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US spy plane circled between Russian airbase & port facility during Syria drone attack – MoD

RT | January 9, 2018

Moscow has noted “strange coincidences” surrounding a terrorist attack on a Russian airbase and port facility in Syria, in which guided combat drones were deployed by militants. These include a US spy plane spotted in the area.

The Russian Ministry of Defense consciously didn’t point any fingers when talking about the January 6 attack on Russia’s airbase and port facility in Syria, the Tuesday statement said, but added that technology used in the attack was telling.

Advanced training in engineering in “one of the developed countries” would be necessary to program the principal controllers and bomb-release systems of an aircraft-type combat drone, the statement stressed. “Not everyone is also able to get exact [attack] coordinates from the space surveillance data,” it added.

The ministry noted that a US Navy Poseidon reconnaissance aircraft was flying over the region between the Russian bases in Latakia and Tartus for some four hours around the time of the drone attack. An earlier Pentagon statement allowed the Russian military to “take a new look at some strange coincidences” surrounding the incident, it said.

The Saturday attack targeted both Khmeimim Airbase and the maritime logistics facility in the city of Tartus, and involved as many as 13 combat drones. The assault was successfully repelled by the Russian anti-aircraft defense systems and electronic warfare specialists.

It was the first time terrorists had used such a technology in the conflict, the ministry said, adding that the technical assessment showed that the drone could have been obtained “only from a country possessing state-of-the-art technologies.”

Earlier on Tuesday, the US said it was “concerned” over the incident. Pentagon spokesman Maj. Adrian Rankin-Galloway, however, claimed that “those devices and technologies can easily be obtained in the open market.” He later also told Sputnik that the US already saw what it called “this type of commercial UAV [unmanned aerial vehicle] technology” being used in Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS) missions.

Russia has repeatedly warned that US military supplies aimed at supporting “moderate” Syrian militants eventually end up in the hands of terrorists.

January 10, 2018 Posted by | Deception, War Crimes | , | Leave a comment

Bolivia Joins Operation Condor Investigation

teleSUR – January 7, 2018

Bolivian President Evo Morales has announced that his country is joining the regional investigation into Operation Condor alongside Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay.

These latter nations created the Truth Commission to uncover the “Empire’s transgressions” during Operation Condor, the Bolivian head of state tweeted, referring to the United States.

Operation Condor was a covert, multinational “black operations” program organized by six Latin American states (Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay and Uruguay, later joined by Ecuador and Peru), with logistical, financial, and intelligence support from Washington,” according to J. Patrice McSherry, author of Predatory States: Operation Condor and Covert War in Latin America (2005). Their shared intent was to do away with leftist movements in the region.

Morales said he laments this shared history of human rights violations, but celebrates the “brave and dignified struggle against the military dictatorships.”

For its part, Bolivia suffered under Operation Condor during its nearly 20-year dictatorship between 1964 and 1982.

Nila Heredia, who was named the country’s rights commission representative, said that Bolivia is giving “its full support (to the commission) with its experience (of working on other rights commissions, as well as technical expertise.”

Morales has also announced that Bolivia will host a seminary for experts from the Truth Commission on Feb. 20.

Estimates of the number of those killed or disappeared from the clandestine Operation Condor ranges from 20,000 to 60,000.

January 8, 2018 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Subjugation - Torture, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

Hollywood raises money for a foreign army

If Americans Knew | January 4, 2018

Once a year, some of the biggest names in Hollywood get together with prominent leaders in business and politics, to raise millions for charity. Some of the celebrities attending this year’s event were Gerard Butler, David Foster, Joanna Krupa, Katharine McPhee, Paul Reubens, Melissa Rivers, and Arnold Schwarzenegger.

With performances by Seal, David Foster, and Gene Simmons, the night was truly star studded and spectacular.

In total, 53.8 million dollars were donated (http://iakn.us/2Ct0p68), including 16.6 million by Oracle co-founder and CTO, Larry Ellison, 6 million by Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein, 5.2 million by GUESS co-founders, Paul and Maurice Marciano, and 5 million by host, and entertainment mogul, Haim Saban.

Past attendees to this event include Robert De Niro, Sylvester Stallone, Larry King, and Barbra Streisand.

So what is this worthy cause that garners such glamour and generosity? Feeding the hungry? Curing disease?

No. The purpose of this event is to raise funds for a foreign army.

That’s right. While our own United States veterans are barely scraping by, holding bake sales to afford medical treatments, these celebrities contribute mountains of cash to the Israeli Defense Forces, commonly as the IDF. This is the very same IDF who are responsible for killing over 2000 Palestinian children in the West Bank and Gaza over the last 17 years (http://iakn.us/2CqzLe1). The same IDF who have displaced over 5 million people from their homes (PDF link: http://iakn.us/2F0Hlhk), while destroying hospitals, schools, businesses, and places of worship by the tens of thousands. And the same IDF who repeatedly attacked the USS Liberty in 1967, killing 34 American servicemen and wounding another 174 (http://iakn.us/2Au3aCp).

Now, you may not think that 53.8 million dollars is a lot of money these days, but that is in addition to the more than 10 million dollars of American foreign aid given to the state of Israel every single day
(http://iakn.us/2CUL0N4).

And the kicker is that for these millionaire and billionaire celebrities, these charitable donations – that support a foreign army – are tax deductible (http://iakn.us/2m0n9En).

And it’s not just Hollywood getting this tax break. The “Friends of the IDF” claim to have over 150,000 loyal supporters across 20 chapters throughout the US and Panama (http://iakn.us/2Ct0p68).

—————

Original Article: Los Angeles gala raises $53.8 Million for Israeli soldiers [videos]

https://israelpalestinenews.org/

January 5, 2018 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular, Video, War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

Daesh declares war on Palestine’s Hamas resistance movement

Press TV – January 5, 2018

The Egyptian wing of Daesh Takfiri terrorists has released a new execution video, declaring war on the Palestinian Hamas resistance movement based in Gaza.

The video, released Wednesday, purports to show the execution of a man who Daesh claims cooperated with Hamas’ armed wing.

“Never surrender to them. Use explosives, silenced pistols and sticky bombs. Bomb their courts and their security locations, for these are the pillars of tyranny that prop up its throne,” said one of the militants in the video.

The Egyptian wing of Daesh, known as the Sinai Province, is notorious for its brutal massacres, including the Sinai 2015 plane crash which killed 224 passengers and mass killing of over 300 people at a Sufi mosque in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula, the deadliest attack in modern Egyptian history.

The video comes as Hamas has been cooperating with Egyptian security forces to restore stability to Sinai, which borders Gaza.

In October, the Palestinian resistance movement arrested four senior Daesh terrorists in Sinai.

In July 2015, Daesh released a video saying that it would overthrow Hamas “tyrants” for their perceived lack of religious rulings in Gaza.

Takfiri groups such as Daesh have never attacked Israel despite operating close to Syria’s borders with the occupied Palestinian territories. Israel is widely believed to be supporting terrorists in Syria by launching airstrikes against various targets there from time to time.

Meanwhile, the US and its allies, which have been conducting airstrikes against what are said to be Daesh targets inside Syria, have repeatedly been accused of providing logistic support and air cover for Daesh terrorists.

Daesh, however, lost all the territory under its control in Syria and Iraq late last year.

January 5, 2018 Posted by | War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

Sabotaging Peace in Korea

By Jacob G. Hornberger | FFF | January 3, 2018

It just might be that the two Koreas are figuring out a way to avoid war, much to the anger and chagrin of President Trump and the U.S. national-security establishment, who are obviously increasingly viewing war as inevitable and even in the best interests of the United States.

Why, even the U.S. mainstream press, which oftentimes seems to operate as an ex officio spokesman for the U.S. government, appears irritated over North Korea’s initiation of talks with South Korea. The press describes North Korea’s overtures not as an attempt to avoid war but instead as a cynical attempt to “drive a wedge” between the United States and South Korea.

Actually, it’s President Trump, who is obviously upset that the Koreas are marginalizing him, that is using his ridiculous and dangerous tweeting abilities to further provoke North Korea, with the obvious intent of “driving a wedge” between North Korea and South Korea, a wedge that could conceivably sabotage talks between them.

Let’s first get to the root of the problem in Korea. That root is the U.S. government, specifically the U.S. national-security branch of the government, i.e., the Pentagon and the CIA. That’s the reason there is a crisis in Korea. That’s the reason why war could suddenly break out, killing hundreds of thousands of people and more if it the war turns nuclear.

The U.S. government and its acolytes in the mainstream press say that the problem is with North Korea’s nuclear development program.

Balderdash! The problem is with the Pentagon’s and CIA’s decades-old aim to effect regime change in North Korea, a Cold War aim that they have never been able to let go of. That’s why the Pentagon has some 35,000 troops stationed in South Korea. That’s why they have regular military exercises over there. That’s why they have those bomber fly-overs. They want regime change, bad, just like they still do in Cuba and Iran, and just like they wanted (and got) in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Libya, Chile, Guatemala, Indonesia, and so many other countries.

That’s why North Korea wants nuclear bombs — to protect its communist regime by deterring the United States from attacking and fulfilling its decades-old aim of regime change. North Korea knows that a nuclear deterrent is the only thing that might deter the Pentagon and the CIA from attacking.

The nuclear deterrent strategy certainly worked for Cuba during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Once the Soviet Union installed nuclear missiles in Cuba, that stopped the Pentagon and the CIA from attacking and invading the island again and even caused President Kennedy to vow that the Pentagon and the CIA would not again invade the island.

North Korea also has seen what happens to impoverished Third World regimes that don’t have nuclear weapons, like Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya. They go down quickly to defeat and regime change at the hands of an all-powerful First World country.

Here’s the big point: Korea is none of the U.S. government’s business. Never has been and never will be. The Korean conflict was always nothing more than a civil war. A civil war in an Asian country is none of the U.S. government’s business. It wasn’t in the 1950s when the war broke out. It still isn’t. Korea is the business of the Korean people.

Keep in mind also that U.S. interventionism into the Korean War was always illegal under our form of constitutional government. The Constitution, which the president, the Pentagon, and the CIA, swear to uphold, requires a congressional declaration of war. There was never a congressional declaration of war against North Korea. That means that U.S. troops and CIA agents had no legal right to kill anyone in Korea, not with rifles, artillery, carpet bombing, or with the use of germ warfare against the North Korean people.

The Pentagon and the CIA claimed that it was necessary to illegally intervene in Korea because the communists were coming to get us. It was a lie, just as the entire Cold War was a lie. It was all just one great big fear-mongering racket to solidify the power and control of the military and intelligence services over the American people.

Those 35,000 U.S. troops in Korea today have no business being there, not only because the communists are still not coming to get us but also because they are simply the outgrowth of the original illegal intervention in the 1950s. The Pentagon has those troops there for one reason and only one reason: No, not to defend and protect the South Korean people, who are of minor importance to U.S. officials compared to the United States, but rather to serve as “tripwire” to guarantee U.S. involvement should war once again break out between the two Koreas.

In other words, no congressional deliberation on a declaration of war on whether to get involved should war break out. No national debate. Once tens of thousands of troops are automatically killed, the United States is, as a practical matter, stuck, trapped, committed. That’s why the Pentagon and the CIA have those troops there — to box in the American people — to deprive them of a choice on whether to get involved in another land war in Asia or not.

That makes U.S. soldiers in Korea nothing more than little pawns. Their assigned role is to die in order to ensure that Congress has no say on whether the U.S. gets involved in another land war in Asia. The Pentagon and the CIA, not Congress, remain in charge.

Why hasn’t the U.S. already attacked North Korea? One big reason: China. It says that if the United States starts the war, it’s coming in on the side of North Korea. China has lots of troops that could easily be sent into Korea to fight against U.S. forces. It also has a nuclear capability that can easily hit the United States.

So, that leaves Trump and his national security establishment doing their best to provoke North Korea into “firing the first shot,” or at least making it look like they have fired the first shot, like what happened at the Gulf of Tonkin or what the Pentagon hoped to accomplish with Operation Northwoods and a concocted war against Cuba.

If Trump can successfully taunt, tease, antagonize, and provoke North Korea into attacking first, then he and his national-security establishment can exclaim, “We’ve been attacked by the communists! We’re shocked! We’re innocent! We have no choice but to protect America by carpet-bombing North Korea again, this time with nuclear bombs.”

And as long as it’s not the United States that suffers the death and destruction, it will all be considered acceptable. Tens of thousands of U.S. troops will be dead. Hundreds of thousands of Koreans will also be dead. Both countries will be devastated. But the United States will remain intact and, equally important, will no longer be threatened by North Korea’s growing nuclear capability. It will all be considered a victory as far as the United States is concerned.

That’s why the South Koreans are smart in agreeing to talk to North Korea. If they were really smart, they would give Trump, the Pentagon, and the CIA the boot. The best thing South Korea could ever do is immediately kick out every U.S. soldier and every CIA agent out of their country. Send them packing back to the United States.

Sure, Trump would be hopping bad, just as the Pentagon and the CIA would be. So what? It would be the best thing that could ever happen to Korea, the United States, and the world.

January 4, 2018 Posted by | Illegal Occupation, Militarism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

Yemen says Saudi war has killed, wounded 35,000 people

Press TV – January 2, 2018

The Yemeni Ministry of Health says the Saudi-led military coalition has either killed or wounded some 35,000 people of Yemen during the ongoing war Riyadh imposed on the impoverished nation almost three years ago.

In a report read out in a press conference in the Yemeni capital of Sana’a on Tuesday, the ministry said that the appalling number of casualties occurred in just 1,000 days since the Saudi regime began its military aggression against the Yemeni people in March 2015.

The report added that nearly all of Yemen’s provinces sustained losses in the war with the northwestern province of Sa’ada, the west-central province of Sana’a and the western province of Hajjah suffering the most in a descending order.

The ministry also said that 415 health facilities were destroyed, either completely or partially, as a result of direct Saudi airstrikes, pointing out that more than 55 percent of the health facilities did not function due to the ceaseless aggression, and that the remaining 45 percent operated with a minimum capacity.

The report also revealed figures showing that more than 95,000 Yemeni patients needed to travel abroad for proper treatment, stressing that the closure of airports, due to a total blockade of the country by the Saudi-led coalition, led to the death of 32 patients every day in all provinces.

The ministry further said that, according to figures provided by the World Food Programme, more than 21 million Yemenis needed humanitarian assistance, and that more than 9 million others were expected to enter the stage of starvation.

According to the ministry’s figures, some 2 million Yemeni children suffer from some form of malnutrition, of which half a million are dying of severe malnutrition and 52,000 children died in 2016 for preventable causes.

The report also said that 2,236 people had so far lost their lives due to a cholera outbreak triggered by the Saudi war.

The international committee of the Red Cross says more than one million people have contracted cholera in Yemen amid Saudi Arabia’s war.

Saudi Arabia has been leading a deadly campaign against Yemen from the air, land, and sea since March 2015 in an attempt to reinstate former President Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi, a staunch ally of Riyadh, and to undermine the Houthi Ansarullah movement. Over the past two years, the Houthis have been running state affairs and defending Yemeni people against the Saudi aggression.

The campaign has also taken a heavy toll on the country’s facilities and infrastructure, destroying many hospitals, schools, and factories. The offensive has, however, achieved neither of its goals despite the spending of billions of petrodollars and the enlisting of the cooperation of Saudi Arabia’s regional and Western allies.

January 2, 2018 Posted by | War Crimes | , | Leave a comment

WSJ Said It 6 Months ago: CIA Working to Turn up Heat on Iran

Al-Manar | January 2, 2018

American daily Wall Street Journal had said it clearly six months ago: The Central Intelligence Agency has established an organization in Iran aimed at spying on the Islamic Republic.

“The Central Intelligence Agency has established an organization focused exclusively on gathering and analyzing intelligence about Iran, reflecting the Trump administration’s decision to make that country a higher priority target for American spies,” the WSJ reported last June, citing US officials.

The report said that the mission center “will bring together analysts, operations personnel and specialists from across the CIA to bring to bear the range of the agency’s capabilities, including covert action.”

The CIA did not announce the Iran Mission Center at that time, but it likened it to the Korea Mission Center that the CIA announced earlier in May to address North Korea’s efforts to develop long-range nuclear missiles.

Talking more about the move, the report described CIA Director Mike Pompeo as a longtime Iran hawk, citing his first public remarks since taking the helm at the spy agency, when he warned that Iran was “on the march.”

“Whether its enormous increased capacity to deliver missile systems into Israel from Hezbollah, their increased strength in and around Mosul with the Shia militias, the work that they’ve done to support the Houthis to fire missiles against the Saudis—the list of Iranian transgressions has increased dramatically since the date that the JCPOA was signed,” the WSJ quoted Pompeo as saying then, referring the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the 2015 agreement that Iran struck with the US and other world powers to limit its nuclear program.

“We’re actively engaged in a lot of work to assist the president, making sure he has an understanding of where the Iranians are complying and where they might not be,” the report quoted Pompeo as saying at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington in April.

The report also quoted Mark Lowenthal, a former senior CIA official as saying that the center in Iran was an effort by the agency to bring all its experts together in one place, from the spies who gather information to the analysts who make sense of it.

“We know that combining [intelligence] collectors and analysts together you end up with better analysis and better operations,” Lowenthal said, noting that the center model has been used successfully in other areas.

January 2, 2018 Posted by | Deception, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , | Leave a comment

President Trump’s Jerusalem Decision: the End of Hegemony?

By James Petras • Unz Review • January 1, 2018

Introduction

The Trump regime proclaimed that the vote in the General Assembly of the United Nations regarding the recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel was a strategic US decision.

Both President Trump and his bombastic UN Ambassador Nikki Haley threatened that all decisions and agreements regarding alliances, loans, aid and diplomatic relations were at stake.

Moreover, the Trump regime clearly defined the style and substance of US imperial dictates: All UN member nations (large and small) must grovel in the most abject manner to his orders. Ambassador Haley demanded that each nation on earth accept Trump’s and the racist-Zionist Netanyahu’s declaration that the ancient city of Jerusalem is the eternal, undivided and ethnically managed capital of the Jews. Trump’s message was loud and clear – he was the great ‘decider’ and the UN votes would identify America’s true friends and enemies. “We are making a list… and there will be consequences…”

Clearly Trump’s boast of US power and Haley’s assumption that her terrifying threats would ensure that Washington had a majority vote in the ‘gifting’ of Jerusalem to Zio-fascism. They believed that US dominance and global hegemony was absolute and unassailable. The vote proved something else, something very new was happening.

The US suffered an overwhelming and humiliating defeat, one that kept Ambassador Haley’s dexterous fingers busy ‘taking notes’: 128 nations demanded that the Trump regime withdraw its declaration that Jerusalem was Israel’s undivided capital for Jews. Only 9 micro-nations (some mere postage stamps and a few death-squad banana-stans) voted with the Trump-Haley decision, 35 mendicant-states put their heads down and abstained while 21 timorous ambassadors chose to hide their shamelessness in the toilet stalls rather than show up for this important vote.

Political Context

First and foremost it is important to discuss the steps leading up to the US suffering such a crushing debacle. In other words, who was responsible for leading the Trump Administration by the nose down the blind alley of submission to the dictates of Zio-fascism.

The leader and driving force behind the UN disaster was Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu whose quest to seize Jerusalem and convert it into the ‘eternal’ capital of the Jews was his top priority. For decades the entire world has rejected Israel’s seizure of Jerusalem and its conversion into an ethnically cleansed capital for the ‘Jewish’ state. The UN and international jurists denounced Israel’s colonial conquest and ethnic cleansing of Palestine.

Netanyahu took charge with the election of Donald Trump as President. Operation Jerusalem was his first order to Puppet Donald. A number of Israel-First multi-billionaires, who financed Trump’s electoral campaign, demanded an immediate pay-off from their puppet: The Administration’s unconditional support for Netanyahu’s agenda. Despite protests from the rest of the world, especially the US closest European allies, Trump plunged the nation right into the Zionist soup: a Jewish Jerusalem; the systematic eviction of all Arabs, Christian, Muslim and secular, and the eventual annexation of all of Palestine; as well as an increasing military confrontation with Iran.

Real estate speculator, Jared Kushner, Trump’s pampered son-in- law, and a complete Netanyahu flunky, became the senior advisor for the Middle East. Kushner pressured Trump’s National Security Advisor General Michael Flynn to intervene with Russia on behalf of Israel’s take-over of Jerusalem. Flynn was subsequently prosecuted for discussing global US Russian relations and the ‘good soldier’ is falling on his sword on behalf of the Zionists. Not surprising, the Congressional Democrats, the FBI and the Special Prosecutor found it easier to prosecute Flynn for his discussion regarding de-escalating the tense US-Russian relations provoked by the Obama administration than his discussions with the Kremlin in support of Israel’s seizure of Jerusalem!

Netanyahu’s operational weapons in manipulating US policy involved Jared Kushner, the billionaire Israel-First donors, the AIPAC and UN Ambassador Nikki Haley. Tel Aviv succeeded in securing Trump’s commitment to the Israeli agenda, despite opposition from the entire UN National Security Council and the overwhelming majority of the General Assembly. In the style of a typical authoritarian, US President Trump grovels at the feet of his ‘superior’, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, while tearing at the throats of his ‘inferiors’, the 193 member nations of the UN General Assembly.

Netanyahu’s vitriolic bar room threats against the entire membership of the UN prior to the vote ensured the repudiation of all Security Council representatives with the exception of his South Carolina puppet, Ambassador Nikki Haley. Trump and Haley backed the blustering Netanyahu by issuing gangland threats to all UN representatives who dare to oppose Washington’s dictates.

In this way, Prime Minister Netanyahu secured the greatest diplomatic and political success of his career – the total submission of the US to his agenda, at the risk of a major humiliation in the UN. This, in effect, formalized Israeli hegemony over Washington, for the world to see.

In contrast to Netanyahu’s beaming success, the US suffered a historic diplomatic defeat: Fourteen times as many nations voted against the demands of the US President over– Netanyahu’s grab of Jerusalem.

What makes the defeat even more striking is the fact that all major allies and most of the biggest aid recipients openly defied the US threats. Eight of the ten biggest US aid recipients voted against Trump–Netanyahu–Haley. This bizarre troika is now left with an enemy list circling the entire globe, and a few timorous allies in the South Pacific and among the death squads of Guatemala.

Trump’s total and puerile embrace of the raving Netanyahu has exposed and widened fissures in US global hegemony.

Apart from ‘capturing’ Netanyahu’s vote, the other pro Trump nations included a handful of insignificant Pacific islands (Marshall Islands, Palau, Micronesia), Togo, a corrupt African mini-state and two banana-sized ‘death squad democracies’, Honduras and Guatemala. The latter two regimes hold power via stolen elections backed by narco-thugs in the pay (dubbed ‘foreign aid’) of the US.

All of the leading Asian and Western European countries voted against Trump. They openly rejected the crude blackmail of the US-Israel duet. Subservient regimes in Eastern Europe, corrupt regimes in Latin America and some horrifically impoverished nations in Africa and Asia chose to abstain or excuse themselves to the bathrooms of Times Square. Narco-neo-liberal regimes in Mexico, Colombia, Paraguay, Panama and the Dominican Republic abstained. Even rightwing Eastern European regimes, which usually give unquestioned support to all US demands, like Romania, Bosnia, Poland and Latvia defied Nikki Haley’s ‘name taking’ by abstaining. The ‘no-shows’ (hiding in the toilets) included US puppets like Georgia, Samoa, St Kitts and Tonga.

An openly humiliated UN Ambassador Haley was left with the task of thanking the abstainers and ‘no-shows’ for their courage and preparing a few bags of goodies (matzos, Mogan David wine and discounts to the brothels of Tel Aviv) for the torturers of Honduras and half-drowned ‘leaders’ of Palau in gratitude for such loyalty.

Conclusion

Clearly Trump’s championing of a racist, colonialist, ethnic cleansing state like Israel is viewed as a strategic diplomatic disaster. The Manhattan egomaniac has tied the US fortunes to the whims of a pariah state led by a complete lunatic.

Trump’s decision to demonstrate total loyalty to his Zionist billionaire campaign ‘donor-owners’ and his Israel-First son-in-law in his first major foreign policy decision failed to impress any of the influential nations of the world – East or West. Indeed, it showed how fractured and dangerously dysfunctional the US Administration had become.

Most important, Trump’s proclamation of a unipolar world based on his notion of the US’s economic power has collapsed. Israel, despite Haley’s bluster and list-taking, has no legitimacy. It’s continued Mossad assassinations of leading Palestinians and others and the increasing IDF slaughter of the spontaneous Palestinian civilian resistance has failed to improve its international standing – except among Guatemalan torturers.

However, it is not clear that the US has lost its big power influence regarding other regional conflicts. The subsequent UN Security Council vote in favor of Washington’s demands for added sanctions against North Korea demonstrated Trump’s power to intimidate the oligarchs and leaders of China and Russia.

In other words, limits on US power still depend on the issues, the allies, the diplomatic appeals, the adversaries and the distribution of benefits and costs.

In the case of Jerusalem, Real Estate Mogul Trump’s bizarre decision to hand an entire city over to the Zionists alienated all Muslims and Christians the world over, as well as the secular Western liberal nations and emerging powers, like Russia and China. The US tied its prestige to the whims of a paranoid nation arrogantly flaunting its racist superiority complex, backed by groups of immensely wealthy overseas dual citizens.

Diplomatically, Israel’s vituperative responses to any legal criticism from world bodies undermines its chances of coalition building.

Finally, Washington’s support for Israel’s perpetual and overt violation of international law and its bombing of humanitarian missions makes Israel a very costly ally.

January 1, 2018 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Washington Post Ad Calls Singer Lorde a Bigot Over Cancelled Israeli Show

Sputnik – 01.01.2018

A backlash against New Zealand singer Lorde continues in the wake of her decision to call off her concert in Israel amid pressure from her fans following Trump’s Jerusalem move.

A full-page advertisement calling Lorde a bigot and accusing New Zealand of harboring a bias against Israel appeared on the fifth page of the Washington Post’s December 31 edition.

The ad features Lorde’s photo over the picture of men running through ruins with babies and Israeli flags streaming in the wind. The headline says “Lorde and New Zealand ignore Syria to attack Israel.”

It slams the 21-year-old singer’s decision to cancel a concert in Tel Aviv following a wellspring of Muslim fans urging her not to go there, noting that she had joined the global boycott of Israel but “will perform in Russia, despite Putin’s support for Assad’s genocide in Syria.”

The advertisement adds that Lorde’s move shows how a “growing prejudice against the Jewish State” in New Zealand is “trickling down to its youth.”

As for New Zealand, the ad points out the country’s support for the UN resolution urging the US to revoke its decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, while citing New Zealand’s co-sponsorship of a UN resolution condemning illegally-built Israeli settlements in Palestinian territories. The resolution, which was approved by every member of the UN Security Council except the US (which abstained), was endorsed by both Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch.

“Let’s boycott the boycotters and tell Lorde and her fellow bigots that Jew-hatred has no place in the twenty-first century,” the ad reads.

Commenting on the advertisement in the Post, the New Zealand Jewish Council said that the council is “committed to dialogue and tolerance and distances itself from the inflammatory and aggressive material that stoops to the level of BDS [Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement] rather than rising above it.”

“We are disappointed with Lorde’s decision to cancel her show after pressure from the discriminatory BDS movement and invite Lorde to continue learning about the region,” the council’s statement reads.

Lorde called off her June concert in Tel Aviv, giving in to the mounting pressure from activists of the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement (BDS), which aims “to end international support for Israel’s oppression of Palestinians and pressure Israel to comply with international law,” according to its official website.

She was also influenced by an open letter written by her fans from New Zealand, which stated that the show in Tel Aviv would demonstrate support for Israel’s occupation of Palestine.

“I’ve received an overwhelming number of messages & letters and have had a lot of discussions with people holding many views, and I think the right decision at this time is to cancel the show,” Lorde said, as quoted by Naranjah, the Israeli promoters of her show.

The decision was made after what the New Zealand pop star deemed as her “learning all the time” and “considering all options” available to her.

January 1, 2018 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation, Solidarity and Activism, War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

Israel agrees to EU deal excluding settlements

RT | December 31, 2017

Israel’s government has approved an agreement with the EU that includes a provision excluding funding for settlements, seemingly consenting to the EU’s boycott of settlements.

The agreement centers on Israel’s part in the EU’s ENI Cross-Border Cooperation in the Mediterranean (CBC Med) program, which provides funds for projects for non-EU countries in the Mediterranean area, such as Israel, Egypt and Jordan, Haaretz reports. The projects are largely focused on promoting development, education, technology and environmental sustainability.

As per EU policy, the ENI CBC Med agreement contains a provision which excludes areas outside Israel’s 1967 borders from receiving grants. This means Israeli settlements inside the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights (which were occupied by Israel in the conflict) cannot receive funding under the program.

Israeli settlements inside Palestinian territories are considered both an impediment to the peace process between Israelis and Palestinians, and to be in violation of a number of UN resolutions and the Fourth Geneva Convention.

Israel’s Culture and Sport Minister, Miri Regev, voiced her objections to the agreement to the cabinet secretary earlier in the month. She fought against the deal at the cabinet meeting, the Jewish Press reports, but no other minister agreed to second her motion to delay the vote pending further debate.

The deal was given final approval by the government Sunday, after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu signed off on the measure last week. It’s also been approved by the Justice Ministry and Foreign Ministry, Haaretz reports. The foreign ministry is said to have led the charge for Israel to be part of the program.

The agreement is at odds with the Israeli government’s stance on settlements, which it continues to develop within the occupied territories in disregard of the EU and others’ condemnation. Netanyahu is also a fierce opponent to the international Boycott Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement which calls for boycotts and sanctions against Israel.

“My fundamental position is that the Israeli government should reject agreements from the outset that require us on a de facto basis to boycott portions of the homeland or populations living in the Golan Heights, Jerusalem or Judea and Samaria [the West Bank] other than with very limited exceptions,” Regev wrote in her letter.

“I do not see the justification to compromise and with one hand sign the agreement while with our other demanding that the world give de facto recognition to our right to a united Jerusalem and even to move embassies to Israel’s capital,” she added.

Aside from the settlement matter, Regev’s letter to Cabinet Secretary Tzachi Braverman also took issue with the text of the agreement referring to the Palestinian Authority “as if it were a neighboring country.”

It is “not acceptable to me,” she said.

 The far-right Regev managed to halt a similar agreement with the EU last year. A Creative Europe culture and media program contained a similar provision excluding settlements, and, although Netanyahu had given consent, Regev stopped it from going ahead. Earlier this month, Regev succeeded in forcing  the NBA remove a reference to Palestine as being “occupied territory.”

Read more:

‘Enough is enough’: Norway’s trade unions vote to boycott Israel over Palestine

December 31, 2017 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation, War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

NYT Trumpwashes 70 Years of US Crimes

By Adam Johnson | FAIR | December 30, 2017

Trumpwashing—defined as whitewashing, obscuring or rewriting the broader US record by presenting Donald Trump as an aberration (FAIR, 6/3/16)—was on full display Thursday in a nominally straight news report from the New York Times’ Mark Landler (12/28/17) on how Trump has reshaped US foreign policy. Buried in the otherwise banal analysis was this gem of US imperial agitprop:

Above all, Mr. Trump has transformed the world’s view of the United States from a reliable anchor of the liberal, rules-based international order into something more inward-looking and unpredictable. That is a seminal change from the role the country has played for 70 years, under presidents from both parties, and it has lasting implications for how other countries chart their futures.

There’s lots of ideology to unpack here, but let’s start with the empirically false assertion that the “world” viewed the United States as a “reliable anchor of the liberal, rules-based international order.” Poll (Guardian, 6/15/06) after poll (Pew, 3/14/07) after poll (PRI, 1/3/14) throughout the years has shown that much of the world views the United States as threat to peace, often taking the top spot as the single greatest threat. What evidence Landler has for the world viewing the US as a sort of good-natured global babysitter is unclear, as he cites nothing to support this hugely important claim (since if Trump’s cynical disregard for “human rights” is nothing new, then there’s no real story here). It’s just thrown out with the assumption the Times readership is sufficiently nationalistic and/or amnesiac to either not notice or not care. It’s designed to flatter, not to elucidate.

"Shock and Awe" in Iraq.

The US invasion of Iraq in defiance of international law

The second dubious assertion is the idea that the US is “viewed” as being (or, by implication, objectively is) concerned with “liberal, rules-based international order.” Perhaps Landler missed the part where the US runs offshore penal colonies for untried political prisoners, and a decade-long drone war that’s killed thousands—both entirely outside the scope of international law. Or the time the US invaded and destroyed Iraq without any international authorization, killing hundreds of thousands. Or perhaps he missed the part where the United States refuses to sign “liberal, rules-based international order” treaties such as the International Criminal Court or the ban on bombs and or a prohibition on nuclear weapons. Or the part where the US not only doesn’t recognize the International Criminal Court, but has a law on its books (dubbed “the Hague Invasion Act,” passed in 2002) that if an American is ever held by the ICC for committing war crimes, the US is obligated to literally invade the Hague and free them.

And this is just in the past 15 years. Landler, even more laughably, starts the clock in 1947, which would include dozens of non-“liberal,” non-“rules-based” coups, invasions, bombing campaigns, assassinations, extrajudicial murders and so forth. The number of actions carried out by the US not sanctioned by even the thinnest pretext of “international order” is too long to list.

What exactly is this “liberal, rules-based international order,” and when did “the world” view the United States as its most reliable anchor? Landler doesn’t say, he simply asserts this highly contestable and ideological claim, and moves on to pearl-clutch about Trump ruining the US’s hard-won moral authority. He has some 100 percent uncut pro-US ideology to push under the guise of criticizing Trump, and no amount of basic historical facts will get in his way.

December 31, 2017 Posted by | Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , | Leave a comment

Syrian Army Thwarts Israeli Plan to Control Mutual Border

Sputnik – 30.12.2017

On Saturday buses arrived in the villages of Mugr al-Mir and Mazaria Beit Jinn in the so-called ‘Hernon Pocket’ to transport the fighters of al-Nusra Front to Idlib and Daraa governorates. The pocket extended into government-held territory southwest of Damascus from the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. According to a Syrian Arab Army (SAA) military strategic analyst, Brig. Gen. Heitham Hassun, the move will help liberate the southwestern part of Syria from terrorists.

“This will allow [the SAA] to free the entire southwestern region of Damascus from terrorists,” Brig. Gen. Hassun told Sputnik Arabic. “It is especially important to take under the SAA’s control [the territories] north of the province of Quneitra, which the Israelis had planned to manage with the assistance of the militants. Now, by retaking Mugr al-Mir and Mazaria Beit Jinn, the army will be able to conduct an operation to liberate all the terrorist-controlled areas adjacent to the occupied Golan Heights.”

The local government managed to strike a deal with the al-Nusra jihadists through intermediaries on joining the program of reconciliation and establish a ceasefire regime in the area. The victories of the SAA, which allowed the government forces to gain control over the dominant terrain, contributed to the success of the talks.

According to the military analyst, residents of local villages are making every effort to facilitate the advancement of the Syrian government forces. For instance, they provide information to the SAA about the location and the numerical force of jihadists.

Brig. Gen. Hassun said that, for its part, Israel is providing the extremists with intelligence concerning Syrian government troops. Additionally, the Israelis continue to supply weapons to terrorist groups and provide fire support if necessary, the military analyst underscored. It appears that Syria’s southern neighbor is unwilling to give up its plans for this part of Syria, the brigadier general suggested.

The Golan Heights remain an apple of discord for Damascus and Tel Aviv, prompting tit-for-tat strikes in border areas. Israel’s occupation of the western two-thirds of the Golan Heights (known in Syria as Quneitra governorate) prevents the states from signing a peace treaty. The annexation of the disputed area started during the Six-Day War in 1967 and has been repeatedly condemned by the UN in 1981 and 2008.

The eastern Golan Heights, which remained in Syrian hands following the Six-Day War and 1973 Yom Kippur War, became the target of the al-Qaeda-affiliated al-Nusra Front, as well as Daesh terrorists and other Syrian opposition forces, during the ongoing war.

Meanwhile, according to Sputnik’s source, on Friday the Syrian government forces expelled terrorists from the Abu Dali settlement in the north-east of Hama province.

Located on the border between Hama and Idlib, the settlement was used by the terrorists to disrupt the supplies from one city to another.

The SAA continues to crack down on terrorists following Russia’s partial withdrawal from Syria after a two-year-long aerial campaign. The decision to pull out was announced on December 11 by Russian President Putin, who specified, however, that the bases in Tartus and Hmeymim, as well as the center for Syrian reconciliation, would continue to operate.

On December 26, Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu signaled that Russia has started to form a permanent group in Syria’s Tartus and Hmeymim. The Russian military contingent is armed with advanced weaponry systems including the cutting edge S-400 system, while S-300 surface-to-air missile systems, as well as the Bastion coastal missile systems with cruise missiles.

December 31, 2017 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation, War Crimes | , , , , , | Leave a comment

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