The subject of Israeli hegemony over US must be addressed
By Walt Peretto | Press TV | December 25, 2020
It’s pardon season for President Trump. The likely outgoing president has issued 15 pardons that include two members of the Russian investigation and four convicted murderers who worked for the private security firm Blackwater.
These four were convicted of murdering 14 Iraqi civilians in 2007. Private security corporations such as Blackwater (since renamed Academi) have played a major role in war zones since the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq after the false flag events of 9/11/2001. They are also suspected of participation in other domestic false flag events that include the Boston Marathon event in 2013.
These pardons by Trump will facilitate the use of private security firms in the near future both domestically and abroad. Further lockdowns in the US and crushing strains on small business may create unrest which could overwhelm municipal law enforcement and the federal government may choose to hire private security to deal with such occurrences. Overseas, tensions may increase in Syria as the new Democratic president may resurrect the goal of toppling President Assad which would likely be carried out by hiring private mercenaries which the West has done in the past.
I think these pardons by Trump send a signal to private security firms that their actions will not be hampered by long prison sentences for employees who engage in murder. Similar to municipal policing in which cops that murder are virtually never convicted. If the US does rededicate itself to regime change in Damascus, it’s hired security forces and clandestine paid terrorists don’t want restraints like convictions of murder in the courts.
Trump’s pardon of two people involved with the Russiagate fiasco makes sense since Russian collusion was never proven and the whole story was really a distraction for 4 years designed to take people’s eyes off of leaked emails involving Hillary Clinton, the Podesta brothers, Barack Obama and others that were quite damning if they were thoroughly investigated.
For four years the left-leaning media in the United States filled the news with accusations of Russian collusion in US elections and other illegal and immoral interactions between Russian officials and the Trump administration.
This also kept the eye off the elephant in the room called Israel which has seized control of the presidency, the Congress, the Judiciary, the economy through the FED, and the mainstream media.
China has provided another useful distraction from Israeli influence in America. If one honestly examines recent US presidential administrations — don’t strain to find any Chinese or Russian nationals in positions of power in the US federal government. Dual US/Israeli citizens are abundant and ubiquitous in the Trump administration and it will be similar in the Biden administration if he makes it to the White House. The subject of Israeli hegemony over the United States is a subject no one seems to want to address.
Judging from the proposed COVID Stimulus Package which allocates billions of dollars to other countries, this proves that the globalist intention is to bleed the United States dry until it submits wholly to the international cabal of psychopaths that includes Klaus Schwab and his World Economic Forum who are attempting to reset the world into a one-world system led by global organized psychopathy.
Democracies Don’t Start Wars. But Democrats Do
By Philip Giraldi | Strategic Culture Foundation | December 24, 2020
It may have been President Bill Clinton who once justified his wrecking of the Balkans by observing that liberal interventionism to bring about regime change is a good thing because “Democracies don’t start wars with other democracies.” Or it might have been George W. Bush talking about Iraq or even Barack Obama justifying his destruction of Libya or his interventions relating to Syria and Ukraine. The principle is the same when the world’s only superpower decides to throw its weight around.
The idea that pluralistic democracies are somehow less inclined to go to war has in fact been around for a couple of hundred years and was first elaborated by Immanuel Kant in an essay entitled “Perpetual Peace” that was published in 1795. Kant may have been engaging in some tongue in cheek as the French relatively liberal republic, the “Directory,” was at that time preparing to invade Italy to spread the revolution. The presumption that “democracies” are somehow more pacific than other forms of government is based on the principle that it is in theory more difficult to convince an entire nation of the desirability of initiating armed conflict compared to what happens in a monarchy where only one man or woman has to be persuaded.
The American Revolution, which preceded Kant, was clearly not fought on the principle that kings are prone to start wars while republics are not, and, indeed, the “republican” United States has nearly always been engaged in what most observers would consider to be wars throughout its history. And a review of the history of the European wars of the past two hundred years suggests that it is also overly simple to suggest that democracies eschew fighting each other. There are, after all, many different kinds of governments, most with constitutions, many of which are quite politically liberal even if they are headed by a monarch or oligarchy. They have found themselves on different sides in the conflicts that have troubled Europe since the time of Napoleon.
And wars are often popular, witness the lines of enthusiastic young men lining up to enlist when the Triple Entente took on the Germans and Austrians to begin the First World War. So, war might be less likely among established democracies, but it should be conceded that the same national interests that drive a dictatorship can equally impact on a more pluralistic form of government, particularly if the media “the territory of lies” is in on the game. One recalls how the Hearst newspaper chain created the false narrative that resulted in the U.S.’s first great overseas imperial venture, the Spanish-American War. More recently, the mainstream media in the United States has supported the disastrous invasion of Iraq, the destabilization of Syria, and the regime change in Ukraine, Afghanistan and Libya.
So now we Americans have the ultimate liberal democratic regime about to resume power, possibly with a majority in both houses of Congress to back up the presidency. But something is missing in that the campaigning Democrats never talked about a peace dividend, and now that they are returning the airwaves are notable for Senators like Mark Warner asking if the alleged Russian hacking of U.S. computers is an “act of war?” Senator Dick Durbin has no doubts on the issue, having declared it “virtually a declaration of war.” And Joe Biden appears to be on board, considering punishment for Moscow. Are we about to experience Russiagate all over? In fact, belligerency is not unique to Donald Trump and Mike Pompeo. War is in the air, and large majority of the Democratic Party recently voted for the pork-bloated National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), endorsing a policy of U.S. global military dominance for the foreseeable future. If you are an American who would like to see national health insurance, a large majority among Democrats, forget about it!
But more to the point, the Democrats have a worse track record than do the Republicans when it comes to starting unnecessary wars. Donald Trump made the point of denouncing “stupid wars” when he was running for office and has returned to that theme also in the past several weeks, though he did little enough to practice what he preached until it was too late and too little. Clinton notoriously intervened in the Balkans and bombed a pharmaceuticals factory in Sudan and a cluster of tents in Afghanistan to draw attention away from his affair with Monica Lewinsky. His secretary of State Madeleine Albright thought the death of 500,000 Iraqi children due to U.S. sanctions was “worth it.” Barack Obama tried to destroy Syria, interfered in Ukraine and succeeded in turning Libya into an ungovernable mess while compiling a “kill list” and assassinating U.S. citizens overseas using drones.
If you want to go back farther, Woodrow Wilson involved the U.S. in World War One while Franklin D. Roosevelt connived at America’s entry into the Second World War. FDR’s successor Harry Truman dropped two atomic bombs on civilian targets in Japan, killing as many as 200,000. Japan was preparing to surrender, which was known to the White House and Pentagon, making the first use of nuclear weapons completely unnecessary and one might call it a “war crime.” Truman also got involved in Korea and John F. Kennedy started the intervention in Vietnam, though there are indications that he was planning to withdraw from it when he was killed. The only Democratic president who failed to start one or more wars was the much-denigrated Jimmy Carter.
So, it is Joe Biden’s turn at the wheel. One has to question the philosophy of government that he brings with him as he has never found a war that he didn’t support and several of his cabinet choices are undeniably hardliners on what they refer to as national security. The lobbies are also putting pressure on Biden to do the “right thing,” which for them is to continue an interventionist foreign policy. The Israeli connected Foundation for the Defense Democracies (FDD) has not surprisingly issued a collection of essays that carries the title “Defending Forward: Securing America by Projecting Military Power Abroad.” If one had to bet at this point “defending forward” will be what the Biden Administration is all about. And oh, by the way, as democracies don’t go to war with democracies, it will only be the designated bad guys who will be on the receiving end of America’s military might. Or at least that is how the tale will be told.
Philip Giraldi, Ph.D. is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest.
Cynical US Policy on Syria Revealed: Block the Russians and Iranians, Destroy the Economy, to Hell with the People
By Peter Ford | 21st Century Wire | December 15, 2020
The Rambo of the State Department is leaving. James Jeffrey, the outgoing Syria envoy, boasts about his achievements in a recent candid interview with Al-Monitor which with no sense of shame opens up to public gaze the cynicism, callousness and sheer power-crazedness of US policy on Syria, conducted as though it were a video game or a game of Monopoly.
US Special Representative for Syria Engagement James Jeffrey at Syria-Turkish border (March 2020 Syriac Press)
Jeffrey makes no bones about it. It’s not about ending the Syrian conflict, it’s about prolonging it:
Basically, first and foremost is denial of the [Assad regime] getting military victory… And of course, we’ve ratcheted up the isolation and sanctions pressure on Assad, we’ve held the line on no reconstruction assistance, and the country’s desperate for it. You see what’s happened to the Syrian pound, you see what’s happened to the entire economy. So, it’s been a very effective strategy….
The point is, this [preserving the SDF] is our plan B. We have a plan A. Plan A doesn’t answer ‘how does this all end?’ Plan A’s whole purpose [is] to ensure that the Russians and Assad and the Iranians don’t have a happy answer to how this all ends, and maybe that will someday get them to accept Plan B. Meanwhile, they’re tied up in knots. They don’t see Syria as a victory.
So, we don’t care a jot if Syrian people are suffering greatly, that’s part of the plan. We are happy to prolong the suffering indefinitely as long as the Russians, Iranians and Assad can’t claim victory.
Plan B, by the way, requires implementation on US terms of UN resolution 2254, which would amount effectively to a suicide note for Assad as under those terms it would allow millions of Syrians outside Syria to vote and thus decide the fate of those still inside.
At no point in this lengthy interview does Jeffrey even mention the Syrian people. The only Syrians (condescendingly) mentioned are the Kurdish militia SDF:
The SDF, they’re clean kids. I’ve gotten to know them and their leadership very, very well. They really are phenomenal, by Middle Eastern standards. They’re a highly disciplined Marxist offshoot of the PKK.
So, let’s get this straight: the US is supporting a bunch of Marxists in North East Syria to stop Assad getting the much needed oil for the Syrian people and is indifferent to the fact that Idlib is controlled by a bunch of Islamist fanatics?
Jeffrey in fact does not say a single word about the character of the opposition to acknowledge their Islamist extremism, or about the likely consequences if Plan B were to succeed and deliver the keys of Damascus to Islamist radicals. In this game – and a game is clearly how callous power-crazed Washington policy makers see it – only preventing victory by the other side matters.
Trump emerges as relatively sensible, which is saying a lot.
The president was uncomfortable with our presence in Syria. He was very uncomfortable with what he saw as endless wars. … Trump kept asking, “Why do we have troops there?”
The reason that Trump pulled the troops out was I think because he was just tired of us having to come up with all these explanations for why we’re in there.
We at the State Department never provided any troop numbers to the president. That’s not our job. We didn’t try to deceive him. He kept on publicly saying numbers that were way below what the actual numbers were, so in talking to the media and talking to Congress, we had to be very careful and dodge around. But the Syria mission is the gift that keeps on giving. We and the SDF are still the dominant force in [northeast] Syria.
‘Not our job?’ The deviousness of this is breathtaking. The US State Department deliberately withheld crucial information from the President in order to get their way on keeping their counters on the Monopoly board which for them is Syria.
It’s no surprise that someone of Jeffrey’s calibre boasts about helping Israel to pulverise Syria:
We then also had the Israeli air campaign. The US only began supporting that when I came on board. I went out there and we saw Prime Minister Netanyahu and others, and they thought that they were not being supported enough by the US military, and not by intelligence. And there was a big battle within the US government, and we won the battle.
The argument [against supporting Israel’s campaign] was, again, this obsession with the counterterrorism mission. People didn’t want to screw with it, either by worrying about Turkey or diverting resources to allow the Israelis to muck around in Syria, as maybe that will lead to some blow-back to our forces. It hasn’t.
All that matters is ‘stabilizing the situation’ to US advantage:
So that was how we put together an integrated Syria policy that nestled under the overall Iran policy. The result has been relative success because we — with a lot of help from the Turks in particular — have managed to stabilize the situation.
The only change on the ground to the benefit of Assad has been southern Idlib in two and a half years of attacks. They are highly unlikely to continue, given the strength of the Turkish army there and the magnitude of the defeat of the Syrian army by the Turks back in March.
It would be hard to disagree with that pessimistic analysis. As long as the US puts stymieing its adversaries ahead of any genuine concern for the suffering and prospects of the Syrian people, including the millions of refugees condemned by this policy to indefinite exile, no end is in sight.
It’s worth bearing in mind that Jeffrey worked with Obama long before he worked with Trump. Anybody who expects a Biden administration to follow a different path on Syria must be seriously deluded, unless by ‘different’ is meant an even more reckless, activist, interventionist policy that goes beyond ‘stabilising’.
And there is no Trump there now to apply the brakes.
***
Author Peter Ford is the former British Ambassador to Syria (2003-2006) and Bahrain (1999-2002).
US plan to blacklist Iraqi Badr Organization as terrorist meant to protect Israel: Official
Press TV – December 13, 2020
A senior member of the Badr Organization, whose group is a part of the Iraqi Popular Mobilization Forces (PMU), also known by their Arabic name Hashd al-Sha’abi, has slammed Washington’s attempts to classify his organization as terrorist, stressing that such measures are meant to protect the Israeli regime.
“We do not care about the White House’s efforts to place the Badr Organization on the [so-called] US terror blacklist. Badr is an organization that has its own supporters and institutions. It is represented by a parliamentary faction and has more than 50 legislators in Fatah (Conquest) Alliance,” Qusay al-Anbari, a spokesman for the organization, told Arabic-language al-Ahad news agency on Saturday.
He added, “Badr Organization is a part of the Iraqi political system and nation, and will not be affected by such evil plots. Everyone knows that the United States is working to protect the Zionist regime through various means, and is fighting resistance groups to prevent them from defending Palestine and the Arab world.”
The remarks come as the US Congress is seeking to enact a new legislation that would designate the Badr Organization as a terror group, according to a copy of the bill obtained exclusively by the Washington Free Beacon newspaper.
The newspaper said that a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Representative Joe Wilson, is leading such efforts.
Back on October 18, a political adviser to Iraqi officials and leading member of the State of Law Coalition said the United States is trying to eradicate Hashd al-Sha’abi by force and has even devised an action plan for such a purpose.
Saad al-Muttalibi told Arabic-language al-Nujaba television network in an interview at the time that not only had Iraqi authorities been informed of the plan, but also some political factions.
Muttalibi noted that a number of US state institutions have come to the conclusion that Hashd al-Sha’abi can only be removed from Iraq’s arena by military force.
He went on to say that Washington intends to assassinate some high-ranking Hashd al-Sha’abi commanders and instigate clashes with other Iraqi armed forces as part of preparation for the total annihilation of the PMU.
Hashd al-Sh’abai fighters have played a major role in the liberation of Daesh-held areas to the south, northeast and north of the Iraqi capital Baghdad, ever since the terrorists launched an offensive in the country in June 2014.
Back in November 2016, the Iraqi parliament approved a law giving full legal status to the fighters. It recognized the PMU as part of the national armed forces, placed the forces under the command of the prime minister, and granted them the right to receive salaries and pensions like the regular army and police forces.
On March 27, the New York Times reported that the Pentagon had ordered a secret directive, which called on US military commanders to prepare a campaign against Kata’ib Hezbollah, which is part of Hashd al-Sha’abi.
But the United States’ top commander in Iraq at the time, Lieutenant General Robert P. White, warned that such a campaign could be bloody and counterproductive.
IAEA only authorized to monitor, verify Iran’s nuclear work under JCPOA: Envoy
Press TV – December 11, 2020
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is authorized to only monitor and verify Iran’s voluntary measures in accordance with the 2015 nuclear agreement, says the Iranian permanent representative to Vienna-based international organizations, stressing that the agency has no right to assess the Iranian nuclear work.
“@iaeaorg sole role is to monitor and verify the voluntary nuclear-related measures as detailed in the JCPOA and to provide regular updates in this regard,” Kazem Gharibabadi said in a post on his Twitter account on Friday, referring to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.
Any assessment or analysis is out of the IAEA’s mandate, he said.
The Iranian diplomat’s tweet came in response to remarks made by the IAEA Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi, who told Sky News that Iran should not follow through on threats to increase uranium enrichment and throw out inspectors.
In the wake of the assassination of top Iranian nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh in late November, the UN nuclear agency chief warned against any further escalation after lawmakers at Iran’s Parliament overwhelmingly endorsed the outlines of a strategic action plan which aims to counteract sanctions imposed on the Iranian nation and safeguard its interests.
“If implemented,” Grossi told Sky News, “these measures would be an even further deviation from the commitments that Iran entered into when it joined the agreement.
On December 1, 251 out of 260 Iranian lawmakers present at the Parliament voted ‘yes’ to the outlines of the draft bill, which will require the Iranian administration to suspend more commitments under the JCPOA.
The plan, among other things, requires the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI) to produce at least 120 kg of 20-percent enriched uranium annually and store it inside the country within two months after the adoption of the law.
It also urges the AEOI to start the installation, gas injection, enrichment and storage of nuclear materials up to an appropriate enrichment degree within a period of three months using at least 1,000 IR-2m centrifuges.
France, Germany and Britain, the three European signatories to the JCPOA, said on December 7 that they are worried by the Iranian plan to install additional, advanced uranium-enriching centrifuges at Natanz nuclear facility.
“Iran’s recent announcement to the IAEA that it intends to install an additional three cascades of advanced centrifuges at the Fuel Enrichment Plant in Natanz is contrary to the JCPOA and deeply worrying,” the three governments, dubbed the E3, claimed.
US President Donald Trump unilaterally pulled Washington out of the JCPOA in May 2018, and unleashed the “toughest ever” sanctions against the Islamic Republic in defiance of global criticism.
Since the much-criticized exit, Washington has been attempting to prevent the remaining signatories – Britain, France, China and Russia plus Germany – from abiding by their commitments and thus kill the historic agreement, which is widely viewed as a fruit of international diplomacy.
Iran remained fully compliant with the JCPOA for an entire year, waiting for the co-signatories to fulfill their end of the bargain by offsetting the impacts of American bans on the Iranian economy.
But as the European parties failed to do so, the Islamic Republic moved in May 2019 to suspend its JCPOA commitments under Articles 26 and 36 of the deal that cover Tehran’s legal rights.
Iranian scientist assassinated with help of SATELLITE-CONTROLLED hardware – IRGC
RT | December 6, 2020
The assassination of senior Iranian military researcher Mohsen Fakhrizadeh involved sophisticated electronic equipment controlled via satellite link, a senior official said. The scientist was gunned down in an ambush last week.
This piece of information comes from General Ramezan Sharif, spokesman for the powerful Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC), whose remarks during a Saturday event commemorating Fakhrizadeh were reported on Sunday by Iranian media.
“The assassination of a scientist on the street with a satellite device can not undermine our security,” he was cited as saying.
Last week the secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, Ali Shamkhani, said a remotely controlled weapon was used in the ambush that claimed the scientist’s life. The operation was “very complicated” and didn’t require human presence on the site at the time of the attack.
Iranian officials believe that Fakhrizadeh’s assassination was masterminded by Israel. Iranian media reported that the remains of the weapon that killed him, which was recovered from the scene, indicated that it originated from the Israeli military.
Israeli Intelligence Minister Eli Cohen said his government had no idea who killed Fakhrizadeh, but added that whoever did made the world a safer place because the Iranian physicist took “an active part in creating a nuclear weapon.” Iran denies ever trying to militarize its nuclear research, saying it’s purely civilian in purpose.
Biden Appointee Neera Tanden Spread the Conspiracy That Russian Hackers Changed Hillary’s 2016 Votes to Trump
By Glenn Greenwald | November 30, 2020
The announcement that Joe Biden intends to nominate Neera Tanden as his Director of the Office of Management and Budget — a critical position overseeing U.S. economic and regulatory policy — triggered a wide range of mockery, indignation and disgust from both the left and the right.
That should not be surprising: though a thoroughly mediocre and ordinary D.C. swamp creature from the perspective of both ideology and competence, Tanden’s uniquely unhinged, venomous, corrupt and pathologically dishonest conduct as a Clinton Family and DNC apparatchik and President of the corporatist-and-despot-funded Center for American Progress (CAP) has earned her a list of enemies far longer and more impressive than her accomplishments.
When news of her appointment broke, many of the journalists and activists she has spent years abusing, slandering, and lying about instantly stepped forward to compile just some of her worst political and behavioral lowlights. And some preliminary signs emerged that she might encounter difficulty in obtaining the Senate confirmation needed for her to assume this position. The Communications Director for GOP Senator John Cornyn of Texas announced that “Tanden stands zero chance of being confirmed” by the Senate.
Former Sanders campaign aide David Sirota hypothesized that “it is not a coincidence that they are putting Neera Tanden — the single biggest, most aggressive Bernie Sanders critic in the United States of America — specifically at OMB while Sanders is Senate Budget Committee ranking/chair.” Sirota’s statement suggests Biden’s nomination of Tanden was intended as yet more humiliation doled out to the Democratic-loyal Sanders left by cucking the Vermont Senator even further by forcing him to shepherd the confirmation of one of his most vicious and amoral attackers (who Sanders himself in 2019 vehemently denounced). But Sirota’s point also raises the prospect that Tanden’s nomination could even encounter trouble from that side of the aisle as well (given Sanders’ compliant and disciplined conduct over the last six months, it’s more likely we will see him roll out a literal red carpet for Tanden to walk on, gently toss red roses on it before she passes, and then serve her a glass of Chardonnay rather than meaningfully obstruct her confirmation).
The list of sociopathic and even monstrous acts from Tanden is too long to list comprehensively. She punched one of her own employees, a reporter for CAP’s now-abolished blog ThinkProgress, after he had the temerity to ask Hillary Clinton in 2008 about her support for the Iraq War (Tanden claimed she “merely” had “pushed,” not punched, her undeferential reporter). In 2011, as the Obama administration was participating in the NATO bombing of Libya, Tanden suggested in internal CAP discussions that the U.S. steal Libya’s oil as a way of reducing the U.S. deficit (a story I was able to report only because Tanden had abused and alienated so many of her employees that they worked together to leak her incriminating emails to me).
During her tenure as CAP’s President, Tanden accepted millions of dollars from the regime of the United Arab Emirates, which built Dubai and Abu Dhabi using slave labor, along with massive donations from Facebook, Google, Microsoft, J.P. Morgan, the Walton Family and Michael Bloomberg, while hiding the identity of some of her think tank’s largest donors. A huge chapter on the NYPD’s abusive policies toward Muslims under Mayor Michael Bloomberg was removed from a CAP report after Boomberg donated more than $1 million to Tanden’s organization, and he continued to donate even more after that courteous gesture.
She ordered the supposedly independent journalists of the ThinkProgress blog, including Muslim writers, to stop writing critically about Israel after key CAP donors, including Barney Frank’s sister Ann Lewis and long-time Clinton advisor Howard Wolfson, complained. [More info on this and about AIPAC’S influence is here and here. and here and here]
Ann Lewis speaks at AIPAC national conference, March 20, 2016 in Washington DC. Lewis is a Democratic political strategist and former White House Communications Director to President Bill Clinton.
Tanden and Wolfson plotted in 2016 how to weaponize female journalists and people of color against Hillary’s critics as well to use their identity to stigmatize and thus stop undesirable coverage from The New York Times. In 2018, she outed a CAP employee at a staff-wide meeting who had filed an anonymous complaint of sexual harassment and retaliation against one of Tanden’s male allies. Secure with her UAE-and-corporate-funded large salary, she has long urged cuts to Social Security. The list goes on and on.
One can reasonably view Biden’s choice of Tanden as a positive. She is no different in character or ideology than any of the faceless, more obscure DNC operatives who would occupy this position if she did not. But because of how well-known her sociopathy, militarism and corporatism are to many on the liberal-left, her face serves as an undeniable and unavoidable reminder of what the Biden administration and the Democratic Party really are. She illuminates the truth about their real aims.
But beyond things like wanting to steal Libya’s oil after bombing it into oblivion, outing sexual harassment complainants, and physically assaulting and censoring her own employees, there is one uniquely abominable feature of Neera Tanden. She is one of the most deranged conspiracy theorists in the United States, and has done more than almost any other Washington functionary to contaminate Democrats’ mental health, capacity to reason, and faith in the legitimacy of U.S. elections.
Tanden owes her entire career to the patronage of Hillary Clinton, and her devotion to Hillary approaches restraining-order levels of creepiness (here you can watch Tanden beam with adoration as then-Senator Hillary Clinton, on the Senate floor in 2004, explains her steadfast opposition to marriage equality for same-sex couples on the ground that “marriage is a sacred bond between a man and a woman” and “exists between a man and a woman going back into the mists of history” for the primary purpose of raising children — just a few short years before Democrats changed views on this, after which it instantly became the hallmark of an unreconstructed hateful bigot to say this).
Few people took Hillary’s 2016 loss to Donald Trump as hard as Tanden, or handled it as poorly. Indeed, she refused to believe it really happened, and encouraged others to similarly refuse to accept its reality.
In the weeks after Trump’s victory, Tanden joined numerous Democrats in encouraging electors of the Electoral College to ignore their states’ votes and refuse to elect Trump as President (many rationale were invoked for this: Tanden’s was a CAP article promoting #Resistance fanatic Richard Painter’s argument that Trump’s violations of the Emolument Clause precluded an Electoral College win). She insisted that Hillary lost because of Russia, claiming the “Russians did enough damage to affect more than 70k votes in 3 states.” And she was not only one of the first to push the Steele Dossier’s claim that Russia held blackmail power over Trump but also one of the last to do so — insisting in 2018 that “the dossier been mostly proven to be true” and claiming as late as 2019 that nothing in this discredited junk report had been disproven.
Tanden’s bizarre claims about Russian hackers
But what really distinguished Tanden when it came to unhinged and toxic behavior was her repeated (and obviously baseless) claims that Hillary only lost because Russian hackers invaded the U.S. voting system and clandestinely changed Hillary’s votes to Trump’s, costing the real winner — Hillary — her rightful place on the throne, behind the Resolute Desk.
Four days after the 2016 election, Tanden began strongly implying, if not outright stating, that Russian hackers changed the vote totals, and that this is why “Trump was as surprised as everyone else” by his victory. When I highlighted her conspiratorial claims, she did not deny their obvious meaning, but rationalized them by insisting that her conspiracies were not as bad as Trump’s refusal, in advance of the election, to acknowledge the legitimacy of an election that had not yet taken place:
Tanden’s insistence that Russia changed the voting results through hacking did not once her traumatic shock in the weeks after Hillary’s loss dissipated (if it ever did). After The Intercept published an anonymous, evidence-free document in June, 2017, allegedly sent by NSA employee Reality Winner, which led that site to claim that “Russian military intelligence executed a cyberattack on at least one U.S. voting software supplier and sent spear-phishing emails to more than 100 local election officials,” Tanden returned to pushing this bizarre conspiracy theory, demanding that I “retract” my post-election criticism of her for peddling this Russia-changed-the-votes madness — as if this NSA document published by The Intercept proved vote-changing hacking by Russia.
This conspiracy-mongering led by Tanden and other prominent liberal activists had a corrosive effect on the ability of Democrats to perceive basic reality, to put that mildly. A 2018 poll from Economist/YouGov — conducted more than a year after Trump’s inauguration — found that a large majority of Democrats (66%) believe that “Russia tampered with vote tallies in order to get Donald Trump elected President.”
Economist/YouGov poll, published Mar. 9, 2018
Thereafter, Hillary herself took to calling Trump an “illegitimate” president, further fueling the destruction of confidence and faith among Democrats in the legitimacy of the vote totals and specifically the outcome of the 2016 presidential election.
Democratic leaders and their media allies love to patronizingly warn that conservative media outlets and their audiences are prone to spread and believe crazy conspiracy theories. They purport particular worry when such conspiracies are designed to undermine faith and trust in the U.S. electoral system itself.
Yet few have done more to destroy such confidence and faith than Neera Tanden, achieved by disseminating over the course of several years some of the most unhinged, evidence-free and deranged conspiracy theories in which she deliberately deceived Democratic partisans into believing that Moscow’s dastardly hackers invaded the sanctity of the U.S. voting system to change Hillary’s votes to Trump’s. And it worked: at least as of 2018, large majorities of Democrats believe that this utterly unproven but dangerous assertion is true.
If Joe Biden succeeds in empowering someone like Neera Tanden without extreme opposition from supposedly adversarial journalists, not only Democrats but also these media outlets will lose whatever lingering credibility they have to denounce conspiracy theories and to defend the legitimacy of U.S. elections. And they will deserve that fate. You can’t run around expecting people will take you seriously when you warn of the dangers of toxic, moronic conspiracy theories when you yourself embrace, elevate and promote the most prolific and reckless purveyors of them.
The Fallacy behind ‘Normalization’
By Lubna Tarabey – Al-Manar – November 28, 2020
“Normalization” is the process through which relationships can become normal or the process of bringing or returning something to a normal state or condition. Normalcy requires a balance of relationships, a regularization, an orderly state of affairs. Is that really the basis of the relationship between the so called “State of Israel” and the other countries of the Arab World that appear to be rushing to sign such ‘normalization’ agreements? Would such a state of affairs result in something that is even remotely balanced?
Let us take a look at this assumed balance and see if it is skewed in any direction – in whose direction. What does the “State of Israel” have? It has a nuclear ability- unlike the Arab countries, the strongest army, and the unconditional support of the United States of America and the Western world. What do any of the Arab states embarking on normalization have? Nothing of the above – not even the support of their people. Yes, they do have an oil-based wealth which can be robbed, used or abused, and that is what the Israelis are after. What resources does ‘Israel’ have that it promises to share with these Arab states? It promises to share nothing – promising peace. The idea in itself would be funny if it was not so pathetic. When were these Arab states now signing agreements ever in a state of war with ‘Israel’? When did any ever offer to send one soldier to fight alongside the Palestinians? The promised peace is pathetic as it is being offered as a gift among two parties that had never even been in war. Arab regimes are fools if they think they would benefit from the Zionists controlling the policies, both internal and external, in ‘Israel’. Which Arab state – those who actually were engaged in armed conflict – ever benefited from any agreement with the Zionists? Did Egypt benefit? Did Jordan benefit? The answer is categorically NO. None of these states benefited and none can hope to ever benefit from such agreements. That is against the policies of the Zionists state as the following clarifies.
The Zionists have a long history of using others. Ends justifies means. No other principle matters to them. Not justice, not equality, not fairness, not even peace. The principle of ‘end justifies means’ is the only principle they adhere to and to achieve their aims they gladly walk over other people. They even did that to Americans themselves – their number one ally. This is something that was seriously and meticulously documented by Alison Weir, the author of a must read book titled “Against Our Better Judgment: the hidden history of how the U.S was used to create Israel” (2014). Describing the scheming of the Zionist movement in the US, the author writes, “It has targeted virtually every sector of American society; worked to involve American in tragic, unnecessary and profoundly costly wars, dominated congress for decades; increasingly determined which candidates could become serious contenders for US presidency; and promoted bigotry towards an entire population, region and culture.”(Weir, 2014:2). The Zionist movement has constantly used any and whichever method to realize its end – using other people, benefiting from other nations economic powers, draining their resources and even stealing and appropriating other people’s history and culture. This is what they have done all over the world. This is what they have done in Palestine.
How can one even consider a normal relationship with an entity that is anything but normal. Its very existence represents an abnormality among nations. The only state in the world that has no history – a mere 60 years of existence – younger than my own father! Created in a land whose people have a history of more than 4000 years. This abnormal state was established at the cost of killing and displacing the natives of the land. The ‘engineers’ behind the establishment of this abnormality were quite aware that their claim to the land had no foundation. So, what was their brilliant solution? Let us steal the needed foundations! It was not enough to steal the land and houses of the Palestinians. Why not go the extra mile? Steal their history and, along the way, their culture. After all, no one can stop them. They enjoyed the support of the almighty western superpowers along with all the technological resources need to do so. The plan was deviously simple: Erase all traces of anything Palestinian and replace it with ‘Israeli’. Hence, the world wide famous Middle Eastern dish called the hummus became Israeli Hummus. The famous relics of the church of Bethlehem were stolen and documented as part of the Jewish heritage. The embroidery work of the Palestinians which for thousands of years stood as a signature of the clothing of the people of Palestine was also stolen and renamed ‘Israeli’. Even names of villages were changed in line with the Jewish pronunciations to establish a sense of continuity and belonging. For example Asqalan became Ashkelon …. The story goes on and on. Palestine was removed from the maps used all over the world and replaced with ‘Israel’. One theft after another. All carried out under the eyes of the so called ‘free world’ which mostly reacted by turning a blind eye, intentionally so, further supporting these atrocities.
Such practices cannot be allowed to continue. People of the Arab World must become active agents, calling out and exposing these practices. A documentation of Palestinian cultural heritage must be embarked upon. The youth of the Arab world must be reminded of how the ‘state of Israel’ was established. Whose houses were destroyed? Whose land was stolen? Whose culture was destroyed? Normalization of what! What a fallacy! There can be no normal relationships – the very basis of the concept is not applicable.
Lubna Tarabey is a Professor of Cultural Anthropology, Institute of Social Sciences, Lebanese University.
Alison Weir is an American research with a lot of publications on the Zionist movement and the Israeli Palestinian conflict.
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New Book
Trans agenda is ‘normalization of sadism’ – US author
RT | September 23, 2026
The US Democratic Party has embraced a transgender agenda that amounts to “the normalization of sadism,” author A.J. Rice has said, warning that radical trans policies would return if the party is allowed to regain power.
Speaking to RT’s America First host Scotty Nell Hughes about his new book, ‘The Curse of the Bearded Lady: How the Trans Mafia Whacked American Sanity’, Rice argued that activists have gained significant influence in schools, medicine, and corporate America while people who questioned the agenda have faced pressure to stay silent.
The author described the “trans mafia” as the sprawling network of people and institutions that have helped the movement gain influence. He singled out parts of academia, wealthy backers, and corporations, and stated that providers of transition-related treatment also have a financial incentive to keep young people in their care indefinitely.
Rice argued that the consequences of these policies ultimately fall on children who are being drawn toward gender-affirming medical treatments and on girls who are expected to share locker rooms or compete in sports with biological males.
He noted that while voters rejected the Democrats’ approach to gender in 2024, the party, which has been “captured by madness,” has since only doubled down and is seeking what is effectively “the normalization of sadism.” … Full report
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