“Sewer Socialist” Bernie Sanders’ Anti-Russian Propaganda
By Caleb Maupin – New Eastern Outlook – 28.06.2015
The presidential campaign of Bernie Sanders — an anti-Russia, Israel-supporting politician from Vermont — revives an archaic feud among leftists. The old debate about “sewer socialism” is back.
In the early part of the 20th century, there was a broad movement of people in the United States who advocated the overthrow of capitalism. Among them were many revolutionaries like Eugene Debs, William Z. Foster, Lucy Parsons, and Paul Robeson.
However, there was another current of people who called themselves “socialists” but had no interest in revolution. They were called “sewer socialists.” The term originated in reference to Victor L. Berger, a “socialist” who ran on a platform of improving the city’s sewer system and eventually became the mayor of Milwaukee. The sewer socialists did not want to overthrow capitalism, but simply to be elected to local public office and improve government policy. They wanted to make a global system built on exploitation of people all over the world a little more comfortable for those living within the western economic centers.
The battle between these two poles of the left movement – with the revolutionary and anti-imperialist wing of socialism on the one hand and the “sewer socialist” wing on the other — played out on a global level. Commenting on the debate, Russian socialist revolutionary Vladimir Lenin described the trend this way: “The bourgeoisie of an imperialist ‘Great’ Power can economically bribe the upper strata of ‘its’ workers by spending on this a hundred million or so francs a year, for its superprofits most likely amount to about a thousand million… this little sop is divided among the labour ministers, ‘labour representatives’… labour members of War Industries Committees… labour officials, workers belonging to the narrow craft unions…”
In the modern United States, it isn’t sewer socialism but “Vermont socialism” that plays the role of the ‘Labor Ministers.’ US Senator Bernie Sanders is running for president, and openly describes himself as a “socialist.” Despite using this word to describe himself, with many well intentioned anti-capitalist activists supporting him, Sanders’ platform in reality articulates a strategy for strengthening global monopoly capitalism and its expanding militarism.
Big Oil’s Campaign Against Russia
Currently, Wall Street is doing all it can to suppress Russia, a rising competitor on the global markets. US oil and natural gas corporations in particular want to attack and isolate the Russian Federation, as hydraulic fracking floods the market and drives down oil prices and profits. As Russia stabilizes and expands, continuing to export more and more natural gas, big business desperately needs to purge the country’s oil from the global market.
In service of the western oil and natural gas cartels, US agents overthrew the democratically elected government of Ukraine. The orgy of street violence in Kiev that deposed Yanukovich was conducted with the direction of the CIA and billions of dollars in US funding. In Ukraine, the intervention of the United States has pushed a formerly peaceful country into civil war and installed a fanatically anti-Russian government. Russia now faces a hostile, US-aligned regime directly on its doorstep. Civil war is unfolding as the peoples of eastern Ukraine have taken up arms against it.
US-funded terrorists are waging a campaign of death and destruction in Syria, another Russian-aligned country. Hundreds of thousands have already been killed. The US and its allies in Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan continue to pour money into the so-called “Free Syrian Army” — a group that openly tortures, kidnaps, and beheads innocent people, and has a history of collaborating with ISIS.
Despite giving demagogic anti-corporate speeches, Sanders brags that he is even more in line with big oil’s anti-Russia campaign than President Obama. “The entire world has got to stand up to Putin. We’ve got to deal with sanctions, we’ve got to deal with freezing assets,” he declared in a TV interview with FOX news host Bill O’Reilly.
In the same interview, he declared: “You’ve got to totally isolate them politically. You’ve got to totally isolate them economically… You freeze assets that the Russian government has all over the world… International corporations have huge investments in Russia, you could pull them out…”
A “Socialist” who Loves War and Israel
Sanders is very much a friend of the military industrial complex. In his home state of Vermont, Sanders “rarely misses a photo opportunity with Vermont National Guard troops when they are being deployed to Afghanistan or Iraq.” While criticizing Bush’s invasion of Iraq, Sanders consistently votes for the massive US military budget. In fact, Sanders is vocally very supportive of Obama’s drone strikes program, and has worked to bring US military research corporations into his home state to set up facilities.
As a highly rated ally of the American-Israeli Public Affairs Committee, Sanders has consistently voted and spoken out in support of Israel. When criticized for it, he often replies with standard Israel lobby talking points, saying things like, “Hamas is sending missiles into Israel… some of those missiles are coming to populated areas…” Other than vaguely saying that Israel may have “overreacted,” he blatantly supports and defends Israeli military policy.
Sanders openly believes that the Palestinian resistance to Israeli occupation is “terrorism,” and that the existence of a “Jewish state” on Palestinian land is somehow ethical. In his 2013 interview with Playboy, he declared: “The Palestinians must fulfill their responsibilities to end terrorism against Israel and recognize Israel’s right to exist.”
A Friend of the Rising Police State
As a loyal ally of military corporations, he not only supports their war against people in Ukraine, Syria, and Palestine, but also their profitable activities at home. Big business is making huge profits from a prison industrial complex as well as the rapid expansion of the role of police in US society. As police patrol the halls of elementary schools, and “stop and frisk” people on the streets without probable cause, it is young African-Americans who are their primary targets.
Sanders has never been an opponent of the prison industrial complex or the rising incidents of police violence. In Michael Moore’s 2009 film “Capitalism: A Love Story,” Moore interviewed Sanders and asked him to explain what it meant to be a socialist. Sanders responded with a vague, populist rant in which he portrayed the police as victims: “We’ve become very religious in worshipping greed. We put on the front pages of magazines guys who have made millions of dollars, we ignore the cops… who every day are doing so much in improving the lives of people.”
More recently, in response to the massive uprising against police brutality and mass incarceration in the United States, Sanders has declared: “Look, the issue here is…. I was a mayor for eight years, and being a cop is a very, very difficult job. But the word has got to get out that when police act inappropriately, and of course in this case there has to be a thorough investigation.” Sanders gives standard, Obama-style talking points on the issue, saying he supports “body cameras” and wants more community cooperation and involvement with police departments.
Inevitably, whenever the issue of police brutality is raised, Sanders changes the subject to economics. In response to the Baltimore uprising after the killing of Freddie Grey, Sanders declared, without ever even mentioning Grey’s name: “In the neighborhood where this gentleman lives, as I understand it, the unemployment rate is over 50 percent, over 50 percent. What we have got to do as a nation is understand that we have got to create millions of jobs, to put people back to work, to make sure that kids are in schools, and not in jails…. so they’re not hanging out on street corners.”
No one can deny that unemployment is a huge problem, especially for Black and Brown communities in the United States. However, Eric Garner wasn’t choked to death by a bill collector. The direct issue at hand is the fact that police officers have essentially been given a “license to kill” by the courts, and routinely face no penalty after blatantly and intentionally killing people of color.
By diverting the conversation to economics and not calling out the police in harsh terms, and then using racially loaded phrases like “hanging out on street corners,” Sanders is essentially saying: “If only Black people had more economic opportunities, they wouldn’t be worthless, low-life criminals who the police have to kill.”
A Bigger Slice of Empire?
Often Bernie Sanders is asked what it means to be a socialist. He does not respond with a call for public management of the economy, “workers’ control of the means of production,” a workers and farmer’s government, or any of the definitions of “socialism” used by socialists historically. Instead, he talks about Norway, Sweden, and other US-aligned imperialist countries. He emphasizes that these countries have a national health service, and provide free university education. […]
Sanders’ political viewpoint, based on his experience of decades in governing his home state — where only 1.2% of the population is Black — has been: “If we give white middle class Americans a bigger slice of the pie, they will be far more willing to line up with Wall Street against Russia, China, Iran, and the Palestinians.”
Lenin accurately described leaders like Sanders as “opportunists and social-chauvinists,” saying, “They are defending the temporary privileges of a minority of the workers…” Back in 1916, Lenin urged his followers to “go down lower and deeper, to the real masses… teach the masses to appreciate their true political interests, to fight for socialism and for the revolution.”
The following year, Lenin and the Bolsheviks were victorious. Capitalism, along with its mischievous and demagogic defenders like Bernie Sanders, was overthrown in Russia. That was nearly 100 years ago. How this battle will play out among 21st-century leftists remains to be seen.
Caleb Maupin is a political analyst and activist based in New York. He studied political science at Baldwin-Wallace College and was inspired and involved in the Occupy Wall Street movement.
Media Report on “Terrorists and Hostages” While Falsifying Iran-Contra
By Sam Husseini | June 26, 2015
Much of the media has been abuzz with President Barack Obama’s announcement that, as NBC put it: “the government will no longer threaten to criminally prosecute families of American hostages who pay ransom to get loved ones back from such groups as ISIS…”
The NBC report — and virtually every other report on this subject I’ve seen — have made no mention of when the U.S. government did pay for hostages in the Iran-Contra Affair. That’s when the Reagan administration sold arms to Iran in exchange for hostages and illegally used the funds for the Contras in Nicaragua.
An extreme example of media mis-reporting was Jake Tapper who claimed on November 18, 2014: “It’s a policy the U.S. government has never wavered on. America does not negotiate with terrorists. You have heard them say that, but now the Obama administration is ordering a full review of how it does deal with hostage situations in light of recent criticism from families of Americans brutally murdered by ISIS terrorists.”
So, I tweeted to Tapper: “never wavered on negotiating for hostages? I guess Iran-Contra didn’t happen.”
He tweeted back: “good point, we should we have couched that”
I responded: “No corrections on cable. Cause, 24-hour news.”
And indeed, no correction was forthcoming. Because it’s not like CNN has a lot of time to fill to educate, especially younger viewers about what happened in Iran-Contra.
Particularly insidious is Tapper’s notion that he should have “couched that” differently. Firstly, it avoids acknowledging that what he said was false: “It’s a policy the U.S. government has never wavered on.” That’s just a brazen lie.
But in a subtle way, his response is even worse. Tapper, it would seem, is tacitly blaming himself for not finessing the lie better. Perhaps he thinks it would be better had he said: “Administration after administration has declared they don’t negotiate with terrorists, but now, that policy is being reconsidered…” This would fulfill the goal of creating a false impression while not being so oafish as to outright lie. And in some way, that’s what most of the media did on this story (and countless others) — create the impression that the U.S. has never traded for hostages without outright lying about it.
All this helps put Iran-Contra, one of the few instances when the machinations of policy were exposed to public scrutiny to at least some degree, further into the memory hole. Indeed, what’s called the Iran-Contra Affair helped bring some light on several insidious policies, including plans to outright suspend the U.S. Constitution.
Another deceitful aspect of this story is it further solidifies the “definition” of terrorist that’s commonly employed by major media being whoever the U.S. government says is a terrorist. These hypocrisies certainly include as FAIR and others have noted not calling Dylann Storm Roof a terrorist. But outside even that discussion is if the violence of the U.S. government and its allies shouldn’t be called terrorism.
Much is also lost by not understanding the dynamics around the Iran-Contra Affair — which involved the U.S. arming both Iran and Iraq while those two countries fought a bloody war. Dahlia Wasfi in her recent piece “Battling ISIS: Iran-Iraq war redux” points out that the U.S. government is in effect doing the same thing in the Mideast now — arming warring sides. She writes: “Just as with Iran and Iraq in the 1980s, the people in the battlefields of Syria and Iraq pay the highest price. And just as was the case in the 1980s, the devastation of these countries serves U.S. and Israeli hegemony.”
Neocons Urge Embrace of Al Qaeda
By Daniel Lazare | Consortium News | June 26, 2015
Just nine days after the fall of the World Trade Center, George W. Bush announced that he was imposing a radical new policy on virtually the entire globe: “Every nation, in every region, now has a decision to make. Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists. From this day forward, any nation that continues to harbor or support terrorism will be regarded by the United States as a hostile regime.”
As dramatic as the statement was, just about every phrase was open to question in one form or another. But rather than launching into a long and vigorous debate about the meaning of terrorism or America’s right to impose diktat on the world at large, congressmen turned their minds off and gave Bush a standing ovation.
Today, the same Bush Doctrine is sinking beneath the waves as a growing portion of the punditocracy declares that some forms of terrorism are better than others and that harboring a terrorist may not be so bad if it advances U.S. interests. But once again, the response is not questioning, debate, or even applause, but silence.
The latest evidence of a sea change in establishment thinking is a blog that Ahmed Rashid, a prominent Middle East correspondent, recently published on The New York Review of Books website. Entitled “Why We Need al-Qaeda,” it argues that Al Qaeda and its Syrian affiliate, Al Nusra, are evolving in a more moderate direction in growing contrast to its rival, the super-violent Islamic State. So why not use Al Nusra as a counterforce against both Bashar al-Assad and ISIS?
As Rashid puts it: “Unlike ISIS, which demands absolute subjugation of the inhabitants of any territory it conquers (surrender or be executed), al-Nusra is cooperating with other anti-Assad groups and recently joined the ‘Army of Conquest’ alliance of rebel militias in northern Syria. Moreover, in contrast to ISIS’s largely international and non-Syrian fighting force, al-Nusra’s fighters are almost wholly Syrian, making them both more reliable and more committed to Syria’s future.
“Meanwhile, in interviews with Al Jazeera, al-Nusra leaders have vowed not to attack targets in the West, promoting an ideology that might be called ‘nationalist jihadism’ rather than global jihad. In recent months, al-Nusra’s leaders have toned down the implementation of their own brutal version of Islamic law, while putting on hold their own plans of building a caliphate.”
Thus, according to Rashid’s viewpoint, Al Nusra is cooperative, patriotic, unthreatening to anyone other than Assad, and in favor of a kinder and gentler form of shari‘a as well. Yet, Rashid argues, that while Turkey and the Arab gulf states recognize that change is afoot, the U.S. keeps its eyes resolutely shut:
“With 230,000 killed and 7.6 million people uprooted in Syria alone, the Arab states want a quick end to the Assad regime and a viable solution for Syria. They know that solution will never come from the weak moderate opposition, and that any lasting peace will require support by the strong and ruthless Islamist groups fighting there.”
Gulf States’ Favorite
So the gulf states are backing the second most ruthless Islamist group in Syria (Al Qaeda’s affiliate) in hopes of offsetting the first most ruthless (ISIS) and making short work of the Baathist regime in Damascus. But as Arab leaders prepare for direct negotiations with Al Nusra, Rashid warns, “the only one not at the table could be the United States.”
This is dramatic stuff. After all, Rashid is not taking aim at some minor doctrine, but one that has been a cornerstone of U.S. foreign policy since 9/11. Moreover, he’s not the only one talking this way. Since Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan flew to Riyadh in early March to meet with Saudi King Salman and discuss ways of upping support for the Syrian Islamist opposition, there has been a veritable boomlet in terms of calls for a rapprochement with Al Qaeda.
Within days of the Riyadh get-together, Foreign Affairs went public with an article arguing that even though “the United States is the closest it has ever been to destroying al Qaeda, its interests would be better served by keeping the terrorist organization afloat.” Lina Khatib, director of the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut, wrote a few weeks later that “while not everyone likes Nusra’s ideology, there is a growing sense in the north of Syria that it is the best alternative on the ground – and that ideology is a small price to pay for higher returns.”
Charles Lister of the Brookings Institute’s Doha Center, wrote that Al Nusra is undergoing a “moderating shift.” Frederic Hof, Obama’s former envoy to the Syrian guerrillas and now a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council in Washington, said the group has become “a real magnet for young Syrian fighters who don’t have any particular jihadist or even radical sectarian agenda.” They are drawn to Al Nusra, he explained, for two reasons – because it’s “well-resourced” and because it “seems to have been willing to fight the regime and not to engage in some of the corrupt activities and warlordism that you would find elsewhere within the panoply of Syrian opposition.”
So, Rashid’s views are hardly unique. Nonetheless, they’re the most explicit and upfront to date, an indication that support for an alliance with Al Qaeda is on the upswing and that advocates are growing bolder and more self-confident. So how should ordinary people who are not part of the elite foreign-policy discussion respond?
One-Sided Arguments
For one thing, they might notice that such articles are remarkably one-sided and poorly reasoned. Rashid may be “one of Pakistan’s most respected journalists,” as the BBC puts it, someone whose work has appeared in such publications as the Daily Telegraph and the Far Eastern Economic Review. Yet shooting holes through his arguments is child’s play.
Take his claim that “al-Nusra’s leaders have toned down the implementation of their own brutal version of Islamic law.” Whatever the difference between Al Nusra and ISIS on this score, it’s less impressive than Rashid lets on.
The Soufan Group, a New York-based security firm headed by a Lebanese-American ex-FBI agent named Ali H. Soufan, notes, for instance, that while Islamic State released a video in January showing its forces stoning an accused adulteress, Al Nusra released one around the same time showing its forces shooting two women for the same alleged offense. Since the victims in either case were killed, the difference, as the Soufan Group noted, was purely “stylistic.”
Rashid claims that Al Nusra is less extreme in its hostility to Shi‘ism, in part because it thinks “anti-Shia fanaticism” is backfiring and becoming “an impediment to gaining more territory.” Indeed, Abu Mohammad al-Julani, Al Nusra’s commander-in-chief, told Al Jazeera in a rare interview on May 27 that his forces were willing to welcome Alawites, as Syria’s Shi‘ites are known, back into the fold.
“If they drop weapons,” al-Julani said, “disavow Assad, do not send their men to fight for him and return to Islam, then they are our brothers.” But when he described Alawism as a sect that has “moved outside the religion of God and of Islam,” the meaning became clear: Alawite must either convert or die.
Whether this makes Al Nusra less genocidal than ISIS is open to debate. According to the pro-rebel Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, meanwhile, Al Nusra recently massacred more than 20 Druze villagers in northwestern Syria – reportedly after a local commander denounced them as kuffar, or infidels, while al-Julani, in his Al Jazeera interview, specified that Christians must pay the jizya, a special head tax imposed by Islamic law, as well – a stipulation Syria’s ten-percent Christian minority is not likely to find very reassuring.
Ordinary people viewing this from afar might notice that the government that al-Julani is seeking to overthrow is officially secular and non-discriminatory and that even Obama has conceded that it has “protected the Christians in Syria,” as he told a Syrian Christian delegation last September. They might also notice that Rashid’s article is in other respects highly revealing, although not in ways he cares to admit.
For instance, Rashid writes that U.S. policy in the Middle East is beset by “growing contradictions.” This is obviously correct. But the problem is not that Washington refuses to face facts about Al Nusra’s alleged moderating trend, but that the U.S. is attempting to hammer out an accord with Iran while struggling to preserve its alliance with Israel and the Arab gulf states, all of whom regard Iran as public enemy number one.
Obama’s Fence Straddling
The effort has led to monumental fence straddling. While entering into talks with Iran, the Obama administration has given the go-ahead to Saudi Arabia’s two-month-old assault on Iranian-allied forces in Yemen while turning a blind eye to growing Turkish and Saudi support for anti-Iranian terrorists in Syria.
While paying lip service to the Bush Doctrine that he who harbors a terrorist is as bad as a terrorist, the Obama administration made no objection when the Saudis and Turks donated U.S.-made TOW missiles to Al Nusra-led forces in northern Syria or when the Saudi bombing campaign allowed Al Qaeda to expand in Yemen.
It’s a mixed-up policy that has people in the Middle East shaking their heads. Yet Rashid adds to the confusion by misrepresenting the Saudi role. He writes, for instance, that the Arab States are swinging behind Al Nusra because they “want a quick end to the Assad regime and a viable solution for Syria,” when, in fact, Saudi Wahhabists have sought from the start to impose a government much like their own, as a report by U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency observed back in August 2012.
Rather than “viable,” such a government would be precisely the opposite for a highly variegated society like Syria with its large Christian, Shi‘ite, and Druze minorities fearful of Sunni fundamentalist domination – yet the gulf states, backed by the U.S., have pushed on regardless.
On the issue of Al Qaeda’s brutal intolerance, Rashid adds, “For Arab leaders, determining whether al-Qaeda has really changed will depend on the group’s long-term attitude toward Shias,” suggesting that the gulf states are seeking a fairer outcome for Syria’s Alawites.
Saudi Intolerance
But this is misleading as well since Saudi attitudes toward the kingdom’s own 15-percent Shi‘ite minority are deeply oppressive and seem to be getting worse.
According to the Cambridge scholar Toby Matthiesen, for example, Saudi Shi‘ites are barred from the army and the National Guard as well as the top rungs of the government. State-mandated schoolbooks denounce them as “rejectionists,” while, according to the independent scholar Mai Yamani, they cannot testify in court or marry a Sunni and must put up with abuse from Wahhabist clerics who regularly preach that killing a Shi‘ite merits a greater heavenly reward than killing a Christian or a Jew.
Since Salman’s accession in late January, there is no sign of a softening. Indeed, by bombing Yemen’s Shi‘ite Houthi rebels and stepping up support for fanatically anti-Shi‘ite rebels in Syria, Salman gives every indication of intensifying his anti-Shi‘ite crusade and taking it abroad.
Neocons pushing for an explicit alliance with Al Nusra are thus attempting to plunge the U.S. ever more deeply into a growing sectarian war. Ordinary people might also notice that such “experts” expound their views from cushy posts financed by Qatar (the case with Brookings’ Doha Center) or by Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, and Bahrain (the case with the Atlantic Council).
Yet Congress doesn’t care about such conflicts of interest and the White House is too intimidated to speak out, while the American people at large are not consulted. Questioning and debate are more imperative than ever, yet they are as absent as they were back in 2001.
Druze Attack Israeli Ambulance Carrying Wounded Al-Nusra Gunmen
Al-Manar | June 23, 2015
A wounded takfiri of Al-Nusra Front terrorist group was killed on Monday when a group of Druze in Majdal Shams attacked an Israeli military ambulance taking him and his fellow terrorist to hospital for treatment, occupation police said.
“A crowd attacked an ambulance with stones near Majdal Shams on the Golan Heights,” as it was transporting two wounded gunmen operating in Syria, a police statement said, adding that one of the injured “died after the attack”.
It said that the second Al-Nusra gunman was in a serious condition, and that two soldiers who were also inside the vehicle had been lightly wounded.
The Zionist Public radio earlier said that around 200 Druze from Majdal Shams had pelted the ambulance with stones, forcing it to stop, and dragged the wounded gunmen from the vehicle.
Zionist Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called the incident “very serious” and vowed those behind the attack would be held to account.
“We will not let anyone take the law into their hands and prevent the army from carrying out its mission,” he said in a statement, appealing for leaders in the Druze community to maintain calm.
The attack came amid growing concern for the fate of Syria’s Druze minority who are surrounded by takfiris operating in the country.
Tensions have flared in Druze areas of northern occupied Palestine and the Zionist-occupied Golan Heights after Al-Nusra Front takfiri group surrounded a government-held Druze village on the Syrian side last week.
Monday’s attack came hours after another group of Druze also blocked and threw stones at an army vehicle they believed was transferring wounded mercenaries for treatment, Zionist police said.
Police spokeswoman Luba Samri said the first incident happened in the northern Zionist settlement of Horfish and that the Druze tried to check the identities of those inside the ambulance.
The Druze threw stones at the vehicle as it tried to drive off, she said, adding that one Druze was moderately injured in the incident.
Officials say there are 110,000 Druze in northern Occupied Palestine, and another 20,000 in the Zionist-occupied Syrian Golan.
Egypt builds trench along Gaza border
Ma’an – June 22, 2015
CAIRO – The Egyptian military has constructed a trench along the border of Rafah to prevent smugglers from operating in the area, the army said.
The trench is 20 meters deep and 10 meters wide and is located two kilometers from the border with Gaza outside of Rafah city.
The new infrastructure — part of a larger buffer zone being constructed in the area — is intended to prevent smugglers from driving their vehicles to the opening of tunnels along the border.
A military official said that the army plans to expand the trench and install watchtowers along its length.
Work on the buffer zone on the Egyptian side began in February 2014, but was at the time slated to extend only about 300 meters in urban areas and 500 meters in rural areas.
After a bombing killed more than 30 Egyptian soldiers in the Sinai in October 2014, however, the military stepped up a campaign to build the buffer zone amid accusations of Hamas support for the group that carried out the attack.
Hamas, which denies Egyptian accusations, has suffered poor relations with the Egyptian government ever since the democratically-elected Muslim Brotherhood, with whom they were closely allied, was thrown out of power in July 2013.
Deteriorating relations between Egypt and Hamas come at a high price to Gaza’s 1.8 million residents for whom the smuggling tunnels have served as a lifeline to the outside world since Israel imposed a crippling siege on the coastal enclave in 2007.
US State Department accuses Iran of supporting terrorism
Press TV – June 20, 2015
The US State Department has accused Iran of supporting international terrorist groups, claiming the country’s terrorist activities continue.
The department said in its annual report on Friday that Iran is supporting those militant groups fighting against the ISIL terrorist group in Iraq and Syria.
The report also said the Islamic Republic increased its military aid to the Syrian government of President Bashar al-Assad and Shia fighters in Iraq last year.
Washington alleges that Tehran is increasing its support for Lebanon’s resistance movement Hezbollah and Palestinian resistance movements.
This is while the report makes almost no mention of Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey, which are widely believed to be the main supporters of terrorists in the Middle East. The US itself stands accused of financing and arming militants in the region.
In an interview with Press TV on Friday, American political commentator Dr. Kevin Barrett said that the United States is the primary sponsor of the ISIL terrorists.
“It seems that they’re using a very self-serving definition of terrorism here and elsewhere,” he said.
“It’s ironic though that Iran has been bashed primarily for fighting against the people that this very report says are the world’s biggest terrorist threat and that would be ISIL and Takfiri terrorists,” Dr. Barrett added.
He also noted that Iran “has been the biggest single force fighting against that particular brand of terrorism that this report says it’s getting out of control.”
The Deep Rabbit Hole of Israel Spying on America
By Naji Dahi | ANTIMEDIA | June 15, 2015
In 2014, it was revealed that Israel was spying on the secret negotiations between Iran and the five permanent UN Security Council members (China, France, Russia, the U.K., and the United States plus Germany—together known as P5+1) regarding Iran’s nuclear program. More recently, it was revealed that Swiss and Austrian authorities are investigating the extent of said spying. Israel has denied any involvement in the matter, but a spying virus linked to the Israelis was found on the computers of three hotels where the negotiations are hosted.
It may come as a shock to some Americans, but Israel has a long history of spying on the U.S. government, its military, and private sector corporations. While it is common for allies to spy on each other, Israel’s spying is unprecedented in its depth and intensity. According to Newsweek,
Israel’s espionage activities in America are unrivaled and unseemly, counterspies have told members of the House Judiciary and Foreign Affairs committees, going far beyond activities by other close allies, such as Germany, France, the U.K. and Japan. A congressional staffer familiar with a briefing last January called the testimony ‘very sobering… alarming… even terrifying.’
Another staffer called it ‘damaging.’
The spying is even more shocking given the extent of America’s generosity towards Israel. By all accounts, Israel has received $233.7 billion in direct military aid (among many other benefits) from the U.S. over the last six decades. According to If Americans Knew, an independent research institute, since the early 1970s,
The US has given more aid to Israel than it has to all the countries of sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America, and the Caribbean combined—which have a total population of over a billion people… In all, direct US disbursements to Israel are higher than to any other country, even though Israelis only make up 0.1% of the world’s population. On average, Israelis receive 7,000 times more US foreign aid per capita than other people throughout the world, despite the fact that Israel is one of the world’s more affluent nations.
So how far back does Israeli spying go? According to one source, Israeli surveillance of the United States dates back to 1954 when “the U.S. Ambassador in Tel Aviv discovered in his office a hidden microphone ‘planted by the Israelis.’”
In 1965, it was revealed that 100 kilograms of weapons-grade uranium was missing from a U.S. research facility. Israel was suspected of stealing the material for its nuclear weapons program. The Bulletin wrote that “The evidence available for our 2010 Bulletin article persuaded us that Israel did steal uranium from the Apollo, Pennsylvania, plant of the Nuclear Materials and Equipment Corporation (NUMEC).”
Closely related to the smuggling of uranium was the most infamous case of Israeli spying—that of U.S. naval intelligence officer, Jonathan Pollard, and his wife. On November 21, 1985, Jonathan Pollard was arrested for espionage while trying to seek asylum at the Israeli Embassy in Washington D.C. Thus began one of the most damaging thefts of American national security documents. According to one source, Pollard stole “an estimated 800,000 code-word protected documents from inside the CIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency, and numerous other U.S. agencies.” Pollard and his wife pleaded guilty. She was sentenced to two five-year prison terms but was released early because of her illness. She has since left for Israel and campaigns on behalf of an early release of her husband. Jonathan Pollard was sentenced to life in prison but is eligible for parole in 2015. Israel granted Pollard citizenship and has pressured presidents Bush, Clinton, and Obama for his early release. The damage to U.S. national security was such that whenever the subject was brought up, a number of high-ranking national security officials threatened to resign. Pollard has yet to be released.
Another spy that also helped Israel in its quest for nuclear weapons was the 84-year-old Ben-Ami Kadish. After two decades of providing an unnamed Israeli official with sensitive information about the U.S.’ nuclear secrets and weapons programs, Kadish was arrested. He plead guilty and paid a $50,000 fine, but did not serve time due to old age and infirmity. One wonders why the FBI took so long to find and arrest the spy. Curiously, both Pollard and Kadish allegedly had the same Israeli handler. Even the sentencing judge wondered “[why] it took the government 23 years to charge Mr. Kadish.”
Finally, there is the case of Lawrence Franklin, who was arrested in 2005 and charged under the Espionage Act. In January 2006, he was convicted and sent to jail for 12 years for passing secret Department of Defense documents to two high-ranking AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee) officials. The two AIPAC officials were also indicted in 2005 as co-conspirators, but the charges against them were dropped four years later after a court required a “higher level of proof of intent to spy. The court said the prosecution would have to prove not only that the accused pair had passed classified information but that they intended to harm the US in doing so.” One wonders why the court all of a sudden required a higher burden of proof. Justin Raimondo suggests that the dropping of charges is indicative of the power of AIPAC.
As can be seen from the few cases highlighted here (there are more), there is a long history of Israeli spying on the U.S. What is new about the spying on the nuclear negotiations is the involvement of other actors (Britain, France, Russia, China, and Germany). Unlike the United States, which has tolerated and condoned Israeli spying (Israel apologized and promised not to do it again after the Pollard case), these other actors may not take kindly to Israeli spying and might inflict punitive diplomatic and/or criminal sanctions against Israel. That remains to be seen, pending the results of the Austrian and Swiss investigation. This story is far from over given Israel’s intense opposition to the P5+1 nuclear negotiations with Iran.
The Henry Jackson Society and the Degeneration of British Neo-conservatism
MEMO | June 11, 2015
A new report by Spinwatch, a public interest investigation group, provides an in-depth scrutiny of The Henry Jackson Society and the Degeneration of British Neo-conservatism; it examines the history, activities and politics of the right-wing think tank, which is a leading exponent of neo-conservatism in Britain.
Based at the University of Bath, Spinwatch has developed a reputation for carrying out cutting-edge research and investigations into key social, political, environmental and health issues in Britain and Europe. Its previous report in this area was a detailed investigation into the Cold War on British Muslims that is being advanced by the political right-wing.
The new report is sponsored by the Cordoba Foundation, a London-based research and advocacy group promoting religious and cultural understanding. It exposes the Henry Jackson Society’s activities in pushing for liberal interventionism abroad, spreading Islamophobia and its stalwart support for the “war on terror”.
In the 83-page report, the four authors trace the ideological as well as the organisational evolution of the HJS. Beginning with a short biography of the eponymous US senator, whose most consistent characteristic was military intervention as the answer to almost all foreign problems, they sketch the militaristic and uncompromising worldview of the think tank’s mentors. The list includes US hawks like Richard Pearl, Paul Wolfowitz, Donald Rumsfeld and others whose neo-conservative world view combined with strategic manoeuvring under the second Bush administration and led to arguably the worst foreign policy disasters of our time.
Many striking features of the cross Atlantic group are described in the report. None is more remarkable, perhaps, than its ubiquitous presence within the corridors of power and evolution from a small Cambridge group to an influential think tank in Westminster with powerful financial and political backers in Britain and the US.
Within the six different sections of the report, a number of interesting and at times worrying details of the group – which has influence over many British lawmakers and public officials – are exposed. Its close connection with William Shawcross, for example, an ex-director of the HJS and the current chair of Britain’s Charity Commission raises difficult questions about the impartiality of the regulator and its ability to investigate political lobby groups – such as the Henry Jackson Society – that are also registered charities.
The first part of the report sketches the political context and ideological roots that gave rise to the non-profit organisation back in 2005. The report portrays the organisation as a fluid movement capable of taking advantage of political ebbs and flows to further its own narrow agenda. It then takes us through the Cambridge Movement from 2004-2007 during which the HJS emerged as a leading institutional expression of British neo-conservatism, a novel creation of British intellectuals who shared the same concerns as the original American neo-conservatives in the face of an emerging popular anti-war movement in Britain.
Its flexibility is highlighted further in part three, in which the authors examine the internal coup followed by a sharp turn away from the pro-European style Atlanticism associated with its founders, such as the academic and historian Brendan Simms, towards a position more in line with the dominant Euro-scepticism of the British right.
It was during this period that the society aligned itself distinctly with illiberal anti-Muslim groups and figures like Daniel Pipes and Frank Gaffney, who worked previously under Richard Pearl. As the Henry Jackson Society’s Zionist credentials were strengthened, many of its founders were replaced by key people from Just Journalism, a pro-Israel media watchdog.
The society entered a new phase after 2011. It purged some of its less xenophobic staff members and merged with the Centre for Social Cohesion (CSC); the latter’s director, Douglas Murray, joined the Henry Jackson Society as an associate director. Its lurch to the right and metamorphosis into a leading proponent of Israel and vilifier of Islam was complete. The society consolidated itself ideologically, matured as an organisation and relocated to Milbank Tower, a building known for housing high-profile political organisations, including the Conservative Party.
Financially secure and ideologically confident, the HJS began to have noticeable influence in Westminster through all-party parliamentary groups: it operated as a secretariat for Homeland Security, for example, and Transatlantic and International Security. This is the subject of discussion in part five of the report, which goes on to detail the frenzied lobbying and lack of transparency in carrying out parliamentary affairs, including the organisation of briefings and seminars.
Part six provides an eye opener about the exponential growth in the group’s funding levels which increased from a few thousand to over a million pounds. The sharp increase in donations in 2010 and 2011 appears to coincide with the period of the Henry Jackson Society’s controversial merger with the CSC, a move that marked a definitive break with the more liberal aspirations of some of the society’s early members.
An examination of known funding sources leads the authors to make two main conclusions. For a start, there has been a large overlap between the funders of the HJS and other pro-Israel groups in recent years. Secondly, the HJS’s largest known donors include a number of prominent backers of the Conservative Party.
The funding sources provide more evidence of the view that Israel and its international supporters are manoeuvring to influence the British democratic process in order to serve Israel’s interests. The pro-Israel lobby has, from 9/11 onwards (and perhaps earlier) wanted to link the pro-Palestine movement to terrorism. Zionist lobbyists want governments like Britain’s to create a regulatory framework that would mean the legal harassment of pro-Palestine activism. This is one of the desired outcomes of a very long game in which the Henry Jackson Society is playing a part.
Spinwatch has again produced a timely report which sheds light on the growing Islamophobia industry on both sides of the Atlantic, one that is also sweeping through Europe. The authors have raised a number of concerns, not least the hijacking of the democratic process on key issues such as foreign policy and Britain’s approach to “radical Islam” and the “war on terror”.
The rise in prejudice, anti-Muslim bigotry and suppression of pro-Palestine activism coincides with the rise of the Henry Jackson Society within the British establishment. In exposing this, if nothing else, Spinwatch has done us all a great service.
CIA chief pays secret visit to Israel over Iran N-talks: Report
Press TV – June 9, 2015
Director of the US spy agency CIA John Brennan has reportedly made a secret visit to Israel to brief the regime’s officials over the ongoing nuclear negotiations between Iran and the P5+1 states.
Brennan traveled to Israel on June 4 and met with high-ranking Israeli officials, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and one of his advisers Yossi Cohen, to discuss the developments in the talks between Iran and the six world powers, Haaretz quoted two senior Israeli officials as saying on Tuesday.
The officials, who asked not to be named, said the CIA chief also held meetings with the head of Israel’s spy agency Mossad Tamir Pardo and the regime’s military intelligence chief Major General Herzl Halevi.
It is unclear whether Brennan conveyed a message from US President Barack Obama to Netanyahu about a possible comprehensive agreement over Tehran’s nuclear program.
The CIA has not yet commented on the report of Brennan’s trip.
Diplomatic efforts aimed at reaching a final agreement over Iran’s nuclear program have drawn angry reactions from Israel. The Tel Aviv regime has been lobbying intensely to thwart such a deal.
Brennan’s visit to Israel came at a sensitive juncture, less than a month ahead of the June 30 deadline set by Tehran and its negotiating sides to finalize a deal, which seeks to end the Western dispute over Tehran’s nuclear case.
A few days before his visit to Israel, Brennan told the US-based CBS network that Washington and Tel Aviv are closely cooperating on the issue of Iran’s nuclear negotiations.
“The CIA, NSA (the US National Security Agency) and other intelligence community entities are working very close with their Israeli … counterparts” regarding the talks, Brennan said.
Iran and the P5+1 states– Russia, China, France, Britain, the US and Germany — have been working on the text of the final deal since they reached mutual understanding on key parameters of such an accord in the Swiss city of Lausanne on April 2.
Arrests by US as FIFA mulls giving Israel boot
By Jonathon Cook | The Blog from Nazareth | May 27, 2015
FIFA, world football’s governing body, is due to meet this Friday in Zurich to decide whether to back a Palestinian motion to suspend Israel for its systematic violations of Palestinian footballers’ rights in the occupied territories, including preventing practice sessions and games, arresting players, denying entry to other teams, and bombing grounds, as well as for endemic racism towards non-Jewish players in Israeli football itself. I have written about this in the past: here and here.
Although a 75% majority is needed for the Palestinian motion to carry, there has been a growing sense that the mood at FIFA is shifting the Palestinians’ way. Israel and the US are, of course, deeply worried. Such a move would have strong overtones of the sports boycott against South Africa and further reinforce the idea that the description of Israel as an apartheid state holds. It would also disrupt FIFA tournaments Israel is due to host in the coming months, causing great embarrassment to Israel and FIFA’s president, Sepp Blatter.
Meanwhile, almost everyone quietly acknowledges that FIFA is corrupt from head to toe, and has been for as long as the game has been another branch of the big-business entertainments industry. Just think how impossible it would have been for a body not profoundly infected with corrupt practices to have backed desert emirate Qatar’s bid to host the 2022 tournament – in the middle of its stifling summer.
Today, however, the US decided it was time to call a halt to FIFA’s corruption. It ordered the high-profile arrest and extradition of six senior FIFA officials on corruption charges dating back to the early 1990s. The operation at the FIFA officials’ Zurich hotel, as they waited for Friday’s vote, was covered in detail by leading US media organisations after they were tipped off beforehand. Apparently it has taken the US the best part of 20 years to get round to doing the paperwork to make the arrests.
Doubtless, none of this was designed to have – or will have – the slightest effect on FIFA officials as they contemplate whether to infuriate Israel and the US by booting Israel out of world soccer.
In the meantime, you can try to shore up FIFA’s resolve by signing a petition here.
www.haaretz.com/news/world/1.658271
UPDATE:
Anyone who doubts how seriously Israel is taking the threat of being ousted from FIFA and how actively its supporters are working behind the scenes at the world body should read the comments of Avi Luzon, Israel’s representative to UEFA, European football’s governing body. Ominously, he says UEFA’s support for Israel is sown up and suggests that UEFA will prevent Israel’s suspension whatever the outcome of the vote.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: UEFA will not let Israel be harmed, especially as there is no reason for it. An agreement has been reached on a four-point draft that is acceptable to [Israeli PM Benjamin] Netanyahu, [UEFA president Michel] Platini, [FIFA president Sepp] Blatter and now [Palestinian soccer chief] Jibril Rajoub.
In the worst case scenario, if the Palestinians do not agree to pull the proposal and the congress is held as planned, UEFA will prevent the suspension of Israel in a very clear way. From the conversations with important people, face to face here in Warsaw, I can say without a doubt that concern over Israel’s suspension through a vote will not happen.
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From the Archives
A sample of vaccine and injectable medication tragedies during my lifetime
This is what happens when you demand speedy production in an era of politicized regulation
By Meryl Nass, MD | February 12, 2022
All these tragedies have been due to failures of testing or failures in manufacturing processes. Most occurred before vaccine manufacturers were given virtually complete protection from liability in 1987.
With the duration of patent exclusivity determining how much new products earn, products are rushed to market as quickly as possible, most using a shortened path for FDA review. Recalls and market removals of approved products are much more common than they used to be. We can only expect more of these disasters in the future, especially if the products are mandated for everyone. … continue
Blog Roll
Aletho News- Broke Princes: Saudi Arabia’s Powder Keg
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- Trump claims funding to Israel ending in 2026 as merger of Israeli–US armies looms
- Iran Weathering The Storm, But Saudi Arabia Is Sinking
- Sunk Ships Don’t Sail Home: Why Peace Won’t Save the Oil Market and War Will Wreck It
- No Cossacks at the gates, fix Italy instead – opposition leader to Meloni
- The Pits: Zelensky’s torture chamber network in the public eye
- Moscow mocks Kiev’s language hypocrisy exposed by ‘torture chamber’ scandal
- Military ‘torture chamber’ triggers new scandal in Kiev
- If Americans Knew
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- No Tricks Zone
- New Study: The Net Fossil Fuel Contribution To Rising Atmospheric CO2 Has Been Zero For 500 Years
- Germany’s Green Energy Transition Becoming Increasingly Expensive…Another 6 Trillion Euros!
- Sudden Stratospheric Warming, Powerful El Niño Combination May Lead To Extreme Europe Cold, Energy Crisis!
- Two New Studies Find Thwaites Glacier Melt Cannot Be Driven By Human Activity Or A Warming Ocean
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- Predictions Made By Renowned Climate Professor Over Past Decades Have Been Proven To Be Poor
- New Study Suggests Large Regions Of The Pacific Ocean Have Been Cooling For The Last 80 Years
- Germany’s Green Energy Debacle: High Energy Costs Force Kahla Porzellan to Close After 182 Years!
- New Study: 50 Years Of The Most Aggressive ‘Net Zero’ Policies Can Only Affect The Global Climate By 0.03°C
- US September “Heat” Was No Record…Many Records Set Decades Ago
