You don’t think Israel should be permitted to perpetuate its present modes of existence, do you?
Demonstrating once again the sniveling and shameless fealty to the wealthy that she and her husband have elevated to a high art over the last 30 years, Hillary Clinton wrote a letter to Israeli-American billionaire Haim Saban last July 6th in which she said that:
I know you agree that we need to make countering BDS a priority. I am seeking your advice on how we can work together across party lines and with a diverse array of voices to reverse this trend with information and advocacy, and fight back against further attempts to isolate and delegitimize Israel.
One of the key reasons for the extraordinary success of the Zionist lobby in America over the last six decades or so has been its ability to generate and repeat sound bites whose discursive purpose is not to enrich the breadth and texture of a debate on the Middle East, but rather to impoverish and attenuate it.
Long before GOP operative Frank Luntz began trawling focus groups for emotionally-charged terms capable of crippling the public’s rational faculties during political campaigns, the people at AIPAC and the many pundits in the mainstream media who faithfully carry their water (e.g. ex-AIPAC employee Wolf Blitzer) were already experts at this game.
Perhaps the most well-known of the tropes employed by Israel’s more fervent advocates is to challenge someone who is criticizing its policies if they support that state’s “right to exist”.
The beauty of the query, at least from the point of view of those that deploy it, is its seeming innocuousness. We all, especially Americans, have an instinctively positive relationship to the idea of “rights”.
And who would want to go on record as being against the idea of some one’s or some country’s “existence”?
So, when our interlocutor says, “Don’t you support Israel’s right to exist,?” most of us freeze and then retreat.
And that is exactly the effect desired by those posing the question.
But of course criticizing someone’s or some thing’s comportment is not the same as seeking their death and destruction. To portray these two activities as being one in the same is nothing short of absurd.
It is similarly absurd to speak—here again I am referring to the above-mentioned question/rejoinder—of a “right” existing in isolation from other values and concerns.
Every social or political “right” is necessarily constructed upon a matrix of tradeoffs. My “right to live” and my “right to pursue happiness” are necessarily and without exception mediated by a need to be cognizant of, and responsive to, the rights and needs of others around me.
So the real question when it comes to Israel (and every other national polity for that matter) is under what specific legal and moral conditions— both in relation to its geographical neighbors and all those subject to its forms of organized power—can and should be permitted and/or encouraged perpetuate its present modes of existence?
And this, of course, is the very this conversation that the ridiculously unspecific and often smugly issued challenge regarding Israel’s “right to exist” is specifically designed to head off.
Those issuing it understand all too well that, should such a detailed discussion ensue, Israel, with its ongoing record of ethnic-cleansing and deeply institutionalized racism, would not fare very well among most fair-minded people.
We are now witnessing the widespread and seemingly concerted re-deployment of yet another trope: one that holds that the central goal of the BDS movement is to cruelly effect the “delegitimization” of the state of Israel.
According to the Collins on-line dictionary, to delegitimize means “to make invalid, illegal, or unacceptable”.
On one level, then, the use of the term by Israel’s defenders is fairly accurate. Those in favor of BDS do indeed seek to invalidate and eventually render illegal and unacceptable the racist and expansionist practices of the Israeli government.
On another level, however, they are clearly exaggerating when, as they often do, they simplistically equate drive to dismantle odious racist practices with the destruction of the state itself (What does it say about a society when the abolishment of blood-based schemes of citizenship and legalized ethnic supremacy are widely viewed by its members as tantamount to annihilation?), something that all BDS statements of purpose explicitly disavow.
For anyone who has followed the Israel lobby’s actions over the years, such exaggerations and cynically purposeful conflations are, of course old—very old—hat.
What is much more interesting to me is the righteous indignation that almost inevitably accompanies Zionists’ mention of the carefully circumscribed “delegitimizing” efforts of the BDS movement.
After all, it is not as if delegitmization as a tactic is new to Zionism.
Indeed, a strong case could be made that it has been perhaps the single most ubiquitous and effective tool of the movement in the US and elsewhere over much of the last century.
And, generally speaking, its use in Zionist circles has not been marked with any of the thoughtful circumscription employed by the BDS movement in its campaign to modify Israeli behavior toward the captive Palestinians under its control.
Rather, it has usually conformed to the behavior implicit in a second, much more harsh, definition of the term found on Wikipedia which speaks of delegitimization as the process of classifying “groups into extreme social categories which are ultimately excluded from society” and an activity that provides “the moral and the discursive basis to harm the delegitimized group, even in the most inhumane ways”.
What am I talking about?
For example, how, back in the first decade of the 20th century, the influential British Zionist Israel Zangwill famously wrote “Palestine is a country without a people; the Jews are a people without a country”.
Could there be any more direct and forceful delegitmization of a people than to have them ontologically disappeared by another group covetous of their land?
When, after the fledgling Israeli government engaged (despite all you might have read or been told about spontaneously fleeing Arabs) in a well-orchestrated plan to terrorize Palestinians into leaving their houses and lands in the new state in 1948, a number of the same refugees came back and sought to reclaim their properties, the Ben-Gurion government quickly labeled these people as “infiltrators”.
Could there be any more eloquent case of delegitimization than describing people returning to their lawfully titled homes after being driven out of them at the point of gun and/or the demonstrable threat of summary assassination as “infiltrators”?
When, after capturing the so-called West Bank thanks to a war in 1967 that—again, despite all you might have read or been told—Israel clearly initiated, some of the occupied Palestinians, seeing absolutely no attempts on the part of the Israeli government to begin the process of territorial devolution, or to abide by international conventions governing the behavior occupying armies, began to pursue their UN-sanctioned right to engage in armed resistance to that occupation, they were quickly and universally tarred by Israel as “terrorists”, a term designed to morally delegitimize them and their struggle in the eyes of the world.
When a non-Jew criticizes Israeli political and military behavior in exactly the same manner and tone that he or she might use to criticize analogous Russian, Spanish, French or American comportments, many Zionists have little or no compunction about quickly labeling such a person an Anti-Semite, which is to say a person possessed by a malign moral sickness, rooted in a wholly irrational hatred, for which there is therefore no cure.
The goal in quickly slapping this toxic label on a person is to effectively remove him or her from the field of “respectable” debate, that is, to delegitimize them and the set of often quite valid and universally-grounded critiques they might be trying to bring to the public square.
Similarly, when a Jew decides (judging from the cases I have known, almost always after a period of gruelingly careful consideration), to reject the political ideology of Zionism, many of those still working within the fold of this school of thought will show little hesitancy in delegitimizing this person, and with it, his or her freely-arrived-at moral choice, by labeling them with the implicitly pathological label of “self-hating Jew”.
Even former US Presidents are not immune from organized Zionist campaigns of delegitimization.
In 2006, former President and Nobel Peace Prize winner Jimmy Carter published a book in which he described the obvious: that in the Occupied Territories of Palestine, Israel runs a confiscatory colonial enterprise wherein Jews and non-Jews enjoy vastly disparate privileges and legal protections.
What did Carter get for this simple and irrefutable statement fact?
An organized Zionist campaign of delegitimization that culminated in his being, at least to my knowledge, the first living ex-president to be forcibly barred from speaking to the assembled delegates of his own party’s presidential nominating convention.
In October of 1988 the comic actor and writer John Cleese donated $140,000 to the University of Sussex in England to finance a study on psychological projection and denial, describing those phenomena to be “frightfully important” to understanding many life conflicts, especially those that play out in realm of politics.
Looking at irony-free use of delegitimization in certain Zionist reactions to BDS, it seems safe to say that the famous jester’s intuitions about the importance of these phenomena in public life were spot on.
Thomas S. Harrington is a professor of Iberian Studies at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut and the author of the recently released Livin’ la Vida Barroca: American Culture in a Time of Imperial Orthodoxies.
March 16, 2016
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular | Israel, Palestine, UK, United States, Zionism |
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While coverage of Justin Trudeau’s recent visit to Washington was embarrassingly banal in its emphasis on “bromance” between Obama and the Canadian PM, at least it was accurate (in the limited sense valued by the dominant media), except for the 60 Minutes feature that comically confused a photo of Sex and the City star Kim Cattrall for Margaret Trudeau. However, one aspect of the reporting did stand out as both a lie and dangerous nationalist mythology.
A number of media outlets discussed Lester Pearson visiting Lyndon Johnson the day after he reportedly gave a “scathing speech on American involvement in Vietnam.” The Canadian Press described the former prime minister’s speech and meeting with the US president this way: “Pearson never visited again, after a famous 1965 dust-up. He’d spoken out against the Vietnam War, and Johnson grabbed him by the lapels and snarled: ‘Don’t you come into my living room and piss on my rug.’”
Pearson’s speech at Temple University in Philadelphia the night before he met Johnson is probably the most cited example of a Canadian leader (supposedly) opposing US militarism. Even generally sensible authors such as Linda McQuaig point to it as having “contributed to ending the U.S. war effort in Vietnam.”
But here’s what Pearson really said in Philadelphia:
The government and great majority of people of my country have supported wholeheartedly the US peacekeeping and peacemaking policies in Vietnam.
In Quiet Complicity: Canadian involvement in the Vietnam War, Victor Levant puts Pearson’s talk in proper context:
In his Temple speech, the Prime Minister did accept all the premises and almost all the conclusions of US policy. The chief cause of the escalation of the war in Vietnam, in Pearson’s view, was North Vietnamese aggression. ‘This situation cannot be expected to improve,’ he said, ‘until North Vietnam becomes convinced that aggression, in whatever guise, for whatever reason, is inadmissible and will not succeed.’ This had wider implications, since ‘no nation… could ever feel secure if capitulation in Vietnam led to the sanctification of aggression through subversion and spurious wars of national liberation.’ If peace was to be achieved, the first condition was a cease-fire, and this could happen only if Hanoi recognizes the error of its ways: ‘aggressive action by North Vietnam to bring about a Communist liberation (which means Communist rule) of the South must end. Only then can there be negotiations.’ Since US military action was aimed at resisting Hanoi’s aggression, the measures taken so far, including the bombing of the North, were entirely justified: ‘the retaliatory strikes against North Vietnamese military targets, for which there has been great provocation, aim at making it clear that the maintenance of aggressive policies toward the south will become increasingly costly to the northern regime. After about two months of airstrikes, the message should now have been received loud and clear.
Levant continues:
On the other hand, Pearson argued that continued bombing, instead of weakening Hanoi’s will to resist, might have the effect of driving it into an even more intransigent position. He therefore suggested, as a tactical move, that the United States consider a carefully timed ‘pause’ in the bombing: ‘there are many factors which I am not in a position to weigh. But there does appear to be at least a possibility that a suspension of such airstrikes against North Vietnam, at the right time, might provide the Hanoi authorities with an opportunity, if they wish to take it, to inject some flexibility into their policy without appearing to do so as the direct result of military pressure. If such a suspension took place for a limited time, then the rate of incidents in South Vietnam would provide a fairly accurate way of measuring its usefulness and the desirability of continuing. I am not, of course, proposing any compromise on points of principle, nor any weakening of resistance to aggression in South Vietnam. Indeed, resistance may require increased military strength to be used against the armed and attacking Communists. I merely suggest that a measured and announced pause in one field of military action at the right time might facilitate the development of diplomatic resources which cannot easily be applied to the problem under the existing circumstances. It could, at the least, expose the intransigence of the North Vietnam government.
Let’s further dissect Pearson’s “anti-war” position. Approximately three million Vietnamese died during the US war in Indochina, with about 100,000 killed during the US bombing of the North. To put Pearson’s Temple speech in the crassest terms possible, opposing the bombing of the North was a call to end 3.3% of the death toll.
When Pearson met Johnson the next day the president was mad because senior US foreign-policy planners were debating a pause in the bombing of North Vietnam (which would take place months later and when Washington restarted their bombing campaign Pearson publicly justified it). By speaking out Pearson effectively sided with Johnson’s opponents in the US administration after he enabled the bombing campaign. According to the leaked internal government documents known as the Pentagon Papers, in May 1964 Pearson agreed to Johnson’s request to have the Canadian Commissioner on the International Control Commission, which was supposed to enforce the implementation of the Geneva Accords and the peaceful reunification of Vietnam, deliver US bombing threats to the North Vietnamese leadership. In so doing Canada’s Nobel peace laureate actually enabled a serious war crime.
The story about Johnson challenging Pearson the next day only came to light a decade later, once US actions in Vietnam were widely discredited. In 1974 former Canadian Ambassador in Washington Charles Ritchie wrote: “The President strode up to him and seized him by the lapel of his coat, at the same time as raising his other arm to the heavens.” Ritchie reported Johnson saying, “you don’t come here and piss on my rug.”
While the ambassador’s description is almost certainly an exaggeration, subsequent commentators have further embellished Richie’s account. In one telling Johnson “grabbed Pearson by the lapels of his coat and violently shook him.”
An entertaining story perhaps, but simply not true, just as saying Lester Pearson opposed the war against Vietnam is a lie.
While logic and facts are irrelevant to nationalist myth-makers, it is critical that we understand the reality of our past if we wish to build a better future.
March 16, 2016
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | Canada, United States, Vietnam War |
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Very few US official figures are known for their sense of irony, least of all the Defence Secretary Ashton Carter, and it is unfortunate that he and others lacking appreciation of unintentional absurdity would be unable to find dark amusement in the contrast between two recent parallel events.
On February 25 the Defence Secretary and his uniformed glove puppet, Air Force General Breedlove, appeared in front of the House Appropriations Committee to provide justification for spending as much on military affairs as the next eight nations in the world. It is likely he chose Breedlove to accompany him rather than the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the highest ranking Pentagon officer, because Breedlove is the Supreme Allied Commander Europe – the man responsible for carrying out the policy of confrontation with Russia.
Carter is the man who declared last year that «the US military has helped to maintain peace and stability in [Asia] for 70 years», having had a slight lapse of memory about the US war in Vietnam from 1955 to 1973 in which 58,220 members of its military forces lost their lives while hundreds of thousands of innocent people in Vietnam and its unfortunate neighbours died in merciless US bombing onslaughts. Countless thousands of children were sentenced to infirmity and grotesque deformity by Washington’s use of hideous poisons intended to destroy trees other vegetation.
As for the glove puppet, Germany’s Der Spiegel recorded a year ago that «General Philip Breedlove, the top NATO commander in Europe, stepped before the press in Washington [and said] that Putin had once again ‘upped the ante’ in eastern Ukraine – with ‘well over a thousand combat vehicles, Russian combat forces, some of their most sophisticated air defence, battalions of artillery’ having been sent to Donbass. ‘What is clear,’ Breedlove said, ‘is that right now, it is not getting better. It is getting worse every day.’ German leaders in Berlin were stunned. They didn’t understand what Breedlove was talking about. And it wasn’t the first time. Once again, the German government, supported by intelligence gathered by the BND, Germany’s foreign intelligence agency, did not share the view of NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander…»
This was not surprising – because there was not a word of truth in any of his wild assertions.
At the very time Carter and Breedlove were speaking to the ever-receptive «support our troops» Congressional Committee («under your leadership, the men and women who serve in the US military answer the call time and again to leave their loved ones, put themselves in harm’s way, and execute challenging missions abroad») the count-down to test-firing a US Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) was under way.
The defence secretary told the American public that «It’s a competitive world out there. We compete with China, we compete with Russia, we compete with terrorists. And we have to win».
Minuteman missiles have nuclear warheads and are manufactured by the Boeing Company which is proud that «the Minuteman program established Boeing as a leader in large-scale system integration. Today, the combined heritage of the Minuteman programs of Boeing and Autonetics continues as Boeing Strategic Missile Systems (SMS), supporting the Air Force with system evaluation, testing, training and modernization».
The US arsenal of deployed nuclear weapons includes 450 Boeing ICBMs, each having an explosive power of 475 kilotons (Kt). The US bombs that totally destroyed the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were about 20 Kt.
On February 25 Boeing’s shares opened at 116.35 and went to a high of 117.60. Next day they reached 119.45. In early March they had increased to 123.49. It seems they’re taking off with comparable velocity to their Minuteman missiles, boosted by statements on the part of the military and their legions of supportive politicians that China and Russia are threatening the United States.
Washington fails to realise – simply refuses to understand – that the only thing wanted by Russia and China is that the United States should mind its own business and stay out of other nations’ affairs that do not concern it. Secretary Carter states that militarily «We compete with China, we compete with Russia» – but Russia and China don’t want to compete with the United States. They just want to progress and develop economically and socially and stay in their own backyards, with secure borders, while trading with as many countries as possible.
Neither Russia nor China has 700 military bases in over 40 countries round the world. Neither Russia not China attempts to vastly expand military alliances specifically designed to threaten the United States. Neither Russia nor China possess nuclear-armed Carrier Strike Groups or Amphibious Ready Groups of the type and strength that the US deploys threateningly around the coasts of sovereign nations who prefer to mind their own business.
The latest US move to threaten China is deployment to the South China Sea of the nuclear-armed aircraft carrier USS John C Stennis along with the guided-missile cruiser USS Mobile Bay and the guided missile destroyers USS Stockdale and USS Chung-Hoon. They and their many escort vessels arrived off China on 4 March to join the guided missile cruiser USS Antietam and its fleet of ancillary ships.
In another wonderfully ironic episode, just as this mighty US attack fleet was arriving to menace China, Defence Secretary Carter announced to the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco that «China must not pursue militarization in the South China Sea». Mystically, he observed that «Specific actions will have specific consequences» and when asked what these might be, he «told reporters the US military was already increasing deployments to the Asia-Pacific region and would spend $425 million through 2020 to pay for more exercises and training with countries in the region that were affected by China’s actions».
With good historical justification, China maintains that most of the islet chains and groups in the South China Sea are its sovereign territory, although some areas are claimed by Brunei, Vietnam, Malaysia and the Philippines. The United States has got nothing to do with these disputes. Washington has no treaties with any of these nations that would require military intervention in the event of one of them having a disagreement with another country.
The United States has no territory of its own closer than the Pacific island of Guam, where, according to the US Congressional Research Service, «Since 2000, the US military has been building up forward-deployed forces… to increase US operational presence, deterrence, and power projection». In other words, the US build-up is intended to confront China, which is now, understandably, being forced to increase its own military forces to be prepared for what might happen as a result of US «power projection».
Complementing the US muscle-flexing in the South China Sea, the indefatigable Breedlove explained why Washington is indulging in similar antics in Europe. Ignoring the fact that the insurgency against Syria’s government was energetically supported by the US, in training and equipping what it absurdly called «moderate rebel forces», thus contributing to massive destruction and creating a dire refugee problem, Breedlove told the Senate Armed Services Committee that the refugee crisis in Europe is all the fault of Russia. «Together», he declared, «Russia and the Assad regime are deliberately weaponizing migration… to break European resolve».
In a fit of fantasy Breedlove announced that Russia has «chosen to be an adversary and poses a long-term existential threat» to the United States and its allies, and emphasised that the Supreme Allied Command Europe, «is deterring Russia now and preparing to fight and win if necessary».
The US is deliberately and most aggressively threatening China and Russia. Its military representatives are making belligerent statements that are intended to implant fear in Moscow and Beijing.
But the immature bluster and bravado of such as Breedlove and Carter do not create fear in those they seek to intimidate. They create determination in such countries – the resolve to stand up to the menace presented by the incessant deployment of military force against them.
This is exactly what is happening at the moment, and the US may be in for some nasty surprises.
March 16, 2016
Posted by aletho |
Militarism, Timeless or most popular | China, NATO, Russia, United States |
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Now you see it, now you don’t. One minute Eagles of Death Metal frontman Jesse Hughes is speaking directly, clearly, honestly and spontaneously about what he organically saw with his own eyes, what he was feeling and thinking as suspicious security personnel behaved oddly the night before the Paris shooting. The next minute Hughes is pulling a “Michael Hess” post-9/11 style 180-degree artificial retraction on his testimony.
Of course the controllers realize that the first organic version of the story confirms foreknowledge on the part of security. That foreknowledge would fit perfectly with the lack of clear evidence of the official story version of the story. The retracted artificial NEW narrative attempts to conveniently remove this foreknowledge and suspicious behavior. But in the end notice that the actual odd behavior and the security personnel who were mysteriously not working that day is still factual, only now we’re asked to chalk it up to coincidence. Now where have we heard this before?
We’ve seen these classic about-faces in many false flag shootings in the past including assassinations of JFK and RFK and almost all false flag events including 9/11 where WTC 7 firsthand “explosions” eyewitness Michael Hess spilled the beans only to later then pull a 180 and completely changed his story. In the aftermath of the RFK assassination we have live recordings of detectives literally forcing a key witness to change her story in what is said to be part of MKUltra mind control experiments conducted on witnesses who told stories damning to the official version.
In every case we see people telling a genuine story from the bottom of their heart, and after apparently being intimidated or mind controlled (as with RFK witnesses) by the controllers to redact their testimony, all of a sudden put out comments that are completely and directly opposite of what they had previously stated.
No one should be fooled by these sudden retractions that realign the story back to the original fake reality we call the “official story”. Sorry mainstream media, but I wholeheartedly believe Mr Hughes’ ORIGINAL testimony. He said it when he was expressing his organic reality, free of coercion. Now it is crystal clear to see that he is under outside pressure and control to say otherwise. No one speaks their heart honestly and then without any coercion whatsoever suddenly changes their story. That is about as unnatural a behavior as you can get. We ONLY see this behavior in movies; usually it’s the part where the mafia-government agent threatens the witness. This behavior would never happen otherwise.
This is a perfect example of what we mean by distinguishing the full-dimensional, real, full and organic reality versus the 2-dimensional artificial world the control system needs you to believe. This thing is real and anyone who threatens the artificial reality they have worked so hard to create and maintain will be threatened or intimidated in some way as I’m sure Hughes now understands very clearly.
Hughes is no different than any other musician, actor or celebrity who all came under attack in Operation Chaos of the 1960s. Everyone should research Operation Chaos, a CIA counterculture operation where “anti-government” celebrities with powerful influence were systematically drugged, blackmailed, threatened, intimidated, silenced and murdered if they did not cooperate the same way that Eagles of Death Metal frontman Jesse Hughes is doing now.
So we can rest assured that Hughes had a talk with someone who told him that for his own safety, perhaps for the sake of the future of his band he better change his story. And clearly whatever he was told worked. His “story” now fits in comfortably with the official story just a couple of days later, mind you. He is no longer a threat to their narrative and their agenda, and for him all is well again. The threat of exposure of the globalist agenda, as far as the controllers are concerned, is now over – order, they hope, can now be restored.
Hughes told the Fox Business Network last week that six guards at the Bataclan venue never came to work the night of the attack, and “it seems rather obvious that they had a reason not to show up.”
On Friday, Hughes apologized: “I humbly beg forgiveness from the people of France, the staff and security of the Bataclan, my fans, family, friends and anyone else hurt or offended by the absurd accusations I made.”
“My suggestions that anyone affiliated with the Bataclan played a role in the events of November 13 are unfounded and baseless — and I take full responsibility for them,” he said in a statement.
Disturbingly, the 180-degree retraction sparks memories of MKUltra experiments and how a key Robert F Kennedy assassination witness was coerced and intimidated. As we saw with the RFK witness intimidation, Hughes later goes on to blame HIMSELF suggesting he was possibly delusional about his original beliefs:
Hughes blamed the lingering effect of the attack for his accusations that the security team may have been in on the attack.
“I’ve been dealing with non-stop nightmares and struggling through therapy to make sense of this tragedy and insanity. I haven’t been myself since Nov. 13,” he wrote. “I realize there’s no excuse for my words, but for what it’s worth: I am sincerely sorry for having hurt, disrespected or accused anyone.”
This apparently is the telltale sign of someone who is completely under their control. Blame yourself and talk about yourself like you are mentally struggling, thus wiping away any possible self-credibility you thought you had. Nobody in their right mind tells a clear story then blames themselves for being mentally unclear and in need of “therapy” for saying what they said.
Was Hughes under mind control when he put out this statement? Did someone write this retraction out for him and force him to put his name behind it? The possibilities are endless, but the important thing is to realize what is happening here.
Stories like these serve as indicators of who is under the control of the control system and who is not. The system will harass and destroy anyone who does not cooperate – plain and simple. For this reason it is important to remember that celebrities are nothing more than puppets for the ruling elite or they wouldn’t be celebrities to begin with.
The lesson to learn here is that if you are going to come against the system don’t expect the system to work for you. You must choose who your master will be and you cannot serve two masters. Either you stand for truth at any cost and that which is real, organic and genuine; or you stand with the deceivers who control the media, Hollywood, all the politicians and all the celebrities. Do not mistake that which is real and that which is artificial.
March 15, 2016
Posted by aletho |
Deception, False Flag Terrorism, Timeless or most popular | France, MKUltra, Operation Chaos, RFK |
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Prof. Tony Hall speaks out
To the Honourable Kent Hehr, Minister of Veterans Affairs c/oBen Charland Executive Assistant
Dear Minister Hehr;
I want to add my voice to that of my friend and associate John Duddy. Right now Canadian public policy on the issue of terrorism draws on the substance of the US 9/11 Commission Report, a notorious document outlining conclusions based on evidence obtained illegally through torture.
The Canadian government should not be formulating Canadian public policy on outrageously flawed foreign sources, especially those obtained through the infliction of torture. Right now this uncritical acceptance of the contents of the 9/11 Commission Report makes many of our federal public officials inside and outside Parliament complicit in illegal torture. This state of affairs is unacceptable. You should do what is necessary to veer away from this travesty that is presently making you and your fellow Liberal parliamentarians complicit in torture.
The whole Global War on Terror is known by millions of citizens worldwide to be based on an elaborate psychological operation whose objectives include the incitement of Islamophobia by the dissemination of false interpretations not only of 9/11, but also of other false flag terror events including the Ottawa shooter episode of Oct. 2014. This shooter episode, used as justification for the divisive and unacceptable Bill C-51, has never been properly investigated by a genuinely neutral third-party arbiter. Eye witnesses to the shooter event have given evidence to the CBC that does not conform to the RCMP version of events. Canadian citizens have no reason to trust the RCMP version of events.
To its credit the Liberal Party ran its most recent federal election campaign on a platform opposing the incitement and political exploitation of Islamophobia by Stephen Harper and his party. Mr. Harper rode to power riding the energy of a specious, hate-mongering campaign of disinformation on 9/11.
The Liberal government can rightfully be accused of carrying on Islamophobia in public policy as well as long as it continues to avert reckoning with the lies and crimes of 9/11. Canadians need a proper federal investigation of what is true and what is fraud when it comes to the originating and justifying event for the Global War on Terror in all its incarnations and iterations, including numerous subsequent false flag terror events right up to the present day.
Yours Sincerely,
Anthony Hall
Professor of Globalization Studies
University of Lethbridge
Editor In Chief, American Herald Tribune
Co_Host, False Flag Weekly News
March 15, 2016
Posted by aletho |
Deception, False Flag Terrorism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | 9/11, 9/11 Commission Report, Canada, Global War On Terror, United States |
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The annual grovel begins next week
I am reluctant to write two weeks in a row about Israel’s malignant influence over the United States but as the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) is meeting in Washington for its annual Summit beginning next Sunday some commentary would seem desirable. AIPAC’s website claims that its “… mission is to strengthen, protect and promote the U.S.-Israel relationship in ways that enhance the security of Israel and the United States. Our staff and citizen activists educate decision makers about the bonds that unite the United States and Israel and how it is in America’s best interest to help ensure that Israel is safe, strong and secure.”
That is, of course, a self-serving bit of nonsense. U.S. national security would be best enhanced by telling Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to take a hike and never come back. AIPAC is a political pressure group, not an educational foundation, which is purely a pretext exploited to secure it tax exemption. It uses every means, fair and foul, to influence and even intimidate the U.S. government and media to maintain the fiction that Israel is somehow America’s “best friend” and “closest ally” even though it is neither. Its objective is to maintain the flow of U.S. dollars from the U.S. Treasury while keeping the firewall of political protection in place to insulate Israeli politicians from the consequences of their own actions.
This year AIPAC, which has an annual budget of $70 million and more than 200 employees, is expecting 16,000 supporters and two thirds of Congress. It will be featuring a keynote speech by Hillary Clinton, which should be fascinating. As Hillary and her husband Bill already constitute a fully owned subsidiary of the Israel Lobby and New York financial services interests, which often amount to the same thing, her attendance might be regarded as de rigueur. And she has already pledged to invite Netanyahu to the White House during her first month in office while also promising to move the Israeli relationship to a “new level,” a concept that is both difficult to imagine and positively frightening in terms of what it might portend. Will she move the entire U.S. government to Jerusalem? Or only the Treasury Department?
Donald Trump will also be speaking at AIPAC, for the first time. Trump has rattled Israel’s friends in the U.S. by calling for an even handed role by Washington in Middle East peace negotiations and through his insistence that he does not need the money from Jewish mega-donors to run his campaign and “can’t be bought.” But he has also said “First of all, there’s nobody… that’s more pro-Israel than I am. OK. There’s nobody. I am pro-Israel. I was the Grand Marshall, not so long ago, of the Israeli Day Parade down 5th avenue. I’ve made massive contributions to Israel. I have a lot of — I have tremendous love for Israel. I happen to have a son-in-law and a daughter that are Jewish, OK? And two grandchildren that are Jewish.” So one should assume that he will talk fulsomely about his love of Israel but at the same time it has to be hoped that he will assert his independence when it comes to policy affecting the United States.
Netanyahu also regularly appears at AIPAC. Last year he used the platform provided to harangue the American public and the inside the beltway chattering class about the dangers posed by Iran while also exploiting the opportunity to do some serious fundraising in New York. The visits also frequently provide an opportunity to meet with and scold the President of the United States or to address Congress on how the U.S. should conduct its foreign policy. It is a given in Washington that Netanyahu will show up in the nation’s capital personally to kick some butt at least twice a year but it is also understood that Bibi will not fail to dish out some harsh criticism the rest of the time by way of the media, his own patented form of international extortion.
Nothing illustrates the unbridgeable abyss between the media/talking head vision of Israel promoted by the Israel Lobby and folks like Hillary and the real thing more than the recent embarrassments and indignities being delivered by the Netanyahu government, which AIPAC really represents. Benjamin Netanyahu is, to everyone’s surprise, not coming to AIPAC this year but will instead address the conference by video link. The visit was planned but canceled at the last moment and, per Netanyahu, the fault is that of the president of the United States who had reportedly said that he would not be available for a meeting due to the upcoming trip to Cuba.
The Obama Administration was genuinely puzzled, partly due to the fact that it first learned of the cancellation through a newspaper story rather than from the Israeli Embassy or Foreign Ministry. It was also astonished by the explanation given as it had indeed set up a presidential meeting at Netanyahu’s request in spite of a very tight schedule. The White House did not complain openly about the deliberate snub, but it was clear to everyone involved that Netanyahu was yet again sending a message to the Administration regarding who was in charge.
Netanyahu benefits from the fact that his tendency to ridicule critics makes many in the media reluctant to challenge his behavior, but when it became embarrassingly clear that he had been fibbing about why he was not coming to Washington he immediately resorted to Plan B, stating that he did not want to interfere in the presidential primaries currently underway. No one believed that argument either as Netanyahu has not hesitated to interfere in American politics in the past, notably when he made clear that he would prefer a Republican president in 2012 and appeared in ads in Florida endorsing Mitt Romney.
The White House meanwhile resorted to its own Plan B when confronted by a truculent Netanyahu. It first groveled a bit about how much it loves Israel and then expressed hope that Vice President Joe Biden, who was in the air on his way to Tel Aviv, would be able to calm the situation. Indeed, the original objective of the Biden trip turned out to be the real reason for the contretemps with Netanyahu. Netanyahu was miffed because the United States has hesitated to provide him with a no-strings-attached long term agreement to give Israel at least $5 billion dollars per year in military assistance, up from the current $3 billion.
To be fair to Netanyahu, the demand for more “assistance” was no secret. The Israelis had made it clear since they failed to stop the Iran nuclear deal that they would feel a whole lot better if Washington were to give them a lot more money. And it would have to be guaranteed cash, tied to a security package that would run for at least ten years.
Biden had been sent to help negotiate an agreement over the assistance, which had been stalled due in part to Israeli expectations that they might do better with a GOP Administration or Hillary if they wait a few months. Obama’s insistence that any deal would require the Israeli government to forego lobbying directly to congress for more cash also was a stumbling block. The President of the United States has thereby found himself in a situation engineered by Netanyahu in which he has to beg Israel to take more money with the only condition being that it not make trouble with the nation’s legislature. In return for the largesse, Israel would not be committed to do anything that would directly benefit the United States.
In the event, Biden’s role as a negotiating intermediary was unsuccessful and he wound up looking foolish so he too has decided to speak at AIPAC where he will undoubtedly say many unctuous things that no one will believe.
There are several things that can be done to address the wildly asymmetrical situation with Benjamin Netanyahu and AIPAC. First, it must be recognized that the United States and Israel are actually two separate countries with very little in the way of common interests. The notion that they have many mutual concerns is largely a myth. AIPAC, the principal purveyor of the myth, is an agent of Israel and should be compelled to register with the Foreign Agents Registration Act of 1938, which would require it to maintain transparency in terms of who funds it. It should also be stripped of its tax exemption as it is demonstrably not an educational foundation. Taking those two steps would enable the American public to understand just exactly what AIPAC represents.
Second, President Obama should cut off aid to Israel completely since it is uninterested in there being any quid pro quo for the billions that it receives. If Obama wants to be gracious, he can consider renewing the subsidy if and when Israel rolls back its illegal settlements in Jerusalem and on the Palestinian West Bank. If Israel is not interested in peace and not willing to reverse policies that many believe constitute war crimes then it will not receive any support of any kind from the United States.
The annual reappearance of AIPAC in Washington should remind everyone that there are those among us who regard any allegiance to the common interests that should bind together all Americans as secondary at best. In the case of Israel, billions in taxpayer money should not be regarded as a convenient mechanism to bribe a foreign state to behave. It is past time to cut the ties that bind to despicable rogues like Benjamin Netanyahu and to make clear to Americans politicians that dual loyalty to a state that has been nothing but trouble for the past twenty years will no longer be considered acceptable.
March 15, 2016
Posted by aletho |
Corruption, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | AIPAC, Benjamin Netanyahu, Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, Israel, United States, Zionism |
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Military invisibility technology could breach the laws of war if developed and put into use, according to former Royal Air Force (RAF) commodore and legal expert William Boothby.
In a report in the journal Weapons and the Law of Armed Conflict, due to be published by Oxford University Press in March, Boothby examines the legal concerns associated with advancing stealth technology.
He says although normal camouflage measures are lawful, some new technologies may break the rules of warfare.
Boothby fears that technology which deceives the enemy in certain ways could be illegal if one party uses stealth abilities to appear as a non-combatant by making his weapon invisible and uses that appearance to gain a deadly advantage.
“A combatant whose weapon is rendered invisible by its coating is arguably not complying with the minimal requirements [of carrying a weapon openly],” Boothby claims.
Such a move could leave the disguised combatant liable according to what the Geneva Convention terms a “prohibition of perfidy.”
Similar technology could be used to disguise a tank as a civilian vehicle or even render it invisible to surveillance equipment, an ability UK arms firm BAE Systems is currently researching in Sweden.
Boothby explained that a vehicle could be fitted with technology which beats an infrared scan by the enemy by making itself appear to have the same temperature as the background scenery.
“An object can be made to disappear into the background for an observer using an infrared sensor,” Boothby said.
“It can also be used to mimic the infrared reading of a different vehicle, so a tank looks like a civilian car, for example.”
Nations including the US already use a range of stealth technologies on their aircraft. Special ‘metamaterials,’ which bend or alter light, have become multimillion-dollar research areas.
March 14, 2016
Posted by aletho |
Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | Stealth |
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Tom Friedman thinks that if it weren’t for Hamas, Gaza would be another Singapore. If you look up Singapore you will find that it is an island city-state off southern Malaysia, with a population of about 5.5 million people and a GDP total of $452 Billion. It is a global financial center, a center for global commerce, and a financial and transportation hub. Its standings include: “Easiest place to do business” (World Bank) most “Technology-ready” nation, “top international meetings” city, city with “Best investment potential”, 2nd-most competitive country, 3rd-largest foreign exchange center, 4th-largest financial center, 3rd-largest oil refining and trading center and one of the top two busiest container ports since the 1990s. Singapore’s best known global brands include Singapore Airlines and Changi Airport, both amongst the most-awarded in their industry.
And there’s more. The Singaporean military is arguably the most technologically advanced in Southeast Asia, and none other than Israel made this possible. As a boy I remember my father, who at the time was still a general in the Israeli army, traveling to Singapore very frequently. Israeli Defense Force (IDF) commanders were tasked with creating the Singapore Armed Forces from scratch, and Israeli instructors were brought in to train Singaporean soldiers. As I write these words, Singapore still maintains strong security ties with Israel and is one of the biggest buyers of Israeli arms and weapons systems.
The Gaza Strip on the other hand is arguably the world’s largest concentration camp and is controlled entirely by Israel. For nearly seventy years it has been a refuge for poor, homeless refugees who were forced out of their homes and off of their land by Israel. The authorities in the Gaza Strip are not permitted to build an airport or seaport, and people have no access to trade or commerce; The UN declared the Gaza Strip as “food insecure” largely because of the siege that is imposed and strictly enforced upon it by Israel; the people of Gaza are victims of constant carpet bombings and massive attacks by the Israeli army. So, how exactly was Gaza going to be like Singapore? One has to wonder, was Thomas Friedman high when he wrote this, or is he really so poorly informed?
It was early in February 2016, when Friedman wrote this piece in the NY Times The piece is broad-stroked and superficial, and his main argument is that everyone is to blame for the collapse of the peace talks and the death of the Two State Solution. But what is particularly nauseating is the following sentence: “Hamas” Friedman writes, “devoted all its resources to digging tunnels to attack Israelis from Gaza rather than turning Gaza into Singapore.” Wow! Hamas prevented Gaza from becoming another Singapore! This means that Hamas at one point had the ability and the resources to create a paradise on earth in Gaza, to establish a major center for finance and commerce, but chose to spend all those resources to attack Israel instead.
So it was Hamas that imposed the siege on Gaza; Hamas that destroyed the water supply in Gaza making the water unfit for human consumption; Hamas is to blame for the massacres Israel committed in Gaza over the past seven decades; Hamas is the reason that Gaza is in ruins; Hamas is the reason that medical facilities cannot function, and that the basic most medicine is impossible to find; Hamas is the reason that schools are in ruins. Hamas is to blame for the fact that for seven decades the refugees have not been able to return to their homes and their land. Or perhaps Tom Friedman is just spewing all this nonsense because that is what liberal Zionists want to believe?
Hamas is certainly the excuse for all of this, but not the reason for any of it. Some tunnels, were built as traps for Israeli soldiers, and during the Israeli invasion into Gaza in 2014 they were used in several daring operations against the Israeli forces. However, the majority of the tunnels were used as a lifeline. They were used to bring in much needed aid, food, medicine, cash and they allowed people (like me for example) to travel in and out of the Gaza strip, albeit “illegally.” The reason Gaza is not Singapore is that Israel, with the aid of the Egyptian and the US governments and the complicity of the international community has created a concentration camp and implemented genocidal policies in Gaza.
While today Israel uses Hamas as an excuse for the murder, destruction and imprisonment of close to two million Palestinians in Gaza, this was not always the case. When Israeli commandos would enter Gaza and commit atrocities there in the early 1950s, the excuse was “infiltrators.” Arabs were infiltrating the newly established Jewish state and had to be stopped. These were refugees who wanted to exercise their right to return to their lands and their homes. But Israeli law made it illegal for them to exercise this right, and the Israeli army established a murder squad to deal with them. It was made up of young, bloodthirsty Jews, headed by the butcher-in-chief Ariel Sharon. They would enter the newly formed Gaza Strip and massacre Palestinians as punishment. Their thirst for Palestinian blood turned out to be unquenchable and they became an embarrassment even by Israeli standards, so this terror squad, called “Unit 101” eventually had to be dismantled.
Later on the excuse for the killing was no longer “infiltrators” but “Fedayeen” or fighters, and later on the name changed again and Israel used the term “terrorists.” The murderous attacks on Gaza continued, many of them led by Ariel Sharon who rose in the ranks of the Israeli Army and would command larger forces during these raids thus increasing the death toll. In recent years Israel has been using Hamas as an excuse for its genocidal policies against the people of Gaza. The firepower utilized by Israel today is the kind of which Sharon could have only dreamed: In 2014 Israeli fighter jets executed six thousands fly overs dropping millions of tons of bombs on Gaza, and that was prior to the massive ground invasion. Yes, Sharon may be dead but his legacy lives on.
So, perhaps Thomas Friedman can explain further how Hamas is at fault that Gaza isn’t another Singapore? Hamas was not yet created when Israel decided that people in Gaza would always live among death and ruins. And while it is true that Hamas is dedicated to fighting Israel, and it is true that Gaza has brave fighters, Tom Friedman might be interested to know that in spite of seven decades of oppression and violence and in spite of the fact that Gazans are forced to live in a concentration camp, people in Gaza have one of the highest literacy rates in the world. Gazans are some of the finest teachers, writers, poets, engineers, doctors and therapists. They are all Gazans, all dedicated to making Gaza livable for its children.
Friedman lays the blame for the death of the “Peace process” on everyone: “So many people stuck knives into the peace process it’s hard to know who delivered the mortal blow.” Indeed? It really isn’t that hard to see the massive building of Jewish only cities and towns, shopping malls and highways in the West Bank. It isn’t that hard to see the ethnic cleansing that goes on in East Jerusalem, spreading Jewish only communities at the expense of Palestinians. And it really isn’t hard to see the ongoing Jewish expansion on Palestinian land taking place in the Naqab desert, the Galilee and everywhere else that Palestinians reside. It certainly isn’t hard to see how Israel has been turning all of Palestine into a single Jewish Apartheid state.
“Bibi won” Friedman writes, “He’s now a historic figure — the founding father of the one-state solution.” As much as Bibi Netanyahu would love for this to be true, it isn’t. Israel’s Labor governments established the One State solution when Bibi was still a boy. The foundations for a single apartheid state in Palestine were laid when Israel occupied the lion’s share of Palestine in 1948, and then it was cemented and made permanent when Israel completed the occupation of Palestine in June 1967.
Miko Peled is an Israeli writer and activist living in the US. He was born and raised in Jerusalem. His father was the late Israeli General Matti Peled. Driven by a personal family tragedy to explore Palestine, its people and their narrative. He has written a book about his journey from the sphere of the privileged Israeli to that of the oppressed Palestinians. His book is titled “The General’s Son, Journey of an Israeli in Palestine.” Peled speaks nationally and internationally on the issue of Palestine. Peled supports the creation of a single democratic state in all of Palestine, he is also a firm supporter of BDS.
March 14, 2016
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Timeless or most popular | Gaza, Hamas, New York Times, Palestine, Thomas Friedman, Zionism |
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Haaretz’s original headline for an article by Amitai Etzioni, a noted Israeli-American academic.
SEATTLE — Haaretz is famed in many circles as Israel’s leading liberal newspaper. In 2011, the New Yorker’s managing editor, David Remnick, deemed it “easily the most liberal newspaper in Israel and arguably the most important liberal institution in a country that has moved inexorably to the right in the past decade.”
The newspaper is part of an Israeli journalistic dynasty founded in the 1930s by Gershom Schocken, a Jewish-German immigrant. His son, Amos, is now publisher. Remnick had these glowing things to say about Amos:
“He is … a singular force in Israeli journalism on issues such as free speech, equal rights for Israeli Arabs, the independence of the Supreme Court, and the exposure of military abuse.”
However, analysis of two recent opinion columns published by Israel’s “most important liberal institution” reveals another side to the story.
Distinguished Israeli-American academic calls for annihilation of Lebanon
Amitai Etzioni, a noted Israeli-American academic, published an alarming piece last month arguing that Israel should not endanger its own troops, who he claimed would be expected to identify and dismantle many of Hezbollah’s 100,000 rockets before they could be fired. Rather, Israel should use a devastating weapons system that would save Israeli lives while annihilating large swaths of territory in which Lebanese civilians live.
Etzioni, 87, is the University Professor at George Washington University, where he serves as director of the Institute for Communitarian Policy Studies, a think tank. The noted sociologist is best known for his advocacy of communitarianism, an academic theory which, in some ways, is a perfect distillation of Israeli attitudes toward individual rights. Etzioni argues that while such rights are important, they must be carefully calibrated so they don’t interfere with the interests of society as a whole. This is precisely the way in which the Israeli national security state persuades citizens that protecting their security is a greater good that justifies sacrificing the interests of the individual.
Etzioni’s Haaretz op-ed was originally titled, “Should Israel Flatten Beirut to Destroy Hezbollah’s Missiles?” That title has been significantly softened to tone down the genocidal content of the piece itself; it now reads: “Should Israel Consider Using Devastating Weapons Against Hezbollah Missiles?”
From this brief excerpt, perhaps you can judge for yourselves which title is more accurate and why it was changed:
“I asked two American military officers what other options Israel has. They both pointed to Fuel-Air Explosives [FAE]. These are bombs that disperse an aerosol cloud of fuel which is ignited by a detonator, producing massive explosions. The resulting rapidly expanding wave flattens all buildings within a considerable range.
Such weapons obviously would be used only after the population was given a chance to evacuate the area. Still, as we saw in Gaza, there are going to be civilian casualties.”
Etzioni vastly understates the lethality of what are otherwise known as FAEs or thermobaric weapons. The Guardian quotes a clinical description of their impact from the Marine Corps Gazette :
“Thermobaric, or ‘fuel-air’ weapons … form a cloud of volatile gases or finely powdered explosives. ‘This cloud is then ignited and the subsequent fireball sears the surrounding area while consuming the oxygen in this area. The lack of oxygen creates an enormous overpressure. … Personnel under the cloud are literally crushed to death. Outside the cloud area, the blast wave travels at some 3,000 meters per second. … As a result, a fuel-air explosive can have the effect of a tactical nuclear weapon without residual radiation. … Those personnel caught directly under the aerosol cloud will die from the flame or overpressure. For those on the periphery of the strike, the injuries can be severe. Burns, broken bones, contusions from flying debris and blindness may result. Further, the crushing injuries from the overpressure can create air embolism within blood vessels, concussions, multiple internal hemorrhages in the liver and spleen, collapsed lungs, rupture of the eardrums and displacement of the eyes from their sockets.’”
Russia used FAEs in Chechnya, and the United States employed them in Fallujah. Some experts on the laws of war have declared the use of FAEs a war crime. In 1992, Michael Ratner, founder of the Center for Constitutional Rights and one of the world’s leading legal experts on these matters, noted that FAEs violate international law:
“The use of asphyxiating gases is prohibited. The U.S. violated this by its use of fuel-air explosive bombs on Iraqi frontline troops; these bombs are terror bombs which can burn the oxygen over a surface of one or two square kilometers, destroying human life by asphyxiation.”
He further noted that FAEs are “outlawed by the Hague and Geneva Conventions, which prohibit the use of weapons causing unnecessary harm to combatants.”
It should’ve been clear to Haaretz editors that they were publishing an op-ed that not only urged Israel to commit war crimes in the next Lebanon war, but that these weapons would also open Israel to charges of genocide given the extraordinarily high death toll that would ensue.
The Israeli Defense Forces itself has developed a similar military strategy for its attacks against Hezbollah. The Dahiya Doctrine, developed by Maj. Gen. Gadi Eisenkot, who would go on to become chief of staff of the IDF, argued that Israel must wreak maximum damage on the civilian neighborhoods of Beirut in which Hezbollah was based. Such devastation would force the Islamist group to pay a maximum price for its attacks on Israel, he asserted. This is precisely what happened during the 2006 Lebanon war, when the Shiite neighborhood of Dahiya, in which Hezbollah’s leadership took refuge, was reduced to rubble. Over 1,000 Lebanese civilians were killed in that conflict.
The strategy appears to have had little deterrent effect. Hezbollah now possesses more than double the rockets it did in 2006 and poses an even fiercer threat to Israeli targets when the next war breaks out.
Etzioni’s claim that FAEs would be used only after civilians were warned to evacuate the target area is pure sophistry. Civilians in war zones have no shelter or refuge. There is nowhere they can go to escape the military onslaught. This has been proven repeatedly both in Gaza and Lebanon.
Israel makes no attempt on the battlefield to provide sites where civilians may shelter safely. It has repeatedly attacked locations such as U.N. schools, killing massive numbers of civilians. In Lebanon, it has attacked convoys of civilians fleeing combat zones and U.N. facilities where civilians have taken refuge. Faced with such a dilemma, many civilians would prefer to take their chances and remain in their homes.
Further, Israel’s attempts at “warning” civilians are feeble at best: The IDF sends targeted communities SMS messages and drops fliers from airplanes warning them to flee. How does a frightened resident whose cellphone battery has died or who is too frightened to venture out of his or her home learn about Israeli orders to flee?
The most cruel and calculating portion of Etzioni’s essay is his call for Israel to recruit pro-Israel “experts” to join war games in which they would be called upon to use these diabolical weapons:
“ … The time to raise this issue is long before Israel may be forced to use FAEs. One way this can be achieved is by inviting foreign military experts and public intellectuals, who are not known to be hostile to Israel, to participate in war games in which they would be charged with fashioning a response to massive missile attacks on Israeli high rise buildings, schools, hospitals, and air bases.
In this way, one hopes, that there be a greater understanding, if not outright acceptance, of the use of these powerful weapons, given that nothing else will do.”
This would supposedly condition the world for future Israeli use of FAEs. Etzioni is essentially calling for pre-approval of war crimes. These enablers would be offering Israel a kind of “Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval” for genocide.
Etzioni: Falsification of historical memory and Nakba denial
Amitai Etzioni has long served as a mouthpiece for the whitewashing of Israel’s moral sins. In March 2014, he wrote an op-ed in the Daily Forward in which he attempted to recount the history of the village where his family settled after fleeing Germany in 1935 and arriving in pre-state Israel:
“In 1935, as Nazi influence grew, my family escaped, joining four other families of the same background to form a new settlement in Palestine in 1936. They named it Kfar Shmaryahu (it’s next to Herzliya). The five families… cleared the rocks, drilled a water well, paved a road before erecting a bunch of modest homes and farming the land. All this was done on previously unoccupied land — land that was lying fallow next to an Arab village called Sidney Alley. …
The relationship between my parents’ village and Sidney Alley varied over the years, ranging from comfortable to tense. However, as far as I recall, no shots were fired, and most assuredly, no one was driven off land or out of a home. Those who lived unmolested in Sidney Alley until 1948 left at that point. We were told that they took with them keys to our homes that they somehow acquired, and had agreed among themselves who will get which of our homes after the seven Arab militaries that attacked the weak and newborn Israel defeated it. I never saw any evidence that supports this tale, but I know firsthand that no Israeli forces drove out the people of Sidney Alley.”
Soon after Etzioni’s account was published, Maher Mughrabi, a Palestinian-Australian foreign news editor for the Australian Age, exposed how woefully inadequate Etzioni’s account and his memory are. In a Letter to the Editor of the Forward, which he also shared with me via email, he wrote:
“Etzioni recalls the neighbouring village’s name as ‘Sidney Alley.’ This surely must strike anyone with an ear for Arab idiom as improbable. … However, if you think a bit about what this place might be called in Arabic, it turns out the mosque is of Sidna (or Sayyidna, meaning ‘our lord’) Ali. And it turns out that if you are not Etzioni, you can remember a history of displacement from this place.”
The mosque of the ethnically-cleansed Palestinian village of Sidna
Further, the Palestinians of Sidna Ali were indeed driven from their homes not just by “shots fired” but by cold-blooded murder.
Zochrot, an Israeli NGO dedicated to memorializing Palestinian villages destroyed in the Nakba, offers a fuller account of the events leading to the tragedy of Sidna Ali. A family in the village owned a dairy and orchard on its outskirts. Their Jewish tenant invited Lehi militants to train on the farm. Someone appears to have reported this to British authorities, who then raided the farm, resulting in the killing of four Jewish militants and a commander.
Villagers of Sidna Ali drawing water from communal well (source: Palestine Remembered)
To exact revenge, Lehi returned to Sidna Ali, captured five family members, lined them up against a wall and executed them. The killers deliberately permitted a few members of the family to flee so they could spread the word of the massacre among the Palestinian population. At that point, many remaining villagers saw the handwriting on the wall and fled in terror (this was in the period before the war and ensuring mass expulsions had happened). Those who did not flee were forced to flee later by menacing gunfire sprayed by Jewish forces.
You can see that one of America’s towering academic figures leaves much to be desired when recounting Israeli history. If he wrote as sloppily in his own field as he does on these subjects, he would be labelled a fraud. But instead, the pages of Israel’s leading liberal newspaper are opened wide for him to call for mass murder against Lebanese civilians.
One has to wonder how a newspaper editor decides a contribution from Etzioni about Hezbollah is even relevant. He is not a philosopher of war or ethicist like Asa Kasher or Princeton’s Michael Walzer. He is not an expert on military strategy or Israeli Defense Forces affairs. What is Etzioni’s expertise on the subject?
And even if he had expertise, how does one justify publishing an op-ed calling for genocide? It would appear that Haaretz has, in some fundamental way, gone off the rails.
Haaretz literary editor approves of rape in pursuit of artistic ‘excellence’
This becomes even more clear in the second example of a woefully misguided piece published by Haaretz. In 2013, a popular Israeli entertainer, Eyal Golan, was investigated for allegedly raping teenage girls. His father was later convicted of pimping girls to his cronies, though no charges were ever brought against Golan. In response to an Israeli TV interviewer excoriating him last month for his dissolute personal life, he responded that he made no claim to be a moral exemplar or, as he put it, “the Pope.” On the other hand, and paradoxically, he called himself a “moral man.”
Eyal Golan enjoying the lush life with female admirer
On March 5, Benny Ziffer, the newspaper’s literary editor, responded to a particularly pugnacious recent Israeli TV interview with Golan by a noted female program host. Ziffer’s column launched a crusade not just to redeem Golan’s reputation, but to claim that it is the right of all artists to engage in antisocial behavior (like raping young girls) as long as they do so for their art. Further, he claims that societies which persecute such creative souls are suppressing freedom of expression and the artistic impulse (my translation is from the Hebrew piece):
“Cultured nations know that in order for art to exist and creativity to flourish, artists must enjoy moral privileges and freedoms not available to others. Even tyrants harboring no tolerance for individual freedom understand that artists must be permitted to live a Bohemian existence; and that this is part of the unwritten agreement between a society and its artists, who are offered extensive latitude under ethical norms which permit wild behavior, especially in the sexual realm.
Artists from Goethe to Eyal Golan hover intoxicatedly in the air above the heights of artistry and creativity. They must feel most intensely those things that are considered the basest sexual urges in life, like intercourse with young female admirers. Without this, there would be no creativity, despite all the pain this is liable to cause these young women, whose lives may have been damaged.”
The journalistic crime committed here is rendered even more severe by the fact that the author is neither freelancer nor columnist, but senior editorial staff.
Again, one must wonder what Ziffer’s editor was thinking when he or she approved such journalistic trash for publication. Besides the claims in this passage being pure intellectual bunkum (since when did Goethe ever justify raping young girls in order to delve deeper into his artistic impulses?), did no one at the paper stop to consider the backlash that would stem from this rape apologia?
Haaretz readers have started a petition (Hebrew) calling for the firing of Ziffer. It’s doubtful this will have any impact on Haaretz publisher Amos Schocken, whose approach to criticism is to dismiss it with hurt indignation.
I can attest to this personally. In 2012, the newspaper published an expose about Israeli museums which did not offer Arabic-language inscriptions for exhibits, as required under a law guaranteeing multi-lingual accessibility for publicly-funded cultural institutions. I wrote to the reporter, asking why Haaretz itself never published in Arabic. I argued that doing so would offer a pioneering statement from the nation’s leading liberal daily about the critical importance of embracing the Arabic-speaking Palestinian minority. I suggested, to that end, Haaretz consider publishing an Arabic-language supplement.
Instead of a response from the reporter, Schocken himself replied disdainfully that if I thought such a project was so important that I should find him funding to support it. It was a response, doubtless to say, I found disingenuous, as it wasn’t my job to secure investments in his newspaper.
The following year, Haaretz published its first article in Arabic, an editorial urging Palestinians to “get out and vote.” Ironically, many members of the Palestinian minority do not vote precisely because the institutions of the Jewish majority (like Haaretz ) are largely closed to them. Generally they enjoy second or third-class rights within society, thanks in part to the patronizing approach of elite Ashkenazi Jewish institutions like it.
Haaretz refuses to publish Ziffer’s column in English edition
It should come as no surprise that Ziffer’s op-ed was not translated into English or published in the paper’s English edition. The editors there perhaps had a better understanding of their own readers and determined there was no need to inflame them. But in truth, this is a form of self-censorship. If you want to publish misogynist trash, why only publish it in Hebrew? Why not proclaim proudly to the rest of the English-speaking world what your journalistic values are?
If, as David Remnick argues, Haaretz is the best of Israeli journalism, what does that tell us about Israeli society in general and its Fourth Estate in particular? It tells us that the weight of being a garrison nation in a state of perpetual war has corroded whatever liberal values Haaretz may have once championed. It tells that no matter how much higher are the standards Haaretz upholds than those of their competitors, they are indelibly stained by historical sins of the their society.
Breaking: Managing editor cancels Ziffer’s weekly column
When reached for comment on this story, Aluf Benn, the newspaper’s managing editor, declined, but he did allude to a major forthcoming development.
Shortly thereafter, on Wednesday, Israeli business news site Globes reported than Benn had decided to cancel Ziffer’s weekly column in response to the March 5 piece.
In his final column, published on Wednesday, Ziffer apologized for what he wrote. He added, oddly, that it was all part of a twisted game he played on behalf of his audience:
“I entered into the role of provocateur [Author’s Note: literally, “playful devil”], and the game was good and yielded rewards. The audience was enthusiastic and begged for more and more columns in which I played the the game of provocateur. I reaped success. Together with the intoxication of success, this blurred within me the boundaries between the game and reality.”
Haaretz later published Ziffer’s apology in its English edition. But without the context of the original article (published only in Hebrew), readers of the English edition have no idea what “monstrosity” Ziffer is apologizing for. And that’s probably the way Haaretz’s editors prefer it. Rather than being fully transparent, it has the effect of further concealing the original offense.
Still, Ziffer remains as literary editor of the paper. He will also continue writing other articles for the paper. Presumably, Benn believes that by giving Ziffer a lower profile and “disappearing” his byline, readers — especially female readers — will be able to forget this disaster. In the past heyday of Israeli macho behavior, perhaps Haaretz could’ve gotten away with this. But can you imagine the Washington Post or New York Times in this day and age permitting its literary editor to write such swill and not firing him? The very thought seems preposterous.
March 14, 2016
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | Amitai Etzioni, dDahiya Doctrine, Haaretz, Hezbollah, Israel, Lebanon, Zionism |
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It was quite different in the 1990s — early 2000s. Significant improvements were achieved in the relations between the US and Russia, including in the sphere of military cooperation. Those days there was no doubt the Russia-US relationship had a great future.
The military met each other as friends and allies to discuss what could be done to boost cooperation and prepare for joint actions to counter terrorist threats. Then the process got stalled. The relations deteriorated. All the efforts applied went down the drain. What really caused it to happen? Today US foreign policy old timers and savvies have something to say about it.
Consistent disregard for Russia’s interests by the US, as well as Washington’s dismissive attitude towards Moscow in the post-Cold War era, have led to strained relations between the two, former US Defense Secretary William Perry told The Guardian on March 9.
Perry said that a complete lack of regard for Russia as a power or a dialogue partner from Washington officials played a crucial role in this reversal.
According to the opinion of former US Defense Chief, reckless expanding NATO, making plans to deploy a missile defense system in Eastern Europe, and supporting the so-called «color revolutions» in former Soviet republics were all steps in the wrong direction, which were all taken without ever even considering Russia’s concerns.
Perry also denounced the George W. Bush administration’s decision to station a US missile defense system in eastern European countries – particularly in Poland. He also emphasized that the US support of the so called «color revolutions», was another serious blow to bilateral relations between Moscow and Washington.
Jack F. Matlock Jr., ambassador to the USSR from 1987 to 1991 and the author of the book titled Reagan and Gorbachev: How the Cold War Ended, has his own views on the matter.
According to him, after the USSR ceased to exist the United States insisted on treating Russia as the loser. The former ambassador writes that Russian President Vladimir Putin was the first foreign leader to call and offer support when terrorists attacked the United States on Sept. 11, 2001. He cooperated with the United States when it invaded Afghanistan, and he voluntarily removed Russian bases from Cuba and Cam Ranh Bay in Vietnam. In return, he got further expansion of NATO in the Baltics and the Balkans, and plans for American bases there; withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty; invasion of Iraq without UN Security Council approval; overt participation in the «color revolutions» in Ukraine, Georgia and Kyrgyzstan; and then, probing some of the firmest red lines any Russian leader would draw, talk of taking Georgia and Ukraine into NATO.
Speaking at the meeting of the Committee for the Republic, an organization established by former diplomats and government officials, Mr Matlock went on to lambaste Obama for using the State of the Union to personally attack Russian President Putin.
«His comments were totally out of place», Matlock said. He also attacked Congress for their own interference in passing the Magnitsky Act. «The Russians are reacting to a policy of insufferable arrogance and humiliation», he said. He criticized the whole policy with regard to Ukraine and «regime change». «If you can think that you can solve all problems by removing a leader, you’re wrong. Didn’t we learn the lessons from Iraq?» asked the former ambassador.
Henry Kissinger is clearly still one of America’s foremost foreign policy gurus who served as National Security Advisor and later concurrently as United States Secretary of State in the administrations of presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford. He believes that instead of trying to break Russia, America’s goal should be to «integrate» it into the international order taking Moscow’s interests into account.
According to the US foreign policy vet, that would begin with recognition of the realities of Russian power and interests, treating Russia like the great power that it is, and on that foundation exploring «whether their concerns can be reconciled with our necessities».
The opportunities to change the relationship for the better are here to stay.
On March 3, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov stressed that a policy of confrontation with the West is not something that Moscow wants. «We are not seeking confrontation with the United States, or the European Union, or NATO. On the contrary, Russia is open to the widest possible cooperation with its Western partners. We continue to believe that the best way to ensure the interests of the peoples living in Europe is to form a common economic and humanitarian space from the Atlantic to the Pacific, so that the newly formed Eurasian Economic Union could be an integrating link between Europe and Asia Pacific», the Russian foreign policy chief wrote in an article.
US candidates in the presidential race (except Republican candidate Donald Trump), as well as many in the Obama administration, find the idea of trying to work with Russia appalling when they speak in public. There is a reason to believe they don’t entirely share that view, but at least that’s what they say. No matter who wins in November, a new president will have to shape new policy on Russia. He or she will have to make decisive choices. It presupposes immense responsibility. The Americans are normally reluctant to admit mistakes, but it’s important to understand what is the root of the problem. That’s when the opinion of foreign policy gurus stands one in good stead.
March 13, 2016
Posted by aletho |
Militarism, Progressive Hypocrite, Timeless or most popular | NATO, Obama, Russia, United States |
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When it comes to The City of London, the term ‘tax haven’ is not describing all that it should. It doesn’t just shield the mega-wealthy from paying their fair dues it goes further and offers a departure from the rule of law as you would know it. Secrecy is its raison d’être. These secrecy laws do not benefit the local people living in its jurisdiction but only those individuals and corporations with enough money and with something to hide.
The reality is that the City of London caters for those above the law, it operates on the basis of bypassing democratic society as a whole. This has come about over time where an extraordinary ‘gentlemens agreement’ has stood the test of time. The head of state and his/her governments have the need of large loans for wars and the like, the City, in exchange for such commodity has extracted certain privileges the rest of the population do not enjoy. The end result over the centuries is that it now has its own financial jurisdiction to do pretty much as it pleases.
A ‘watchman’ sits at the high table of parliament and is its official lobbyist sitting in seat of power right next to the Speaker of the House who is “charged with maintaining and enhancing the City’s status and ensuring that its established rights are safeguarded.” The job is to maintain order and seek out political dissent against the City.
The City of London has its own private funding and will ‘buy-off’ any attempt to erode its powers; any scrutiny of its financial affairs are put beyond external inspection or audit.
For over a hundred years the Labour party tried in vain to abolish the City of London and its accompanying financial corruption. In 1917, Labour’s new rising star Herbert Morrison, the grandfather of Peter Mandelson made a stand and failed, calling it the “devilry of modern finance.” And although attempt after attempt was made throughout the following decades, it was Margaret Thatcher who succeeded by abolishing its opponent, the Greater London Council in 1986.
Tony Blair went about it another way and offered to reform the City of London in what turned out to be a gift from god. He effectively gave the vote to corporations which swayed the balance of democratic power away from residents and workers. It was received by its opponents as the greatest retrograde step since the peace treaty of 1215, Magna Carta. The City won its rights through debt financing in 1067, when William the Conqueror acceded to it and ever since, governments have allowed the continuation of its ancient rights above all others.
The City effectively now stands as money launderer of the world, the capital of global crime. It is the heart and engine of the offshore haven, with Jersey, Guernsey and the Isle of Man its european collection centres, the caribbean and others hoovering up billions of American dollars from all over the globe. Whilst there are good and legal reasons for offshore accounts, It has a dark and shadowy client list; terrorists, drug barons, arms dealers, politicians, corporations and companies, millionaires, billionaires – most with something to hide.
The Independent newspaper reported last July that The City of London is the money-laundering centre of the world’s drug trade, according to an internationally acclaimed crime expert. In addition, every notable financial expert now agrees that due to incredibly lax financial laws by the British government, the London property market is built largely on the laundered money of crime from all over the world involving hidden tax havens, most of which are British.
Her Majesty’s British Overseas Territories and Crown Dependencies make up around 25 per cent of the world’s tax havens, which are now blacklisted by the European Commission and now ranked as the most important player in the financial secrecy world.
Tax havens featured on the EC’s blacklist of June last year include Anguilla, Bermuda, the British Virgin Islands, the Cayman Islands, Montserrat and the Turks and Caicos Islands to name just a few and each is inextricably linked to the City of London’s crime offices.
The consequence of its operations is that money laundering is now at such levels and so widespread that the authorities have recently admitted defeat in its battle of attrition by stating openly it has been completely overwhelmed and lost control. Keith Bristow Director-General of the UK’s National Crime Agency said just six months ago that the sheer scale of crime and its subsequent money laundering operations was “a strategic threat” to the country’s economy and reputation and that “high-end money laundering is a major risk”.
In the meantime, the City of London remains politically immune and acts with criminal impunity as it sucks up what is now understood to be trillions in illicit and ill-gotten gains. Bankers and hedge-fund operators dodge the authorities with particular skill sets honed over a millennia, especially HMRC.
It is of no coincidence that this small area of britian, just 1.2 square miles has the highest pay in the land and the third lowest council tax for property anywhere in the United Kingdom. A £20 million mansion costs less than £1,000 a year in council tax.
At the last census, its population stood at just 7,325, its employees stand at 414,600, nearly 40 per cent of them in financial services. Nearly 17,000 businesses are registered there, 2,700 are finance and insurance based and just over 45 per cent are foreign owned entities. HSBC’s organisation is the ninth largest bank in the world following four Chinese and four American banks located down the road in Canary Wharf.
This tiny island haven, with its own borders and police force sits within the Isles of Britain as an international hub, the tax haven of all tax havens. Make no mistake, the banks use offshore business organisations to escape regulation and the grip these organisations have over an ever weakened and corrupt political class is utterly astounding. The Conservative party is literally bankrolled by bankers and hedge funds. Half of the wealthiest hedge fund managers in the land pay millions each year to the Tories – what do they expect back from their investment? Perhaps the hundreds of millions of stamp duty exemptions and taxes hedge funds no longer have to pay. This is just the tip of the iceberg.
This is neoliberalism out of control. The legislators have capitulated to its power. Democracy is systematically deconstructed in favour of the corporations. In the legislators place, people powered organisations emerge such as Tax Justice Network, Democratic Audit, New Economics Foundation to name a few who operate in an arena of social justice in an attempt not to stifle capitalism, but to level the playing field a bit.
March 13, 2016
Posted by aletho |
Corruption, Supremacism, Social Darwinism, Timeless or most popular | UK |
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