The Infamous Video of an Aircraft Exploding in Air at High Altitude and the “Big Chutzpah” Construct
By Doug E. Steil | Aletho News | November 7, 2015
Only a day after the Russian Metrojet airliner Flight 9268 went down, killing 224 people, a short video went onto the Internet on YouTube, purporting to show the explosion of the Airbus 321-200 aircraft in mid-air, at roughly 30 thousand feet elevation. This video was immediately ridiculed because the group claiming responsibility for bringing down the airliner, ISIS, which was said to have presented the video as proof, did not have the sophisticated military capacity, according to intelligence analysts, to shoot down any aircraft at such an altitude. Yet the video did not show a missile approaching the jet, nor did the group claim to have shot it down in such a manner. It simply showed an explosive burst, consistent with a bomb being detonated, and heavy black smoke trailing the aircraft as it subsequently descended.
Even though a civilian style aircraft, with two engines mounted below its wings, can be discerned, and no such video had previously been seen — nor were there reports of any civilian aircraft with such features having exploded in mid-air during daytime — the video was denounced as a fake (computer generated imagery) nonetheless, perhaps because the video quality was poor or not sufficiently specific, which was suspiciously indicative of an attempt to obfuscate any confirmatory information.
A dose of skepticism is certainly legitimate when being presented with such videos, which may be intended to convey false political propaganda. However, since no compelling proof of the imagery not possibly showing what was claimed has yet been presented, the authenticity cannot be completely discounted. Indeed, this question is currently a point of discussion on some technical forums. What appears to be the case is that the shaky nature of both embedded videos — a second version appears at 20 seconds in the 32 second video — both came from two mobile phone camera recordings that were taken of a screen playback of the explosion. It has also been suggested that the imagery was actually shot from another aircraft following the fateful jet from farther below. Though this was likely the case, it would not necessarily invalidate the claimed authenticity of this particular jet being shown.
It should be noted that a professional quality video recording, filmed through a heavy zoom lens mounted upon a camera on a stationary tripod, would provide investigators with sufficient information to calculate a small circle on the ground from where the shots were most probably taken, which would likely not be in the interest of the perpetrators or co-conspirators. If, for the sake of argument, one presumes the authenticity of what was being filmed, then the most interesting and compelling proof of a desire to obfuscate and mislead comes from the obvious image reversal, which is particularly evident during the first second. The sky to the left of the screen is bright whereas, in stark contrast, it is dark on the right side, though exactly the opposite should be the case because the jet was then flying northward at a track of 340° in the morning, shortly after sunrise.
The ground track in the eastern portion of the Sinai peninsula during the final minutes of flight was exactly parallel to and 40 km away from the border between Israel and Egypt. The mid-air explosion occurred west of the highest mountain in the Negev Desert (Har Raman, 1035 meters), not hard to make out on a topographic map of the area. The impulse of the explosion and its aerodynamic effects then changed the heading of the aircraft by more then 15°. When viewing the video through a mirror to correct the image reversal, one sees that the vantage point of the camera is behind, below, and to the right (east) of the aircraft’s flight path. When one accepts the notion that the incident was filmed from another aircraft, pursuing the Airbus in roughly the same direction, then one must logically conclude that the video was taken from within — or just slightly outside of — Israeli airspace, likely by a surveillance drone, operating in the southern region, north of Eilat. One would expect Israeli surveillance drones to operate here on a regular basis because this region, at the northernmost part in the Gulf of Aqaba, is strategically important; the borders of Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Israel, and Egypt nearly converge here.
While the notion of a military drone operating near this particular region on a Saturday morning may not be unusual, what certainly should raise some questions is that the Russian Metrojet aircraft — assuming, as before, that the video is not a fake but authentic — would have been pursued and filmed (surveillance operations would be more interested in what happens on the ground rather than pursuing a civilian airliner emitting its tracking data by beacon and not posing a potential threat). Even more worthy of question or inquiry is that these modified (second-hand) video versions of the on-board explosion and descent of the aircraft would be loaded onto the Internet the next day, allegedly by the ISIS terrorist group, which has been publicly exposed to be in an alliance with Israel, the United States, and Saudi Arabia in the Syrian battleground.
While the concept of the “Big Lie” is based on the idea that (nearly) everyone will believe a major fabrication that is completely untrue because these heavily conditioned people couldn’t possibly imagine that their government would dare lie to them so blatantly about something so important, viewers of the video may have been subjected to the opposite phenomenon, namely “Big Chutzpah”, the raw truth presented right in your face in such a brazen way that (nearly) everyone will still refuse to believe it because these people cannot possibly imagine that the Israeli government would dare to actually do something like that.
Egyptian army shoots, kills Palestinian fisherman off Gaza coast
Ma’an – November 5, 2015
GAZA CITY – Egyptian military forces shot and killed a Palestinian fisherman off the coast of the southern Gaza Strip on Thursday afternoon, the Ministry of Health in the besieged enclave said.
Ashraf al-Qidra, spokesperson of the ministry, said Firas Mohammad Miqdad, 18, from Rafah was shot in the abdomen by Egyptian forces while at sea and died from his injuries.
It is unclear why Egyptian forces opened fire.
In May, Egyptian naval forces opened fire at a Palestinian fishing boat off the coast of the southern Gaza Strip, injuring a fisherman from Rafah.
Egypt upholds an Israeli military blockade on Gaza, keeping borders largely closed and limiting imports, exports, and the freedom of movement of its residents.
The threat from Egyptian forces comes as Palestinian fishermen already face daily risks in order to make a living, including routine harassment from Israeli naval forces, confiscation of boats and materials, detention, and potentially death.
Israeli forces reportedly fired towards Palestinian fishing boats on a daily basis last week, according to documentation by the UN agency for Palestinian refugees.
The U.S. Spends $35 Billion ‘Helping’ Out The World… But Where Does All this Money Really Go?
HowMuch.net | October 28, 2015
The United States provided approximately $35 billion in economic aid to over 140 countries* in fiscal year 2014. In the map below the relative size of each country is proportionate to the aid received from the United States and the color of each country indicates GDP per capita.
* For visualization purposes the map above reflects only 77 countries that received approximately $17 billion of the $35 billion in global aid. We chose top 40 by aid received and then manually selected different countries to illustrate geographic diversity.
The Arab Spring: Made in the USA
By Stuart Jeanne Bramhall | Dissident Voice | October 25, 2015
Arabesque$: Enquête sur le rôle des États-Unis dans les révoltes arabes (Investigation into the US Role in the Arab Uprisings) is an update of Ahmed Bensaada’s 2011 book L’Arabesque Américaine. It concerns the US government role in instigating, funding and coordinating the Arab Spring “revolutions.” Obviously most of this history has been carefully suppressed by the western media.
The new book devotes much more attention to the personalities leading the 2011 uprisings. Some openly admitted to receiving CIA funding. Others had no idea because it was deliberately concealed from them. A few (in Egypt and Syria) were officially charged with espionage. In Egypt, seven sought refuge in the US embassy in Cairo and had to be evacuated by the State Department.
Democracy: America’s Biggest Export
According to Bensaada, the MENA Arab Spring revolutions have four unique features in common:
- None were spontaneous – all required careful and lengthy (5+ years) planning, by the State Department, CIA pass through foundations, George Soros, and the pro-Israel lobby.1
- All focused exclusively on removing reviled despots without replacing the autocratic power structure that kept them in power.
- No Arab Spring protests made any reference whatsoever to powerful anti-US sentiment over Palestine and Iraq.
- All the instigators of Arab Spring uprisings were middle class, well educated youth who mysteriously vanished after 2011.
Nonviolent Regime Change
Bensaada begins by introducing non-violent guru Gene Sharp (see The CIA and Nonviolence), his links with the Pentagon and US intelligence, and his role, as director of the Albert Einstein Institution, in the “color” revolutions.2 in Eastern Europe and the attempted coup against Hugo Chavez in 2002.))
The US goal in the Arab Spring revolutions was to replace unpopular despotic dictators while taking care to maintain the autocratic US-friendly infrastructure that had brought them to power. All initially followed the nonviolent precepts Sharp outlines in his 1994 book From Dictatorship to Democracy. In Libya, Syria and Yemen, the US and their allies were clearly prepared to introduce paid mercenaries when their Sharpian “revolutions” failed to produce regime change.
Follow the Money
Relying mainly on Wikileaks cables and the websites of key CIA pass through foundations (which he reproduces in the appendix), Bensaada methodically lists every State Department conference and workshop the Arab Spring heroes attended, the dollar amounts spent on them by the State Department and key “democracy” promoting foundations3, the specific involvement of Google, Facebook, Twitter and Obama’s 2008 Internet campaign team in training Arab Spring cyperactivists in encryption technologies and social media skills, US embassy visits, and direct encounters with Hillary Clinton, Condoleezza Rice, John McCain, Barack Obama and Serbian trainers from CANVAS (the CIA-backed organization that overthrew Slobodan Milosevic in 2000).
Bensaada focuses most heavily on the Tahrir Square uprising in Egypt. The Washington Post has estimated approximately 10,000 Egyptians took part in NED and USAID training in social media and nonviolent organizing techniques. For me the most astonishing information in this chapter concerned the role of an Egyptian exile (a former Egyptian policeman named Omar Afifi Suleiman) in coordinating the Tahrir Square protests from his office in Washington DC. According to Wikileaks, NED paid Suleiman a yearly stipend of $200,000+ between 2008-2011.
When Nonviolence Fails
Arabesques$ devotes far more attention to Libya, Syria and Yemen than Bensaada’s first book.
In the section on Libya, Bensaada zeroes in on eleven key US assets who engineered the overthrow of Gaddafi. Some participated in the same State Department trainings as the Middle East opposition activists and instigated nonviolent Facebook and Twitter protests to coincide with the 2011 uprisings in Tunisian and Egypt. Others, in exile, underwent guerrilla training sponsored by the CIA, Mossad, Chad and Saudi Arabia. A few months after Gaddafi’s assassination, some of these same militants would lead Islamic militias attempting to overthrow Assad in Syria.
Between 2005 and 2010, the State Department funneled $12 million to opposition groups opposed to Assad. The US also financed Syrian exiles in Britain to start an anti-government cable TV channel they beamed into Syria.
In the section on Syria, Bensaada focuses on a handful of Syrian opposition activists who received free US training in cyberactivism and nonviolent resistance beginning in 2006. One, Ausama Monajed, is featured in the 2011 film How to Start a Revolution about a visit with Gene Sharp in 2006. Monajed and others worked closely with the US embassy, funded by the Middle East Partnership Initiative (MEPI). This is a State Department program that operates in countries (such as Libya and Syria) where USAID is banned.
In February 2011, these groups posted a call on Twitter and Facebook for a Day of Rage. Nothing happened. When Sharpian techniques failed to produce a sizable nonviolent uprising, as in Libya, they and their allies (Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Qatar and Jordan) were all set up to introduce Islamic mercenaries (many directly from Libya) to declare war on the Assad regime.
- I was astonished to learn that Forum Fikra, a forum for Arab activists working against authoritarian governments, was mainly funded by the Nathan and Esther K Wagner Family Foundation. The latter also funds numerous pro-Israel groups and projects, as well as the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (a pro-Israel group with close ties to AIPAC).
- The color revolutions were CIA-instigated uprisings that replaced democratically elected pro-Russian governments with equally autocratic governments more friendly to US corporate interests:
Serbia (2000) – Bulldozer Revolution
Georgia (2002) – Rose Revolution
Ukraine (2004) – Orange Revolution
Kyrgyzstan (2005) – Tulip Revolution - Democracy promoting foundations (as used here, “democracy” is synonymous with capitalism, ie favorable to the interests of US investors). Here are seven of the main ones involved in funding and training Arab Spring activists:
• USAID (US Agency for International Development) – State Department agency charged with economic development and humanitarian aid with a long history of financing destabilization activities, especially in Latin America.
• NED (National Endowment for Democracy) – national organization supported by State Department and CIA funding dedicated to the promotion of democratic institutions throughout the world, primary funder of IRI and NDI.
• IRI (International Republican Institute) – democracy promoting organization linked with the Republican Party, currently chaired by Senator John McCain and funded by NED.
• NDI (National Democratic Institute for International Affairs) – democracy promoting organization linked with the Democratic Party, currently chaired by Madeline Albright and funded by NED.
• OSI (Open Society Institute) – founded by George Soros in 1993 to help fund color revolutions in Eastern Europe. Also contributed major funding to Arab Spring revolutions.
• Freedom House – US organization that supports nonviolent citizens initiatives in societies were liberty is denied or threatened, financed by USAID, NED and the Soros Foundation.
• CANVAS (Center for Applied Non Violent Action and Strategies) – center originally founded by the Serbian activists of Otpor who the US funded and trained to over throw Slobodan Milosevic and who were instrumental in training Arab Spring activists. Funded by Freedom House, IRI and George Soros
Dr. Bramhall is a retired American psychiatrist and political refugee in New Zealand. She has published a free, downloadable non-fiction ebook 21st Century Revolution. Her first book The Most Revolutionary Act: Memoir of an American Refugee describes the circumstances that led her to leave the US in 2002. Email her at: stuartbramhall@yahoo.co.nz.
Journalist missing after police arrest him in his home
Mada Masr – October 22, 2015
Journalist Hossam al-Deen Seed was arrested in his home and taken to an unknown location on Thursday morning, the Arabic Network for Human Rights Information (ANHRI) reported.
He was still missing as of Thursday evening.
The charges against Seed are unknown, according to the ANHRI statement, which noted that he is a member of the Journalists Syndicate.
The Interior Ministry did not respond to Mada Masr’s calls for a comment on the incident.
Seed’s arrest comes the day after security forces raided the offices of the Mada Foundation for Media Development and arrested all staff members on the premises.
This raid represents “a dangerous escalation in the Egyptian authorities’ crackdown on freedom of expression and association,” Amnesty International argued in a statement released Wednesday.
Seed’s arrest also coincides with a National Council for Human Rights (NCHR) report on 15 cases of forced disappearances that was issued the day of the Mada Foundation raid, the privately owned newspaper Al-Masry Al-Youm reported.
Reports of journalists being arrested or forcibly disappeared by security forces have swelled since the military-led ouster of former President Mohamed Morsi in July 2013.
There are disagreements about the number of journalists currently detained or in prison, but estimates range from 60 to 70.
The freelance photographer Mahmoud Abou Zeid, commonly known as Shawkan, has been held in pre-trial detention for over two years, exceeding Egypt’s legal two-year limit.
Egypt ranked near the bottom of the 2015 Reporters Without Borders press freedoms index, coming in at 158 out of 180 countries.
At least 30 journalists were arbitrarily arrested in 2014 on charges of organizing or participating in protests, the report said. Reporters Without Borders claimed that President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi’s government is using its ongoing war on terror as a pretext to curb press freedoms and target media institutions affiliated with the banned Muslim Brotherhood.
The Egyptian Commission for Rights and Freedoms released a report in August stating that authorities violated journalists’ rights at least 658 times during the first year of Sisi’s presidency. The violations included preventing journalists from doing their jobs, verbal and physical assault, detention, arrests and imprisonment, damaging and confiscating equipment, banning press reports and filing lawsuits against journalists.
GAZA: One in three exit permit applications for medical care rejected
PNN | October 22, 2015
NEARLY a third of all patients referred for urgent medical care outside the Gaza Strip are being barred from leaving.
The number of exit permits granted is now at it’s lowest level for six years, with the exception of last summer during the war.
New figures from the World Health Organisation (WHO) show the Israeli and Egyptian governments stopped three out of every ten people who had medical referrals from leaving Gaza. Of those, 104 were children and ten were elderly patients over 60 years old. And no medical aid or medical delegations were allowed entry into Gaza at all during the entire month of September.
The main referral specialties needed were in oncology, orthopaedic surgery, ophthalmology, paediatrics, and heart catheterization.
Most of the patients had been offered care in Palestinian-run hospitals, with 157 referred to East Jerusalem and the West Bank, 12 in Israel and 3 in Jordan.
The WHO said in a statement yesterday (Wednesday) that of 1,883 patients who applied to leave in September, 527 were rejected. Another 363 patients , including 104 children, received no response to their applications. And permits were formally denied to 72 of the patients, including five children and ten elderly patients over 60 years old.
One 23 year old patient was even arrested by Israeli security at Erez, despite being approved for a permit. He had been referred for treatment for an eye injury following a road accident. He is still in custody and is due in court on October 20.
In August, the WHO reported an “unprecedented” shortage of health staff in Gaza, with many nurses and doctors not being paid for over a year.
In addition, they reported a chronic shortage of drugs and medical disposables, and said staff were working in poor conditions, without sufficient support, were under-trained, and facing shortages of supplies and electricity.
Most of the patients needed Israeli permits, with only 141 patients (8%) seeking approval to exit through the Rafah border crossing into Egypt. But Rafah was open for only 5 days last month, with only a few exceptions for religious pilgrims making the trip to Mecca.
The figures show a stark change since the July 2013 closure, when around 4,000 Gaza civilians a month used the Rafah crossing for medical access.
Family members including parents, who wished to accompany patients, also made 1,920 applications for permits to Israel’s authorities. Of these, only 66.5% were approved, 25.8% were pending and 7.7% were denied.
The top referral destinations were:
Makassed Hospital (22.27%) and Augusta Victoria Hospital (12.16%) in East Jerusalem
An Najah National University Hospital (8.58%) in Nablus
Al-Haia center for heart catheterization in Gaza (4.38%)
Nasser Institute in Cairo (4.09%)
The remaining appointments (48.5%) were in 40 other hospitals.
Source: WHO OPT SITUATION REPORT 1. 19 OCTOBER 2015
Russia Destroys The Greater Israel Dream
Plato’s Guns | October 19, 2015
The grand plan was going swimmingly. The concept of endless wars for Greater Israel was working and producing impressive results. Opportunistically, through aggravation of war after war, chunk by chunk of Arab land was usurped and the map of Greater Israel was slowly materializing. No matter the unstable chaos surrounding the State of Israel for the past seven decades, and no matter the undying Palestinian resistance and the violent Intifadas that erupted internally, the Zionist dream of Greater Israel remained consistently intact and was progressing unabated and unchallenged by anyone.
But dreams, by their diaphanous nature are easily interruptible – can easily turn into sudden nightmares. Indeed, dreams do, in the blink of an eye, simply end.
Nobody expected the Zionist dream to come to a sudden halt like this. Nobody. Nobody expected Russia, literally in the blink of an eye, to suddenly assert itself militarily in the Levant and in the process turn the Zionist dream into a geopolitical and existential nightmare. No further territorial expansions are even remotely possible now with Russia’s military presence in the Levant. The Russian army is in the Levant to stay and the Israelis know it. In the Zionist universe, it’s as if a mighty big-footed contender had suddenly appeared in the dream and instantly stepped on the Greater Israel map like it was a castle made of sand.
Russia is not a declared enemy of Israel. Russia did not squelch The Greater Israel dream on purpose. The destruction of the Zionist dream is the result of an unintended consequence that purely serves the regional and global interests of Russia. Happenstance that the Zionist dream was in the way of Russian ambitions, that’s all. Dog eat dog world.
But what are Russia’s interests in lassoing the Levant?
Well, first, Putin intends to re-fulfill the old Russian dream of establishing sizable military foundations and bases in the ‘warm waters’ of the world, in the Mediterranean, to be more precise, in order to pivot and project power westwards with practical ease. And also, to use Mediterranean naval bases as a first line of defense against a Western creep towards its own territory. Russia’s growing military presence in Syria is a matter of “national security”, Putin has declared several times over. Establishing multiple bases in the Mediterranean has not been possible for Russia to do since the 1967 Arab-Israeli war when it lost the Middle East chess game to America, symbolized by Egypt, a major Soviet client at the time having its Soviet military hardware devastated by Israeli-operated, made-in-USA weaponry. Russia today considers its growing presence in Syria to be a most vital geopolitical maneuver for re-establishing a seat of power again in the Middle East, in tandem with its progress into future Superpowerdom. In the current uncontrollable chaos of the Levant, this is an ambition that Russia must begin implementing immediately, lest the region falls dangerously under ISIS and Zioconism, making it thus harder for Russia’s old dream to be realized.
Secondly, Putin sees the cloth of American Empire as fast fading, especially in the Middle East, and he’s taking advantage of this: putting forth a challenging proposition to the American Emperor. Yes, Vladimir Putin, president of Russia, a man considered to be a cold-blooded realist, is aware of America’s weaknesses, but he’s also aware of its current strengths and he is in Syria as a power salesman – he’s in Syria to make a deal with Empire Americana. Respectfully, but firmly, he is pitching to Empire: ‘Look, you remain supremely powerful, but you are hemorrhaging in the Middle East and the situation is now critical. You cannot afford a new large-scale war in the Middle East that may or may not reassert your hold on the region; and you have lost all your proxy wars there as well – there are no more black-clad joker cards in your deck. You cannot continue on this disadvantageous path, you cannot stand still either and you also cannot withdraw from the region. All these are strategically inferior options and will not stop the bleeding of your powers. The only way out is through pragmatism. The only remedy is to share control of the Middle East with us, Russians. We have together shared power in the Middle East under the shadow of the Cold War and yes it created dangers and complexities for both our countries in the past. But today is different: there is no official Cold War between us and so our new partnership can only serve to strengthen us both’. This, dear reader is Russia’s diplomatic speak, received with quiet relief by the White House and cussed and scorned by the Ziocons in DC. Simplified, Putin is in Syria and his realist message to America is: ‘Share the Middle East with us now or we both fall in the future’. And it looks like Obama has quietly taken heed, in the interest of Empire and realism and not out of cowardice or submission to Putin. Obama’s problem is that although he begrudgingly agrees with Putin’s analysis and remedy, he cannot be seen to be supporting it in public because the Neocons would immediately set the dogs of treason on him, bogging him down with political obtrusion and smear campaigns in his last 15 months of power – possibly damaging his party’s winning chances at the next elections.
Thirdly, in my opinion, Russia is in Syria also for the purpose of redressing Russian military image and history. After the devastating defeat of the Soviet Union at the hands of the American-backed Afghani Mujahedeen, and considering the profound nationalism that Russian society feels especially towards its military institutions, it behooves any modern Russian leader thus to conceive and create a military victory against a modern version of the same old enemy who had previously defeated them – a military morale-booster both for the Russian populations and for the history books. A utilization of the sentiments of the ‘comeback kid’ for mass consumption so as to boost levels of nation devotion. Russia, being the largest nation in the world, landmass-wise, it has to regularly make grand spectacles and gestures in the name of national unity enhancement. Killing Takfiri terrorists in Syria, nay smashing them to smithereens with Russian Air Power is an opportune event to balance out and positively update Russian history books.
Yes, the Russian military buildup in Syria, especially in marine and air power, now looks to be, relatively speaking, permanent. And this is what is causing Israel and its Ziocon friends in Washington sleepless nights and hectic, nefarious group-brainstorming sessions. They know that the dream of a Greater Israel cannot be realized with Russia dominating the skies and waters of the Levant. This is the current and silent inescapable reality. This is the wall that suddenly sprung up and instantly separated Zionists from their beloved Greater Israel dream. Because of a ‘wall’, the dream is now impossible.
Some would call this, poetic justice.
The ‘dream destroyed’ being the current unspoken reality, Israel is left with no expedient and transforming choices. It cannot go to direct war with a more powerful Russia and win back domination over Levant skies and waters. It couldn’t even defeat Hezbollah who lack any form of Air Power back in 2006. And more frustratingly for Israel, it cannot blackmail, coerce or buy President Putin either. Moreover, presently under the leadership of Obama, it is clear that America is not prepared to go to direct war with any nation, let alone Russia, on behalf of Israel. The current architects of expansionist Zionism are at a complete and utter loss to recognize all these chokehold factors – blood is draining from their faces. No more meetings over what Arab country to genocide next so as to steal more land and resources, the issue now is not when and how the Zionist dream can be finally fulfilled, but how to safely bring the corpse-dream back from the dead without anyone noticing.
Alas, there are no clever Zionist ideas on the architects’ table. They are truly and absolutely in utter speechless shock.
And what compounds this hectic catatonia that the Zionist Sensei are currently experiencing is the fact that they know that Israel’s global credibility is at its lowest ever, and that sooner or later, the international community – seeing Israel’s geopolitical weakness – will start pressing hard, even imposing the 2-State solution on Israel, based on the 1967 borders. This is the double nail in the Greater Israel dream coffin. Not only will Israel be unable to expand territory, but it will also be forced into giving up territory currently under its (illegal) control. Something that the Israeli public are psychologically not prepared for, nor is there any political will in the Israeli halls of power to do so either.
Observations of the behaviorism of Zionists tell us that what they cannot change, they usually endeavor to spoil. And the only thing they are still capable of doing is spoiling it for Arabs. They will undoubtedly attempt to expand the current regional conflicts into another one hundred years of Arab on Arab wars. This is a given – they breathe to spoil life for their Arab neighbors. And we also observe that when Zionists are not willing or able to go to war, they usually endeavor to send other capable and willing nations to war on their behalf. But as noted a few passages above, this is currently impossible under the Obama administration. The dream of Greater Israel remains smashed.
What to do then? What is the ultimate solution? Would Israel prefer that America directly and militarily confront Russia in the Levant? I call it a yes. Even at the cost of causing World War Three? Yes. Even at the risk of igniting a nuclear war? Yes.
Yes, yes, and a triple yes. The global Zionist congress pathology shows every indication of this. ‘The tribe above all’ is their core belief. They are Masadian-ISISians in suits with basements full of nukes. Their narcissistic intentions are always clear – their motives and maneuvers are never to be trusted.
We are currently at a very serious and sobering point in the fast-evolving dramas taking place in the Levant and the Middle East at large. Everyone concerned is standing shoulder-to-shoulder with the unknown. This alignment of overwhelming unknowns is rare in history. The geopolitical stress and distress levels – despite the equalizing Russian presence in the Levant – remain excruciatingly high for all parties concerned. All actors have so much to lose with a single wrong move. A cluster of unknowns is forcing everyone into extreme caution. Hesitant steps are made then quickly unmade. If you were to privately ask Obama or Putin what would happen to the world the day after a war between their two nations ignites, they would both be likely to look you somberly in the eye and say, ‘I don’t know’.
The unknown is upon us and we are upon the unknown.
For now, Zionist masterminds plan on keeping the death of the dream of Greater Israel a secret, in the hope that the next American president would be more malleable and more reactionary than Obama. They will be quietly biding their time and hoping that the next President of America would be more Zionist that Theodore Herzl. More ideologically violent than ISIS and Tarantino. Hoping against all hope that the tiny state of Israel would survive a Word War Three catastrophe with little damage inside its boundaries. Hoping against all hope that the Arab world surrounding Israel, all of it would literally be bombed back into the stone ages, while Israel continues to be the hi-tech bride of the Middle East. Hoping against all hope that Russia would again be defeated by America in the Middle East – just so that Israel can again dominate the skies and waters of the Levant, allowing it thus to revive the corpse of the Greater Israel project. Hoping against all hope that igniting World War Three would actually solve all of Israel’s problems.
A touch fantastical? Maybe not.
This is what happens when tribal madmen dream.
Egyptian Report: 215 cases of forced disappearances in August, September
Mada Masr | October 13, 2015
There have been 215 cases of forced disappearances across Egypt in August and September, according to a report issued by a campaign working to combat the phenomenon.
The report, which was issued on Tuesday, stated that only 63 individuals have been located, with the whereabouts of the other 152 cases remaining unknown.
The 63 cases, the report said, have appeared in various police stations and Central Security Forces camps. The individuals located include defendants in cases related to protesting or belonging to a terrorist organization. Others were identified by their families in Interior Ministry videos.
The report was prepared by the Stop Forced Disappearances campaign, under the auspices of the Egyptian Commission for Rights and Freedoms. The campaign was launched on August 30, to coincide with the International Day of the Victims of Enforced Disappearances, amid a wave of forced disappearances in the country.
The campaign had posted a form on its Facebook page, through which it collected information and reached out to the families of the disappeared.
Stop Forced Disappearances managed to trace eight cases that disappeared from their holding cells after the prosecution ordered their release, an occurrence similar to “a pattern used by former Interior Minister Habib al-Adly under [former President Hosni] Mubarak.”
The report also listed the names of the 215 people who disappeared, including details of those located, such as where and when they were located and the charges leveled against them.
Those listed in the report are from different backgrounds, and were arrested on suspicion of belonging to a terrorist group or being involved in acts of violence.
“Perhaps the reason behind their arrest and torture is security forces’ belief that they have information on certain people or organizations or claimed terrorist activity,” the report said.
In its report, the campaign listed its demands, including the disclosure of the whereabouts of those listed in the report and referring them to prosecution and holding those responsible for their disappearances accountable. It also demanded that Egypt sign and ratify the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court and the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance.
According to the report, there is no definition for forced disappearances in the Constitution or Penal Code, and there are no articles that criminalize it.
However, certain forms of arrest are criminalized and temporary detention is regulated by certain laws that partly protect from forced disappearances.
The report added that President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi has issued a number of decrees in the absence of parliament, pertaining to rights and freedoms, which “strengthen the tools of repression” and violate human rights.
It cited the anti-terrorism law, which includes articles that legalize “practices that lead to forced disappearances,” and gives police and military forces powers that violate the Constitution and give them impunity.
The report concludes, “It is therefore no surprise that security forces is systematically involved in forced disappearances in Egypt, making it one of the most committed violations practiced on a daily basis against innocent citizens.”
Dead left unattended after Egyptian forces attack tourists
Mada Masr | September 14, 2015
The bodies of the Egyptian victims are still lying in the desert following the killing of 12 Mexicans and Egyptians by security forces on Sunday, according to a lawyer whose relative was killed in the attack.
Amr Imam, a lawyer at the Hisham Mubarak Law Center, who was on his way to the scene of the accident by the time of publication, told Mada Masr that neither the prosecution nor the forensics want to investigate, citing other family members who have been at the Western Desert since yesterday.
“That means that the bodies have already deteriorated,” he said, “although the accident happened only 500 meters away from the road.”
Ten other passengers in a convoy of four cars were injured and transferred to the hospital, according to a statement by the Ministry of Interior, which was released early Monday morning.
The ministry claimed the convoy was in a restricted area, and that a joint police and military force was on a mission to tackle armed groups in the area.
Earlier on Sunday, the Islamic State released a statement on social media saying they had exchanged fire with the Egyptian military in the Western Desert.
Imam said that tour guide Awad Fathi and the other victims were killed by an Apache, according to eyewitnesses, including the driver, who is the only Egyptian who survived the accident.
Spanish newspaper El Mundo quoted an anonymous employee of the tour group Qasr El Bawity, who said that the group was fired on as they were eating dinner and that “some tried to run away, but the military followed them and fired at those who tried to escape.”
“[The army] didn’t even call them an ambulance; it was people from the oasis who helped them,” the source was quoted as saying.
Mexican President Peña Nieto condemned the accident on Twitter, saying “Mexico condemns these events against our citizens and has demanded that the Egyptian government launch an exhaustive investigation into what happened.”
In a phone call on Monday, Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry expressed condolences to his Mexican counterpart, explaining that the tourists were in an allegedly restricted area and that their presence coincided with an ongoing operation against terrorists.
Shoukry further explained that the tourists were in cars that are similar to those of suspects in the operation, according to a statement issued on the ministry’s website.
He assured the Mexican foreign minister that the Interior Ministry will investigate the matter, and that the Egyptian government will provide all necessary medical assisstance for the injured, as well as facilitate the transfer of the bodies back to their home country.
Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Ahmed Abou Zeid declined any further comment on the incident, deferring to the Interior Ministry statement.
Meanwhile, the Egyptian Ministry of Tourism issued a statement regretting the accident, saying investigations are underway.
The statement said that the results of the investigations will be announced as soon as possible.
The Foreign Ministry spokesperson Ahmed Abou Zeid declined any further comment, referring the press instead to the statement made by the Foreign Ministry on Monday.
The civilian deaths are the latest in a country embroiled in a violent conflict with Islamist insurgents, focused in the area of North Sinai. On the same day as the accident, the Armed Forces announced the deaths of 53 insurgents in North Sinai, claiming a total of 349 insurgent deaths since September 7. No civilian deaths have been reported by the military.
However, the identity of those killed is often subject to conflicting reports, such as the worker from a military owned company killed by the army in Arish, North Sinai, in June. While the military claimed he was an insurgent fighting for Islamic State affiliated Sinai Province, an eyewitness told Mada Masr that the man had no such connection.
The Egyptian government ratified a law on August 16 making it illegal to contradict official reports of terrorist attacks. The law came in the aftermath of an attack on the military in North Sinai where the government claimed 17 people were killed. Foreign news outlets estimated the deaths at 60-70.
‘Dozens of Egyptian dissidents died in prison in August’
Press TV – September 13, 2015
Dozens of dissidents have died across prisons in Egypt in the month of August alone, according to a non-governmental organization.
The Arab African Center for Freedoms and Human Rights documented deaths of 42 detainees.
According to the Cairo-based NGO, the captives mainly died due to medical negligence on the part of Egyptian authorities.
Human rights activists in the Egyptian capital have repeatedly said that many of those who die behind bars are in very critical condition due to torture upon arrest by Egyptian authorities.
Nearly 300 political prisoners have died in Egyptian detention facilities since 2013, according to activists.
The current military-backed government has harshly cracked down on dissent since the downfall of former President Mohamed Morsi in a military coup in July 2013.
Large numbers of supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood have been jailed since the rise of former military commander and current President Abdel-Fattah el-Sisi.
Egypt: 680 death sentences handed down since 3 July 2013
MEMO | September 10, 2015
Nine anti-government defendants were sentenced to death in Egypt on Monday, bringing the number of those handed the death penalty to 680 since 3 July 2013, the Arab Organisation for Human Rights in the UK (AOHR UK) said in a report on Tuesday.
The organisation said the Egyptian security services torture opponents of the Egyptian regime and commit crimes against them so as to force them to confess to “fabricated” charges so they can be given severe sentences that may amount to the death penalty.
Seven of those who have received the death penalty have already been executed. The total number of defendants whose papers were referred to the Grand Mufti has reached 1,734. The report pointed out that senior officials at Mansoura’s security directorate systematically exercise illegal detention, kidnapping, torture and the forgery of official documents and fabrications.
The AOHR UK noted that photographing the defendants in a degrading manner, humiliating and torturing them and forcing them to give false confessions that were dictated to them constitute “unacceptable behaviour both legally and morally; and are also serious human rights violations which, if added to other human rights violations in Egypt, underline the collapse of the moral and legal system among individuals in the Egyptian police.”
The organisation warned that the adoption of the anti-terror law poses a threat to defendants who had already been sentenced to death as the new law decreased their chances of avoiding the death penalty and having fair trials.
It invited UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to form a fact-finding committee with full powers to investigate crimes committed after 3 July 2013 and bring those responsible for these crimes to justice.
On Monday, the Terrorism Circuit at the Mansoura Criminal Court, headed by Judge Osama Abdul Zahir, sentenced to death nine young men, including four students, in case number 16,850 of the year 2014, in which 24 people from the province of Dakahlia are accused. The remaining defendants were sentenced to life in prison.
Yesterday the court referred the cases of 10 defendants to the Grand Mufti for his approval. They were sentenced on charges of killing a police sergeant, committing acts of violence against the army and police forces, forming a cell that seeks regime change, and possessing explosives and weapons.
AOHR UK said that defendants were subjected to torture to force them to make fabricated confessions. Such confessions would help the regime demonise its opponents and incite public hatred ahead of the judicial procedures.
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Not Hamas-Israeli conflict: The Palestinian cause belongs to the world
By Ramzy Baroud | MEMO | October 15, 2023
This, in his thinking, could only mean one thing: “Never before has Israel stood more honored and revered by the nations of the world.”
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