Netanyahu’s links to French fraud mastermind exposed
Press TV – March 26, 2016
A report has exposed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s shady relations with a French individual considered by French prosecutors as the “brain” behind one of the biggest frauds in history.
According to a recent report by French news website Mediapart, which was obtained by Israeli newspaper Haaretz, Netanyahu has had affiliations with French national Arnaud Mimran.
Mimran, along with his partners, is accused of stealing between 300 million to 1.6 billion euros in a fraud case commonly referred to in Europe as “the scam of the century.”
The report said that since the early 2000s, the Mimran family has loaned Netanyahu, then Israel’s finance minister, a spacious apartment on Avenue Victor Hugo, in the heart of Paris’ 16th Arrondissement.
Mimran is free on a bail of 100,000 euros after spending 10 months in jail awaiting indictment on charges including extortion in a different case.
The trial of Mimran, who denies all of the allegations against him, will begin in Paris on May 2.
Police are also probing his possible involvement in other cases, including the mysterious murder of his ex-wife’s billionaire father Claude Dray.
This week, Mediapart journalist Fabrice Arfi published the photograph of Mimran relaxing with Netanyahu on the French Riviera.
In a series of articles slated to be published over the coming weeks, whose details were shared with Haaretz, Mediapart will say that Mimran has benefited from wide-ranging connections that have delayed his trial until now.
The name of Netanyahu appears first among such connections as revealed by Mediapart.
“From the evidence I have collected it is clear the Mimran family regularly donated money to the Likud movement in France, and Arnaud Mimran took care to tirelessly cultivate this connection,” Arfi wrote in reference to the ruling and Netanyahu’s party in Israel.
Throughout 2000s, Mimran was suspected of many crimes. He was convicted of tax offenses in France in the late 1990s.
In 2000, three years before a vacation with Netanyahu in Monaco, he was investigated on suspicion of insider trading in the United States and agreed, together with his partners, to pay a fine of 1.2 million dollars.
According to the current indictment, Mimran and his partners stole at least 282 million euros from the European Union over the course of 10 months, from the summer of 2008 to the spring of 2009. He also accused of stealing 1.6 billion euros from the French republic’s coffers.
One of Mimran’s partners, who was arrested and will stand trial alongside Mimran, is Marco Mouly, a Tunisian Jew with a long history of misconduct.
French Fury Explodes with Echoes of 1968
By Finian CUNNINGHAM – Strategic Culture Foundation – 26.03.2016
Riot police clashing with striking workers, students shutting down universities, teargas and cars torched in the streets – the mayhem this past week in France evoked memories of 1968, the tumultuous year when mass protests threatened to overthrow a French government back then.
The public fury last week in France boiled over into ugly scenes in several cities, with protests spreading across the country, fanning out from the capital Paris. The French public are furious. And they have right to be.
The uproar mounting over several months now is due to the government’s plan to overhaul the country’s comprehensive labor laws. The essential thrust is to re-write the laws in order to make private businesses and companies hire more workers – by making it easier for them to fire workers!
If that sounds contradictory, then it is a fitting epitome of this French government. President Francois Hollande and his ruling Socialist Party led by Prime Minister Manuel Valls claim, at the risk of sounding tautologous, to be «socialists».
Yet the supposed socialist government is embarking on a ruthless project to smash workers’ rights on behalf of capitalist enterprise.
This week premier Valls presented his so-called labor «reforms» to business representatives and to France’s powerful trade unions. Neither were pleased, with the business groups scoffing that the government had caved into public protests over their much-touted reforms, while unions claimed the proposed changes were still an unacceptable assault on workers.
Students and workers are now pushing ahead with even bigger protests, with more nationwide demonstrations reportedly planned over the coming weeks. It appears that Valls’ government has ignited a firestorm that it can no longer douse.
Valls’ economy minister, Emmanuel Macron, is the personification of the French government’s widely perceived betrayal, in the eyes of ordinary Socialist Party members and the wider public. Reports describe the 38-year-old rising star as being seen as «toxic» by many ordinary French. Macron is a former investment banker who worked at Rothschild before being drafted into government. Yes, that’s right, an investment banker for one of the world’s major capitalist enterprises is given the portfolio of economy minister in an avowedly socialist government. Eh, conflict of interest comes to mind.
It has been Macron’s ministerial brief to push through «business-friendly reforms». Speaking at the Davos summit earlier this year – the annual confab for global capitalists – Macron told his audience that France’s «bloated» labor laws would be stripped. He particularly mocked the country’s statutory limit of a 35-hour working week, vowing that company management would henceforth be allowed to set their own limits.
Macron has also talked about smashing other «glass ceilings», such as relatively strict rules against firing workers and onerous financial compensation for employees who claim they have been unfairly dismissed by bosses. Another target for Macron is to do away with collective bargaining by trade unions, and to permit firms to negotiate terms of pay and conditions with individual workers.
From the capitalists’ point of view – and evidently it is a view shared by premier Valls and his economy minister – the root problem for France’s sluggish growth and high unemployment is that workers have too many rights. By making it easier for private companies to fire workers or make their employees clock up longer hours – so the argument goes – the bosses will be inclined to take on more staff, which it is assumed will result in higher macroeconomic growth for the country.
France wants to follow the Anglo-American model. Britain and the US appear to have better economic performances than France and lower official unemployment rates. The US jobless rate is reported at around 5 per cent, whereas the French unemployment figure is 10 per cent, with the rate rising among youth to 25 per cent. But in Britain and the US, workers are notoriously stressed from much longer working weeks up to 48-60 hours. They also suffer from so-called «in-work poverty» from being underpaid, with less legal protections against hire-and-fire bosses and «zero-hours contracts».
In other words, Britain and the US are more nakedly capitalist models where workers are mere profit-making inputs to be cast aside when no longer required. Britain and the US may be sought after as destinations for unemployed migrants who are desperate for any form of income. But that is no endorsement from a humane viewpoint.
What we have here are fundamental questions of ideology and morality. Are workers and the rights they have won over centuries of labor struggles to be discarded like human chattel?
Compared with the Anglo-American model, France’s relatively more civilized culture for workers should be seen as a virtue to be staunchly defended, not sacrificed on the altar of insatiable profit-making.
Another fundamental ideological difference is that the French government is following the official British and American prejudice that scapegoats workers for low economic growth. In this logic, economic growth can only be revived by making workers toil harder and longer. The more insecure the workers are made to feel, then the harder they will work and the more bosses’ profits will be boosted.
This is a fallacious – not to say immoral – way of looking at contemporary economic conditions. Since the global economic crash in 2008, what needs to be understood is that the problem of low growth in France, Europe, and even the seemingly better UK and US, is not really an issue of worker productivity. It is a much bigger question about a fundamental, historic breakdown in the capitalist system. This is reflected in the record level of inequality between a tiny elite and the vast majority of society. Chronic poverty and austerity wages are why consumption and growth have become stagnant. The systematic injustice needs to abolished, not appeased.
The French government, as in so many other Western countries, has become nothing more than a lobby for the capitalists and their financial oligarchy. Bailouts for the bankers and bosses, but buckets of misery for the masses. What governments should be doing is defending the rights of the vast majority and pushing an agenda that radically redistributes justice in the form of much higher taxes on corporations and the rich, while bringing banks under public control. In a word, socialism is required, not more draconian capitalism.
It looks like the French population at large have finally run out of tolerance for the pseudo-socialists ruling in Paris. Shamelessly, this government is attacking basic rights and mocking touchstones of civility, such as a cap of 35 working hours per week. It truly is Orwellian when such a basic benchmark of human decency is blithely despised by those who claim to be «serving the people».
In a more rational society why shouldn’t workers’ hours be reduced to 25 hours and let the firms take on more staff to maintain output. Oh, it reduces profits and rich dividends for directors, they might say? Well, too bad, let the exploiters take a cut. Better still, let workers and the public take ownership of companies and banks.
One irony in French politics is that Manuel Valls and his de facto capitalist administration have become hysterical about the popular rise of Marine Le Pen’s National Front. Valls and others on the pseudo left deprecate Le Pen’s party as racist, extremist and even fascist. It is arguable that the National Front has gained popular support, as with other similar parties across Europe, precisely because of increasing economic insecurity among workers and society generally. That insecurity, in turn, feeds into anti-immigrant hostility among some sections who see their livelihoods threatened by foreigners.
Ironically, perhaps the biggest recruiting agency for the National Front in France is the pseudo-socialist government of Manuel Valls and his president Francois Hollande. These charlatans are not only attacking workers on behalf of private profit, they are fueling social strife, breakdown, hatred, xenophobia and, in its worst manifestation, fascism.
The danger of a fascist state is not hyperbole. France’s emergency laws deployed since the terror attacks last November in Paris forbid all public demonstrations – in the interest of «national security». As public protests over the coming weeks rightly and legitimately challenge the reactionary French government’s attack on workers, it is only a matter of time before riot-police squads begin to implement mass detention of these same demonstrators, under the pretext that they are threatening national security.
That raises a grim and not inconceivable scenario. French workers and students clubbed off the streets by armed police and thrown into prison without due legal process. Because they oppose an authoritarian government shredding their legal rights? No wonder echoes of 1968 are in the French air.
State of Emergency in France : Salah Lamrani, another victim of war hysteria
More:
An Islamist “terrorist” in the School of the Republic: Day 1
An Islamist “terrorist” in the School of the Republic: Day 2
How Hillary Clinton Lied Her Way to War in Libya
teleSUR | March 18, 2016
Declassified emails released in January and February reveal that Hillary Clinton was one of the main instruments in spreading chaos and extremism in Libya when the U.S. secretary of state personally pushed for the ousting of late Libyan leader Muammar Gadhafi.
Clinton’s emails reveal that she and her staff were aware that civilians they claimed to be protecting were not actually in danger from government forces.
Less than a month ahead of the passage of U.N. Security Council Resolution 1973, a resolution which authorized a no-fly zone to protect civilians on March 17, 2011, Hillary’s assistant, Huma Abedin, in an email dated Feb. 21, 2011, stated: “Based on numerous eyewitness reports, it is the Embassy’s assessment that the government no longer controls Benghazi. This is likely the case for Ajdabiyah as well.”
Abedin went on to write that sources in Benghazi reported that Libyan Interior Minister Abdul Fattah Younes had “changed sides” and was “now with the protesters in Benghazi.” The mood in Benghazi and Ajdabiyah, according to the email, was “celebratory” and all posters of Gadhafi had been “knocked down.”
Crucially, this email was written at a time when Clinton was aware that no government crackdown was taking place in either Benghazi or Ajdabiyah.
This was despite anti-government protests kicking off in Benghazi and Ajdabiyah a few days before, at a time when the U.S. and France and other Western governments were claiming government forces were involved in the mass-killing of protesters and civilians.
However, on March 2, 2011, a few days before the passage of the U.N. resolution, U.S. State Department official Harriet Spanos sent an email informing Clinton that “Security Reports . . . confirm that Benghazi has been calm over the past couple of days.”
“Economic activity is going on in Benghazi,” she added in the email, with shops and banks open and “[m]obile and landline phones… working… and Internet has returned.”
The moment of truth came 11 days into the NATO bombing, which continued for several months, when Clinton’s top adviser, Sidney Blumenthal, who was not employed by the state department but by the private Clinton Foundation, laid out the reasons for the Washington-led intervention and the eventual ousting of Gadhafi.
Without once mentioning “humanitarian” purposes, in a March 27, 2011 email Blumenthal stressed to Clinton the importance of pressing for a “final win” by ousting Gadhafi in order to boost U.S. President Barack Obama’s then low approval ratings.
Ousting the Libyan strongman, argued Blumenthal, would further establish “security in North Africa, securing democracy in Egypt and Tunisia, economic development, effect throughout Arab world and Africa, extending U.S. influence, counter-balancing Iran, etc.”
Further highlighting his complete and utter disregard for the human cost of the intervention, in the same email Blumenthal informed Clinton about the horrors committed by U.S.-backed forces in Libya, which included members of al-Qaida.
“Speaking in strict confidence, one rebel commander stated that his troops continue to summarily execute all foreign mercenaries in the fighting.” Such actions are considered war crimes and in violation of international resolutions and conventions.
The emails also reveal that the Obama administration and Clinton were aware of the threat of al-Qaida in the eastern part of the country, which had for years been suppressed by the Libyan leader.
The emails also show that claims made by NATO at the time, including alleged atrocities committed by Gadhafi’s forces such as rape and mass killings, were rumors used by Clinton and the Obama administration to help sell the intervention to the world.
It is clear the NATO intervention was not intended for humanitarian purposes. So what were the intentions of Clinton and the Obama administration? [Beyond the long planned and ongoing destruction of any and all enemies of Israel*] The same as most U.S. interventions: financial interest.
The emails reveal that most of the intelligence Clinton received on Libya was from Blumenthal, who was preparing to make substantial financial gains from the fall of the Libyan leader.
According to Vice News, the intel briefs on Libya were “prepared by Blumenthal’s business partner and former CIA operative Tyler Drumheller, a consultant with plans to take advantage of economic opportunities in a post-war Libya.”
Both men worked with the U.S.-based security company Osprey, a start-up that hoped to profit from medical and military contracts with Libyan rebels amid the chaos of the conflict, according to Vice News.
Five years later, the opportunism of Clinton and the Obama administration which resulted in one of the most disastrous interventions in recent decades, aiding the rise of extremist groups in the oil-rich African country and contributing to Europe’s ongoing refugee situation can be seen for what it was: a devastating assault on the people of Libya rooted in lies, deceit and narrow, imperial self-interest.
*Also in the cited Vice article but not presented by teleSUR:
… Much of the intelligence Blumenthal fed to Clinton was quite odd. One email suggested that Libyan elites wanted warm relations with Israel, another that European spy agencies were encouraging tribal leaders to declare a semi-autonomous tribal zone in the east of the country. […]
On Aug. 27, 2012, for instance, Blumenthal’s intelligence claimed that a new Libyan president would “seek a discreet relationship with Israel.” Then, Clinton forwarded on the e-mail to her top policy aide Jacob Sullivan with a note attached: “If true, this is encouraging. Should consider passing to Israelis.”
Ben Nayef is a worthy recipient of the Légion d’honneur!
By Gearóid Ó Colmáin | American Herald Tribune | March 14, 2016
The recent scandal in Paris concerning the decoration with the Légion d’honneur by the French government of Saudi Arabia’s Prince Mohammad Ben Nayef, highlights the importance of the absolutist Gulf Monarchy to France’s imperial strategy in the Middle East. The spurious left/right divide in French politics between the Socialist Party and the Republicans, is manifested in a Middle East geopolitics of the Socialist Party’s special relationship with Saudi Arabia, while UMP, formerly led by Nicolas Sarkozy, tends to favor Qatar, the irony being that Qatar is a tad more liberal than the ‘socialist’ backed Saudi behemoth.
While there was muted outrage in the French capital over the decision to honor Ben Nayef on his own request, in order to boost his international ‘credibility’, I believe the French government’s actions were perfectly logical and reasonable. Why wouldn’t the French government honor Saudi officials? Since the creation of a unified kingdom with British backing in 1932, the Saudi dictatorship has served its function well. It has, along with its sister Israel, constituted a bulwark against the two threats to Western, Zionist suzerainty in the Middle East and North Africa: Arab nationalism and revolutionary Shiism.
The Wahhabi regime does this by keeping so many of the Muslims of the former Ottoman Empire indoctrinated in an obscurantist death cult, under the supreme authority of a degenerate ruling caste who, instead of developing the industrial sector of their country so as to improve the lives of the poor, squander billions on Western arms deals in order to better oppress their own people and those of neighboring countries such as Yemen, who are attempting to emancipate themselves from the neocolonial yoke.
Relations between the Saudi monarchy and the French government are currently so good, the words ‘honey moon’, have been used to describe them. When President Holland visited Riyadh Just months after the Charlie Hebdo terrorist attacks in January 2015, French press pundits on the capitalist ‘left’ and ‘capitalist right’, were waxing lyrical about the ‘great friendship’ that exists between Saudi Arabia and France. In June 2015, the French government signed over 10,3 billion dollars in contracts with the Saudi regime in areas extending from military, aeronautics, health, transport and solar energy. This means that a sizable portion of the French bourgeoisie, what President Clemenceau once referred to as “the syndicate of interests”, are perfectly happy with the Franco-Saudi status quo.
French imperialism currently bears the distinction of having surpassed the United States in bellicosity. The French led the carpet bombing and destruction of Libya in 2011; they have led in the destruction of Syria too. In negotiations with Iran, the Quai d’Orsay was the most intransigent; this won it more favor with Riyadh. With US/Saudi relations strained, due to American détente with Iran, Paris is using Saudi insecurity about its future to gain more influence in the Arabian Peninsula.
The French government sold more arms than ever in 2015 and they intend to sell even more this year, thanks to the ‘honey moon’ relationship with the head chopping regime in Riyadh; a regime openly promoting the Wahhabi death cult all around the world, including in France’s sprawling proletarian banlieux, where mis-fortunate youths such as the infamous Kouachi brothers fall under their influence. The fact that the Saudi regime promotes and funds Takfiri terrorism is not a secret; US Vice President Joe Biden candidly admitted this to students at the Kennedy Business School in Harvard University in 2014.
While US presidential candidate Donald Trump, in what appeared to be a veiled critique of Israeli terrorism, recently declared that ‘everyone knows’ the Saudis are behind Takfiri terrorism.
In fact, it is regularly admitted by the French corporate and establishment media that the Saudis are funding terrorism in Syria and other countries, yet Riyadh remains the privileged partner of countries claiming to be fighting an international ‘war on terrorism’! None of this makes sense but, of course, that is because it doesn’t have to make sense. For this global war on terrorism is a war without a real enemy. The enemies are fabricated by the panoply of agencies that constitute the military-industrial-media-intelligence complex; a netherworld of special interests and high finance.
In this post-modern wasteland of consumerist meaninglessness and zero-consciousness, the terrorist is a shifting signifier. The ‘War on Terror’ narrative operates like Derridean deconstruction, whereby the terrorist is both real and unreal, present and absent, constantly deferred, displaced, with no essential being outside the labyrinthine obfuscations of the war on terror’s ever expanding mythos. And the political elites, who serve corporate and financial power, no longer care what the public thinks of them. They are now discretely admitting that the war on terror is a fraud, that the French government supports the most outrageous dictatorships on earth, that human rights, as Marx noted, signify nothing more than vile property rights ; that money is God and that they have nothing but snickering contempt for the French public.
Everything is now out in the open. We are governed by criminals and tyrants and they don’t mind us taking cognizance of that fact. Therefore, the media disclosure of emails showing how the French government attempted to play down the Légion d’honneur affair will not bother them. Speaking to France Inter last week, French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault, said: ” Diplomacy can sometimes surprise us. One should see it like that” In other words, this is an affair of state and we have no duty to explain our policies to the public. Procul, procul, este profani! Be off, be gone, ye uninitiated!
In 1999, a relative of Ben Nayef was arrested in Paris in possession of 20 tons of cocaine. The Saudi prince was smuggling drugs from Latin America into Europe, in order to finance Al Qaeda terrorists in Afghanistan. The prince escaped to Saudi Arabia but was sentenced in absentia to ten years in prison by a French court. The fact that this convicted, felonious relative of Mohammad Ben Nayef was under the protection of the Saudi regime did not even enter into the agenda of the French delegation to Riyadh in 2015.
Why would it? Drug trafficking is a key component of class rule, constituting the carefully concealed underbelly of the global, capitalist system.
Drug dealers operating under the aegis of the French Socialist Party were responsible for crushing the massive French labor strikes of 1948, when there was a real chance of the French Communist Party, (PCF )taking power. In cahoots with the CIA, Socialist Mayor of Marseilles, Gaston Deferre used the drug trafficking mafia clans to crush the worker’s movement. Today, cities like Marseilles are awash with drugs, delinquency, and poverty. The workers are no longer organized as immigration keeps them disunited and demoralized, while Saudi princes party with their French counterparts along the French Riviera. Meanwhile, ‘socialist’ leaders meet farcically in Paris to discuss the “danger of the far right”, movements whose ranks are increasingly being filled with demoralized workers.
The Saudi prince deserves the Légion d’honneur, for the Saudi regime is a worthy partner of French imperialism. It is waging war against the Syrian people, waging war against the Yemeni people, and would soon be waging war against the Iranian people, were it not for the fact that Persia is capable of flattening it.
The Wahhabi regime poisons the minds of millions of young Muslims, diverting their social anger at the ruling class into sectarian hatred of their class allies, killing other poor Muslims and Christians instead of the tyrants spreading hate, oppression and permanent war. The Saudi regime is a Zionist entity, which wages permanent war on Muslims mostly, murdering and defaming them and sullying the Islam. For the deeply unpopular French regime instituting a police state, Saudi Arabia is a role model. In this sense, by bestowing the highest honors of the state on despot Mohammad Ben Nayef, the French government is revealing to the world the true meaning, the transcendental signification of their oft incanted ditty of ‘human rights’, ‘freedom’ and ‘democracy’.
Libya military intervention needs UN approval, says Russian FM
Press TV – March 14, 2016
Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov says any military operation in Libya requires the approval of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC).
Lavrov said during a joint press conference in Moscow with visiting Tunisian Foreign Minister Khemaies Jhinaoui on Monday that Russia is aware of some plans for military involvement in Libya, but insisted that those plans could be implemented only with the permission of the 15-member council.
“We know about what’s being discussed openly and not so openly on plans of military intervention, including with the situation in Libya. Our common position is that this is possible only under the UN Security Council’s decision,” Lavrov said.
The top Russian diplomat also noted that a possible mandate for an operation against the terrorists in Libya must be defined unambiguously so as not to allow misinterpretations.
Russia says that the US-led military alliance NATO abused a United Nations resolution in 2011 to protect Libyan civilians from slain Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi’s forces in order to pursue regime change and political assassinations during a popular uprising across the North African country.
The remarks come as New York Times recently reported that the Pentagon and the highly secretive Joint Special Operations Command have provided the White House with “the most detailed set of military options yet” in Libya.
France’s Le Monde newspaper also reported last month that the country’s special forces and members of the country’s external security agency Directorate-General for External Security (DGSE) were in Libya for “clandestine operations” in cooperation with the US and Britain.
Meanwhile, a UN panel is also investigating claims that Turkey, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Sudan have violated an existing arms embargo by providing weapons to warring groups operating in Libya.
In mid-February, Libya’s internationally recognized Prime Minister Abdullah al-Thinni accused Ankara of interference in his country’s internal affairs.
Since 2014, when militants seized the capital Tripoli, Libya has had two parallel parliaments and governments.
Daesh took advantage of the chaos and captured Libya’s northern port city of Sirte in June 2015, almost four months after it announced its presence in the city, and made it the first city to be ruled by the militant group outside of Iraq and Syria.
France: Another Palestinian TV Station Shut Down
IMEMC News & Agencies – March 12, 2016
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu expressed his gratitude, on Saturday, to French President Francois Hollande, after the French government shut down a Hamas-affiliated television station that, according to the Israeli media, “aired content which constituted anti-Israel and anti-Jewish incitement.”
Netanyahu had earlier urged Hollande to end the transmission of Al Aksa television, the Hamas-run channel that was being broadcast on the French satellite service EUTELSAT — also associated with Palestine Today TV, which was shut down in the occupied West Bank, on Friday.
According to the PNN, Israel’s Shin Bet internal spy agency said in a statement, on Friday, that the Ramallah offices were raided overnight, in a joint operation with the military over allegations that the channel “broadcasts on behalf of the Islamic Jihad,” a Gaza-based Palestinian resistance movement.
“The channel served the Islamic Jihad as a central means to incite the West Bank population, calling for terror attacks against Israel and its citizens. Incitement was broadcast on the television station as well as the Internet,” Shin Bet added.
Palestinian officials have denounced Israel’s closure of the offices. Yousef al-Mahmoud, Palestinian Authority spokesman, described the Israeli raid on Palestine Today TV station in Ramallah as “part of the aggressive occupation policy towards Palestinian media.
Dr. Hanan Ashrawi, member of Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) executive committee, also denounced the Israeli raid, saying it contravenes free speech rules.
The Palestinian Journalists’ Syndicate made an official statement, as well.
“Incursions into areas under the Palestinian Authority’s control and attacking its sovereignty and media institution [are] a stark violation of basic human rights and international and humanitarian laws that have safeguarded freedom of speech,” she said.
Last November, Israeli soldiers broke into the headquarters of Al-Hurriyya Media Network, destroyed the offices, confiscated the tools and threatened to demolish the entire building if the network works again, accusing it of “inciting” Palestinians against the Israeli occupation.
The month previous, in October, Israeli soldiers raided the offices of the International Middle East Media Center and the Palestinian Center for Rapprochement.
Since the start of October 2015, almost 200 Palestinians have been killed, in addition to 30 Israelis, settlers and soldiers.
The current tension is ongoing since October, due to repetitive Israeli settler attacks on Al-Aqsa mosque, the third holiest place in Islam, and Israeli restrictions over Palestinian entrance, in addition to the Douma arson attack which killed a baby and his parents on July 31.
Israeli forces have been criticized internationally, over recent months, for its ‘preemptive shootings’ of Palestinians alleged to be holding knives.
In addition several of the incidents in which the military has claimed that they were ‘attacked’ have proven to be false.
Iran may face sanctions over missile tests: France
Press TV – March 13, 2016
France says Iran may be targeted with new sanctions over its recent ballistic missile tests, to which the Islamic Republic says it is entitled because they fall within the realm of conventional military capabilities.
“If necessary, sanctions will be taken,” French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault said in Paris on Sunday. He was speaking after a meeting with US Secretary of State John Kerry and several European counterparts.
Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) successfully test-fired two ballistic missiles, dubbed Qadr-H and Qadr-F, on Wednesday as part of military drills to assess their capabilities.
A day earlier, the Guards had fired another ballistic missile, called Qiam, from silo-based launchers in different locations across the country.
Last October, Iran successfully test-fired its precision-guided long-range Emad missile, sparking an uproar among US politicians.
In January, the US Department of the Treasury imposed new sanctions against Iranian citizens and companies over the country’s ballistic missile program.
Iran says it has a right to carry out missile tests, asserting that none of its missiles are capable of carrying nuclear warheads.
US Secretary of State John Kerry, who was speaking alongside the French top diplomat, described the recent tests as a breach of UN resolutions. Washington has, meanwhile, asked the UN Security Council to discuss the matter on Monday.
The Islamic Republic has repeatedly said that its military might poses no threat to other countries, reiterating that its defense doctrine is merely based on deterrence.
Riyadh to receive French-made arms intended for Lebanon
Press TV – March 5, 2016
Saudi Arabia will take delivery of French-manufactured arms originally ordered for the Lebanese army, following Riyadh’s recent decision to retract USD four billion in military aid to Beirut.
Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir announced the plan on Saturday during a visit to France.
Last month, the Saudi regime said it had suspended USD three billion in military assistance to the Lebanese military and another USD one billion to the country’s internal security forces.
The aid was cut after Lebanon refrained from endorsing Saudi-crafted statements against Iran at separate meetings held in Cairo and Jeddah.
The move also followed victories by the Syrian army, which is backed by fighters of Lebanon’s resistance movement of Hezbollah, in its battle against Takfiri terrorists battling to topple the government in Damascus.
“We made the decision that we will stop the USD three billion from going to the Lebanese military and instead they will be re-diverted to the Saudi military,” Jubeir told journalists in Paris, adding, “So the contracts (with France) will be completed but the clients will be the Saudi military.”
The aid is vital as the Lebanese army is fighting Takfiri militants from the al-Qaeda-linked Nusra Front and Daesh near the country’s northeastern border with Syria.
France’s arms delivery to Saudi Arabia comes amid Riyadh’s ongoing military aggression against Yemen and its support for militant groups in Syria.
Several European countries including Germany, Britain and France have been engaged in major arms deals with the Saudi regime, turning a blind eye to calls by rights groups to cancel the agreements.
Back in February, the European Parliament passed a resolution calling for the imposition of an arms embargo against Saudi Arabia, and urging EU member states to stop selling weapons to Riyadh as it is accused of targeting civilians in Yemen.
According to a recent report by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), Saudi Arabia’s imports for 2011-15 increased by 275 percent compared with 2006–10. The British government has licensed USD 7.8 billion in sales of arms, fighter jets and other military hardware to Riyadh since Prime Minister David Cameron came to power in 2010. France also signed USD-12-billion contracts with Saudi Arabia in 2015 alone.
Yemen has been under military attacks by Saudi Arabia since late March 2015. More than 8,300 people, among them 2,236 children, have been killed. The strikes have taken a heavy toll on the impoverished country’s facilities and infrastructure, destroying many hospitals, schools and factories.
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Conspiracy Denial
Lies are Unbekoming | January 27, 2026
In honour of Michael Parenti (1933–2026), who passed away on 24 January 2026 at the age of 92. He spent his life naming what power prefers to leave unnamed.
In 1837, Abraham Lincoln remarked: “These capitalists generally act harmoniously, and in concert, to fleece the people.”
Today, he would be dismissed as a conspiracy theorist.
That dismissal—reflexive, automatic, requiring no engagement with evidence—is not a mark of sophistication. It is a tell. The question worth asking is not whether conspiracies exist (they are a matter of public record and a recognised concept in law) but why acknowledging their existence provokes such reliable hostility. What work does the label “conspiracy theorist” actually do?
The late political scientist Michael Parenti spent decades answering that question. His conclusion was blunt: “’Conspiracy’ refers to something more than just illegal acts. It serves as a dismissive label applied to any acknowledgment of ruling-class power, both its legal and illegal operations.” The term functions not as a descriptor but as a weapon—a thought-terminating cliché that protects the powerful from scrutiny by pathologising those who scrutinise them.
Conspiracy denial, in Parenti’s analysis, is not skepticism. It is the opposite of skepticism. It is credulity toward power dressed up as critical thinking. As he wrote in Dirty Truths: “Just because some people have fantasies of conspiracies does not mean all conspiracies are imaginary.” … continue
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Aletho News- Davos and Abu Dhabi: How the Ukrainian Endgame Exposed Western Decline
- AfD co-leader states the obvious: Pouring money into the Ukraine war is killing the German economy
- Britain’s return to piracy to stop Russian ships – desperate attempt to demonstrate power
- Czech coalition rules out higher defense spending, says 2% of GDP is enough
- G7 Hands Ukraine $40Bln Generated From Frozen Russian Assets
- Conspiracy Denial
- Ukraine expects to join EU next year – Zelensky
- Here’s what’s behind the US shift on EU allies
- UN experts alarmed by prosecution of students protesting ETH Zurich’s Israel-linked research ties
- Exposed – How the UAE Became Central to Gaza’s Concentration Camp Plot
- If Americans Knew
- “The Gaza ceasefire is a minefield” – Not a ceasefire Day 110
- Israel to seek new security deal from US, official says
- Leaked “Board of Peace” Resolution Outlines U.S.-Led Plan to Rule Over Gaza
- Jonathan Greenblatt Rolls Out Plan to Activate Hispanic Evangelical Golems
- Violence against hundreds of Gazan remains to find one Israeli – Not a ceasefire Day 109
- Greenpeace Demonstrator Exposes Folly of Protest Restrictions
- From CBS to TikTok, Pro-Israel Ellison is now in the driver’s seat
- Israel pays for UK advertisements attacking Doctors Without Borders
- Israel accused of extracting billions from Gazan people to pay for their own genocide
- ‘Deliberate Assassination’: 3 Journalists Among 11 Killed by Israeli Forces in Gaza
- No Tricks Zone
- New Study Affirms Rising CO2’s Greening Impact Across India – A Region With No Net Warming In 75 Years
- Germany’s Natural Gas Crisis Escalates … One Storage Site Near Empty …Government Silent
- Polar Colding…Antarctica Saw Its Coldest October In 44 Years!
- New Study: Sea Levels Rose 20 Times The Modern Rate During The Roman Warm Period
- As German Gas Storage Dips Dangerously Low…Shortage Hardly Avoidable
- New Study: Brazil’s Relative Sea Level Was 2+ Meters Higher And SSTs 3-4°C Warmer 6000 Years Ago
- Philosopher Schopenhauer: Climate Science Certainty Stems From Stupidity, Ignorance
- New Study: Species Extinction Rates Declining Since 1980 – ‘Climate Change Is Not An Important Threat’
- Denmark Places Climate Protection Above Animal Welfare, Poisoning And Culling Cows
- New Study: Greenland Was 3-7°C Warmer And Far Less Glaciated Than Today 6000-8000 Years Ago
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