Israel grabbed over 13,000 dunums of Palestinian land in 2016
Palestine Information Center – December 31, 2016
BETHLEHEM – The Israeli occupation authorities (IOA) have seized about 13,295 dunums of Palestinian land during 2016, according to a report released on Thursday by the Palestinian Land Research Center (LRC).
Israel’s appropriation of Palestinian land increased by 43 percent during the current year compared to 2015, the report said.
During the reporting month, 9,700 fruitful trees, including 6,550 olive trees, were uprooted or sabotaged by the IOA and settlers.
The center also recorded 110 direct Israeli assaults on farmers and Bedouins and 195 attacks and violations on religious and historical sites, 100 of them occurred at the Aqsa Mosque.
The IOA also established 802 road barriers, most of them makeshift checkpoints, during the same year in different areas of the West Bank and Jerusalem.
Kerry’s speech violates int’l law, Palestinian rights
Palestine Information Center – December 30, 2016
LONDON – The Palestinian Return Center (PRC) slammed on Thursday a speech by the American Secretary of State, John Kerry, on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, saying his comments pose a danger for Palestinians’ rights, particularly the right of return.
According to PRC, the call of Kerry to resettle refugees in countries other than their homes is unacceptable and is a flagrant violation of the international law.
On the basis of its committed position in defending the rights of Palestinian refugees and as an organization in special consultative status with the UN ECOSOC, PRC confirmed that breaching the Right of Return for Palestinian refugees is against international law, UN resolutions, and the Universal Declaration for Human Rights, which all grant the right of return.
PRC added that ignoring the right of return for millions of Palestinian refugees will indeed make attempts to achieve peace fail.
It noted that any discussions or negotiations should be based on and comply with international law. The right of return is well enshrined in international law.
PRC further stated that the reference of Kerry to the Nakba and Palestinian refugees’ plight is a new recognition of their suffering, adding that the only way to end it is to allow them to return to their native homes and villages.
On Wednesday, Kerry delivered a lengthy speech as part of his so-called “comprehensive peace vision.”
Israel declassifies 200,000 pages of documents on 1950s ‘kidnapped babies’ scandal
© AFP 2016/ MENAHEM KAHANA
RT | December 29, 2016
After decades of silence, Israel has moved to bring some closure to the hundreds of parents whose children went missing under mysterious circumstances. Some argue the database on the so-called “Yemenite Children Affair” has only been partially declassified.
The 210,000 pages of declassified documents come as a result of three probes into the mysterious disappearances, which date back to the 1950s.
More than 1,000 families – mostly from the Middle East and North Africa, but also from Balkan countries – had since reported their infants being systematically taken from Israeli hospitals, and put up for adoption. The claims never stood up, and the latest effort to investigate the Yemenite Children Affair in 2001 concluded that the children had either died or been buried with the hospital authorities failing to notify the parents.
“The government is now taking action for the first time. [This step] erases the feeling of an opaque and disconnected establishment,” Minister for Regional Cooperation Tzachi Hanegbi told Army Radio. Hanegbi was also the one appointed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to lead the latest effort, which gave the green light for the release of 70 years of testimony and other evidence collected for the Israel State Archives.
“Today we right a historic wrong,” Netanyahu said, according to the Times of Israel. “For close to 60 years, people did not know the fate of their children, in a few minutes any person can access the pages containing all the information that the government of Israel has.”
The bodies of the children were never released to their parents. No other information, including place of burial, was made available, and multiple administrative mistakes have contributed to an atmosphere of all-out confusion in which the conspiracy had thrived.
Some of the parents received army draft notices for their child 18 years after their presumed death.
On Wednesday, a ceremony was held at Netanyahu’s office to mark the release.
Some critics, however, believe there is still more data that could be released on the matter. Nurit Koren, of Netanyahu’s Likud party, who chaired a task force on the Affair, told Army Radio today there were not 200,000 but 400,000 documents gathered over the years by the three probes.
She also pointed out that the documents only cover the period 1948-1954. Evidence, however, shows the disappearances continued way into the 1960s.
“We are obliged to give these families answers,” Koren said, urging the government to release the rest of the documents.
According to official information, the document database will only contain information for those families who had requested to be included in the initiative. Any others who had failed to do so can call the State Archives directly.
Meanwhile, Israeli news website Ynetnews ran a story with the reactions of relatives whose siblings went missing in hospitals, with many of them saying the information in the protocols released was neither complete, nor accurate. Some have accused the Israeli government of a deliberate “cover-up” and even of “mockery.”
“There is nothing new here,” said Yaakov Ben Aba from Rehovot, who lost five siblings between 1944 and 1953, and who believes they were kidnapped. “Opening the protocols to the public is mockery. It’s in order to keep covering up the affair. Instead of opening the adoption files, they are throwing a bone at us in the form of protocols that will not really get us closer to the truth.”
Several people interviewed pointed to inaccurate dates or details of their relatives’ illnesses and presumed deaths, even contradicting the state-released death certificates, while some suggested the “unreadable handwriting” of protocols was re-interpreted and even “beautified” for the release. Speaking of their deep mistrust for the state, several relatives vowed to continue trying to find out if their siblings were actually alive, in hopes of meeting them.
Obama Signs Measure Opposing Speech and Media Freedoms
By Stephen Lendman | December 27, 2016
Post-9/11, an array of police state laws, executive orders, memoranda, various national security and homeland security presidential directives, along with other repressive measures eliminated constitutional protections.
Indefinite detention without charges or trial became the law of the land. Torture-obtained evidence may be used against detainees in trial proceedings, despite earlier Supreme Court decisions ruling it impermissible.
Amending longstanding Insurrection Act and Posse Comitatus protections allows federal troops to be deployed on US streets.
Big Brother watches everyone. Whistleblowers exposing government wrongdoing risk longterm imprisonment under harsh conditions.
Obama’s war on freedom risks eliminating it altogether, America under his tenure a hair’s breadth from full-blown tyranny.
First Amendment rights are threatened like never before. Truth-telling on vital domestic and geopolitical issues is now considered fake news or Russian propaganda.
Targeting it is the hallmark of fascist dictatorship. Washington wants views contrary to its own suppressed, writers like myself and many others silenced.
When truth-tellers become enemies of the state, freedom no longer exists.
In early December, Congress overwhelmingly passed the Countering Disinformation and Propaganda Act as part of the annual National Defense Authorization Act – an unconstitutional measure against First Amendment freedoms.
On December 23, ahead of the Christmas holiday weekend, Obama signed it into law practically unnoticed. Along with approving bloated military spending, it establishes a Center for Information Analysis and Response – a de facto Ministry of Truth.
It aims to ferret out truth-telling on vital issues, suppress what everyone has a right to know, countering it with state-sponsored propaganda – along with perhaps targeting reliable independent sources of news, information and analysis for elimination.
Orwell once said in times of universal deceit, truth-telling is a revolutionary act. In America, it’s an endangered species, heading toward becoming criminalized, its disseminators risking prosecution, imprisonment or elimination by other means.
Obama governs under a police state apparatus, hardened throughout his tenure. When truth-telling becomes fake news or Russian propaganda, criminalizing it is a step closer to reality.
Stephen Lendman can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. His new book as editor and contributor is titled Flashpoint in Ukraine: How the US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.
British councils used covert surveillance to monitor petty crimes such as ‘dog fouling’ – report
RT | December 26, 2016
British councils were given permission to gather surveillance using covert methods over the course of five years for crimes ranging from dog fouling to pigeon feeding. Spying was conducted with secret listening devices, cameras and private detectives.
A huge freedom of information request from the Liberal Democrats cited by the Guardian showed that 186 of the 283 councils that responded to the request had used the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (Ripa) to gather evidence in covert ways over the course of five years.
A total of 2,800 separate surveillance operations took place during that time, lasting up to 90 days each.
The reasons for conducting the surveillance ranged from Midlothian council monitoring dog barking, to Allerdale borough investigating who was guilty of feeding pigeons.
In Wolverhampton, authorities used secret surveillance to check on the sale of dangerous toys and ‘car clocking’ – adjusting the mileage on a car’s odometer.
Westminster council used Ripa to monitor the sales of fireworks to children, while Slough used it during an investigation into an illegal puppy farm.
Lancaster city council monitored its residents for “targeted dog fouling enforcement” in 2012.
Ripa was also used to monitor people receiving benefits, including those claiming to be single parents.
Critics say that Ripa was purportedly intended only to be used when absolutely necessary to protect British citizens from extreme threats such as terrorism – not dog fouling or other petty crimes.
“It is absurd that local authorities are using measures primarily intended for combating terrorism for issues as trivial as a dog barking or the sale of theatre tickets. Spying on the public should be a last resort not an everyday tool,” said Brian Paddick, the Liberal Democrats peer who represents the party on home affairs, as quoted by the Guardian.
However, a Home Office spokesman said Ripa was an “important tool that local authorities can use to address the issues that affect many people’s lives, like consumer protection, environmental crime, and benefit fraud,” while noting that local authorities should only use it when it is “both necessary and proportionate to do so.”
“Any local authority use of these powers must be independently authorized by a magistrate, who is an independent judicial figure,” the spokesman said.
Meanwhile, a British government spokeswoman told the Guardian that the law has since changed, and Ripa can now only be used if criminal activity is suspected.
Nevertheless, Paddick isn’t certain that anything will change with the new Investigatory Powers Act, which is supposed to ensure that such powers will be overseen by an Investigatory Powers Commissioner in the future. He said that, although it will restrict local authorities from monitoring people’s communications, it will also give “mass surveillance powers to a huge number of government bodies.”
“As with any legislation, there is a significant risk that authorities will use powers in a way that parliament never intended,” Paddick said, calling for oversight of any future surveillance.
Paddick isn’t the only one to criticize the UK’s new Investigatory Powers Act, which will authorize the sweeping collection and storage of people’s emails, text messages, and internet data. The European Court of Justice ruled last week that only targeted interception of traffic and location data is justified, and only to combat serious crime, leaving many to wonder whether the ruling may prompt challenges to the new UK legislation, which critics have dubbed the ‘snooper charter.’
Read more:
GCHQ spied on former colonies & African leaders, including UK allies – Snowden leaks
Nowhere to hide: NSA, GCHQ wiretapped in-flight phone calls, Snowden leaks show
Israeli Ministers Approve Bill to Remove Online ‘Incitement’
Al-Manar | December 26, 2016
Israeli ministers have approved a bill that would allow a court to order sites such as Facebook and YouTube to remove material found to be “incitement,” which they say contributes to Palestinian attacks on Israelis.
A panel of ministers approved the legislation on Sunday and it will now be taken up by the country’s parliament.
Government watchdogs have expressed concern such a law could be abused and harm free speech.
The legislation, known in the Zionist entity as the “Facebook bill”, would allow the government to petition a court to have online material it considers incitement removed.
It would be removed in cases where it poses “a real risk to the security of a person, the public or the state,” Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked said in a statement.
Tel Aviv has previously held discussions with Facebook officials to stop what it calls “online incitement”.
In September, Shaked said that the social network giant had removed 95 percent of the posts the Zionist entity had referred to it.
Shaked said Sunday that in 2016, 71 percent of the 1,755 requests “Israel” filed to internet companies requesting they remove content were fully complied with.
She noted the ongoing collaboration with the internet companies, but stressed that it was “important this cooperation will be obligatory”.
Accused of supporting Palestinian political prisoners: MK jailed, stripped of immunity
Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network – December 25, 2016
Basel Ghattas, a Palestinian citizen of Israel and Member of Knesset, is currently being held by Israeli forces on charges of attempting to bring cellphones to imprisoned Palestinians denied the ability to communicate with their families or political organizations. Ghattas has frequently visited with imprisoned Palestinians, including Palestinians from ’48, long-time prisoners held since the pre-Oslo era, and Palestinian political leaders.
Palestinian prisoners are routinely denied access to communications, whether with their families or their colleagues and comrades. Unlike Israeli criminal prisoners, they are denied access to telephone calls with their family members and can only receive short visits through a glass wall. Family visits are regularly denied under a pretext of “security.” In addition, many Palestinian political prisoners are leaders of the Palestinian movement, targeted for their leadership and political role. The denial of their communications and isolation of these prisoners is an Israeli attempt to silence and disrupt the Palestinian national liberation movement.
On Thursday, 22 December, Israeli authorities announced that Ghattas was being stripped of his parliamentary immunity and had been detained; his arrest was extended until four days until Monday, 26 December on the grounds of “security of the state.” The further extension of his detention will be considered at the Rishon Letzion court at 4:00 pm, while a protest will gather outside organized by Palestinian political groups in ’48 Palestine demanding his immediate release.
Ghattas emphasized following a three-hour interrogation session – before his arrest – that the Palestinian prisoners are human beings first and foremost and that he has always acted to support the prisoners as a humanitarian and moral manner, emphasizing the suffering and isolation of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails and the importance of highlighting the cause of the prisoners.
Ghattas’ detention is being pursued on the pretext that he “poses a risk to the security” of the state or its citizens. His political party, Balad or the National Democratic Aliance (NDA), has engaged in a series of protests demanding Ghattas’ freedom from this “political targeting.” Awad Abdel Fattah said that “This arrest is a continuation of the political persecution of our leadership, our people in general, and the national movement.” MK Jamal Zahalka said that “Despite all borders and laws, he has acted only to help his imprisoned people. We refuse to take the issue of prisoners for granted.”
Ghattas visited Palestinian prisoners Walid Daqqa and Basel al-Bisra in the Ketziot Negev prison last week; he is accused of bringing them several cell phones. While Israeli officials also claimed that he had brought “encrypted messages” to the prisoners, Ghattas and his lawyer Lea Tsemel noted – as was confirmed even by the judge in the case on Friday, 23 December – that these were the political documents and publications of the Balad party and “not a security matter.” Daqqa has spent over 30 years in Israeli prison.
Ghattas noted that the decision to pursue him and strip his immunity was clearly a political action, as other members of Knesset had not had their immunity stripped despite charges of rape, harassment, theft, embezzlement and bribery, including people who were later convicted and sentenced.
In addition to the arrest of Ghattas – which follows on a series of arrests and raids that targeted the NDA’s political activities – and the repression of Palestinian organizing in Palestine ’48, the Israeli state is also attempting to further isolate Palestinian prisoners. On Tuesday, 20 December, the Knesset approved a bill by Internal Security minister Gilad Erdan to prevent MKs from visiting Palestinian security prisoners, obviously targeting MKs who are Palestinian citizens of Israel. Erdan openly spoke to his motivations, saying that “these visits provide a popular platform for the prisoners… and thus impact the security of the state.”
Palestinian lawyer Jehad Abu Raya wrote that “The detentions and harassment of Palestinians and their leaders in 1948 Palestine, including the Knesset member Basel Ghattas, are part of a strategy which Israel has pursed against its Arab citizens since the Nakba. This strategy is aimed at domesticating and defeating Palestinians and at punishing whomever is tempted to challenge the Jewish state.” He noted the ongoing imprisonment of Palestinians in ’48, including Sheikh Raed Salah and former MK Said Nafaa.
Ghattas also participated in the third Freedom Flotilla to break the siege on Gaza. In response to the arrest of Ghattas, the Freedom Flotilla Coalition issued a statement highlighting the isolation and silencing of Palestinian prisoners and calling for phones to be distributed to Palestinian prisoners. “The Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails… are entitled to their basic right of communication with their loved ones. If the system does not allow it, civil disobedience is the only route.”
Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network demands the immediate release of Basel Ghattas and all Palestinian political prisoners. The political persecution of Ghattas is another attempt to suppress Palestinian organizing and existence in Palestine ’48 and to isolate and cut the communications of Palestinian political prisoners. It is part and parcel of the campaign of isolation and silence waged by the Israeli occupation against over 7,000 Palestinian political prisoners.
City Passes Ordinance Mandating CCTV Surveillance By Businesses, Including Doctors And Lawyers Offices
By Tim Cushing | TechDirt | December 23, 2016
Another government has decided to “protect” local businesses by forcing them to install surveillance cameras.
All commercial businesses located here will now be required to install and maintain security cameras or face a fine or jail following passage of a new citywide ordinance by the Mayor and Board of Aldermen Tuesday night.
“A matter that has been of increasing concern to the board lately is keeping the citizens of Madison safe, as well as the people who come here to visit our stores, through the use of security cameras,” City Attorney John Hedglin said. “It’s very important to have a record of what happens in as many places as possible.”
The ordinance has 30 days before it takes effect.
“Here” is Madison, Mississippi, a city with some very low crime rates — one frequently named to “safest cities” and “best towns for families” lists. Why it’s suddenly concerned about business-focused criminal activity is unclear, but the city’s government has decided it should be able to force businesses to install CCTV systems, whether or not they need them… or can even pay for them.
Renee Burns, manager of Hop and Habanas, voiced concerns about the cost of surveillance equipment in an interview with WAPT News.
“Surveillance cameras are very expensive, to get everything set up and it could have people close their stores because they can’t afford it,” Burns said.
And if they can’t afford them, the new statute will make sure they can’t afford to stay in business.
Existing businesses will have one year after the ordinance goes into effect to comply. Those that fail to comply may be subject to a $500 fine and/or up to 90 days in jail. Each day of noncompliance is a different violation.
While there have been similar statutes enacted in other cities, these have generally been targeted at businesses already subject to extra regulation, like pawn shops, gun stores, and pharmacies. There has been some mission creep in recent years, leading to other businesses being ordered to install surveillance systems, like cellphone resellers and scrap metal dealers.
On top of that, many of these ordinances also allow for on-demand law enforcement access, allowing the government to extend its surveillance reach without having to pay for the equipment. The specifics of Madison’s new statute haven’t been made available yet, so it’s unclear whether the collection of footage from businesses will be voluntary and tied only to investigations requested by business owners, or whether law enforcement will just be able to show up and demand to see recordings.
Then there are other privacy concerns to address. The city’s attorney has stated that the ordinance covers businesses like doctor’s offices and law offices — places where patient/client confidentiality has long been assumed. Forcing businesses like these to record interactions with their customers would perhaps prevent more-privacy conscious individuals from seeking help. And this new collection of footage could be abused/misused to identify people who thought their requests for legal/medical assistance wouldn’t be turned over to law enforcement.
Germany Plans Government-Run ‘Center of Defense Against Disinformation’
Sputnik – 23.12.2016
The German Interior Ministry will create a “Center of Defense Against Disinformation,” ahead of next year’s parliamentary elections.
The announcement follows the ongoing “fake news” hysteria in the United States, which has been blamed for Hillary Clinton’s loss to Donald Trump.
German magazine Der Spiegel has reported that an Interior Ministry staff member told them that the creation of the center to combat “fake news” “should be negotiated very quickly.” The effort to set up this “ministry of truth” will be lead by the Federal Press Office, run by Chancellor Angela Merkel’s spokesman.
“The acceptance of a post-truth age would be equivalent to political capitulation,” the Interior Ministry official said.
The Ministry recommended “an intensification of political education work” specifically among “Russian-Germans” and people of Turkish origin.
Several German politicians, including Social Democratic Party (SPD) parliamentary chairman Thomas Oppermann, have also proposed legislation which will criminalize the production and distribution of “fake news.”
Oppermann specifically focused on Facebook, calling for the social-network platform to be penalized if they do not remove articles the government deems incorrect within a 24-hour period. “Facebook did not avail itself of the opportunity to regulate the issue of complaint management itself,” Oppermann told Der Spiegel earlier this month.
“Now market dominating platforms like Facebook will be legally required to build a legal protection office in Germany that is available 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.” If the company fails to comply, he wants them to be subjected to stiff fines.
“If, after appropriate examination, Facebook does not delete the offending message within 24 hours, it should expect individual fines of up to 500,000 euros ($523,320),” Oppermann continued.
In George Orwell’s novel “1984,” a Ministry of Truth is in charge of the creation of propaganda. The Ministry had a famous message, “War is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength.” As the adage goes: 1984 was meant as a warning, not an instruction manual.
Foxes Guard Facebook Henhouse
By F. William Engdahl – New Eastern Outlook – 22.12.2016
The latest mantra of CIA-linked media since the “Pizzagate” leaks of data alleging that Hillary Clinton Campaign Manager John Podesta and other highly influential political persons in Washington were connected to an unusual pizza place near the White House run by a 41-year old James Achilles Alefantis called Comet Ping Pong, is the need to crack down (i.e. censorship) on what is being called “Fake News.” The latest step in this internet censorship drive is a decision by the murky social media organization called Facebook to hire special organizations to determine if Facebook messages are pushing Fake News or not. Now it comes out that the “fact check” private organizations used by Facebook are tied to the CIA and CIA-related NGO’s including George Soros’ Open Society Foundations.
In the last weeks of the US Presidential campaign, Wikileaks released a huge number of emails linked to Clinton Campaign Manager, John Podesta. The contents of thousands of emails revealed detailed exchanges between Podesta and the oddly-influential Comet Ping Pong pizza place owner, Alefantis, as well as the Clinton campaign, which held fundraisers at Comet Ping Pong.
The Pizzagate scandal exploded in the final weeks of the US campaign as teams of private researchers documented and posted Facebook, Instagram and other data suggesting that Alefantis and Comet Ping Pong were at the heart of a pedophilia ring that implicated some of the most prominent politicians in Washington and beyond.
The New York Times and Washington Post moved swiftly to assert that the Pizzagate revelations were Fake News, quoting “anonymous sources” who supposedly said the CIA “believed” Russia was behind hackers who exposed emails and documents from the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and Hillary Clinton’s campaign chair John Podesta. Former NSA senior intelligence expert William Binney claimed the Podesta and Clinton campaign data were leaked, not hacked. The NSA, he pointed out, would immediately identify a hack, especially a foreign hack, and they have remained silent.
The uncovering and release to Wikileaks of the Podesta emails were immediately blamed on Russian intelligence by the CIA, and now by the US President, with not a shred of proof, and despite the fact that NSA. Wikipedia, whose content is often manipulated by US intelligence agencies, rapidly posted a page with the curious title, “Pizzagate (Conspiracy Theory).”
To make certain the neutral interested reader gets the message, the first line reads, “Pizzagate is a debunked conspiracy theory which emerged during the 2016 United States presidential election cycle, alleging that John Podesta’s emails, which were leaked by WikiLeaks, contain coded messages referring to human trafficking, and connecting a number of pizzerias in Washington, D.C. and members of the Democratic Party to a child-sex ring.”
‘Fake News’ Mantra Begins
My purpose in mentioning Pizzagate details is not to demonstrate the authenticity of the Pizzagate allegations. That others are doing with far more resources. Rather, it is to point out the time synchronicity of the explosive Pizzagate email releases by Julian Assange’s Wikileaks web blog, with the launch of a massive mainstream media and political campaign against what is now being called “Fake News.”
The cited New York Times article that Wikipedia cites as “debunking” the Pizzagate allegations states, “None of it was true. While Mr. Alefantis has some prominent Democratic friends in Washington and was a supporter of Mrs. Clinton, he has never met her, does not sell or abuse children, and is not being investigated by law enforcement for any of these claims. He and his 40 employees had unwittingly become real people caught in the middle of a storm of fake news.” The article contains not one concrete proof that the allegations are false, merely quoting Alefantis as the poor victim of malicious Fake News.
That New York Times story was accompanied by a series of articles such as “How Fake News Goes Viral: A Case Study.” Another headline reads, “Obama, With Angela Merkel in Berlin, Assails Spread of Fake News.” Then on November 19, strong Clinton supporter, Facebook billionaire Mark Zuckerberg is quoted in a prominent article titled, “Facebook Considering Ways to Combat Fake News, Mark Zuckerberg Says.”
Facebook uses CIA Censors
Zuckerberg, CEO and founder of the world-leading social media site, Facebook.com, the world’s 5th wealthiest man at an estimated $50 billion, has now established a network of “Third Party Fact Checkers” whose job is to red flag any Facebook message of the estimated one billion people using the site, with a prominent warning that reads, “Disputed by Third-Party Fact Checkers.”
Facebook has announced that it is taking its censorship ques from something called The International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN). This IFCN, a new creation, has drafted a code of five principles for news websites to accept, and Facebook will work with “third-party fact checking organizations” that are signatories to that code of principles.
If we search under the name International Fact-Checking Network, we find ourselves at the homepage of something called the Poynter Institute for Media Studies in St. Petersburg, Florida.
OK. If we look a bit deeper we find that the Poynter Institute’s International Fact-Checking Network in turn, as its website states, gets money from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Google, the National Endowment for Democracy, the Omidyar Network, the Open Society Foundations of George Soros.
Oh my, oh my! Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation who partners with Soros in numerous nasty projects such as convincing African countries to accept Genetically Modified or GMO seeds? Google, whose origins date back to funding by the CIA and NSA as what intelligence researcher Nafeez Ahmed describes as a “plethora of private sector start-ups co-opted by US intelligence to retain ‘information superiority‘ “?
The Omidyar Foundation is the foundation of eBay founder and multi billionaire, Pierre Omidyar, which finances among other projects the online digital publication, The Intercept, launched in 2014 by Glenn Greenwald, Laura Poitras and Jeremy Scahill.
And the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), the US Government-financed “private” NGO behind every Color Revolution CIA regime change from the Ukraine Color Revolutions to the Arab Spring? The NED was a CIA project created in the 1980’s during the Reagan Administration as part of privatizing US intelligence dirty operations, to do, as Allen Weinstein, who drafted the Congressional legislation to establish the NED, noted in a candid 1991 Washington Post interview, “A lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA.”
And if we dig even deeper we find, lo and behold, the name George Soros, convicted hedge fund insider trader, tax-exempt philanthropist and giga-billionaire who seems to fund not only Hillary Clinton and virtually every CIA and US State Department Color Revolution from Russia to China to Iran through his network of Open Society Foundations including the 1990’s Jeffrey Sachs Shock Therapy plunder of Russia and most of former Communist East Europe.
Another one of the media working with Zuckerberg’s Facebook censorship of Fake News is the Washington Post, today owned by Amazon billionaire founder Jeff Bezos. Bezos is a major media business partner of…. The US Central Intelligence Agency, a fact he omitted to inform about after taking over ownership of the most important newspaper in Washington.
Bezos’ Washington Post recently published a bizarre list of 200 websites it claimed generated Fake News. It refused to identify who gave them the list. Veteran Washington investigative reporter, Wayne Madsen, exposed the source of the McCarthy-style taboo list of so-called Fake News. It was a “website called PropOrNot.com that has links to the CIA and George Soros.”
It’s not merely the Pizzagate revelations that have triggered such a massive attack on independent Internet websites. It seems that back in January 2014 at the Davos World Economic Forum control of information on the Internet was a top item of discussion. At the time, Madsen noted, “With the impending demise of World Wide Web ‘net neutrality,’ which has afforded equal access for website operators to the Internet, the one percent of billionaire investors are busy positioning themselves to take over total control of news reporting on the Internet.”
It’s not even the foxes who are guarding the Internet Henhouse. It’s the werewolves of CIA and US Government censorship. Whether the explosive Pizzagate Podesta revelations merely triggered a dramatic acceleration in the timetable for the CIA’s planned “Fake News” operation as the successor to their 1980’s “Conspiracy Theory” linguistic discrediting operation, it’s clear this is no unbiased, objective, transparent public service to protect the Internet public from harmful content.
And, besides, who are they to tell me or you what you are allowed to read, digest and form your independent ideas about? This is a 21st Century reincarnation of the Spanish Inquisition, one by the real fake newsmakers–Washington Post, AP, ABCNews, Snopes.com, FactCheck.org, the CIA and friends. I would say it’s an alarming development of cyber warfare, not by Russia, but by those CIA-run networks that are fomenting Fake News to demonize any and everyone who opposes Washington intelligence propaganda.
Is the CIA editing your newspaper?
By Jonathan Cook | Dissident Voice | December 20, 2016
Here is a great overview by Ed Jones of why corporate media are the arch-exponents of “fake news”. The media are overwhelming owned and controlled by billionaires and gargantuan corporations, who depend on the support of other corporations for ad revenue, and employ journalists from a narrow, privileged class whose careers depend on maintaining access to elite sources. It would be simply astounding in these circumstances if we had anything resembling a pluralistic media.
The data concerns UK outlets, but the same principles apply in the US.
One section makes especially disturbing reading. It is the little-discussed matter of the intelligence services’ deep penetration of most western, and in some cases non-western, media organisations. In short, US intelligence services – and to a lesser extent British ones – have for many decades fed information to sympathetic journalists in key positions inside the “free” media, working with them hand in glove. Additionally, the CIA has sought to put its own people into publications to shape directly editorial content and influence public opinion. In some cases, these people may have reached very senior positions.
Nick Davies, of the Guardian, dedicated a whole chapter of his book Flat Earth News to documenting these practices. Strangely, that chapter is rarely mentioned. Journalists who praise the book instead concentrate on his less revealing concept of “churnalism” – journalism compromised by constraints of time and resources.
Jones adds other sources who make much the same point:
Richard Keeble, professor of journalism at the University of Lincoln, … has written on the history of the links between journalists and the intelligence services. … He quotes Roy Greenslade, who has been a media specialist for both the Telegraph and the Guardian [and is a former editor of the Mirror newspaper], as saying: “Most tabloid newspapers – or even newspapers in general – are playthings of MI5 [Britain’s FBI].”
Keeble goes on to say:
Bloch and Fitzgerald, in their examination of covert UK warfare, report the editor of ‘one of Britain’s most distinguished journals’ as believing that more than half its foreign correspondents were on the MI6 payroll [the British equivalent of the CIA – my emphasis]. And in 1991, Richard Norton-Taylor revealed in the Guardian that 500 prominent Britons paid by the CIA and the now defunct Bank of Commerce and Credit International, included 90 journalists.
Keeble has given many more examples in his book chapter of the intelligence services infiltrating the media and changing the politics of the time, including around the miners strikes and Arthur Scargill in the 1980s and during the lead-up to the Iraq war in 2003. …
David Leigh, former investigations editor of The Guardian, wrote about a series of instances in which the secret services manipulated prominent journalists. He claims reporters are routinely approached and manipulated by intelligence agents and identifies three ways – providing examples for each in his article – in which they do it:
• They attempt to recruit journalists to spy on other people or themselves attempt to go under journalistic “cover.”
• They allow intelligence officers to pose as journalists “to write tendentious articles under false names.”
• And “the most malicious form”: they plant intelligence agency propaganda stories on willing journalists who disguise their origin from readers.
Remember that those who should be exposing the intelligence services’ manipulation of the mainstream media are the very same mainstream media that are already compromised. In other words, this story of systematic “fake news” planted by our intelligence services is almost impossible for the media to tell because it would expose a very uncomfortable reality: that they are not, as they claim, watchdogs on power, but rather the lapdogs of the powerful.
If all this still seems hard to believe, please watch this video of a senior German journalist admitting that he was recruited by the US intelligence services (h/t Antonio Nascimento). Udo Ulfkotte covered the Middle East for the Frankfurter Allgemeine for 12 years, and says he regularly acted as a conduit for CIA propaganda. He adds that many of his colleagues were doing the same, willingly promoting CIA disinformation.
Jonathan Cook, based in Nazareth, Israel is a winner of the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism.
Israel renews travel ban against Jerusalemite Palestinian woman
Ma’an – December 19, 2016
JERUSALEM – Israeli authorities renewed a travel ban against a Palestinian woman from occupied East Jerusalem on Sunday, after she has already been banned from the Old City’s Al-Aqsa Mosque compound as well as from the occupied West Bank.
Khadija Khweis told a Ma’an that Israeli intelligence summoned her to Jerusalem’s Russian Compound police station, where she was handed a renewable one-month travel prohibition order signed by the Israeli Minister of Interior.
A previous one-month travel ban against Khweis had expired on Wednesday.
According to Khweis, the new order read that she was prevented from traveling for “security reasons.”
“They say I have connections with the Murabitat group and think I could travel on missions to promote them,” she said.
In addition to being banned from international travel, Khweis has been prohibited from traveling to the West Bank for six months, an order that she said was still effective.
Furthermore, Khweis is on Israel’s so-called “blacklist” created by Israeli police in August 2015 to deny dozens of Palestinians access to the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound.
Israeli authorities have also revoked Khweis and her family’s national insurance allowance.
In December last year, Khweis was banned from the entirety of the Old City as well as West Jerusalem.
She was also among a number of Palestinian women who were assaulted by Israeli forces when they were denied entry to Al-Aqsa for their affiliation with the Murabitat, a group of women who gather at the compound to demonstrate against what they see as increasing Israeli control over the holy site and provocative visits by Israeli rightists under armed guard.
In September last year, former Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon outlawed the Murabitat and their male counterpart, the Murabitun.
The third holiest site in Islam, the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound is also venerated as Judaism’s most holy place as it sits where Jews believe the First and Second Temples once stood.
The fate of Jerusalem has been a focal point of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict for decades, with numerous tensions arising over Israeli threats regarding the status of non-Jewish religious sites in the city, and the “Judaization” of East Jerusalem through detention campaigns targeting Palestinians, Israeli settlement construction, and mass demolitions of Palestinian homes.
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