before getting onto a back road to Pervomaiskyi where the JIT says the launch occurred.
Instead, according to the JIT account, the convoy took a strange and circuitous route, skirting south of Luhansk to Yenakiieve, a town that sits along highway E50, which incidentally offered another easy route south to Snizhne. Instead of going that way, according to the JIT, the convoy proceeded southwest to the city of Donetsk, stopping there before turning east on H21 passing through a number of towns on the way to Snizhne.
Not only does this route make no sense, especially given the extreme sensitivity of the Russians providing a powerful anti-aircraft missile battery to the rebels, an operation that would call for the utmost secrecy and care, but the eventual positioning of the Buk system in the remote town of Pervomaiskyi makes little military sense.
According to the JIT’s video narrative, the presumed purpose of the Russians taking such a huge risk of supplying a Buk system was to protect rebel troops from Ukrainian military aircraft firing from heights beyond the range of shoulder-fired MANPADs.
So why would the Russians position the Buk battery in the south far from the frontlines of the heaviest fighting which was occurring in the north and then have the crew shoot down a commercial airliner when, according to the JIT, there were no military aircraft in the area?
To accept the JIT’s narrative, you have to swallow a large dose of credulity, plus assume that the Russians are extremely incompetent, so incompetent that they would send a highly secret operation on a wild ride across the eastern Ukrainian countryside, ignoring easy routes to the target location (only about 70 miles from the Russian border) in favor of a route more than twice as long (about 150 miles) while passing through heavily populated areas where the convoy could be easily photographed.
Then, the Russians (or their rebel allies) would have placed the Buk system in a spot with marginal if any military value, misidentify a commercial airliner as some kind of military aircraft, and – with a sudden burst of efficiency and competence – shoot it down.
Russian Fears
After the MH-17 shoot-down, which killed 298 people, I’m told the Russian government did fear that somehow one of its field operatives might have been responsible and conducted an intensive investigation, including an inventory of its equipment, concluding that all its Buk missiles were accounted for.
I was also told that at least some CIA analysts shared the doubts about Russia’s guilt and came to believe that the MH-17 shoot-down was the work of a rogue and out-of-control Ukrainian team with the possible hope that the airliner was a Russian government plane returning President Vladimir Putin from South America.
Another fallacy of the JIT’s report is to assume that in July 2014 there were fixed lines of control between the Ukrainian government and the eastern Ukrainian rebels, something like the trenches of World War I. Indeed, the fluidity of the battle lines – and Ukraine’s ability to penetrate deep into rebel “territory” – was underscored by one of the SBU’s telephone intercepts published by the JIT on Wednesday.
According to the JIT, the conversation revealed a Ukrainian military convoy passing through the town of Sabivka, which is about five miles west of Luhansk, and moving toward an airport, possibly Luhansk’s airport south of the city. If that JIT account is correct, it shows that armed Ukrainian convoys could move almost at will across much of rebel “territory.”
And that would suggest that the assumption that the Buk missile must have been fired by Russians or Russian rebels because the firing location was inside rebel “territory” is suspect. According to Dutch intelligence (which really means NATO intelligence), the Ukrainians had several high-powered anti-aircraft missile systems in eastern Ukraine on July 17, 2014, the day MH-17 was shot down.
The JIT report makes no effort to explain where those Ukrainian Buks were positioned, presumably because Ukraine was part of the JIT investigation and thus had the right to veto the release of any information. While steering the Dutch, Australians and others toward blaming the Russians, Ukraine’s SBU was never going to allow evidence that would put the spotlight on Ukraine.
In addition, by issuing the report in video form, the JIT made it difficult for the public to focus on the logical inconsistencies in the findings, such as the alleged convoy route. Further, complicating the process of evaluation, JIT enhanced its presentation by mixing in real-looking computer graphics with images found on social media.
The world saw him as a friendly diplomat who called for peace and talked about the importance of future generations in his speeches, using phrases such as “the future of our children and their children”. Well, Shimon Peres went AWOL and we can all see what became of the political “peace” project, which reinforced the dominance of the Israeli occupation over the land and destroyed the chances of the Palestinians ever having a bright future, or even a viable state.
The truth is that Israel’s occupation could not have done without a politician like Peres, who climbed the ladder to a civil role that is usually reserved for retired generals holding leadership positions. He was forced, in the autumn of his life, to take a lead on Israeli diplomacy, even when a vengeful, racist and arrogant man – Avigdor Lieberman – was the foreign minister.
Peres was keen on being seen in the corridors of power in the guise of a peacemaker and he seemed to be a political visionary who spoke about the future in the way of a dreamer. He spoke tirelessly about the culture of forgiveness and he wanted his name to be associated with peace by means of multiple acts, including an eponymous centre dedicated to peace.
However, the reality speaks another language. Shimon Peres was always an example of those Israeli officials who ignore throughout their decades in prominent positions the rights of the Palestinian people, international humanitarian law and UN resolutions. He completely disregarded the Geneva Conventions and continuously and repeatedly violated them at the cost of innocent lives and human rights.
Peres was Israel’s president – head of state – during successive military offensives against the Palestinian people, such as the so-called Operation Cast Lead (2008-2009) against the civilians of Gaza. He never shied away from the atrocities committed by the Israel Defence Forces (IDF). Indeed, he often publicised them, even at the World Economic Forum in Davos. He gave his backing to the appalling attacks on civilians, and always sought to justify them. In this, he played a part in Israel’s propaganda machine; you will not find a single example of him being critical of the violations committed by the IDF.
As prime minister, Peres ordered the invasion of Lebanon in spring 1996, which was known as Operation Grapes of Wrath, during which Israeli troops shelled a UN base at which refugees were sheltering. The bloody massacre killed 106 civilians and UN peacekeepers from Fiji, and wounded many more. Peres remained as prime minister even after the massacre for which he was ultimately responsible. This set a precedent for him to act with impunity, as was the case with his predecessors and successors. The same base was attacked by Israel a decade later.
Two years before the Qana massacre, Peres was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, but for what exactly? For his role in reaching the Oslo Accords with a weakened and exhausted Palestinian leadership. The agreement promoted slogans of peace and security, but it lacked important terms such as human rights, fairness and justice for the Palestinian people. There is no need for me to explain, today, what Israel meant by peace in this agreement, because the reality on the ground is enough to explain what ultimately resulted from the implementation of the agreement. The occupation has been entrenched even further, with ongoing settlement expansion under an Apartheid-style government. The Palestinians, meanwhile, fell for it and were trapped; Israel restrains them with Oslo’s unfair clauses.
Peres was hailed as a visionary in his view of “The New Middle East”, which was the title of his 1995 book. The idea around which his theory revolved was that the volatile region should allow Israel to act as the intelligent brain with the others following its instructions. This is basically what one can conclude given the overtones of superiority that are consistent with the logic upon which the Israeli state was founded.
After that, Peres remained an implicit partner of the extreme right-wing Israeli governments made up of ministers who adopted neo-fascist policies and positions; he acted in his capacity as Israeli president in a manner that reinforced the programmes of such governments. The “patron of peace” did not object to the expansion of illegal Israeli settlements in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, despite international condemnation, including that from the “Quartet” – the UN, EU, US and Russian Federation.
Similarly, Peres colluded with the construction of the Apartheid Wall built by Israel on Palestinian land in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, despite the 2004 advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice in The Hague and the decision of the UN General Assembly (2005) against the construction of the structure. Peres also played a part in the suffocating siege, collective punishment and closure imposed on Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, despite the fact that this entails serious violations of international human rights law, the UN Charter and the logic of peace itself. All of this is just the tip of the iceberg of his support for the ethnic cleansing of Palestine throughout his long political career.
Within Israel he made no objections known to the series of racist laws introduced by the Israeli government or passed by the Knesset (parliament) since 2009. Nor did he oppose the measures to restrict independent human rights organisations and gag civil society organisations that are opposed to occupation policies and record and document Israeli government violations.
Despite all of this, Peres will be honoured after his death and will be glorified as a patron of peace. However, before believing what you see, hear or read about him in the mainstream, why not ask the Palestinians what they think about him, or the people of Lebanon? He may have been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, but Shimon Peres was far from peaceful.
Butchered by “Healthcare” is Robert Yoho’s plain-spoken account of how American medicine stopped being a profession and became an industry. 341 pages. Over a thousand references. Thirty-eight chapters.
“Screening Tests Are Useless”, on tests that find diseases that would never have hurt you. “The FDA Protects the Big Drug Companies”, on an agency funded by the companies it regulates. “The Journals’ Sins Are the Editors’ Sins”, on ghostwritten studies and captured peer review. “Opioids and ‘Pain Management’”, on how a generation was prescribed its way into addiction. “Prozac and Relatives” and “Antipsychotics Are Disastrous”, on what psychiatry does to adults and children. “Surgery: Money Before Patients”. “Failed Cancer Treatments”. “Futile CPR and Overprescribing”. “Billing Scams & Specialty Warfare”. “Hospitals Are Sharks”. Each with a Patient Tips section at the end on how to survive it.
If you have ever walked out of a doctor’s office with a prescription you didn’t ask for, or watched a parent put through a treatment that made them worse, this is the book you want on your shelf before the next appointment. … Full review
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Butchered by “Healthcare” is Robert Yoho’s plain-spoken account of how American medicine stopped being a profession and became an industry. 341 pages. Over a thousand references. Thirty-eight chapters.
