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Panama Canard: The ”crimes” of France’s enemies

By Gearóid Ó Colmáin | American Herald Tribune | April 8, 2016

If there’s something to be happy about this week in France, surely it has to do with the fact that the Panama Papers don’t reveal much about the French political elite and their fiscal havens. The focus in the French media- albeit muted acknowledgement of UK Prime Minister David Cameron’s off shore assets- has been entirely on the  so-called enemies of freedom-‘dictators killing their own people’ such as Bashar Al-Assad of Syria and of course primus inter pares of the world’s great villains: Russian President Vladimir Putin; that is in spite of the fact Putin’s name does not appear on any document released by the Soros and USAID-funded International Consortium of Investigative Journalists.

Nowhere can one read in the French press, however, that institutions which represent the richest and most powerful people on the planet; institutions which are all intimately linked to to the Central Intelligence Agency- the Ford Foundation; Carnegie Endowment for Internatioanl Peace; and of course the parent company of US engineered destabilization campaigns throughout the world- the Open Society Foundation- are financing this ‘exclusive leak’ of documents.

Instead, we find leaders France has been diligently attempting to overthrow, conveniently linked to the Panama Papers. Notwithstanding the fact that Bashar Al-Assad’s name does not appear on any document, Le Monde published the Syrian president’s portrait on the front page of it April 4th edition.

The ‘Assad connection’ to the documents is provided by the Syrian president’s cousin Berkane Maklouf who, we are told, attempted to get around sanctions against his country by setting up off-shore companies which supplied parts to the Syrian air force. Maklouf’s declarations about wanting to stay and die in Syria are also quoted to show how loyal he is to the ‘brutal regime’.

Here we need to clarify a few points about Syria and it’s ‘brutal regime.’ Syria is a democratic republic. The Syrian government is, ipso facto, not a ‘brutal regime’. Since unknown snipers opened fire on police and protesters in the city of Deraa on March 17th 2011, Syria has been invaded by mercenary terrorists from all over the world-whose passage into the country has been prepared by Turkey and the Gulf Cooperation Council in accordance with NATO Central Command.

Most, if not all, of the crimes in this war have been committed by the NATO-backed ‘rebels’. The NATO-backed rebels are Takfiri terrorists. All European and American press agencies have been telling lies about the war in Syria, which means that thousands of journalists are complicit in war crimes- the very journalists now accusing the ‘Assad clan’ of financial fraud.

NATO and the Gulf Cooperation Council are not attempting to defeat Daesh in Syria. Rather, as former NATO commander General Wesley Clark has admitted, Daesh is a creation of the United States and Israel, whose purpose is to crush the Shia axis of anti-Zionist resistance in the Middle East.

Media disinformation about Syria is an integral part of the NATO war effort- a fact admitted by former National Security Advisor Zbigniew Bzrezinski.

There was never any crackdown by the Syrian government on peaceful protests.  The Syrian Arab Army has been fighting an armed insurgency supported by Western powers. All of its military operations are therefore fully in accordance with international law, which clearly stipulates that nations have a right to self-defense. A key strategy used by the terrorist brigades in Syria is to commit atrocities and blame them on the government.

The most infamous and widely publicized of these atrocities was the Houla Massacre of 2012, when the children of pro-government families were slaughtered by the Western-backed terrorists.  One of the only journalists in the Western press to confirm this was Rainer Hermann of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung in an article published on June 6th 2012.

In spite of the fact that Hermann  is considered to be one of Europe’s foremost experts on Syria, the Franco-German station ARTE ignored his analysis in their deeply dishonest documentary of 2012- which has since disappeared from their archives.

In the years leading up to the Syrian war, President Bashar Al-Assad was considered a ‘reformer’ by the Western political establishment. The reforms Assad was instituting favored the emerging national bourgeoisie at the expense of the country’s burgeoning working class. Privatization was ‘kept in the family’, with important contracts going to well-connected business men, loyal to the state, such as Berkane Maklouf.

The problem for the Western corporate elite, however, had nothing to do with the plight of the working class; rather it was that Syria still remained a sovereign, protectionist state, with no foreign debt and a high degree of political and economic autonomy. The ‘Washington Consensus’ demanded the ‘opening up’ of Syria to more direct, foreign investment, together with the weakening of its national sovereignty- so that the Arab nationalist state would no longer be able to defend itself against Israel. When Assad refused to comply, NATO fomented a proxy-war against the Arab nation.

Now an attempt is being made by the French press to smear the Assad family by portraying Berkane Maklouf as a money-laundering criminal; when in fact, the Syrian business man’s use of off-shore accounts to aid the Syrian war effort is not only excusable, it is highly commendable.

Maklouf contrasts poignantly with another Assad clan member, whose illegal activities were recently investigated by French courts; his name is Rifaat Al-Assad and he is an uncle of the Syrian incumbent. On April 28th 2014, Liberation reported that Rifaat’s expensive Parisian properties were being investigated by the French courts for tax evasion.

We are told in the headline that Rafaat is a cousin of the ‘Syrian dictator’; a few lines into the piece, we learn that he was disgraced and exiled after an aborted coup d’Etat in 1984; then the article casually reveals that the Syrian traitor and criminal had in fact joined an entirely different family: the French secret service. In essence, although the article appears to show the criminality of the Assad clan, it actually proves the opposite. For Rifaat Al-Assad, banished from Syria, had found work in the service of French foreign policy.

Similarly, as more documents are ‘leaked’ from the Panama Papers, real investigative journalists not on the Soros/USAID/CIA payroll will be better placed to make a concrete assessment of the Empire’s next stratagem of chaos.

German journalist Ernst Wolf, and French journalist Thierry Meyssan, have argued that the Panama Papers are part of a US financial conspiracy against Europe, whereby investors are being blackmailed into lodging their money in American banks-a prelude, they argue, to a new global financial crisis, which threatens to plunge the Old Continent into chaos.

In 1892, another major scandal involving Panama rocked Paris, when it was revealed that the French government- in order to cover up the bankruptcy of their canal project in Panama- had accepted bribes from the industrialists involved. The French political climate became particularly anti-Semitic when the newspaper La Libre Parole (Free Speech) began to publish all of the names of the financiers involved in the cover up- most of whom were Jewish. Given what we now know about those financing the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, France’s Zionist ruling class have nothing to fear this time round.

April 9, 2016 Posted by | Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Timeless or most popular, Video | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Why the Western Elite Love Terror Attacks

By Steven MacMillan | The Analyst Report | March 26, 2016

Instilling fear in the minds of the public has been a powerful tool of social control since the dawn of human civilization. Today, it is clear that the Western elite are using fear and terror as a means of ushering in totalitarian control. The mainstream media has been force-feeding the Western public a steady diet of war, fear and terror since the neocons “new Pearl Harbor event” in 2001.

After the latest terror attack in Belgium, the media is playing its usual role of amplifying the incident beyond any rational comprehension. The majority of the public are caught up in the vortex of emotive propaganda and sensationalist rhetoric. Images of terror; horror; fear; and panic dominate the news landscape. The main message is that you should be afraid.

The only solution to latest crisis (in the eyes of the elite) is for even greater spying powers and totalitarian control. Hillary Clinton, the political prostitute par excellence, called for more surveillance and an expansion of the police state in response to the attacks in Belgium. Both Ted Cruz and Donald Trump support a further erosion of civil liberties and have called for increasing surveillance of Muslims (Trump even advocated torturing terror suspects).

Yet not one political figure has called for prosecuting CIA and other US officials for war crimes, after years of the West openly funding and arming terrorists in Syria. Accountability is what is needed, not authoritarianism.

Every terror attack produces the same response by the elite: more surveillance, more state power, more war, more barbarism and more control. It’s frankly boring. You know what the puppets are going to say prior to them opening their mouths. It was the same response after the Charlie Hebdo attacks in Paris, when David Cameron was pushing for greater surveillance powers in the UK and leading the charge for an insane ban on all encryption.

We know that NSA spying has nothing to do with stopping terrorism, and everything to do with controlling the domestic population. In the words of the high-level NSA whistleblower, William Binney: “The ultimate goal of the NSA is total population control.”

We know that Western intelligence agencies and their regional allies were instrumental in supporting the rise of ISIS (and other terror groups), by funding and arming these factions in a failed attempt to topple al-Assad. In the words of the former US military intelligence chief, Michael T. Flynn, the Obama administration took the “willful decision” to support the rise of these radical forces.

The criminal Western elite have no intention of winning the ‘war on terror,’ as the ‘war on terror’ was always designed to be perennial. The elite create the terror groups because without the faux ‘war on terror,’ the surveillance state loses the entire pretext on which it was built.

For any totalitarian elite, it is essential that “a state of war should exist,” as Orwell wrote in 1984:

“It does not matter whether the war is actually happening, and since no decisive victory is possible, it does not matter whether the war is going well or badly. All that is needed is that a state of war should exist… The consciousness of being at war, and therefore in danger, makes the handing-over of all power to a small caste seem the natural, unavoidable situation of survival” (2008 edition: p.200 & p.201).

As the elite create a perpetual state of war, chaos, fear and terror, the people of the West increasingly allow more power to be concentrated in the hands of the ‘superclass.’ If the Western public continues to be duped into believing that this phony ‘war on terror’ is real, the elite will use this as a pretext to completely destroy civil liberties and any semblance of freedom in the West.

War is Peace

Freedom is Slavery

Ignorance is Strength

April 3, 2016 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Timeless or most popular | , , , , , | Leave a comment

France Spies on Lebanon’s Internet

Al-Manar | April 2, 2016

Al-Akhbar newspaper revealed that France has been involved in spying on the internet cable that transmits the cyber services from the French city of Marseille to Lebanon, passing through Egypt.

The Lebanese daily explained that the French intelligence services monitor all the telecommunications operated in Lebanon, knowing that Orange company that is very close to the Zionist entity also supervises the entire process.

Accordingly, the experts urged the Lebanese to take extreme cyber security measures to secure their telecommunication activities.

April 2, 2016 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , | Leave a comment

The French Malaise: ”National security” but for which nation?

By Gearóid Ó Colmáin | American Herald tribune | March 31, 2016

Since the Belgian attacks on March 22nd, there has been much talk of Europe’s need to increase security and modernize methods of mass surveillance and control in all public transport, particularly airports and underground trains. One country in the world has received a considerable degree of publicity in this regard: Israel. The Jewish State is now being held up by the French media as a ‘model of security’ which should be emulated by the European Union.

Henceforth, Israeli security methods are to be employed in our Airports. Travelers parking their cars will be interrogated by police and secret service personnel; passengers will be questioned about their destination and further interrogations will ensue if they are perceived to be engaging in prevarication or showing signs of anxiety or stress. Passenger profiling is to become the norm rather than the exception. People’s travel records will be taken into consideration in assessing whether or not they pose a ‘threat’. This ultimately means that all citizens will be treated as though they were terrorists.

The French media have not been embarrassed about suggesting Israeli security methods be introduced throughout Europe, notwithstanding the fact that Israel is a racist and criminal entity which cruelly keeps over a million people locked up in an open air concentration camp, subjecting the native population of the occupied territory to constant state terror and torture. The pro-Israeli propaganda is being aggressively pushed through both national and regional newspapers throughout France.

An article appeared in Quest France on Sunday March 27 with the headline: L’aéroport de Tel-Aviv, modèlede sécurité- ‘Tel-Aviv Airport, model of security’.

The report describes the interrogation methods mentioned above which are routinely carried out in Tel -Aviv’s Ben Gourion airport. We are also informed that Israeli security experts from the EL AI airline visited Zaventem Airport in Bruxelles shortly after the terrorist attacks in order to assess the site’s security; they were apparently ‘outraged’ by the lax security at the airport. But the reader is not told who was in charge of surveillance at Zaventem Airport. Security at the airport is in fact provided by ICTS, an Israeli company which was set up by former operatives of Shin Bet, Israel’s domestic spy agency. So Israeli experts were ‘outraged’ by the lack of security provided by Israeli intelligence? http://www.ictseurope.com/global-locations/belgium

According to Sott.net :

‘ICTS uses the security system employed in Israel, whereby passengers are profiled to assess the degree to which they pose a potential threat on the basis of a number of indicators, including age, name, origin and behavior during questioning’.

ICTS provided security at Logan Airport in 2001 when the infamous ’19 hijackers’ allegedly boarded their flight to New York on their way to the World Trade Centre. A few months later in December 2001, Richard Reid, who had previously spent time in Israel, boarded a flight in Paris’ Charles De Gaulle airport heading for Miami. He was carrying explosives which he unsuccessfully attempted to detonate on the plane. ICTS, who were in charge of security at Charles De Gaulle airport, failed once again.

ICTS was in charge of London’s bus security system in 2005 during the terrorist attacks there and on Christmas Day 2009 at Schipol Airport, Amsterdam, the Israeli company failed to prevent ‘knicker-bomber, Nigerian ‘terrorist’ Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the wealthy son of a former Nigerian MP, who boarded a flight from to Detroit without a passport, while carrying explosives. According to US attorney Kurk Haskel who was an eye-witness, Abdulmutallab was escorted on board the plane by a ‘well-dressed’ man of ‘Indian’ origin who told ticket officials that “the man was from Sudan and that it was typical (to let him on the plane without a passport).”

This strongly suggests the terrorists had security clearances.

So now we have a barrage of media sound bites about the effectiveness of Israeli security and the necessity of introducing further police-state measures in Europe, in spite of the fact that Israeli companies are already providing ‘security’ here and doing a spectacularly dismal job at preventing terrorism!

After the March 22nd attacks in Brussels, a video circulated on the Internet drawing attention to the suspicious behavior of an ”eyewitness’ on France 24 news station after the bombs in Zaventum airport. The ”eye-witness” named Alexandre claims to be a Belgian living in America but his accent is unusual. Alexandre, who is supposed to be in shock and trauma after a brutal terrorist attack, suggests that perhaps European authorities will be forced to adopt security measures similar to those in Israel. Although this ”eye witness” experienced a terrorist attack, he admits that he has ‘ no idea’ what the other victims in the Brussels metro bombs went through. The statements are odd and suspicious but there is no way of proving whether the character is a Mossad agent as the video caption implies.

Nonetheless, it is particularly surreal to find the mass media in France promoting the ‘Israeli security model’ when it is Israeli security companies who are responsible for ‘failing to prevent’ so many terrorist attacks. Of course, the Zionist entity is the only real and long term beneficiary of the War on Terror. As Benjamin Netanyahu himself put it in 2007: ” We are benefiting from one thing, and that is the attack on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon, and the American struggle in Iraq.”

There is no reason to suppose that this recent wave of terrorist attacks in Europe is not also ”benefiting” the Zionist entity.

Promoting emigration and multiculturalism in Europe, propping up Zionist regimes such as Saudi Arabia and Turkey who are Wahhabising Europe’s youth, while at the same time fomenting Islamophobia among European citizens, all these policies serve Israel’s imperial ambitions to rule over all the Arabs and Muslims of the Middle East, while maintaining support in Europe and America by reminding its people every time there is an ‘Islamist’ terrorist attack that this is what Israel is fighting every day.

In his new book Palestine, le malaise Français  Franco-Camerounian investigative Journalist Charles Onana shows how the Jewish Lobby in France harassed and demonised President Francois Mitterand for insisting on Yasser Arafat’s visit to France in 1989.

Onana’s study of French government archives prove that the influence of the Jewish Lobby on French foreign policy is deeper and more far-reaching than commonly understood.

Mitterand’s defiance of the Jewish Lobby was continued to a certain extent by President Chirac when he refused to participate in the Zionist-orchestrated war on Iraq in 2003. Since the accession of Nicolas Sarkozy to the French presidency in 2007 and the current regime of François Hollande, Zionism has become almost inseparable from French ruling class ideology. From arch-Zionist Bernard-Henri Lévy’s war on Libya to the war on Syria and a whole series of artificially engineered destabilizations in Africa involving Takfiri Muslims murdering Christians, France has become the bellicose avant-garde of Zionism, carrying out a strategy of chaos which is making the world dangerous for the many but safe for the ‘chosen ones’ and their ever expanding Zionist entity.

Mitterand and Chirac were certainly no friends of French workers nor of the African nations writhing under the yoke of French neo-colonialism, but both leaders had, on the contrary, the merit of setting some limits to Zionist omnipotence. Mitterand’s haughty refusal to ‘apologise’ to Israel on behalf of the French people for the crimes of the Vichy regime, and Chirac’s imperious reprimand of Israeli troops during his visit to Palestine.

[This] contrasts poignantly with the craven, sycophancy of President Hollande’s abasement of the French nation before Israel, when at Netanyahu’s Israeli residence in November 2013 the French president, like a court jester,  nauseatingly offered to ” sing  a song of love for Israel”.

None of the articles in the French press, published since the Paris and Belgium terrorist attacks mention the criminal ‘negligence’ of ICTS. Instead, we are being told Israeli security is a model we should follow when in fact, we are already living under ‘Israeli security’, the same security agencies who have boasted about committing false flag terrorism against the French public.

In 1979, Israel bombed a factory in France making parts for a nuclear reactor in Iraq. The attack was blamed on ecologists. The Israeli Secret Intelligence Service ( ISIS or Mossad) then proceeded to issue death threats to French engineers working on the project, threatening to kill them and their families if they returned to Iraq. The death threats were issued in the name of an ‘Islamist’ group. All of this was admitted by the Mossad agents themselves in a documentary aired on French television entitled: ‘Droit d’Inventaire: quand le Mossad frappe en France’.

Israel is the only foreign state to have bombed France since the German occupation of the Second World War, a terror campaign admitted by the Zionist entity’s government, yet Israeli companies are providing ‘security’ for French citizens.

Israel’s global role as a pariah state operating outside the norms of international law, flouting all international conventions on human rights, repeatedly committing heinous war crimes and waging wars of aggression, while functioning as a veritable shadow government within the corridors of Western imperial states, this is a problem no nation can continue to ignore. But the few who refuse to ignore it risk their lives.

On March 26 French senator Natalie Goulet received death threats on social media after she wrote a letter to the secretary of state in charge of the budget, requesting clarification for the French government’s policy of giving a 60 percent tax deduction to families who make donations to the Israeli Defense Forces. Although banned in Israel, Betar, the Zionist terrorist militia, regularly issue death threats to their enemies with total impunity from the French state.

But perhaps we should feel ‘safer’ now that the ‘Israeli security model’ is being reinforced as the metropolitan world, our world, slowly metamorphoses into a vast, sprawling Gaza-zone.

Gearóid Ó Colmáin, AHT Paris correspondent, is a journalist and political analyst. His work focuses on globalization, geopolitics and class struggle. His articles have been translated into many languages. He is a regular contributor to Global Research, Russia Today International, Press TV, Sputnik Radio France, Sputnik English, Al Etijah TV, Sahar TV Englis, Sahar French and has also appeared on Al Jazeera. He writes in English, Irish Gaelic and French.

April 1, 2016 Posted by | Deception, False Flag Terrorism | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

US Responsibility for Widespread Palmyra Destruction

By Stephen Lendman | March 29, 2016

Washington bears full responsibility for ISIS capturing UNESCO World Heritage site Palmyra last May, causing widespread destruction and looting of precious artifacts, plundered from other sites in the country.

Russian air power helped Syrian ground forces liberate the city after weeks of heavy fighting, the most important strategic victory since Obama launched naked aggression in March 2011, using ISIS and other imported death squads as imperial foot soldiers, a major turning point in the war achieved.

Syrian presidential advisor Bouthiana Shaaban said throughout months of America’s air campaign, begun illegally in September 2014, together with coalition partners Britain, France and others, it “didn’t lift a finger” to prevent Palmyra’s fall.

It “pretended to fight terrorism” while helping ISIS fighters take the ancient city, knowing widespread destruction and looting would follow, priceless artifacts lost forever, ending up in private collections.

Washington and its rogue allies could have prevented what happened. Instead of conducting airstrikes against advancing ISIS fighters, it supported them, its war on terrorism an utter hoax.

Its war on Iraq destroyed the cradle of civilization. It was complicit in the looting of precious artifacts from its National Museum in Baghdad.

Its head, Dony George, said looters knew what they wanted, including the priceless 5,000-year-old vase of Warka.

British Museum’s John Curtis called its theft “like stealing the Mona Lisa.” Occupying US authorities did nothing to stop it.

They let ISIS plunder and destroy ancient sites in the country, including Hatra.

UNESCO called its destruction “a turning point in (its) appalling strategy of cultural cleansing…a direct attack against the history of Islamic Arab cities.”

Stealing Iraqi antiquities from museums and archeological sites began after America’s 1991 Gulf War. Iraq’s National Library was looted, centuries old Korans and irreplaceable historical documents stolen.

Wealthy collectors profited hugely, aided and abetted by Washington. The cradle of civilization and many of its treasures no longer exist.

During and after Obama’s naked aggression on Libya, it was looted and destroyed the same way, its historical artifacts stolen, ancient Roman Empire era city Leptis Magna and Phoenician trading post Sabratha terror-bombed.

America bears full responsibility for the looting and destruction of Syria, many of its priceless artifacts now in private collections, its historical heritage systematically plundered.

Wherever America shows up, mass slaughter, destruction, as well as looting national resources and priceless artifacts follow – a longstanding despicable legacy, continuing with no end in sight.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.

His new book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.”

http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html

March 30, 2016 Posted by | Corruption, Progressive Hypocrite, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

US, three allies urge UN meeting on Iran missile tests

Press TV – March 30, 2016

The United States and some of its European allies have reportedly called for a meeting at the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) on Iran’s recent missile tests, which they claim were carried out in defiance of a UN resolution.

According to a letter reportedly obtained by Western news outlets on Tuesday, the US, Britain, France, and Germany have asked UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and Spain’s UN Ambassador Roman Oyarzun Marchesi for discussions on an “appropriate response” by the UNSC to Iran’s missile tests.

The four countries claimed that the missiles used in Iran’s recent tests were “inherently capable of delivering nuclear weapons” and were “inconsistent with” and “in defiance of” UNSC Resolution 2231 (2015), adopted last July to endorse a nuclear agreement between Iran and the P5+1 group of countries.

Spain has been assigned the task of coordinating UNSC discussions on Resolution 2231.

The claim comes even as Resolution 2231 does not prohibit Iran from testing missiles, and only “calls upon” the Islamic Republic to refrain from testing missiles “designed to be capable of” carrying nuclear warheads. Iran has made clear that it does not seek to build nuclear warheads to be carried on missiles and has put its atomic activities under unprecedented, enhanced international supervision under the nuclear deal with the P5+1.

On March 9, Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) successfully test-fired two ballistic missiles as part of measures to assess IRGC capabilities. The missiles, dubbed Qadr-H and Qadr-F, were fired during large-scale drills code-named Eqtedar-e-Velayat.

Iran fired another ballistic missile dubbed Qiam from silo-based launchers in different locations across the country on March 8.

A similar US-led bid against the Iranian missile tests failed in March, as other diplomats in a closed-door UNSC meeting on Iran back then made it clear that Resolution 2231 did not prohibit Iranian missile tests and thus a response was not warranted to such tests.

Russian Ambassador Vitaly Churkin reiterated that, in the view of veto-wielding Russia, Iran’s ballistic missile tests did not violate Resolution 2231.

In the new letter, the four countries refrained from using the term “violation,” saying instead that the Iranian missile tests were “in defiance of” the resolution. However carefully-worded, it is not clear what kind of legal action the four countries would want to be taken against Iran, as the Islamic Republic says it has not violated its commitments.

Resolution 2231 (2015), which endorses the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) — the Iran-P5+1 agreement — provides for the termination of the provisions of previous Security Council resolutions over the Iranian nuclear program.

Iran argues its missiles are defensive and designed to carry conventional explosives only.

Earlier this month, Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said the missiles are a means of defense. “We spent a fraction of any other country in the region on defense, and missiles are a means of defense that we require,” he said.

Tehran insists that given the deepening insecurity in the region and the fact that many countries are spending hefty sums on arms purchases, it needs to boost its defensive missile program.

The US, Britain, France, and Germany were, along with China and Russia, members of the P5+1. Iran and the six other countries started implementing the deal on January 16.

March 30, 2016 Posted by | Deception, Economics | , , , , | Leave a comment

France’s tax subsidy on ‘gifts’ to Israeli army

By Jonathon Cook | The Blog From Nazareth | March 28, 2016

This is astounding. A senior French politician has revealed that the tax laws of France entitle a citizen to make a charitable, tax-deductible donation to the Israeli army. As the French politician Nathalie Goulet observes: “This represents a tax benefit by the French taxpayer for the benefit of a foreign army.”

Or put more bluntly still, French citizens are being encouraged through the tax system to subsidise an illegal, belligerent occupation of the Palestinians by the Israeli army. It underscores the sheer hypocrisy of the French government as it claims to be trying to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict through “peace-making” at the United Nations.

Maybe one should not be too surprised. After all, the United States and most European countries, including the UK and France, make donations to the Jewish National Fund tax-deductible, even though one of the JNF’s primary activities has been concealing war crimes committed by the Israeli army during the 1948 and 1967 wars: by planting and maintaining forests over more than 500 Palestinian communities that were destroyed by Israel after their inhabitants had been forcibly expelled.

The thickly planted pine forests not only provide year-round cover of the sites of destruction, but in the state’s early years ensured that any Palestinian refugee who managed to return to his or her village would find no place to rebuild their home.

Why are these facts not more widely known. Both because the media make no effort to expose these abuses of taxpayers’ money, and because the rare politician who speaks out, like Goulet, is quickly terrorised back into silence.

Below is an English translation, provided by John Whitbeck, of the original article, which can be found here.

Nathalie Goulet, a Senator for the UDI [centrist] party representing the Orne [a French department], announced on Friday that she had received death threats on social networks after she expressed astonishment regarding a 60% tax reduction available to French taxpayers who make a gift to the Israeli army.

On March 10, the Senator had posed a written question to the secretary of state [a junior minister] in charge of the budget, Christian Eckert, to draw his attention to the existence of tax reductions when gifts are made to the Israeli army. In her written question, Nathalie Goulet underlined that this represented “a tax benefit by the French taxpayer for the benefit of a foreign army.”

Here is the full text of the written question no. 20545 of Mrs. Nahalie Goulet:

“Mrs. Nathalie Goulet draws the attention of the secretary of state in the Ministry of Finance in charge of the budget to the current regulation which permits French citizens who make gifts to the Israeli army (Tsahal) to deduct their gifts and give themselves a 60% tax reduction, within the limit of 20% of their taxable income. This represents a tax benefit by the French taxpayer for the benefit of a foreign army.”

The minister has not yet responded to the question of the Senator, who is also vice-president of the foreign affairs, defense and armed forces commission of the Senate. On the other hand, Nathalie Goulet declared Friday to Agence France-Presse that she had received anonymous death threats on social networks.

Questioned Friday by Ouest-France [a prominent regional newspaper] during a visit in the Orne, the Senator refused to comment on the subject, saying: “I won’t talk about it.”

March 28, 2016 Posted by | Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

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.

March 26, 2016 Posted by | Corruption | , , | Leave a comment

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.

March 26, 2016 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Economics | , , | Leave a comment

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

March 20, 2016 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Islamophobia, Video | , | Leave a comment

6 Jewish vigilantes jailed for Paris attack on Gaza fundraiser

MEMO | March 19, 2016

Six Jewish vigilantes were jailed in Paris yesterday over a “savage gang attack” targeting attendees at a fundraising event for Gaza in 2009 in the French capital.

The defendants used iron bars, baseball bats and bike chains in the onslaught, in which they deliberately targeted anybody who looked like a Muslim.

Among their victims was a 22-year-old singer who suffered a “lynching” by the 20-strong mob who chanted “Death to Arabs” and “Long live Israel”.

All were leading members of the Jewish Defence League (JDL), a notorious vigilante group that is outlawed in both America and Israel because of its links with terrorism.

Despite this, the JDL is allowed to demonstrate openly in France, and its yellow and black clenched fist flags are regularly seen at events across the country.

Video of JDL disrupting a pro-Palestinian gathering. Defendent, Jason Tibi, is the tall thug who has the Israeli flag snatched from his hands, and ends up with bloodied face.

The 10th Chamber of the Paris Correctional Court heard how all had beaten up Hatem Essabbak and Mustapha Belkhir outside a Paris theatre in April 2009.

The case is considered one of the most sensitive in recent legal history, because of the way it illustrates how the Israel-Palestine conflict has been exported to the streets of major French cities.

No less than five examining judges were involved in the Paris enquiry, with four resigning one after the other because of the intense pressure.

The six men found guilty of carrying out aggravated violent assaults were Jason Tibi, Rudy Lalou, Azar Cohen, Maxime Schaffier, Yoia Bensimou and Yoni Sulman.

Other JDL gang members are said to have fled to Israel to avoid prosecution, while Tibi has admitted serving in the Israeli army while waiting for his case to come to court. At least two of those convicted today have since fled to Israel.

The damning verdict reads: “The facts of this case illustrate how the violence was aggravated by victims being targeted because of their race and religion.”

Dominique Cochain, Essabbak’s barrister, said: “Normally, this type of case is dealt with within three months. It has to be said that this is a very sensitive issue.”

Video of the JDL rioting in Central Paris, and then hiding behind the French police once the pro-Palestinian group charges.

Essabbak, a 22-year-old singer at the time, was with his girlfriend outside the Adyar Theatre, close to the Eiffel Tower, on Sunday 12 April 2009.

Both were taking part in “Our Talents for Gaza” – a showbiz event raising money for the surviving families of more than 1,400 Palestinians, including 400 children, killed by Israeli forces during an offensive a few weeks earlier.

Essabbak was surrounded by the JDL men who used their iron bars, bats, bike chains, crash helmets and fists in the “unprovoked lynching”, the court heard.

Essabbak said: “I was repeatedly hit in the face, around the head and on both legs. I then fell to the ground, and was hit again around the head. They carried on until they saw I wasn’t moving. My life stopped on April 12 2009.’

Mustapha Belkhir went to help Essabbak, and was also badly beaten up. Both men ended up in hospital.

Witnesses heard the attackers shouting: “Have this, it’s for Gaza, you dirty Arab”, and “Us Jews are going to f*** you, you dirty race”.

Most of the JDL members had their faces covered, but their mobile phones were later traced to the scene of the attack.

Tibi – who was described in court as the leader of the group – at first denied any knowledge of the attacks, but admitted taking part when confronted with evidence.

Tibi and Sulman received two year sentences, while the others were handed sentences of between nine months and a year.

Twenty-seven-year-old Tibi has a previous prison conviction for smashing up a Palestinian book shop in Paris, and has been filmed fighting in Marseille.

Essabbak’s lawyer Cochain told the court: “The evidence is that Mr Tibi has not changed. Videos on Google show that in 2011 he disrupted a pro-Palestine meeting in the 14th arrondissement of Paris, accompanied by JDL members, and wanted to stop debate.”

“They were shouting slogans like ‘F*** Palestine’. He was also in Marseille in June 2011 to protest against the Gaza flotilla taking supplies to the blockaded Palestinian territory. His face was covered in blood and he was saying ‘I’m here to protest’, ‘Israel will live, Israel will vanquish’.”

The JDL is regularly involved in attacks on pro-Palestine activists, politicians, journalists and other perceived enemies across France.

There have been numerous calls to ban the JDL in France, with Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve condemning their behaviour as ‘excessive’.

March 19, 2016 Posted by | Full Spectrum Dominance, Timeless or most popular, Video | , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

How Hillary Clinton Lied Her Way to War in Libya

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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.”

March 18, 2016 Posted by | Deception, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

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