Robert Fisk Exposes Israel’s Hidden Role in the Brewing India-Pakistan Conflict
By Whitney Webb | MintPress News | March 4, 2019
Well-known British journalist Robert Fisk recently wrote a very telling and troubling article in The Independent regarding the outsized role of the state of Israel in the burgeoning tensions between India and Pakistan, two nuclear powers. The story — despite its importance, given the looming threat of nuclear war between the two countries — was largely overlooked by the international media.
The tit-for-tat attacks exchanged between India and Pakistan last week have seen long-standing tensions between the two countries escalate to dangerous proportions, though Pakistan helped to deescalate the situation somewhat by returning and “saving” an Indian pilot whose plane had been shot down in retaliation for India’s bombing of targets in a disputed area administered by Pakistan.
That bombing was retaliation for a car bomb attack launched by Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) militants, a group that both India and Pakistan recognize as a terrorist organization, against Indian forces. Some analysts have speculated that India’s decision to bomb this area was made by Indian President Narendra Modi, a Hindu ethno-nationalist, in order to rally his base ahead of upcoming Indian elections in May.
Yet, whatever the reason, the bombing has revealed the close ties that have formed between Modi’s India and Israel, particularly between their militaries. As Fisk notes, following the bombing, Indian media heavily promoted the fact that Israeli-made bombs — specifically, Rafael Spice-2000 “smart bombs” — had been used in the attack. Fisk writes:
Like many Israeli boasts of hitting similar targets, the Indian adventure into Pakistan might owe more to the imagination than military success. The ‘300-400 terrorists’ supposedly eliminated by the Israeli-manufactured and Israeli-supplied GPS-guided bombs may turn out to be little more than rocks and trees.”
Recently released satellite images seem to corroborate what Fisk predicted, as the bombing failed to hit its intended target and instead damaged a nearby forest.
Image courtesy of Planet Labs, Google Earth and Digital Globe
Arguably the most important aspect of Fisk’s report is his detailing of the very close ties that have been forged between the Israeli and Indian militaries in recent years. For instance, according to Fisk, India was Israel’s arms industry’s largest client in 2017, spending nearly $700 million on Israeli air-defense systems, radars, ammunition and missiles. Many of those weapons had been promoted as “combat tested” after being used against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, the world’s largest open-air prison. That same year, India represented 49 percent of Israel’s arms export market.
In addition to arms purchases, many Indian soldiers have traveled to the Negev desert to be trained by Israeli “special commando” units, and at least 16 elite Indian “Garud” commandos were recently based at two separate Israeli air bases.
Exporting oppression
Just as troubling as this military cooperation is that ethnonationalism and anti-Islam rhetoric are increasingly becoming the basis for the relationship between the two countries.
For instance, a recent Haaretz article, written by Shairee Malhotra and cited by Fisk, noted that “the India-Israel relationship is also commonly being framed in terms of a natural convergence of ideas between their ruling BJP and Likud parties.” Other reports have noted that this has translated into more “aggressive” policies from Modi targeting Kashmir and Muslims elsewhere in India and that continued Israeli goading of Modi’s anti-Islam tendencies could make life much more difficult for the estimated 180 million Muslims living in India.
Indian police beat a Kashmiri Shiite Muslim for participating in a religious procession in Srinagar, Indian controlled Kashmir, Sept. 19, 2018. Dar Yasin | AP
While some analysts and reports have warned about this danger, Fisk notes that it will be difficult to prevent the Zionist, fascist nationalism of Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud Party from influencing India’s ruling party, writing:
It is difficult to see how Zionist nationalism will not leach into Hindu nationalism when Israel is supplying so many weapons to India – the latest of which India, which has enjoyed diplomatic relations with Israel since 1992, has already used against Islamists inside Pakistan.”
Fisk goes on to note that “[s]igning up to the ‘war on terror’ – especially ‘Islamist terror’ – may seem natural for two states built on colonial partition.” Indeed, India’s actions in the disputed Kashmir region share many similarities to Israel’s neocolonial occupation of Palestine. For instance, the Muslim majority of Kashmir are treated as second-class citizens on their own land and their push for self-determination has been brutally suppressed by Indian forces. As of 2016, 500,000 Indian military personnel were present in the region, roughly equating to one soldier for every 25 civilians. As Al Jazeera noted at the time, there have been more than 70,000 killings, about 10,000 enforced disappearances and 7,000 mass graves found since 1947 in Indian-administered Kashmir.
There are many other parallels between Kashmir and Palestine, including the fact that the British government shares a large share of the responsibility for both. Indeed, the British-brokered partition creating the current states of India and Pakistan in 1947 is the root of the current conflict in Kashmir much as the Britain-mandated creation of the Israeli state in 1948 is the root of the current conflict in Palestine. As far as Kashmiris and Palestinians are concerned, the governments of India and Israel picked up where their colonial master of years past left off.
If a deadly conflict ultimately breaks out between India and Pakistan, it will hardly be the first time Israel has armed controversial governments. Israel sold arms to the Rwandan government during the Rwandan genocide and, more recently, to the government of Myanmar during its “ethnic cleansing” of the Rohingya Muslims. Yet, as Fisk notes, Israel’s export of Zionist nationalism and neocolonialism — and the accompanying oppression that in practice actually helps to create many of the very terrorist groups they fight against — is just as dangerous as its export of arms.
Whitney Webb is a staff writer for MintPress News and has contributed to several other independent, alternative outlets. Her work has appeared on sites such as Global Research, the Ron Paul Institute and 21st Century Wire among others. She also makes guest appearances to discuss politics on radio and television. She currently lives with her family in southern Chile.
How Amnesty International is reinforcing Trump’s regime-change propaganda against Venezuela
By Joe Emersberger | The Canary | February 26, 2019
Amnesty International‘s reports, by their nature, require readers to trust their honesty and impartiality. But there is ample reason not to trust them. Because Amnesty has ignored grave human rights abuses in plain sight in Venezuela while demonizing supporters of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.
Shortly after meeting with Juan Guaidó (whom Donald Trump and a new Iraq-style Coalition of the Willing have anointed as Venezuela’s interim president), Amnesty put out a report that reads like a barely disguised attempt to reinforce, from a ‘human rights’ angle, the military threats against Venezuela from Trump and his henchmen.
Team Trump as Venezuela’s “Only hope”?
Erika Guevara-Rosas, Amnesty’s Americas director, said:
International justice is the only hope for victims of human rights violations in Venezuela. It is time to activate all available mechanisms to prevent further atrocities.
And the report stated that:
[C]ountries genuinely concerned about the human rights situation in Venezuela should explore the application of universal jurisdiction.
Amnesty’s allegations about Venezuela are serious and, if true, deserve condemnation. But there are numerous reasons to question the group’s honesty, impartiality, and public statements.
Somebody should ask Amnesty, for example, to list the countries which are “genuinely concerned”. How many Saudi–arming countries like the US, UK, Canada, and France are on that list?
As Amnesty released this report, the threat of a US military attack on Venezuela disguised a “humanitarian aid delivery” could not be more obvious. Never mind that Venezuela is, in fact, receiving foreign aid with authorization from the Maduro government. US National Security Advisor John Bolton and Senator Marco Rubio have repeatedly made Mafioso-like threats against Venezuela’s military and Maduro. Trump himself has been repeatedly threatening a military “option” since 2017 (the year he reportedly asked “Why are we not at war with Venezuela?”).
Amnesty ignorning Trump’s attack on right to health and food
At the same time, Amnesty has refused to denounce Trump’s financial sanctions which have been in place since August 2017 and whose impact on the entire economy has been crippling. By now, the sanctions have cost Venezuela’s government well over $6bn in revenues in an economy that imported $11.7bn in goods in 2018. Before the deep and sustained collapse in oil prices (and oil production, which nose-dived as the sanctions began), Venezuela’s economy had been importing about $2bn a year in medicines.
It is important to remember that, in Venezuela’s case, Amnesty has been very explicit in pointing to economic problems as human rights abuses. Last year, when they wrote to me refusing to denounce Trump’s sanctions, Amnesty said:
Amnesty International does not take a position on the current application of these sanctions but rather emphasizes the urgent need to address the serious crisis of the right to health and food which Venezuela is facing. In terms of human rights, it is the Venezuelan state’s responsibility to resolve this.
As I’ve noted at The Canary, Amnesty has now updated its position on Trump’s sanctions. It absurdly asks Trump to please be careful and “monitor” the impact of new sanctions that he imposed in January. The new sanctions directly cut off revenues that the Venezuelan government obtained from sales to the US. Amnesty’s continued refusal to acknowledge that a devastating attack on the Venezuelan “right to health and food” has been ongoing since August 2017 is appalling. And that alone is an excellent reason to doubt the honesty and impartiality of their work on Venezuela. Because any credible human rights group would demand an immediate end to all the economic sanctions Trump has imposed.
Violent crime in Venezuela
Amnesty also stated in its latest report that:
The more impoverished areas of Caracas and other parts of the country were particularly affected and stigmatized, registering the highest numbers of victims, who were later presented as ‘criminals’ killed in clashes with the authorities.
There’s no doubt that Venezuela’s security forces have committed crimes. The Maduro government has conceded as much. And Venezuelan police officers were arrested for crimes perpetrated during the violent protests of 2017. In June 2017, Defense Minster Vladimir Padrino López publicly warned security forces in remarks broadcast on state TV that he didn’t “want to see one more national guard perpetrate an atrocity”. Those protests were the fifth US-backed effort to oust the government by force since 2002. Trump is now leading the sixth.
It’s also important to remember that Venezuelan security forces have confronted a very high homicide rate (since long before the current government came to power) and police officer death rate. At the same time, the country has been plagued by violent US-backed protesters for years, who have done things like burn Afro-Venezuelans alive in the streets and murder police officers. And today, it faces the very grave threat of US invasion that would install the most violent opposition groups into power.
We can only imagine how security forces in a country like the UK would behave under the above conditions. Young men have been sent to prison in Britain, for example, simply for writing Facebook posts that advocate riots. I made some of these points last year in response to a similar UN report that was hyped by Reuters.
Venezuela’s very real homicide problem (and violent US-backed opposition problem) could indeed allow security forces to pass off extrajudicial executions as “fighting crime” or as self-defense. But it can also allow apparently partisan groups like Amnesty to distort the situation in support of Trump’s regime-change agenda.
Propaganda groundwork for dirty war on Maduro supporters?
Amnesty said in its report that:
There is a strong presence of pro-Nicolás Maduro armed groups (commonly known as “colectivos”) in these areas, where residents depend to a large extent on the currently limited state programs to distribute staple foods.
Again, the “limited state programs” would be the ones Trump has been viciously attacking through sanctions since 2017. Also notice how Amnesty casts as thugs the organized poor people distributing food to millions of people – up to 60% of households according to an opposition-aligned pollster (Datanálisis).
As George Ciccariello-Maher explained in We Created Chavez, the history of poor people organizing and arming themselves (quite understandably) for self-defense in Venezuela’s poorest neighborhoods goes back decades. It’s not new.
It is Maduro’s supporters in poor neighborhoods and in the countryside, however, who – armed or not – will be violently targeted if the US-backed opposition takes power; especially if they do so in a coup or through a US invasion. Amnesty appears to have little concern about “stigmatizing” them, though, and negligible concern about Trump’s attack on their “right to health and food”.
All of the reasons above make a powerful case for questioning the integrity and objectivity of Amnesty when it comes to Venezuela. And for the sake of peace and justice, we should hold Amnesty to much higher standards.
Four Young Palestinian Lives Snuffed Out Every Month for The Past Year at The Hands of Israeli Soldiers
By CJ Werleman | American Herald Tribune | February 28, 2019
Last Friday, Yousef a-Dava, a 15-year old Palestinian boy was shot and killed by Israeli snipers, becoming the 48th child slain in Gaza by Israeli security forces since the Great Return March began nearly 12 months ago.
“He was peacefully protesting for a better future, raising the Palestinian flag, is the Palestinian flag a weapon?” asked his grief-stricken sister, Nariman al-Daya, in an interview with Middle East Eye.
His death was every bit as gruesome as it was unjustifiably atrocious, with eyewitnesses explaining how he “tried to stand up, walk a couple more steps” before falling to the ground again, after the bullet fired by an Israeli sniper “entered Yousef’s body, exploded hear his heart, exited from his back” and injured another man who was standing behind him.
Less than one hour later he was pronounced dead at al-Shifa Hospital after an emergency operation failed to revive him.
What other democratic ally do we allow 48 unarmed children to be shot and killed for flying a flag or kite in an open field, one that is ring-fenced by high-voltage electric currents, spot-and-strike machine gun posts, armored tanks and dozens of the world’s most lethal military marksmen?
If this were happening in Poland, Spain, or Portugal, both the United States and United Nations would’ve moved quickly to impose economic sanctions, while calls to invade and bomb would be heard far louder than a mere whisper, but this is Israel, the “Middle East’s only democracy,” so the entirely erroneous propaganda tagline goes.
48 murdered children equates to four young lives snuffed out every month for the past year at the hands of Israeli soldiers, who in no way felt threatened by these now slain youngsters. Unless, of course, you think children throwing rocks from inside a cage at armored vehicles positioned hundreds of meters away on the other side fortified fences and barricades is a threat to anyone or anything, which it clearly it isn’t!
Thus these deaths are to be identified for what they truly are: the cold-blooded murder of innocent and non-threatening children.
Of course, nowhere in the Western media is this reality framed in this accurate way. Instead we are fed headlines, or rather footnotes from the likes of The New York Times that read, “15-year-old boy killed in Gaza today,” without identifying the benign circumstances that led to his death, with newspaper editors doing their very best to falsely portray flag waving and rock-throwing protesters to be on equal footing to the most sophisticated military force in the Middle East.
It goes without saying, but I’ll say it anyway, that if a population of 2 million predominately Jews or Christians were held in an open-air prison, which is precisely what Gaza is, and then bombed, strafed, droned, and shelled periodically, with children shot dead by snipers wearing the flag of a Muslim majority country, then there’d be no other issue the Western media would be talking about.
On Thursday, the United Nations published a report concluding, “Israeli soldiers committed violations of international human rights and humanitarian law,” adding that “some of those violations may constitute war crimes of crimes against humanity.”
“Many young person’s lives have been altered forever,” contends the United Nations Human Rights Council. “122 people have had a limb amputated since March 30 last year. Twenty of these amputees are children.”
Moreover, these deaths scratch only the surface of Israel’s savage war on Palestinian children. When Israel invaded Gaza in the summer of 2014, Palestinian children represented 25% of all civilians killed, with human rights groups documenting the deaths of 504 are under the age of 18.
Then there are the 500-700 Palestinian children who are detained each year in the Israeli military court system, some indefinitely, with most held and prosecuted on the charge of stone throwing.
It is in these Israeli military detention centers where some of the most egregious crimes against Palestinian children take place, with two-thirds reporting Israeli soldiers subjected them to violence and physical abuse.
Several years ago, UNICEF published a report that documented Israel’s systematic and systemic abuse of detained Palestinian children, concluding that “the ill-treatment of children who come in contact with the military detention system appears to be widespread, systematic and institutionalized throughout the process, from the moment of arrest to indictment of the child, the conviction and issuing of the verdict.”
The authors of the report also observed how child detainees were often arrested in the middle of the night, denied access to a lawyer or parents prior or during interrogation, denied right to remain silent, alongside credible claims Palestinian children were raped or threatened with rape or execution.
Ultimately Israel gets away with these atrocities because its violence and crimes against the Palestinian people takes place inside a media vacuum, with mainstream networks and publications giving a head glance towards the occupation and conflict only in moments where Palestinians, who are denied the right to resist Israel’s violence and illegalities peacefully, respond with violence of their own.
Until such time the world’s media and international community holds Israel accountable for its violations of international law and denial of human rights to the Palestinian people, it’ll continue to murder children as young as 2 years of age with total and complete impunity.
Forget Venezuela: 80% of Yemenis Require Urgent Humanitarian Aid, Up 30%
Geopolitics Alert – February 27, 2019
Sana’a – While the world focuses on Venezuela to validate coup threats, the manmade humanitarian situation in Yemen continues deteriorating. In fact, the very country claiming to help alleviate Venezuelan suffering, the United States, has played an active and intentional role in creating the crisis in Yemen.
According to a recent report from ReliefWeb, 80% of Yemen’s entire population require urgent humanitarian assistance. This figure is up 30% from last year. That means out of an estimated population of 30.5 million, 24.1 million require immediate aid for survival.
Facing starvation and famine due to the blockade, 20.1 million need urgent food assistance. Healthcare is also a vital concern. 19.7 million Yemenis lack basic access to doctors and lifesaving medicines. To top it off, 17.8 million don’t even have proper water, sanitation, and other supplies for keeping up with basic hygiene. By looking at these numbers, it’s easy to see that a majority of Yemenis need urgent assistance in all three areas.
This is a major problem because the lack of access to clean water and sanitation equipment is directly responsible for the fatal spread of cholera. The UN expects to record up to 350,000 cases of cholera in 2019. In 2017, one million were infected with the preventable illness while several thousand died.
Instead of putting forth any efforts to lift the US-enforced and Saudi-led blockade and siege of Yemen, the UN has appealed for $4.2 billion to meet humanitarian needs.
Famine and Disease as a Weapon of War
The blockade, which is technically illegal under international law, restricts all land, sea, and air imports and exports. It also prohibits the free flow of human movement — which has effectively turned Yemen into an open-air prison. This travel ban, combined with the country’s failing healthcare system, had contributed to the death of over 27 thousand civilians as of August of 2018. It has also caused the death of over 247,000 children who are particularly vulnerable to starvation and disease.
But the starvation, disease, and crumbling healthcare system aren’t merely a byproduct of the blockade: they’re an intentional consequence.
According to a report Geopolitics Alert received from the Republic of Yemen, the US-backed Saudi-led coalition has continued targeting civilian infrastructure vital for sustaining life.
During the month of December alone, Saudi coalition warplanes attacked 68 water tanks and pumps, 222 agricultural fields, four markets, 132 livestock, four food warehouses, and much more. To top it off, coalition airstrikes also targeted 190 businesses and factories as well as airports, seaports, boats, and gas stations.
These are direct attacks on Yemen’s food and water supply.
The report also states that hundreds of workers such as fishermen, farmers, and factory workers in Hodeidah province have become unemployed during the month of December due to such attacks on their source of income. The Saudi coalition also detonates cluster munitions and chemical weapons over agricultural fields to further contaminate the land.
The coalition airstrikes on vital civilian infrastructure make it clear that starvation and disease from the blockade are intended weapons of war.
This MintPress documentary examines the gruesome attacks on fishermen who recall horrors of rape and torture after being captured by Saudi coalition warships.
‘Soft child-porn’ or honest political debate? Take a guess which one YouTube failed to censor
By Robert Bridge | RT | February 25, 2019
Despite employing a small army of ‘anti-extremist’ flaggers, YouTube somehow overlooked an entire prison block of pedophiles on its platform. Is the video-sharing site wasting too many resources censoring political content?
Last week, a regular guy named Matt Watson, working at his home computer, shook the wired world to its very foundations by providing convincing evidence that YouTube supports – either wittingly or unwittingly – a pedophile ring that openly preys on the most vulnerable members of society, children.
As Watson demonstrated, not only are these bottom feeders free to comment on videos that feature minors, but they also provide time stamps, presumably for the benefit of the wider pedophile community, indicating exactly when the children can be seen in their most compromising positions. They also actively promote links to porn sites that cater for these twisted minds.
The discovery prompted some of the most popular corporate brands, including Disney and Nestle, to bolt for the emergency exits after it was discovered their ads were running alongside the work of sexually depraved deviants. Needless to say, not the best business model.
Aside from the lewd comments accompanying the videos, which is not overly surprising considering the planet’s high creep factor, one of the most disturbing revelations is how ‘user friendly’ YouTube has become for pedophiles. Watson showed how Google-owned YouTube, through no more than a couple mouse clicks, navigates users to a frolicking playground where the sidebar is loaded with nothing but children-themed videos, a virtual pedophile paradise. But it gets more disturbing.
Once a user has entered this “wormhole,” as Watson calls it, there are no alternative video options available for escaping from it. A user will not even find ‘awareness’ videos, for example, that discuss the threat of child predators. In other words, once the user makes it to YouTube’s children video section it is game over, so to speak, unless he or she physically activates a new search.
The reason that this scandal makes no sense is that YouTube has known about its pedophile problem for years. Back in 2017, advertisers were fleeing the platform for the very same reason they are today – their ads were being featured next to scantily clad girls, as well as the predictable depraved comments. Today, algorithm technology is so advanced that Google Maps, for example, is able to blur out the faces of every single person’s image that is captured by its Google Street View. Yet somehow YouTube appears to be technologically handicapped when it comes to finding ways to combat online pedophiles. Why is that?
One possible explanation is that Google and YouTube, as well as the majority of other IT companies, have become overly attentive to politics at the expense of everything else – and more so ever since Donald Trump ‘stole’ the White House from the Democratic darling Hillary Clinton.
First, it is important to state the obvious: Silicon Valley is to Liberals what Yankee Stadium is to the New York Yankees. In other words, the holy of the holies. To quote Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Facebook, Silicon Valley, the home to hundreds of IT companies, is an “extremely left-leaning place.” Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, meanwhile, admitted that his company is so liberal that conservative employees “don’t feel safe to express their opinions” in the workplace.
Given this blatant liberal predilection within the industry, who do you think Google and YouTube teamed up with to police its content from ‘extremist’ (i.e. conservative) content? Certainly not far-right groups.
In 2017, YouTube doubled the size of its so-called ‘Trusted Flaggers’ program, which now partners with over 100 organizations, the full member list of the program remains confidential. Among the few members that have been made public, however, including the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), No Hate Speech and the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), they could best be described as ‘extremist’ in their liberal ideology. Meanwhile, as the Wall Street Journal reported, “less than 10 of the slots are filled by government agencies.”
Ironically, given the nature of this discussion, several of those agencies deal with “child-safety” issues.
Conservatives argue that the glaring lack of transparency with regard to the secretive ‘Trusted Flaggers’ program, combined with the IT industry’s well-known liberal affections, explains why so many right-wing and alternative news sites are being either demonetized, downgraded, or outright banned. And since we are talking about private businesses, these organizations have no legal obligation to uphold the Constitution’s Second Amendment that guarantees ‘freedom of speech.’ They just casually shrug their shoulders and blame everything on the almighty algorithms. Yet, as even the most technologically handicapped person knows, algorithms were not magically conjured up out of thin air. Human beings, not robots (at least not yet), work tediously to develop them.
As just one example of the Orwellian atmosphere now pervading Planet Google, Jordan Peterson, a professor with a reputation for opposing political correctness, had one of his YouTube videos blocked in over two dozen countries last year. YouTube duly informed him that it had “received a legal complaint” about the video and decided to block it. Just like that!
Only after a major outcry on multiple social media platforms, which included Twitter user Ethan Klein and his one million followers, did YouTube finally back down, while portraying the event as some sort of fluke that was “fixed.”
This isn’t the first time YouTube users have experienced “glitches” with the platform. Last year, it was forced to explain the mass removal of right-wing video channels, calling it a “mistake.” What is so strange about these technological breakdowns is that they always seem to affect conservative users. This snafu happened shortly after YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki announced she was bringing on board – in addition to the so-called ‘Trusted Flaggers’ – some 10,000 moderators to crack down on rising occurrences of hate speech and – wait for it – “child safety.”
Meanwhile, Google can take draconian measures to downgrade RT and Sputnik, for example, over totally unfounded charges related to ‘Russiagate’ hysteria, yet they seem incapable of micromanaging the comments section in kiddie videos.
What this is intended to show is that YouTube does not hesitate to take deliberate steps to intervene in issues that matter most to them, which overwhelmingly seem to be of a political nature. Yet, when the welfare of children is at stake, the mini-surveillance state that the platform has built always goes missing in action, as it has now for many years.
How is it possible that one young man, working alone and without pay, is able to weed out a viper’s den of pedophiles from YouTube’s dungeon? Yet YouTube, with its army of ‘flaggers’ and moderators and government agencies, has failed to filter these miscreants for several years?
The sad reality is that the world of IT is totally consumed with politics, and politics is totally consumed with the world of IT, to the point where society’s most vulnerable are left at risk.
Unfortunately, parents must assume a great deal of vigilance against pedophiles when their children use the video sharing platform because YouTube has obviously dropped the ball on the issue and simply cannot be trusted. Like the rest of the IT kingdom, their heart is in politics, and that is it.
US Base in Okinawa to Be Relocated Despite Referendum Results – Japanese PM Abe
Sputnik – 25.02.2019
A total of 72.2 percent of those who voted in the referendum on the Japanese island of Okinawa voted against plans to build a new military airfield for US troops in their prefecture, the referendum’s results showed on 25 February.
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said that he “took seriously” the results of the referendum in Okinawa on transferring the US Futenma base to Henoko in the same prefecture, but “it is impossible to postpone the transfer dates”.
“I have considered the referendum results with all seriousness and will do everything to reduce Okinawa’s burden… It’s been over 20 years since Japan and the United States signed an agreement about returning the entire territory of Futenma [to the prefecture]. But it has still not been returned. We cannot postpone the relocation any longer”, the prime minister stated.
He continued on by saying that the authorities need to “avoid a situation where the Futenma base, considered the most dangerous in the world, keeps being surrounded by schools and residential buildings”.
The statement comes after a non-binding referendum was held in Okinawa on 24 February, in which local residents expressed their attitude to the relocation of US Marine Corps Futenma Air Station from the densely populated city of Ginowan, where it is currently situated, to the Henoko district.
A total of 19.1 percent of voters supported the plans for the US base relocation, while 8.8 percent refrained from responding yes or no.
In numerical terms, 434,273 people voted against the Tokyo-Washington plans, while 114,933 supported the move, with 52,682 others choosing neither of the options.
The US Marine Corps base Futenma was constructed in 1945. Talks on its relocation to a less populated area within the Okinawa prefecture started over two decades ago, but the government’s plans have been hampered by local residents’ protests.
While Ginowan residents have been calling on the government to close the Futenma base due to their environmental concerns, aircraft incidents and accidents related to the behavior of US troops, residents of Henoko district are also unwilling to see the base relocated to their region. The administration of Okinawa would like to see the base outside the prefecture instead of its relocation to another site within its administrative borders and called a non-binding referendum in hopes that it would demonstrate the prefecture’s strong opposition to the relocation project.
See also:
UN chief launches global push against ‘hate’ speech
Press TV – February 25, 2019
UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres on Monday launched a new global strategy to combat hate speech, a growing scourge he said has “poisoned” debate on crucial challenges like migration.
Guterres announced the effort, which will be led by his special adviser on genocide prevention Adama Dieng, at the UN Human Rights Council.
“Hate is moving into the mainstream – in liberal democracies and authoritarian systems alike,” he said in a speech at the opening of the council’s 40th session.
“Some major political parties and leaders are cutting and pasting ideas from the fringes into their own propaganda and electoral campaigns,” he added.
Governments across the world have watched with concern as racist and other hate speech have coarsened the political climate.
France and Germany have raised particular alarm in recent weeks over resurgent anti-Semitism.
Guterres targeted his rebuke at the vast campaign he said was mobilized against the UN’s Global Compact on Migration, a non-binding text that aimed to set out best practices for managing refugee and migrant flows.
“We have seen how the debate on human mobility, for example, has been poisoned with false narratives linking refugees and migrants to terrorism and scapegoating them for many of society’s ills,” Guterres said.
He condemned “an insidious campaign sought to drown the Global Compact on Migration in a flood of lies about the nature and scope of the agreement.”
The UN chief noted that the campaign “failed.”
But 17 countries either abstained or voted against the compact at the General Assembly in December and debate over the text fuelled bitter political debate especially in Europe.
Guterres said Dieng, a Senegalese lawyer and veteran UN diplomat, will “define a system-wide strategy and present a global plan of action” to combat hate speech.
In Face of Yellow-Vest Critics, France Moves to Criminalize Anti-Zionism
Alain Finkielkraut being confronted by yellow-vest protesters.
By Guillaume Durocher • Unz Review • February 24, 2019
The French Jewish intellectual Alain Finkielkraut was recently profusely insulted by yellow-vests on the margins of a demonstration. This attack has been widely-portrayed as anti-Semitic, even though the yellow-vests in question explicitly attacked Finkielkraut as a Zionist. As Damien Viguier, the anti-Zionist intellectual Alain Soral’s lawyer, observed:
Alain Finkielkraut was called “a dirty Zionist shit (a Zionist two times again and “shit” perhaps three times more), a “fascist,” a “racist (two times), and “hateful.” He was asked to leave the demonstration in direct times: “get out of here” (twice), “piss off,” “go back home to Israel!” I can see in all this insults, or defamatory comments, I would even grant a light violence, but I find no trace of a discriminatory motivation. This shows well that the words “anti-Semite” and “anti-Semitic” are used in an absolutely arbitrary manner.
It is true that “Zionist” is often used as a euphemism for “Jew.” But it is also true that many anti-Zionists are happy to befriend genuinely anti-Zionist Jews such as Gilad Atzmon (himself an associate of Soral’s). Finkielkraut was likely attacked for his values rather than his ethnicity.
This subtlety did not prevent the incident from triggering a veritable pro-Semitic moral panic across the entire politico-media class. The media lamented the “anti-Semitic” attack on Finkielkraut and he was comforted by politicians from across the political spectrum, from the far-left to the far-right, including the bulk of prominent nationalist and identitarian figures.
Much of the foreign press (the London Times, The Jerusalem Post, the Jewish Telegraph Agency . . .) misrepresented things further, claiming that Finkielkraut had been called a “dirty Jew.” This is a genuine example of fake news.
Then a Jewish cemetery in the Alsatian village of Quatzenheim was desecrated, with over 90 tombstones being sprayed with with swastikas and anti-Semitic slogans. One tombstone was sprayed with the words: “Elsassisches Schwarzen Wolfe,” meaning “Alsatian Black Wolves,” an Alsatian nationalist group which has been inactive since 1981 . . . Of course, a hate hoax cannot be excluded: one thinks of the recent Jussie Smollett debacle or the Israeli-American who instigated 2000 supposed anti-Semitic bomb and shooter threats over the years.
For those whom anecdotal evidence was not sufficient, the regime also trotted out the usual “statistics” about, seemingly released every year of every decade, showing a massive increase in “anti-Semitic” acts. I will only say that such statistics are dubious in general, repetitive, and obviously ethnically and politically convenient. Grand old man Jean-Marie Le Pen commented:
There is no anti-Semitism in France which would justify a mobilization of public opinion. . . . Incidentally, we’re given a figure of a 74% increase in [anti-Semitic] attacks. Compared to what? I ask that we have the list of all these attacks committed against the Jews, in such a way that we can actually tell the difference between a graffiti, a murder, a telephone call, or a schoolyard scuffle. It is true that radical Islamism is extrapolating in a sense the Israeli-Arab conflict into France. It is much more a matter of anti-Zionism than anti-Semitism.
Regardless of whether the Quatzenheim incident is authentic, and it could well be, this event immediately prompted a solemn visit by the President of the Republic himself, Emmanuel Macron. This was followed by a national call to demonstrate against anti-Semitism, initiated by the Socialist Party but with virtually the entire political class following suite.
The response of both of the indigenous French people and the Africans/Muslims was lackluster however. According to the official media, some 20,000 people demonstrated in Paris and negligible amounts in the rest of the country. Actually, as the 20,000 figure was provided by the Socialist Party itself, we can be sure that this is an overstatement.
Serge Klarsfeld, one of the leading lights of the highly-profitable local holocaust industry, could not conceal his disappointment, telling the top journalist Jean-Pierre Elkabbach (a fellow Jew[1]) on television:
The masses were not there. The crowd was not there. The French on the whole were not there. There were demonstrations, but I was there, I was there with my entire family and I saw a lot of familiar faces. But the crowd did not come, and which is indignant, should have come. . . . In Lyon there were 1500 or 2000 people. That is not a lot for a big city like Lyon. The crowd was absent and those who were not Jewish were generally absent!
This is in stark contrast with the similar 1990 Carpentras Affair, during which a Jewish cemetery was also desecrated. The pro-Semitic demonstrators following this incident numbered over 200,000 in Paris alone. The event was skillfully exploited by the Socialist President François Mitterrand and by the politico-media class in general by abusively linking this event to Jean-Marie Le Pen’s rapidly-rising Front National (FN). This contributed to making the FN unhandshakeworthy and to preventing any alliance between Le Pen’s nationalists and the mainstream conservatives, which would have spelled doom for the Left. It was later shown that the FN had nothing to do with the incident, which had apparently been instigated by a handful of neonazis with no links to the party.
People should generally speculate less about the authenticity of an event (e.g. 9/11, the Reichstag Fire), which is often difficult to prove one way or the other, than on whether the event has been used as a pretext by the ruling elite to do something questionable or disproportionate (often something which it had been hankering to do for a long time), which is typically quite easy to demonstrate.
This time, as Klarsfeld complains, the gentiles were not so interested in these theatrics. However, the event is having significant political and legal effects. The Macron regime is exploiting the incident to implement measures which have long been demanded by the CRIF (Representative Council of Jewish Institutions of France), the country’s powerful official Jewish lobby. Macron himself appeared before the (very conveniently-timed, as it happens) CRIF annual dinner, where the crème de la crème of the French political class regularly appear, in a solemn ritual of solidarity and genuflection before the Lobby-That-Doesn’t-Exist.
French President Emmanuel Macron with CRIF President Francis Khalifat (himself the successor to the long-time present Roger Cuckierman, you can’t make some things up).
Macron made a number of promises to the CRIF:
- Three small “anti-Semitic” nationalist groups would be banned (Bastion Social, Blood & Honor Hexagone, and Combat 18).
- A new law strengthening the state’s already considerable ability to censor anything it deems to be “hate speech” on social media (the French government is among the world leaders in demanding and obtaining the suppression of content on Twitter, behind only Turkey and Russia).
- Most significantly, France would adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s “working definition of anti-Semitism,” which ludicrously includes anti-Zionism as an integral part of anti-Semitism. Thus, Jewish organizations and the French government are moving to outright criminalize opposition to Jewish ethno-nationalism (the definition of Zionism) all the while criminalizing all Western ethno-nationalisms as being discriminatory, hateful, xenophobic, etc.
This was quickly followed by the European Union me-too-ers in Brussels making their own proposals for an “anti-Semitism pact,” notably aimed at punishing Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s campaign raising awareness around international financial speculator George Soros’ multi-million dollar efforts to flood Europe with migrants and undermine traditional European culture and ethnic identity.
Surprisingly, Soral’s anti-Zionist and civic nationalist association Égalité & Réconciliation actually hailed Macron for resisting the CRIF’s demands, bowing to them only reticently, and in some cases only symbolically. After all E&R itself, the most prominent anti-Zionist organization in France, will not be banned. The social-media censorship legislation will only be presented in parliament in May. And, apparently, France’s redefinition of anti-Semitism to include anti-Zionism will not be legally-binding, but will be used to educate policemen and judges (go figure). All this, E&R surmises, left the CRIF’s audience underwhelmed. And, E&R notes that the CRIF’s demands are “extremely anti-popular and legally untenable . . . unless there is a complete shift to a communitarian [ethnic] dictatorship.”
Let us return to the original “victim” of all this, Alain Finkielkraut. Following the incident, an immediate “investigation” was launched of the various “perpetrators,” showing the absurd judicialization of French life. Finkielkraut, recently appointed as one of the forty “Immortals” of the Académie française, has been known to the younger generation primarily as an anti-racist Jew turned neoconservative once he realized Islamic immigration to France was bad for the Jews. He has become a popular Internet meme for his numerous televised hysterical outbursts: “Shut up! Shut up!”
Personally I haven’t followed Finkielkraut very closely and whenever I listen to him his discourse sounds like over-complicated pilpul. That said, he has objectively voiced a number of French identitarian concerns over the years. In 2005 he correctly and controversially told the Israeli newspaper Haaretz: “People say that the French national [football] team is admired because it is black-blanc-beur [black, white, Arab]. In reality, the national team is today black-black-black, which makes it the laughingstock of Europe.” There was clearly an element of rivalry in claiming the status of top ethnic victim. Finkielkraut also told Haaretz:
I was born in Paris and am the son of Polish immigrants, my father was deported from France, his parents were deported and murdered at Auschwitz, my father returned from Auschwitz to France. This country deserves our hatred. And what it did to my parents was far more brutal than what it did to the Africans. And what did it do to the Africans? Nothing but good. My father was forced to endure hell for five years. And I was never taught hatred. Today the blacks’ hatred is even stronger than the Arabs’.
In 2017, upon the death of the French rock singer Johnny Hallyday, Finkielkraut told the right-wing journalist Élisabeth Lévy (another fellow Jew, at once moderately anti-Muslim and hysterical on anti-Semitism): “the little people, the little whites went in to the streets to say adieu to Johnny. […] The non-natives[2] shone by their absence.”
Alain Finkelkraut’s biased & red-pilled critics
In the footage of his “assault” by the yellow-vests, Finkielkraut however played his role to perfection, bearing his grotesque attackers’ insults with calmness and dignity. He then appeared on the radio to discuss the incident and emphasized that the attackers were probably of Islamic origin:
When one hears this slogan, “France is ours” [pronounced by one of the yellow-vests], one could thinks this is a variant of “France for the French” of classical fascism. But in fact no: he is saying “France is ours, it belongs to us Islamists.” He therefore is a believer in the theory of the Great Replacement. I do not say this Great Replacement is taking place, but for him it should take place. And for him, the Jews should be the first to be kicked out.
One will appreciate the utter tartuffery of claiming an opponent is promoting the Great Replacement while denying that it is taking place.
I will take this opportunity to emphasize again the Soviet-style absurdity of the French politico-media class’s denial of the Great Replacement. The replacement of the indigenous French population by both European and non-European (overwhelmingly African/Muslim) allogenes is visible in every major French city and, increasingly, in towns and villages across the country. And yet, our treacherous ruling elite, media, and even Wikipedia claim that all talk of a Great Replacement is a mere “conspiracy theory.” I’m not sure even Pravda’s claims concerning the workers’ paradise were so bold.
As it happens, Finkielkraut’s attackers seem to have been Muslims and one, “Benjamin W.,” appears to be an indigenous French convert. It seems quite likely that they were indeed influenced by Soral or at least the multiracial “patriotic” anti-Zionist culture he has created.
All in all, these events are illustrative of the French and Franco-Jewish elites manias for anti-Semitism and the growing indifference of the French and Afro-Islamic populations to such theatrics. The Lobby-That-Doesn’t-Exist – denounced by French leaders as varied as Charles de Gaulle, Raymond Barre, and François Mitterrand – continues to play the victim. But their power is weakening; and they know it. Macron himself, a convinced high-globalist, is only moderately interested in these matters. Many leading Jews, Bernard-Henri Lévy and Daniel Cohn-Bendit, have been extraordinarily alarmed by the uncontrolled and populist nature of the yellow-vest movement. Time will tell if this movement will participate in France’s liberation from globalism and the lobby’s distorting influence.
Notes
[1] Soral has observed that while Jews make up only 1% of the French population many French talk shows resemble “a little Jewish theater.” This disparate outcome and ethnic privilege should be noted.
[2] Actually, the non-souchiens, the non-French-by-blood. Souchien is a term coined by “anti-colonial” Arab-Berber racial activists. It is a homophone for sous-chien, “sub-dog.”
British Intel Tried to Make N Irish Gang ‘Shoot Up’ School, Documentary Claims
Sputnik – 23.02.2019
A new documentary, based on an interview with a self-confessed member of the Glennane Gang, gives some insights into allegations that British military intelligence was behind a shocking murder plot to cause the situation in Northern Ireland to “spiral out of control”.
In a documentary, Unquiet Graves: The Story of the Glennane Gang, John Weir, a former officer from the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC), alleges that British intelligence tried to persuade paramilitary group Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) to attack a Catholic primary school at Belleeks in County Armagh.
Weir claimed that the UVF was urged to kill children and teachers in retaliation for the 1976 Kingsmill massacre, in which gunmen stopped a minibus carrying twelve workmen and shot them; only one person survived despite having been shot 18 times.
“The plan that was decided on was to shoot up a school in Belleeks”, he said, adding that the British intelligence plot was to make the situation in Northern Ireland “spiral out of control”.
The film, directed by Sean Murray and narrated by Oscar-nominated actor Stephen Rea, tells the story of the Glenanne Gang, a secret informal alliance of Ulster loyalists who conducted bombing attacks against Irish nationalists and Catholics in the 1970s frequently working in collusion with RUC officers and Ulster Defence Regiment soldiers.
Murray said that conversations with Weir, a self-confessed member of the Glennane Gang, suggest that the intelligence plan was to foment a “civil war”:
“From their vision such a war would be quite short; they thought they could have a quick, short and sharp process of cleansing out the IRA”.
The UVF refused to carry out the attack, Weir said.
“A lot of this local people will be well aware of but internationally I think it is going to be dumbfound audiences. Collusion has left a dark and terrible stain on the North of Ireland, the pain that’s been caused to thousands of people here is incredible. If there is ever going to be a healing process on this island, if we’re ever going to move forward in reconciliation, people need to be able to tell their stories, but more importantly we need truth from the state about their role in the conflict”, Murray said.
Unquiet Graves will be shown in independent cinemas in Ireland and will be broadcast by RTÉ in May; it will also be shown in the United States, Canada, Europe, and Australia. The documentary will also be available on iTunes, Google Play and Amazon Prime, Murray said.
J’Accuse!
By Eugene Schulman | CounterPunch | February 22, 2019
A short essay on my thoughts about the Yellow Vest movement in France (now spreading to other parts of the world) and the coincidental (alleged) rise of anti-Semitism. I use the term ‘essay’ in its French meaning of the verb ‘essayer’: to try out, or try on, i.e., I am trying my theory on you.
I accuse the Macron government, in its frustration over failure to bring an end to the Yellow Vest uprising, of raising the issue of anti-Semitism in order to discredit the movement. By accusing the movement of stirring up anti-Semitism and blaming it for the recent desecration of Jewish cemeteries and shops and other iconic symbols suddenly appearing in Paris and other cities around France where the movement has been most active, the government hopes to instill fear in the public, who until now, polls show, has been by a large margin, favorable to the movement.
It seems not to be a coincidence that, until this moment, incidents and accusations of anti-Semitism in France have been barely noticeable or non-existant for quite some time. It would seem the Zionist community and its lobbies such as Crif, feel neglected, so they have sent out reconnaissance soldiers such as Daniel Cohen Bendit, Bernard Henry-Levy, and Alain Finkielkraut to stir up the masses. All of these soldiers, and many others of their ilk are solidly in line with the ruling elite represented by the new ‘Jupiter’, Emanuel Macron, and his cronies who are following the leadership of U.S. dictate to make the 1% even smaller. I don’t have to go into detail to justify this claim. There have been many articles in both mainstream and alternative (such as this site) media, explaining in detail this case. Thus, all the more reason for the Yellow Vests to protest. That this protest seems to be working is what has got the Macronistas so upset and induced them to begin to get dirty by playing the anti-Semitism card.
It is time to recognize that if anti-Semitism is increasing in our societies, the Zionist are as much to blame for its rise as Jew hatred. This latest incidence has been manufactured by the ruling powers, including the Jewish/Israel lobbies, themselves, to distract us from the real causes of today’s societal breakdown in France.
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From the Archives
The great ADHD swindle
By Daniel Ken | TCW Defending Freedom | May 20, 2023
Over more than two decades in the classroom I’ve taught thousands of children and teenagers: some were lovely and lots were hard-working. On the other hand, quite a number were disruptive and argumentative, and a number were violently opposed to learning. But I don’t think I’ve taught more than a handful of kids who could be properly described as having the symptoms of ADHD. And that handful could just as easily have had something else wrong with them. Because here’s the thing: despite the fact that the best part of a million children are medicated for the condition, ADHD doesn’t exist.
There’s no definitive medical test for it, experts can’t agree on what it actually means, and most of the symptoms disappear if the child in question has lots of exercise, good diet and, crucially, a set of clear behavioural boundaries, preferably set early in childhood and, for the boys at least, enforced by a stable adult male living at home. … continue
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