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Standing with Syria

By Margaret Kimberley | Black Agenda Report | September 14, 2016

American and NATO aggressions must be opposed wherever they surface in the world. That statement ought to be the starting point for anyone calling themselves left, progressive, or anti-war. Of course the aggressors always use a ruse to diminish resistance to their wars of terror. In Syria and elsewhere they claim to support freedom fighters, the moderate opposition and any other designation that helps hide imperialist intervention. They label their target as a tyrant, a butcher, or a modern day Hitler who commits unspeakable acts against his own populace. The need to silence opposition is obvious and creating the image of a monster is the most reliable means of securing that result.

The anti-war movement thus finds itself confused and rendered immobile by this predictable propaganda. It is all too easily manipulated into being at best ineffectual and at worst supporters of American state sponsored terror.

For five years the United States, NATO, Saudi Arabia, Israel, Qatar and Turkey have given arms and money to terrorist groups in an effort to topple Syrian president Bashar al-Assad. Some of those bad actors felt flush with success after overthrowing and killing Muammar Gaddafi in Libya. They had high hopes of picking off another secular Arab government. Fortunately, Assad was hard to defeat and the barbarians cannot storm the gates. Most importantly, Russia stopped giving lip service to Assad and finally provided military support to the Syrian government in 2015.

The United States government is responsible for the ongoing humanitarian crisis in Syria. The so-called barrel bomb doesn’t kill more people than conventional weapons provided by the United States and its puppets. There would not be bombs of any kind, sieges, starving children, or refugees if the Obama administration had not given the green light to the rogues gallery.

Whatever their political beliefs or feelings about Assad, Syrians did not ask the United States to turn their country into a ruin. They don’t want ISIS to behead children, as they infamously did on camera. American presidents, beginning with Jimmy Carter, have all used jihadists at opportune moments when they want regime change. The name of the country under attack changes but the story ends with massive human suffering.

Instead of siding unequivocally with America’s victims some in the anti-war movement instead live in greater fear of being labeled “pro Assad.” Assad didn’t invade Iraq and kill one million people. George W. Bush did that. Assad did not give support to jihadists to destroy Libya, kill 50,000 people, ignite a race war and create another refugee crisis. Barack Obama did that. The list of human rights abuses carried out by the American government is a long one indeed. There is torture in the United States prison system, the largest in the world. American police are given tacit permission to kill three people every day. Yet the fear of being thought of as an Assad supporter is so powerful that it silences people and organizations who should be in the forefront of confronting their country domestically and internationally.

Of course American propaganda is ratcheted up at the very moment that sides must be chosen. Any discussion or debate regarding Syria’s political system was rendered moot as soon as the United States targeted that country for destruction. There is only one question now: when will America tell its minions to stop fighting?

Obama didn’t start a proxy war with an expectation of losing, and Hillary Clinton makes clear her allegiance to regime change. The United States will only leave if Syria and its allies gain enough ground to force a retreat. They will call defeat something else at a negotiating table but Assad must win in order for justice and reconciliation to begin.

Focusing on Assad’s government and treatment of his people may seem like a reasonable thing to do. Most people who call themselves anti-war are serious in their concern for humanity. But the most basic human right, the right to survive, was taken from 400,000 people because the American president decided to add one more notch on his gun. Whether intended or not, criticism of the victimized government makes the case for further aggression.

The al-Nusra Front may change its name in a public relations effort, but it is still al Qaeda and still an ally of the United States. The unpredictable Donald Trump may not be able to explain that he spoke the truth when he accused Obama and Clinton of being ISIS supporters, but the anti-war movement should be able to explain without any problem. Cessations of hostilities are a sham meant to protect American assets whenever Assad is winning. If concern for the wellbeing of Syrians is a paramount concern, then the American anti-war movement must be united in condemning their own government without reservation or hesitation.

Margaret Kimberley can be reached via e-Mail at Margaret.Kimberley(at)BlackAgendaReport.com.

September 14, 2016 Posted by | Progressive Hypocrite, Solidarity and Activism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

Isn’t it time to ban the bomb?

By Lawrence Wittner | Peace and Health Blog | September 13, 2016

Although the mass media failed to report it, a landmark event occurred recently in connection with resolving the long-discussed problem of what to do about nuclear weapons. On August 19, 2016, a UN committee, the innocuously-named Open-Ended Working Group, voted to recommend to the UN General Assembly that it mandate the opening of negotiations in 2017 on a treaty to ban them.

For most people, this recommendation makes a lot of sense. Nuclear weapons are the most destructive devices ever created. If they are used―as two of them were used in 1945 to annihilate the populations of Hiroshima and Nagasaki―the more than 15,000 nuclear weapons currently in existence would destroy the world. Given their enormous blast, fire, and radioactivity, their explosion would bring an end to virtually all life on earth. The few human survivors would be left to wander, slowly and painfully, in a charred, radioactive wasteland. Even the explosion of a small number of nuclear weapons through war, terrorism, or accident would constitute a catastrophe of unprecedented magnitude.

Every President of the United States since 1945, from Harry Truman to Barack Obama, has warned the world of the horrors of nuclear war. Even Ronald Reagan―perhaps the most military-minded among them―declared again and again: “A nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought.”

Fortunately, there is no technical problem in disposing of nuclear weapons. Through negotiated treaties and unilateral action, nuclear disarmament, with verification, has already taken place quite successfully, eliminating roughly 55,000 nuclear weapons of the 70,000 in existence at the height of the Cold War.

Also, the world’s other agents of mass destruction, biological and chemical weapons, have already been banned by international agreements.

Naturally, then, most people think that creating a nuclear weapons-free world is a good idea. A 2008 poll in 21 nations around the globe found that 76 percent of respondents favored an international agreement for the elimination of all nuclear weapons and only 16 percent opposed it. This included 77 percent of the respondents in the United States.

But government officials from the nine nuclear-armed nations are inclined to view nuclear weapons―or at least their nuclear weapons―quite differently. For centuries, competing nations have leaned heavily upon military might to secure what they consider their “national interests.” Not surprisingly, then, national leaders have gravitated toward developing powerful military forces, armed with the most powerful weaponry. The fact that, with the advent of nuclear weapons, this traditional behavior has become counter-productive has only begun to penetrate their consciousness, usually helped along on such occasions by massive public pressure.

Consequently, officials of the superpowers and assorted wannabes, while paying lip service to nuclear disarmament, continue to regard it as a risky project. They are much more comfortable with maintaining nuclear arsenals and preparing for nuclear war. Thus, by signing the nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty of 1968, officials from the nuclear powers pledged to “pursue negotiations in good faith on . . . a treaty on general and complete disarmament under strict and effective international control.” And today, nearly a half-century later, they have yet to begin negotiations on such a treaty. Instead, they are currently launching yet another round in the nuclear arms race. The US government alone is planning to spend $1 trillion over the next 30 years to refurbish its entire nuclear weapons production complex, as well as to build new air-, sea-, and ground-launched nuclear weapons.

Of course, this enormous expenditure―plus the ongoing danger of nuclear disaster―could provide statesmen with a powerful incentive to end 71 years of playing with their doomsday weapons and, instead, get down to the business of finally ending the grim prospect of nuclear annihilation. In short, they could follow the lead of the UN committee and actually negotiate a ban on nuclear weapons as the first step toward abolishing them.

But, to judge from what happened in the UN Open-Ended Working Group, a negotiated nuclear weapons ban is not likely to occur. Uneasy about what might emerge from the committee’s deliberations, the nuclear powers pointedly boycotted them. Moreover, the final vote in that committee on pursuing negotiations for a ban was 68 in favor and 22 opposed, with 13 abstentions. The strong majority in favor of negotiations was comprised of African, Latin American, Caribbean, Southeast Asian, and Pacific nations, with several European nations joining them. The minority came primarily from nations under the nuclear umbrellas of the superpowers. Consequently, the same split seems likely to occur in the UN General Assembly, where the nuclear powers will do everything possible to head off UN action.

Overall, then, there is a growing division between the nuclear powers and their dependent allies, on the one hand, and a larger group of nations, fed up with the repeated evasions of the nuclear powers in dealing with the nuclear disaster that threatens to engulf the world. In this contest, the nuclear powers have the advantage, for, when all is said and done, they have the option of clinging to their nuclear weapons, even if that means ignoring a treaty adopted by a clear majority of nations around the world. Only an unusually firm stand by the non-nuclear nations, coupled with an uprising by an aroused public, seems likely to awaken the officials of the nuclear powers from their long sleepwalk toward catastrophe.

Dr. Lawrence Wittner (http://lawrenceswittner.com) is Professor of History emeritus at SUNY/Albany  and the author of Confronting the Bomb (Stanford University Press).

September 13, 2016 Posted by | Militarism, Progressive Hypocrite, Solidarity and Activism, Timeless or most popular | , , , | Leave a comment

Facebook, Israel Seal Deal to Crack Down on Palestinians Online

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teleSUR – September 12, 2016

Facebook and the Israeli government agreed to set up joint teams in order to fight what they call “incitement” posts on the social media website which officials said were meant to target Palestinians and Arab-Israelis, local media reported Monday.

“The meeting took place under the assumption that Facebook has the capability, the responsibility and the willingness to help mitigate incitement and terror from the network,” said a joint statement issued by Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked and Interior Minister Gilad Erdan.

The Israeli ministers, who belong to the most conservative right-wing government in the history of the country, further argued that criticism and response to Israeli operations, extrajudicial killings and targeting of anti-occupation protests is “incitement and terror.”

“In the recent spate of terror it was proven that the internet has become a home to incubate terrorists and we must fight together to prevent this. The companies must and can do much more,” the statement added according to the local Times of Israel.

“Facebook and internet companies have a responsibility regarding the content they allow on their sites that encourages incitement and terror, and they should actively operate to monitor it,” Erdan said.

Justice Minister Shaked, who has previously called all Palestinians, including women and children “the enemy,” further used the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks in the U.S. to call for a crackdown on Palestinian “terror.”

“Particularly in the week in which we remember 9/11, an event that changed the face of the U.S., it is clear that there is a joint interest among all parties that are in a position to fight terror.”

Such a crackdown on incitement by Facebook would never be used against Israelis who suggest killing Arabs and Palestinians, according to the Intercept.

During the 2014 war on Gaza, many Israelis took to social media platforms to call for more killing of Palestinians.

Last year when an Israeli soldier was arrested for shooting and killing a wounded Palestinian point blank in the head, his fellow troops used Facebook to praise the killing, while Israeli extremists justified the killing and called for his release.

The same Shaked who is worried about online incitement, used Facebook to post the text of an article by the late Israeli writer Uri Elitzur that referred to Palestinian children as “little snakes.”

In a another example, the justice minister posted on Facebook that Palestinians are all “the enemy” and therefore all legitimate targets.

“This is a war between two people. Who is the enemy? The Palestinian people,” she said in a Facebook post in 2015. “Every war is between two peoples, and in every war the people who started the war, that whole people, is the enemy.”

Both of those posts were deleted upon her appointment to the justice ministry.

Facebook and Israel have been developing an intimate relationship over the past few years. In June, Mondoweiss reported that Jordana Cutler, current chief of staff at the Israeli Embassy in Washington, D.C. was hired as head of policy and communications at Facebook’s Israel office.

Facebook has also been very responsive when asked by Israel to delete posts it deems as inciting terror over the past year.

September 13, 2016 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , , | Leave a comment

Israeli defense minister compares illegal Israeli outpost with native Palestinian villages

Ma’an – September 13, 2016

BETHLEHEM – Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman compared the illegal Israeli Amona outpost to the indigenous Palestinian Bedouin village of Susiya and Palestinian land in Jerusalem on Monday in a speech at Ariel University in the occupied West Bank, according to Israeli media.

The Amona outpost was slated for demolition following a 2008 Israeli Supreme Court decision after eight Palestinians from neighboring villages — with the support of Israeli human rights organization Yesh Din — successfully petitioned the court to remove the outpost on grounds that the construction was carried out on privately-owned Palestinian land.

“There is no way that Amona can be left as it is built today, because most of the houses are built on private Palestinian land,” Lieberman reportedly said on Monday, referring to Amona, which was built in 1996.

After years of appeals from right-wing Israeli government officials, and attempts by Amona settlers to prove they had legally purchased the land, an Israeli police investigation in May 2014 found the entirety of the outpost to have been built on Private Palestinian lands, and that the documents used by Amona residents to try claim their “purchases” were in fact forged.

In December 2014, the Israeli Supreme Court ordered again that the outpost be demolished by December 2016.

According to Haaretz, Lieberman followed up on his comments about Amona on Monday with the stipulation that “all the rules that apply to Amona apply to every other place as well.”

Claiming that “there is only one law for both Israelis and Palestinians,” Lieberman reportedly told the audience that it was unacceptable that such rulings — as in the case of Amona, which along with every other settlement and outpost in the occupied West Bank is internationally recognized as being illegal — are unfairly enforced against Israelis but not against “other trespassers.”

The “trespassers” Lieberman was referring to were the Palestinian residents of Susiya in the southern West Bank, and the Palestinians of the area known as the “E1 corridor,” a contentious zone that the Israeli government has set up to link annexed East Jerusalem with the mega settlement of Maale Adumim, which would virtually cut the occupied West Bank in half, making the creation of a contiguous Palestinian State impossible.

“We are a nation based on law and we will honor court decisions in all circumstances,” Lieberman said, saying that “when it comes to enforcing rulings against other trespassers everyone stands up on their hind legs,” seemingly complaining about the international community’s harsh reactions to Israeli government attempts to demolish Susiya and replace it with an illegal Jewish settlement of the exact same name.

Susiya’s residents have been embroiled in a decades-long legal battle to legalize the village and have endured multiple demolitions enforced by Israeli authorities over the years, who say Palestinians lack the proper building permits to live on the land that lies between an Israeli settlement and Israel-controlled archaeological site.

The privately owned Palestinian land is located in Area C — the more than 60 percent of the occupied West Bank under full Israeli control — where building permits for Palestinians are nearly impossible to obtain.

Many of the villagers have ties to the land that predate the creation of the state of Israel, and Ottoman-era land documents to prove it.

Most recently, in mid-July, authorities from Israel’s Civil Administration abruptly halted months of dialog with Susiya’s residents over the possibility of legalizing the village, telling them that a future agreement on the village would now be the responsibility of Lieberman.

Lieberman postponed the announcement of his decision twice, first until November 2016, and then until December.

According to spokesperson for Rabbis for Human Rights (RHR) Yariv Mohar, who is assisting in Susiya’s legal battle, Lieberman’s decision on whether or not to continue the dialogue between the residents of Susiya and the Civil Administration is set to be announced on December 15, 2016.

Lieberman will be responsible for deciding whether to accept the state of Israel’s request to immediately and without prior notice demolish some 40 percent of the southern occupied West Bank village, where half of the some 200 village residents live according to RHR.

The lawyers of RHR have affirmed that there is no question as to whether the residents own the land they are on, also noting that “basic (Jewish) morality dictates it is wrong to demolish part of a village which has previously demolished without any plan or solution for the residents, while international law prohibits the forcible transfer of populations,” Mohar told Ma’an in August.

Though Lieberman has yet to formally announce a decision, his comments on Monday indicate that in his opinion, the residents of Susiya should be subject to the same treatment as the illegal settlers occupying privately owned Palestinian land in Amona.

Lieberman has previously advocated policies ranging from the overthrow of the Palestinian Authority to the deportation of Palestinian citizens of Israel into the occupied Palestinian territory, while promoting the transfer of towns in Israel that are heavily populated by Palestinians to a future Palestinian state in exchange for illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank.

Lieberman himself lives in the southern occupied West Bank Israeli settlement of Nokdim, in contravention of international law.

Since appointed as defense minister by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in May, the two have teamed up to approve hundreds of new housing units in illegal settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

September 13, 2016 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Last words to the nation of Salvador Allende

Last words to the nation of Salvador Allende

Surely this will be the last opportunity for me to address you. The Air Force has bombed the towers of Radio Portales and Radio Corporación.

My words do not have bitterness but disappointment. May they be a moral punishment for those who have betrayed their oath: soldiers of Chile, titular commanders in chief, Admiral Merino, who has designated himself Commander of the Navy, and Mr. Mendoza, the despicable general who only yesterday pledged his fidelity and loyalty to the Government, and who also has appointed himself Chief of the Carabineros [national police].

Given these facts, the only thing left for me is to say to workers: I am not going to resign!

Placed in a historic transition, I will pay for loyalty to the people with my life. And I say to them that I am certain that the seed which we have planted in the good conscience of thousands and thousands of Chileans will not be shriveled forever.
They have strength and will be able to dominate us, but social processes can be arrested neither by crime nor force. History is ours, and people make history.

Workers of my country: I want to thank you for the loyalty that you always had, the confidence that you deposited in a man who was only an interpreter of great yearnings for justice, who gave his word that he would respect the Constitution and the law and did just that. At this definitive moment, the last moment when I can address you, I wish you to take advantage of the lesson: foreign capital, imperialism, together with the reaction, created the climate in which the Armed Forces broke their tradition, the tradition taught by General Schneider and reaffirmed by Commander Araya, victims of the same social sector which will today be in their homes hoping, with foreign assistance, to retake power to continue defending their profits and their privileges.

I address, above all, the modest woman of our land, the farmer who believed in us, the worker who labored more, the mother who knew our concern for children. I address professionals of Chile, patriotic professionals, those who days ago continued working against the sedition sponsored by professional associations, class-based associations that also defended the advantages which a capitalist society grants to a few.

I address the youth, those who sang and gave us their joy and their spirit of struggle. I address the man of Chile, the worker, the farmer, the intellectual, those who will be persecuted, because in our country fascism has been already present for many hours — in terrorist attacks, blowing up the bridges, cutting the railroad tracks, destroying the oil and gas pipelines, in the face of the silence of those who had the obligation to protect them. They were committed. History will judge them.

Surely Radio Magallanes will be silenced, and the calm metal instrument of my voice will no longer reach you. It does not matter. You will continue hearing it. I will always be next to you. At least my memory will be that of a man of dignity who was loyal to [inaudible] the workers.

The people must defend themselves, but they must not sacrifice themselves. The people must not let themselves be destroyed or riddled with bullets, but they cannot be humiliated either.

Workers of my country, I have faith in Chile and its destiny. Other men will overcome this dark and bitter moment when treason seeks to prevail. Go forward knowing that, sooner rather than later, the great avenues will open again where free men will walk to build a better society.

Long live Chile! Long live the people! Long live the workers!

These are my last words, and I am certain that my sacrifice will not be in vain, I am certain that, at the very least, it will be a moral lesson that will punish felony, cowardice, and treason.

chilecoup

September 11, 2016 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Timeless or most popular, Video | , , , , | Leave a comment

A new international control regime on armed drones led by the US? What is going on?

By Chris Cole • Drone Wars UK • September 2, 2016

The United States has begun moves to develop what amounts to a new international control regime on the proliferation and use of armed drones. US officials presented details of a ‘Proposed Joint Declaration of Principles for the Export and Subsequent Use of Armed or Strike-Enabled Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS)’ to international export control officials during the arms trade treaty review conference in Geneva this week.

US officials told Defense News, who first revealed the initative, that the joint declaration – to be signed by as many nations as possible – is the first of a two-stage process. The declaration, official stated, would addresses “the misperceptions” about the use of armed drones, as well as “the complicated, sensitive and controversial aspects”. Although the draft joint declaration has not been made public, it appears to echo the US’ own policy guidance on the export of armed drones put in place in Spring 2015. Defense News reports that the current draft

“lays out five key principles for international norms, including the “applicability of International law” and human rights when using armed drones; a dedication to following existing arms control laws when considering the sale of armed unmanned systems; that sales of armed drone exports take “into account the potential recipient country’s history regarding adherence to international obligations and commitments”; that countries who export unmanned strike systems follow “appropriate transparency measures” when required; and a resolution to continue to “ensure these capabilities are transferred and used responsibly by all States.”

The second stage of the process is the establishment of an international working group on armed drones for those who sign the declaration, which will devise “a voluntary Code of Conduct for exporting and importing nations.”

Why is this happening?

Over the past three years, as we have written previously, there has been a real rise in the proliferation of drones by Israel, the US and in particular by China. Iraq, Nigeria, and apparently Egypt have all gone on to launch drone strikes over the past two years utilising armed drones bought from China.

On the one hand US drone industry lobbyists have long argued that their industry is hampered by the US membership of the Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR) which controls the export of larger drones as neither China nor Israel are members (although Israel says it abides by its rules voluntarily). The drone industry has argued that the MTCR rules need to be ‘relaxed’ in order for the US to gain its fair share of the market. This new initiative seemingly therefore arises in part from drone industry lobbying to put in place a process which they want to see as levelling the playing field.

On the other hand, the outgoing Obama administration is also legacy shopping. Stung by international criticism of its use of armed drones over the past decade it wants at least the appearance of putting in place international rules to restrict the proliferation and use of such technology

It seems these two disparate and contrary ideas have come together in this new process.

Prospects for success?

Although a number of countries are working individually or jointly to develop an advanced drone industry, currently the US, Israel and China are the market leaders. While China is unlikely to be involved in this new US-led initiative, US officials apparently believe that they can persuade Israel to join. Israel has never even confirmed that it operates armed drones, so Israeli officials often refuse to talk on the record about the issue but early reports indicate a great deal of scepticism and alarm from Israel about the initiative.

Israel and China however will not be the only nations suspicious of any drone control initiative led by US, fearing that it is simply about the US promoting its own commercial and political interests. Campaigners and the human rights community too will need convincing that such an initiative is a genuine attempt to curb proliferation and use beyond the bounds of international law.  After all, we have spent the last decade watching the US “interpret” (i.e. bend and break) international law in this area in its own interests.

However, despite genuine suspicions, the seeming acceptance of the need for an international control regime on the proliferation and use of armed drones is to be welcomed. Armed drones are a real and genuine danger to international peace and security. While there is a long, long way to go and many – if not most – will need to be convinced, that this is the right process, failure will also play into the hands of those who argue that there should not and cannot be such controls.

September 11, 2016 Posted by | Economics, Militarism, War Crimes | , , | Leave a comment

CIA Continues to Cover Up Its Involvement in Chile’s 9/11 Coup

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Victim of one the many coups on democracy carried out by the United States: Salvador Allende
teleSUR | September 9, 2016

Though intelligence documents from the 1973 coup period have been declassified since 1999, the CIA continues to censor them.

The CIA continues to withhold information on its involvement in the Sept. 11, 1973 coup that led to the death of President Salvador Allende in Chile, followed by a deadly dictatorship, according to documents posted Friday by the National Security Archive.

In the list of published documents, the section regarding Chile is censored. The President’s Daily Briefs, the intelligence reports given daily to the U.S. president, in particular former President Richard Nixon days before Allende’s death, were among those censored.

According to Peter Kornbluh, director of the Archive’s Chile Documentation Project, censorship on this issue makes no sense since the intelligence agency has officially acknowledged its ties to those who plotted the coup from inside the Chilean military, and declassified several intelligence reports since.

“The CIA is trying—but failing—to hold history hostage,” Kornbluh said. “The CIA is attempting to cover up what Nixon knew about coup plotting in Chile and when he knew it, as well as hiding the CIA’s own contacts and connections to the coup plotters.”

According to the documents, three days before the coup—and on the day of the coup—the CIA gave Nixon an intelligence report on the progress of the efforts inside the Chilean military to overthrow Allende, a socialist.

In one document, a CIA operative in Santiago named Jack Devine identifies the new date of the planned coup for the next day, September 11, and confirms all three branches of the Chilean armed forces along with the police “are involved in this action.”

The same sources told the CIA that General Augusto Pinochet, who would later become a dictator with the support of the U.S., was in communication with Air Force General Gustavo Leigh about the planned coup. The Air Force would later bomb La Moneda presidential palace, where Allende and his closest allies were on Sept. 11.

The CIA told the White House that a “key officer” in the coup attempt requested U.S. assistance in case the Chilean military encountered any resistance, according to the documents.

Kornbluh said his institution would press for the release of the censored information.

“The documents provided to Richard Nixon on Chile can and should be released for the sanctity of the historical record. The public has a right to know what the President knew, and when he knew it,” he said.

September 11, 2016 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Timeless or most popular | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Netanyahu’s Ethnic Cleansing Blood Libel

By Richard Silverstein | Tikun Olam | September 10, 2016

The pro-Israel crowd love to trot out anti-Semitic memes to smear their opponents. One of them, used widely by Alan Dershowitz and the like is the term “blood libel.” Accuse Israelis of killing Palestinians indiscriminately and it’s a blood libel because, of course, a Jew shedding non-Jewish blood is the same as Jews murdering Christian babies to use their blood in making matzah for Passover. Got that?

Bibi Netanyahu’s latest outrage is this video in which he ever so innocently professes bafflement that Palestinians would oppose Israeli settlements. Why, he asks, if 2-million “Arabs” (the actual number is 1.8-million) live in Israel proper, can’t Jews live in Palestine?

There is a wee-small problem with this analogy: approximately 600,000 Israeli Jews live in settlements. But they have lived in them for at best a generation, while Palestinians have lived in Israel for centuries. The vast bulk of settlers moved to Palestine since 1967, while Palestinians have lived in Israel over a vastly longer span. Nor have Palestinians displaced anyone over this period. While Israeli settlers have literally stolen the land out from under the Palestinian natives.

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Ethnic cleansing Israel-style: yet another Palestinian home bulldozed

Bibi’s general argument is not new. He and his supporters have advanced it for years. But he added a new and even more outrageous twist this time: Palestinian opposition to Israeli settlements was akin to ethnic cleansing because it meant no Palestinian would ever accept any Jew living anywhere on Palestinian land.

There are numerous outrageous elements to this charge worth parsing. The first, and most obvious is that it’s Israel, rather than Palestine, that’s engaged in ethnic cleansing. Israel has destroyed a record number of Palestinian homes over the past year, leaving their inhabitants homeless. It has enacted draconian definitions of Palestinian residency which render tens of thousands of Palestinians stateless if they live outside areas like East Jerusalem for any length of time. Israel also depopulates Palestinian neighborhoods of East Jerusalem through forcible eviction and theft of homes. Israel maintains a stranglehold over the West Bank economy so that stifles innovation, independence and development that might sustain the population. The final coup de grâce is the siege of Gaza, which has forced thousands of Gazans to flee their imprisonment by any means possible.

So which Israeli Jew has ever been ethnically cleansed from Palestine? None. Further, the claim that Palestinians will never accept Jews living in Palestine is a hoax perpetrated by none other than Netanyahu himself and his followers. In fact, those like Rabbi Menachem Froman, who lived in the Tekoah settlement before his untimely death, denounced the idea of Israeli national sovereignty in the West Bank. He argued that he would happily live under Palestinian jurisdiction. What was important to him was not which nation owned the land on which he lived. Rather, he believed God owned the land and his allegiance was to Him and not to any particular nation.

Such an approach offered a way for Jews to remain in Palestine after a peace agreement was signed. Undoubtedly, the lion’s share of settlers would return to Israel, rather than remain under Palestinian sovereignty. But to those who really sought to uphold the vision of Abraham and the Bible to live in this Holy land, they could live there as Palestinian (or Israeli) citizens.

The final hypocrisy of Bibi’s video is his refusal to reciprocate with Palestinians regarding Jewish settlers in Palestine. If you truly believe that Jews must live there, then it’s self-evident that Palestinians should be permitted to return to their homes in pre-48 Israel. Jewish settlers see their return to their ancestral homeland as a fulfillment of sacred Biblical texts and a divine promise. The Palestinian return to their homelands from which they were expelled by Israel in 1948 is no less compelling to them. It is, to them, reparation for the Original Sin committed against them by Ben Gurion in the establishment of the State.

So if Bibi wants to argue that Jews who returned to ancient sites like Hebron or Tekoah or Bethlehem must be permitted to remain there, I say fine: then let’s talk about the return of the original refugees expelled in the Nakba and their direct descendants.

The U.S. government was none to happy with Bibi’s incitement against Palestinians. The State Department, in its typical milquetoast fashion, called the comments “inappropriate and unhelpful.” This sort of language is akin to taking a pebble to a gunfight. It’s one thing when David faces off against Goliath with a slingshot. But this is like David blowing bubbles at his well-armed nemesis. Indeed, the motto for U.S. policy toward Israel should be an inversion of the famous military slogan: “always outnumbered, always outgunned.”

NOTE: I’ve just published a new piece at Mint Press News, Israel Ramps Up Its War on BDS.  It exposes an official Israeli campaign of death threats and intimidation against Palestinian activists and NGOs.

September 10, 2016 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

CNN says Al-Qaeda are ”heroes”

By Gearóid Ó Colmáin | September 8, 2016

In an interview with Charlie Rose on the 10th of August 2016, CNN’s Middle East “super-correspondent”, Clarissa Ward, said that the Al-Qaeda-affiliated terrorist group, Japhat Al-Nosra (now known as Japhat Fatah Al-Sham) were the only ” heroes” in the mislabeled Syrian Civil War. Ward told Charlie Rose, ” … even though some of these more extremist factions are not hugely popular with everyone living in rebel-held areas, they are also the people who have unfortunately, Charlie, emerged as the so-called heroes in this narrative because they are the ones who have stepped in to fill the void. So the reality is in rebel-held Syria, these Islamist factions have emerged as an important force. Now if the U.S. was to decide to join with Russia to take out those more extremist factions, that would certainly be extremely unpopular with the Syrian people that the U.S. would purportedly be trying to actually help.”

https://charlierose.com/video/player/28578

This is not the first time a major Western broadcaster has publicly backed the terrorist group. Since Syria was invaded by foreign mercenaries in 2011, backed by U.S./NATO/Israel, with the objective of breaking up the country according to NATO’s geopolitical interests, the terrorist group are systematically described by the Western corporate press as ‘moderate rebels’. When asked if the Japhat Fatah al-Sham, have really severed their ties with Al-Qaeda, Ward states that it is unlikely as they praised Osama Bin Laden and Ayman Al-Zawahiri in their recent videos. But she still advocates US support for the terrorist group by describing the Lebanon’s Hezbollah who are supporting Assad as “terrorists”. According to that logic, if Assad is using “terrorists”, so should the U.S! Now, as the battle for Aleppo, Syria’s second largest city, heats up, the terrorists are again being marketed by their puppet-masters as ” heroes”.Hezbollah was formed in Lebanon after the Israeli invasion of that country after 1982. The organisation participates fully in the electoral, democratic process and respects the political rights of all Lebanese citizens. To therefore suggest that two law-abiding nation states and a mass democratic organisation of legitimate resistance to colonial rule, are the equivalent to head-choppers, rapists, marauders and mass murderers in the pay of the retrograde regimes such as Saudi Arabia, is another cogent reminder of the moral bankruptcy of the Western military alliance and its media disinformation agencies.

The United States who created Al-Qaeda – a fact admitted by Hillary Clinton – are the puppet-masters of the death squads who have overrun Syria since March 2011. It is claimed that a ‘spontaneous uprising’ against an ‘undemocratic’ regime was met by brutal violence from the security forces. That was the big lie which launched the war on the country. The Syrian government did not repress peaceful protests. I visited Syria two weeks after the violence broke out in 2011. I had the opportunity of witnessing some protests in Karfanbel outside Damascus. The Syrian security forces behaved in an extremely professional and orderly manner. On March 15th in the town of Daraa in the South of the country, snipers opened fire killing several police and protesters. The snipers were in the pay of the Muslim Brotherhood- a terrorist organisation linked to the United States and Israel, Turkey and the Gulf dictatorships. The Western press made no effort to investigate the origin of the violence in Syria. The Syrian government was blamed for repressing ‘peaceful protesters’. Human rights organisations such as Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and subsequently White Helmets, played a key role in the lies and disinformation which the terrorists used as cover for their slaughter of the innocents in Syria.

Only the willingly blind and ignorant could view the U.S./NATO/Israeli role in the destruction of Syria uncritically. Since the arrival of IS (Islamic State, formerly ISIS/ISIL) on the Syrian war theatre in 2014, the intensity of the conflict has escalated. IS – another creation of the United States – was used by NATO as a pretext for a bombing campaign against Syria, when the lies and propaganda campaign against the country failed to provide the Western military alliance with the opportunity to launch a carpet bombing campaign against the Syrian state.

The Western public are being told by corporate media giants like CNN et al, that their freedoms have to be curtailed in order to win the war on Islamist terrorists while the very same terrorists are being openly and unashamedly described as “heroes” when they commit atrocities in Syria. On September 11th every year the same news agencies will remind you about the “threat” of Al-Qaeda and the “heroes” fighting them. They will never tell you who those real heroes are; they are the men and women of Syria who are defending their country against the foreign invaders. They peacefully congregate en masse in public squares to wave the flag of the Syrian Arab Republic and the leader they believe to be an incorruptibly loyal patriot, Dr. Bashar al-Assad. Heroes are motivated by love, not hate. To understand why there is a catastrophic war in Syria, you just need to listen to what hateful people like Clarissa Ward say. And Clarissa Ward has told you that the Syrian rebels are terrorists and that terrorists become  heroes when they serve U.S. interests.

Do you understand now?

September 10, 2016 Posted by | Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Addictive painkiller profiteer donates $500k to fight cannabis legalization in Arizona

RT | September 9, 2016

Insys Therapeutics, which profits off of a painkiller 50 times more potent than heroin, has donated $500,000 to a campaign opposing marijuana legalization in the US state of Arizona.

The maker of the drug Subsys, a sublingual fentanyl spray, said that children are their main concern for fighting Proposition 205, which appears on the ballot this November.

“They want to be able to push their far more addictive, far more harmful and far more dangerous opioid drugs,” JP Holyoak, chair of the committee pushing Prop 205, told the Arizona Capitol Times.

Supporters of cannabis legalization say legal access to their natural non-addictive painkiller could eliminate the need for drugs like fentanyl, which contributes to America’s growing epidemic of opioid dependency that claims more lives each year than gunshot wounds or car crashes.

Prince died from an overdose of fentanyl and one third of Ohio’s 3,050 deaths caused by lethal drug consumption last year were linked to the drug, according to the Columbus Dispatch.

A 2014 study by John Hopkins University found that states which legalized medical marijuana had 25 percent less overdose deaths from prescription drugs than those where it remained illegal.

Insys said in a statement that its opposition to the legalization of cannabis was “because it fails to protect the safety of Arizona’s citizens, and particularly its children.”

It did not address whether the outcome could have financial benefits for the company, although all of its profits come from the sale of its only product – the fentanyl-containing spray, according to its August filing.

Last month, Illinois Attorney General, Lisa Madigan, brought a lawsuit against Insys over claims they had deceptively marketed and sold their medication to doctors for uses other than cancer treatment, which the FDA has approved its sole use for.

Madigan said the company’s “desire for increased profits led it to disregard patients’ health and push addictive opioids for non-FDA approved purposes.”

Insys became the largest contributor to the anti-legalization campaign after donating to Arizonans for Responsible Drug Policy, a group opposing the initiative to regulate marijuana in the state under Prop 205.

Their donation was over 400 percent higher than the next largest donor, the Arizona Chamber of Commerce and Industry, with $110,000.

Pro-legalization campaigners have called for the donation to be returned as it has now tainted the campaign against Prop 205.

“We hope that every Arizonan understands that Arizonans for Responsible Drug Policy is now a complete misnomer. Their entire campaign is tainted by this money. Any time an ad airs against Proposition 205, the voters should know that it was paid for by highly suspect Big Pharma actors,” Holyoak said.

When questioned by the Arizona Capitol Times about donations made to the Marijuana Policy Project in support of Prop 205, Holyoak did not dispute that several out-of-state interest donors “stand to make millions if Prop 205 passes.”

Coincidentally, the recently-passed Bill 205 in Canada banned the sale of pill presses for making fentanyl.

September 9, 2016 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Corruption, Deception | , , | Leave a comment

European Copyright Ruling Ushers in New Dark Era for Hyperlinks

By Jeremy Malcolm | EFF | September 8, 2016

In a case which threatens to cause turmoil for thousands if not millions of websites, the Court of Justice of the European Union decided today that a website that merely links to material that infringes copyright, can itself be found guilty of copyright infringement, provided only that the operator knew or could reasonably have known that the material was infringing. Worse, they will be presumed to know of this if the links are provided for “the pursuit of financial gain”.

The case, GS Media BV v. Sanoma, concerned a Dutch news website, GeenStijl, that linked to leaked pre-publication photos from Playboy magazine, as well as publishing a thumbnail of one of them. The photos were hosted not by GeenStijl itself but at first by an Australian image hosting website, then later by Imageshack, and subsequently still other web hosts, with GeenStijl updating the links as the copyright owner had the photos taken down from one image host after another.

The court’s press release [PDF] spins this decision in such a positive light that much reporting on the case, including that by Reuters, gets it wrong, and assumes that only for-profit websites are affected by the decision. To be clear, that’s not the case. Even a non-profit website or individual who links to infringing content can be liable for infringing copyright if they knew that the material was infringing, for example after receiving notice of this from the copyright holder. And anyway, the definition of “financial gain” is broad enough to encompass any website, like GeenStijl, that runs ads.

This terrible ruling is hard to fathom given that the court accepted “that hyperlinks contribute to [the Internet’s] sound operation as well as to the exchange of opinions and information in that network”, and that “it may be difficult, in particular for individuals who wish to post such links, to ascertain whether [a] website to which those links are expected to lead, provides access to works [that] the copyright holders … have consented to … posting on the internet”. Nevertheless, that’s exactly what the judgment effectively requires website operators to do, if they are to avoid the risk of being found to have knowingly linked to infringing content.

There are also many times when knowingly linking to something that is infringing is entirely legitimate. For example, a post calling out a plagiarized news article might link to the original article and to the plagiarized one, so that readers can compare and judge for themselves. According to this judgment, the author of that post could themselves be liable for copyright infringement for linking to the plagiarized article—madness.

This judgment is a gift to copyright holders, who now have a vastly expanded array of targets against which to bring copyright infringement lawsuits. The result will be that websites operating in Europe will be much more reticent to allow external hyperlinks, and may even remove historical material that contains such links, in fear of punishing liability.

September 9, 2016 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , | Leave a comment

Increased Israeli attacks on civilians in Gaza endanger two-year-old ceasefire

MEMO | September 8, 2016

Israeli forces markedly increased their attacks on Palestinian civilians in the Gaza Strip during the second quarter of 2016, United Nations (UN) data has revealed, with concerns that such violence endangers the viability of the ceasefire that ended ‘Operation Protective Edge’ in 2014.

During the period April-June, there were an average of more than 90 shooting incidents per month by Israeli forces in Gaza’s so-called access restricted areas (ARA) – some 60 on land, and 30 at sea. This is more than double the equivalent average figures for the last six months of 2015.

Israeli forces have long attacked farmers, fishermen and other civilians in Gaza’s ARA. As the UN described in July, Israel’s unilaterally-imposed access restrictions are “enforced by firing direct or warning live ammunition, the destruction of property, arrests and the confiscation of equipment.”

Presenting the latest figures in a quarterly update published last month, the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT) described “the use of force by Israel” in the ARA as a “particular cause for concern.”

According to James Heenan, head of office at the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights in the occupied Palestinian territory, “there are almost daily shooting incidents by Israeli forces into Gaza, often resulting in injury and even death as well as destruction of property.”

In most cases, Heenan told Middle East Monitor, “there are no indications that Israeli forces were in any imminent threat to have justified the level of force employed, including use of firearms. Often victims are farmers, fishermen, children, and demonstrators.”

On April 3, the Israeli authorities announced an expansion of the permitted fishing zone off the southern Gaza coast from six to nine miles (note that the Oslo Accords stipulate a 20-mile limit). However, on June 26, less than three months later, the six-mile limit was re-imposed.

By July, according to OCHA, more than 90 fishermen had been arrested and detained, “the highest figure in any year since records began in 2009.” Over nine days in August, for example, Israeli forces attacked Palestinian fishermen on six different occasions (Aug. 21, 23, 25, 27, 28, 29).

In May, meanwhile, it was reported that the Israeli army would allow farmers to access land close to the border fence, under the supervision of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). Since 2014, the ICRC has been helping Gaza’s farmers to rehabilitate land and secure access.

While some farmers have clearly benefited, a Jerusalem-based ICRC spokesperson declined to comment on Israeli forces’ continued attacks in the ARA, saying that “any issues of concern are addressed as part of our confidential and bilateral dialogue with all parties to the conflict.”

As one farmer told activists recently: “My lands are relatively close to the fence, so I cannot set foot in them between 6pm and 6am without getting shot at. What can I do if the electricity does not come before 6pm? I have to leave my land without watering, risking the loss of the crop.”

The violence used by Israeli forces against Palestinian civilians in the Gaza Strip is vastly under-reported in the English-language Western media. The majority of attacks on fishermen, farmers, and demonstrators do not even get a mention.

Such attacks, however, cannot be divorced from the bigger picture in the Gaza Strip, including the ‘security’ dimension that is typically understood by journalists, analysts, and policy-makers in terms of projectile fire and Israeli military responses.

According to Fawzi Barhoum, a Gaza-based Hamas spokesperson, Hamas views Israeli forces’ routine use of violence against Palestinians in the ARA as a violation of the 2014 ceasefire. “Hamas records all the violations, and updates the regional sponsors of the ceasefire accordingly”, he said.

Furthermore, Barhoum added, such attacks by Israeli forces “endanger the status quo.”

Each time, Hamas discusses what happens with the other Palestinian factions, who evaluate together what is the best response to the Israeli violation in question; whether it is silence, condemnation, warnings, firing short-range rockets, unleashing snipers on the borders, etc.

Thus, aside from the cost for farmers and fishermen of Israel’s policy of violently enforcing a ‘no-go zone’ inside Gaza, such attacks, clearly on the rise, also risk further undermining a ceasefire agreement that brought ‘calm’ for Israel, but nothing like it for Palestinians.

September 9, 2016 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture | , , , , , | Leave a comment

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