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Iran blasts IAEA for repeating old allegations based on bogus Israeli claims

Press TV – June 17, 2022

Iran’s nuclear agency chief has again blasted the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) for repeating old allegations against the country’s civilian nuclear program, based on bogus Israeli claims.

Mohammad Eslami, the head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI), addressing a press conference in the central Iranian city of Natanz on Thursday, said the false allegations made by the IAEA are detrimental to ongoing negotiations to revive the 2015 nuclear deal.

“Now that the negotiations for [the US] return to the JCPOA [nuclear deal] are underway, the same old allegations are being repeated by citing fabricated claims made by the Zionist regime,” Eslami said.

He was referring to the UN nuclear agency’s mention of the so-called PMD (possible military dimensions) file on Iran’s nuclear program, insisting that such schemes will not help negotiations.

Eslami stressed that the reasoning behind signing the 2015 nuclear deal – officially referred to as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) – was the closure of false Western allegations about possible military applications of Iran’s civilian nuclear program under the PMD file.

He said the PMD file was supposed to be closed as a key condition for reaching the accord and lifting anti-Iran sanctions — based on extensive inspections of Iran’s nuclear facilities and activities by the IAEA over the past two decades.

“We, in turn, accepted limitations on our nuclear activities and thereby yielded on our certain rights as well as accepted inspections on the condition that previous accusations would be permanently revoked and that we would be able to continue our activities under strict inspection and trust-building engagements,” the official added.

Eslami said Iran continues to operate under the IAEA regulations, while defending the removal of surveillance cameras functioning beyond the safeguards agreement, in reaction to the anti-Iran vote at the UN agency’s board of governors meeting recently.

Last week, Eslami slammed the IAEA for politicizing Iran’s peaceful nuclear program under Israeli pressure while disregarding Tehran’s extensive cooperation with the UN agency after the adoption of a resolution against Iran — drafted by the US and its European allies.

Eslami justified Tehran’s refusal to provide the IAEA with films of JCPOA’s monitoring cameras, stressing that the accord between Iran and the 5+1 countries will only exist as long as both sides remain committed to it.

“Today they want to return to JCPOA, but then raise the same old reasons for starting the nuclear talks. So we, in turn, did not grant them access to the film of the JCOPA cameras,” he stressed.

“Psychological operations, media campaigns and political pressures and controversies against Iran have never produced results in the past and will now remain ineffective as well because the PMD file was closed in the past, and reopening it will in no way help them,” he added.

He said Iran was in possession of “less than three percent of the world’s nuclear reserves” but still “more than 25 percent of [IAEA] inspections” were carried out in Iran, while the regimes that have waged wars against Iran have never allowed inspections of their nuclear facilities.

Iran’s foreign minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, in his remarks on Thursday, also blamed the US for IAEA’s recent anti-Tehran resolution, insisting that the move was aimed at mounting pressure on Tehran to give concessions in Vienna talks.

Iran’s top diplomat made the remarks in a Thursday phone call with his Iraqi counterpart, Fuad Hussein, during which the two sides also discussed bilateral issues and regional developments.

Negotiations have been underway in the Austrian capital since April last year to restore the 2015 Iran deal, which the former US President Donald Trump unilaterally abandoned in May 2018.

After quitting the deal, Trump introduced what he called the “maximum pressure” campaign to bring Iran to its knees, a policy that has failed miserably. The Joe Biden administration, despite its initial pledge to reverse Trump’s hard-nosed measures, has failed to deliver.

Iran has cited Washington’s indecisiveness as the reason behind the stalemate in talks, as many key issues remain unresolved, ranging from the removal of all post-JCPOA sanctions to the provision of guarantees by the American side that it will not leave the deal again.

AEOI spokesman Behrouz Kamalvandi on Wednesday advised IAEA director general Rafael Grossi to refrain from “complicating the situation” by making political statements after the UN agency called on Iran to resume talks before things get “much more problematic.”

“I amicably advise Rafael Grossi, the director-general of the [International Atomic Energy] Agency, to distance himself from making unprofessional statements of political color intended for media consumption,” Kamalvandi said.

“It is clear that if there is a technical issue, it should be presented professionally within the framework of the Agency’s duties and followed through its channels and the usual mechanisms of the Agency. Obviously, the arena for such interactions is not the media.”

Kamalvandi was referring to Grossi’s interview broadcast on June 12 on CNN, in which he made unusually menacing tropes against Iran.

Grossi sparked a controversy after he traveled to Israel and met the regime’s leaders late last month, just before the IAEA board of governors meeting.

The IAEA’s annual report, experts believe, was based on documents supplied by Israel about Iran’s nuclear program, which Tehran has rejected as fabricated.

June 17, 2022 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Israel snubs Biden request to halt actions that could embarrass the US President

MEMO | June 16, 2022

US President, Joe Biden, sought assurance from Israel that no action is taken in the occupied West Bank and Jerusalem that could create tensions ahead of his controversial visit next month to the Apartheid State. Biden’s team made the request to the Israelis in what seems to be an attempt by the White House to avoid repeating the embarrassment Biden suffered over a decade ago when he visited the territory as Vice President under the administration of Barack Obama.

During the 2010 visit, Biden vowed unyielding American support for Israel’s security. The Israelis returned the favour by humiliating the then vice President with an announcement to build 1,600 new Jewish only houses, in illegal settlements, in occupied East Jerusalem. Biden condemned the move as “precisely the kind of step that undermines the trust we need right now.” A statement by the White House condemned “the substance and timing of the announcement.”

Barbara Leaf, the US Assistant Secretary of State for Near East Affairs, and her deputy for Israeli-Palestinian affairs, Hady Amr, are laying the groundwork for Biden’s visit scheduled for 13-15 July. Leaf asked Israel to halt actions like home demolitions, evictions of Palestinians and decisions on settlement building, as well as decrease Israeli military operations in the West Bank until after Biden’s visit, officials told Axios.

The Israelis have said they are not able to give such assurances, but they will, nevertheless, try their best. According to Axios, senior members of the Israeli team, including Defence Minister, Benny Gantz, told Leaf they will do their best, but explained the domestic political complexities of halting such actions, in addition to what they called the operational needs of the Israeli military in order to stop attacks.

With the trip coming fresh after the Israeli killing of Palestinian journalist, Shireen Abu Akleh, the Americans are fearful of a global outrage coinciding with Biden’s visit to the Apartheid State. “The Biden administration doesn’t want us to create any crisis in the West Bank … They want quiet and calm” for Biden’s visit, a senior Israeli official is reported saying.

Not only is the US team desperate to avoid embarrassment for Biden, they are also putting together a plan to show that the US President is capable of making progress. Israeli, Palestinian and US officials said Leaf, Amr and US ambassador to Israel, Tom Nides, tried to put together a package of tangible deliverables for the Palestinians to coincide with the Biden visit.

But they did not make significant progress on the package because there are not enough meaningful things the US can give and Israel is not willing to take any steps with political significance that will be enough for the Palestinians, the officials said, according to Axios.

“We need a political horizon. We want to hear President Biden say what his detailed position regarding the two state solution is,” PLO official and adviser to the Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas, Hussein Al-Sheikhal-Sheikh, is reported saying. “The US wants the visit to take place in a good atmosphere – different than the one now,” Al-Sheikhal-Sheikh added implying that Washington is more concerned about its image than it is about Israel’s daily human rights violations.

In a blow to the Biden team’s effort to portray the US President as the broker of peace, the PA and Israel rejected their proposal to meet. Palestinian officials stressed that such a meeting should include an Israeli commitment to the two-state solution based on the 1967 borders, otherwise, the meeting would be useless.

June 16, 2022 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , , , , | Leave a comment

Iran vs. UAE – ‘Russia and Ukraine Gulf edition’ coming soon?

By Gavin O’Reilly | OffGuardian | June 15, 2022

Although receiving miniscule media coverage, Thursday’s announcement that Israel had deployed military infrastructure to the UAE and Bahrain in the shape of radar systems, ostensibly to counter an alleged missile threat from nearby Iran, should be a cause for concern amongst onlookers.

Coming in the same 24 hour period in which Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett paid a surprise visit to the Emirates, and in which Israeli Forces bombed Damascus International Airport, the announcement that both Abu Dhabi and Manama had agreed to host Israeli military infrastructure should be seen as the first step towards current tensions between Tel Aviv and Tehran being placed on a possibly irreversible path towards conflict in the region.

Indeed, Israeli encirclement of Iran via Tel Aviv-allied Arab states possibly triggering a war between Tehran and both the UAE and Bahrain bears a stark similarity to the nine-year long build-up of provocations which would ultimately led Russia to launch a military intervention into neighbouring Ukraine in February of this year.

In November 2013, following the decision by then-Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych to suspend a trade deal with the EU in order to pursue closer ties with Russia, a CIA-orchestrated regime change operation, known as ‘Euromaidan’, would be launched in order to depose Yanukovych’s leadership and replace him with the pro-Western Petro Poroshenko – whose coalition government would contain rabid far-right sympathisers hostile to Moscow.

Indeed, such was the anti-Russian sentiment amongst the new US-backed Kiev government that the predominantly ethnic-Russian Donbass region in the east of the country would breakaway to form the independent republics of Donetsk and Luhansk in April 2014, following the previous month’s successful reunification of the Crimean Peninsula with the rest of Russia.

The establishment of these two pro-Russian Republics however, would spark a near eight-year long conflict in the eastern European country, in which Kiev would use neo-Nazi paramilitaries such as Azov Battalion and Right Sector to wage an ethnic cleansing campaign against the inhabitants of the Donbass.

In spite of Western media descriptions of ‘Russian aggression’ however, Moscow had sought to resolve the conflict in Donbass through peaceful mean via the Minsk Agreements – which would see both Republics granted a degree of autonomy whilst still remaining under the rule of Kiev.

With 14,000 dead in the Donbass conflict, NATO failing to honour a post-Cold War agreement not to expand eastwards, and the subsequent confirmation that US-funded labs were developing bioweapons in Ukraine however, Moscow’s hand was ultimately forced in February of this year when a Russian military intervention was launched into Ukraine in order to remove neo-Nazi elements from power and to destroy any military infrastructure that would ultimately have been used by NATO had Kiev gone on to become a member.

This is where the similarities with Iran and the neighbouring Gulf states of the UAE and Bahrain come into play, with both countries having formalised diplomatic links with Tel Aviv via the September 2020 US-brokered Abraham Accords.

Lauded as a ‘peace deal’ by the then-administration of Donald Trump, despite Israel, the UAE and Bahrain never actually being at war, the ‘normalisation’ agreements, coming eight months after the US had nearly triggered a new Gulf war with the assassination of Iranian Quds Force commander Qasem Soleimani in a drone strike, were seen by many geopolitical observers as a means to contain Iran within the region, a long-time foreign policy aim shared by both Washington and Tel Aviv.

Indeed, despite the relationship between Israel and both states initially starting off on a purely diplomatic basis, the announcement that Israeli radar systems are to be moved into both the UAE and Bahrain marks a dangerous step towards a scenario were Israeli military infrastructure is placed within striking distance of Iran – a situation that would likely lead to a major regional conflict, one that could reach far beyond the Persian Gulf.

Gavin O’Reilly is an Irish Republican activist from Dublin, Ireland, with a strong interest in the effects of British and US Imperialism; he was a writer for the American Herald Tribune from January 2018 up until their seizure by the FBI in 2021, with his work also appearing on The Duran, Al-Masdar, MintPress News, Global Research and SouthFront. He can be reached through Twitter and Facebook and supported on Patreon.

June 15, 2022 Posted by | Militarism | , , , , | Leave a comment

Nuclear-armed states spent $82.4bn on nukes in 2021, US topped list: Report

Press TV – June 15, 2022

The world’s nine nuclear-armed countries – led by the US – spent $82.4 billion upgrading their atomic arsenal in 2021, eight percent more than the previous year, an anti-nuke campaign group has unveiled.

The largest spender by far was the United States, which accounted for more than half the total expenditures on nuclear weapons – followed respectively by China, Russia, Britain, France, India, the Israeli regime, Pakistan and North Korea – the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) stated in its annual report, titled “Squandered: 2021 Global Nuclear Weapons Spending.”

“Nuclear-armed states spent an obscene amount of money on illegal weapons of mass destruction in 2021, while the majority of the world’s countries support a global nuclear weapons ban,” the group said in the report, noting that the massive spending nevertheless failed to prevent a war in Europe.

“This spending failed to deter a war in Europe and squandered valuable resources that could be better used to address current security challenges, or cope with the outcome of a still raging global pandemic,” ICAN said. “This corrupt cycle of wasteful spending must be put to an end.”

The group said atomic arms producers had further spent millions of dollars on political lobbying efforts, saying that every $1 spent on lobbying had led to an average of $256 in new contracts involving nuclear weaponry.

“The exchange of money and influence, from countries to companies to lobbyists and think tanks, sustains and maintains a global arsenal of catastrophically destructive weapons,” it said.

The US spent $44.2 billion on atomic weaponry in 2021, followed by China’s $11.7 billion, Russia’s $8.6 billion, the UK’s $6.8 billion, and France’s $5.9 billion, according to the report. India led the more recent nuclear arms developers in expenditures on the mass-destructive weaponry, spending $2.3 billion, followed by the Israeli regime’s $1.2 billion, Pakistan’s $1.1 billion and North Korea’s $642 million.

The report came a week after US-led NATO alliance declared that it did not offer a guarantee to Russia that it would not deploy nuclear weapons on the territories of its two prospective new members, Finland and Sweden.

ICAN’s report further confirmed a statement released by the prominent Stockholm International Peace Research (SIPRI) a day earlier in which it had warned that all the nine nuclear-armed states were increasing or upgrading their arsenals, and that the risk of deployment of such weapons appeared higher now than at any time since the height of the Cold War.

While there is no official confirmation on the amount North Korea spends on nuclear weapons or its arsenal, SIPRI estimates that it possesses as many as 20 warheads.

The Israeli regime, along with India, Pakistan, and South Sudan have never joined the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), an international treaty purportedly established to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons.

As of August 2016, 191 states have become parties to the NPT, though North Korea, which acceded in 1985, announced its withdrawal from the treaty in 2003, following detonation of nuclear devices in violation of core obligations.

Critics of the treaty insist, however, that the NPT cannot stop the proliferation of nuclear arms or the motivation to acquire them, arguing that the biggest possessors and developers of atomic weapons are leading members of the global accord. Officials of the treaty have been selective in enforcing nuclear disarmament, imposing sanctions on observant member nations, such as Iran, while ignoring certain atomic arms possessor and developers such as India, Pakistan, and the Israeli regime, which is widely believe to possess at least 300 nuclear warheads.

June 15, 2022 Posted by | Militarism | , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Israel, Egypt and EU sign gas export deal

Samizdat | June 15, 2022

Egypt, Israel, and the European Union have signed a deal to boost shipments of liquified natural gas (LNG) to EU member states, Sky News Arabia reported on Wednesday. Brussels hopes the agreement will help it to reduce energy dependence on Russia.

“The deal will see Israel sending more gas via Egypt, which has facilities to liquify it for export by sea,” European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen said at a joint news conference alongside the Egyptian and Israeli energy ministers.

In 2021, the EU imported some 40% of its gas from Russia. The heavy reliance on energy purchases from the country makes it difficult for the bloc to expand its Ukraine-related sanctions.

The gas destined for European consumers is expected to go from Israel via a pipeline directly to Egypt’s LNG terminal on the Mediterranean coast before being loaded onto tankers and shipped north to the European market.

Some Israeli gas is already being sent by pipeline to liquefaction plants in Egypt, where it is liquefied and re-exported. Israel reportedly operates two gas fields off its Mediterranean coast holding an estimated 690 billion cubic meters of natural gas combined, while a third offshore rig is in the works.

Egypt is also a gas producer, but its exports have been limited by rising domestic demand. At the same time, the country’s large-scale natural gas facilities on the Mediterranean have remained mostly inactive since the country’s 2011 uprising that led to the overthrow of then-President Hosni Mubarak.

The Egyptian government has modernized the facilities in recent years and has ambitions to become a regional energy hub.

June 15, 2022 Posted by | Aletho News | , , | Leave a comment

‘Israel’ Continues Exploring Disputed Maritime Zones, US Mediator Insolently Says Lebanon Cannot Restore Rights

Al-Manar – June 14, 2022

In light of the ongoing dispute between Lebanon and the Zionist entity over the maritime border demarcation, the US mediator, Amos Hochstein, visited Lebanon and met with the senior officials.

The Lebanese officials voiced a united stance on the demarcation issue, underlining the Lebanese rights in this regard.

However, the insolent mediator said, during an interview with Al-Hurra News Channel, that Lebanon will not be able to obtain its rights, adding that the issue would be complicated.

Hochstein expressed satisfaction with what he heard from Lebanese officials in his meetings with them on Tuesday, adding that this will enable the sea border negotiations with Israel to “go forward.”

“The good news is that I heard a lot more unanimity, a lot more unity of message (and) serious preparation for the visit,” Hochstein said.

“They shared some ideas of how to continue the negotiations, the basis for which to continue the negotiations and to take it a step forward,” he added.

In an article published last October, Al-Akhbar Lebanese daily described the US envoy as “an Israeli-born who served with the Israeli occupation army, killed the people of this land (Lebanon) and now acts in Beirut as a man on a spy mission in favor of his “homeland” (the Zionist entity).”

The Greek firm Energean’s FPSO arrived on June 6 near the disputed maritime zone, knowing that Energean signed in 2018 an agreement with the Zionist entity to drill and extract gas and oil in occupied Palestine’s offshore, and the disputed field of Karish.

June 14, 2022 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation | , , , | Leave a comment

The Power of the Jewish Lobby

Israelis killing Americans is okay In Washington

BY PHILIP GIRALDI • UNZ REVIEW • JUNE 14, 2022

Anyone who has spent any time in Washington and who has been reasonably engaged in watching the fiasco playing out there might agree that the most powerful foreign lobby is that of Israel, backed up as it is by a vast domestic network that exists to protect and nourish the Jewish state. Indeed, it is the domestic element of the lobby that gives it strength, supported as it is by extravagantly well-funded think tanks and a media that is Jewish dominated when it comes to developments in the Middle East. The power of what I prefer to call the Jewish lobby is also manifest down to state and local levels, where efforts to peacefully boycott Israel due to its war crimes and crimes against humanity have been punished and even criminalized in more than thirty states. In several states, including Virginia, special trade arrangements are designed to benefit Israeli companies at the expense of local residents and taxpayers.

Given all of that, it should be no surprise that Israel consistently gets a pass on its aberrant behavior, even when it acts directly against US interests or kills Americans. Recall, for example, how when General David Petraeus rashly observed in 2010 that Israeli intransigence in advancing its own interests complicated relations with Arab states and could cost American lives in the Middle East, he was quickly forced to recant. And more recently an Israeli sniper murdered Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh without any consequences coming from the Joe Biden White House or from the Tony Blinken-led State Department. Biden has declared himself a Zionist and Blinken is Jewish.

But one of the most horrific Israeli outrages directed against Americans remains little known and hidden from view by the media and the political elite. Last week, on Wednesday June 8th there was a commemorative gathering at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia that was unreported in the mainstream media. It was the annual day of remembrance for the dwindling group of survivors of the USS Liberty, which was attacked by Israel fifty-five years ago. The moving service included the ringing of a ship’s bell for each one of the thirty-four American sailors, Marines and civilians that were killed in the deliberate false flag attack that sought to sink the intelligence gathering ship and kill all its crew. The surviving crewmembers as well as friends and supporters come together annually, bound by their commitment to keeping alive the story of the Liberty in hopes that someday the United States government will have the courage to acknowledge what actually happened on that fateful day.

In truth the attack more than half a century ago on the USS Liberty by Israeli warplanes and torpedo boats on June 8, 1967, has virtually faded from memory, with a younger generation completely unaware that a United States naval vessel was once deliberately attacked and nearly sunk by America’s “greatest friend and ally” Israel. The attack was followed by a cover-up that demonstrated clearly that at least one president of the United States even back fifty-five years ago valued his relationship with the state of Israel above his loyalty to his own country.

It was in truth the worst attack ever carried out on a US Naval vessel in peace time. In addition to the death toll, 171 more of the crew were wounded in the two-hour assault, which was clearly intended to destroy the intelligence gathering ship operating in international waters collecting information on the ongoing Six Day War between Israel and its Arab neighbors. The Israelis, whose planes had their Star of David markings covered up, attacked the ship repeatedly from the air and with gunboats from the sea. They sought to sink the ship, blaming Egypt, so the United States would respond by attacking Israel’s Arab enemies.

A Liberty survivor Joe Meadors recalls how “No Member of Congress has ever attended our annual memorial service at Arlington National Cemetery on the anniversary of the attack. We are condemned as ‘anti-Semitic’ and ‘bigots’ simply because we have been asking that the attack on the USS Liberty be treated the same as every other attack on a US Navy ship since the end of WWII. All we have is ourselves. Not Congress. Not the Navy. Not the DoD. Just ourselves. We need a place where we are welcome. We need our reunions.”

Indeed, the incredible courage and determination of the surviving crew was the only thing that kept the Liberty from sinking. The ship’s commanding officer Captain William McGonagle was awarded a Congressional Medal of Honor for his heroic role in keeping the ship afloat, though a cowardly and venal President Lyndon Baines Johnson, who may have connived with the Israelis to attack the ship, broke with tradition and refused to hold the medal ceremony in the White House, also declining to award it personally, delegating that task to the Secretary of the Navy in a closed to the public presentation held only reluctantly at the Washington Navy Yard. The additional medals given to other crew members in the aftermath of the attack made the USS Liberty the most decorated ship in the history of the United States Navy.

The cover-up of the attack began immediately, to include concealing the White House’s actual recall of fighter planes launched by the Sixth Fleet to assist the under-attack Liberty. The Liberty crew was subsequently sworn to secrecy over the incident, as were the Naval dockyard workers in Malta and even the men of the USS Davis, which had assisted the badly damaged Liberty to port. A hastily convened and conducted court of inquiry headed by Admiral John McCain acted under orders from Washington to declare the attack a case of mistaken identity. The inquiry’s senior legal counsel Captain Ward Boston, who subsequently declared the attack to be a “deliberate effort to sink an American ship and murder its entire crew,” also described how “President Lyndon Johnson and Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara ordered him to conclude that the attack was a case of ‘mistaken identity’ despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.” The court’s findings were rewritten and sections relating to Israeli war crimes, to include the machine gunning of life rafts, were excised. Following in his father’s footsteps, Senator John McCain of Arizona subsequently used his position on the Senate Armed Services Committee to effectively block any reconvening of a board of inquiry to reexamine the evidence. Most of the documents relating to the Liberty incident have never been released to the public in spite of the 55 years that have passed since the attack took place.

There has been one independent investigation into the Liberty affair headed by former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Thomas Moorer, but it had no legal standing. Its report was headed “Findings of the Independent Commission of Inquiry into the Israeli Attack on the USS Liberty, the Recall of Military Rescue Support Aircraft while the Ship was Under Attack, and the Subsequent Cover-up by the United States Government, CAPITOL HILL, WASHINGTON, D.C., OCTOBER 22, 2003.” It concluded that “That there is compelling evidence that Israel’s attack was a deliberate attempt to destroy an American ship and kill her entire crew; evidence of such intent is supported by statements from Secretary of State Dean Rusk, Undersecretary of State George Ball, former CIA director Richard Helms, former NSA directors Lieutenant General William Odom, USA (Ret.), Admiral Bobby Ray Inman, USN (Ret.), and Marshal Carter; former NSA deputy directors Oliver Kirby and Major General John Morrison, USAF (Ret.); and former Ambassador Dwight Porter, U.S. Ambassador to Lebanon in 1967…”

More recently, the claim by apologists for the Jewish state that Israel acted in error or due to the fog of war, has been debunked by previously suppressed National Security Agency intercepts that included an Israeli pilot calling his flight controller and stating, in alarm, that they were about to attack what was clearly an American ship. The controller ordered him to continue his attack.

The faux court of inquiry and the medals awarded in secret were only the first steps in the cover-up, which has persisted to this day, orchestrated by politicians and a media that seem to place Israel’s interests ahead of those of the United States. Liberty survivors have been finding it difficult even to make their case in public. In early April 2016 a billboard that read “Help the USS Liberty Survivors – Attacked by Israel” was taken down in New Bedford Massachusetts. The billboard had been placed by the Honor Liberty Vets Organization and, as is normal practice, was paid for through a contractual arrangement that would require the billboard company to post the image for a fixed length of time. It was one of a number of billboards placed in different states. Inevitably, Israel’s well connected friends began to complain. One Jewish businessman threatened to take his business elsewhere, so the advertising company obligingly removed the billboard two weeks early.

After fifty-five years, the dwindling number of survivors of the Liberty are not looking for punishment or revenge. When asked, they will tell you that they only ask for accountability, that an impartial inquiry into the attack be convened and that the true story of what took place finally be revealed to the public.

That Congress is deaf to the pleas of the Liberty crew should surprise no one as the nation’s legislative body has been for years, as Pat Buchanan once put it, “Israeli occupied territory.” The Jewish Lobby’s ability to force Congress and even the presidency to submit to its will has been spelled out in some detail by critics, first by Paul Findley in They Dare to Speak Out, later by John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt in The Israel Lobby and in Alison Weir’s Against Our Better Judgment and most recently in Kirk Beattie’s excellent Congress and the Shaping of the Middle East.

Congressional willingness to protect Israel even when it is killing Americans is remarkable, but it is symptom of the legislative body’s inclination to go to bat for Israel reflexively, even when it is damaging to US interests and to the rights that American citizens are supposed to enjoy. To cite only one example of how ambitious politicians rally around to protect Israel, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is a former Navy officer who once served as a congressman for a district in Florida where several Liberty survivors were living. They recount how repeated attempts to meet with DeSantis to discuss a possible official inquiry were rejected, with the Congressman refusing to meet them. Even the veterans’ organization the American Legion walks in fear of Israel. It has refused to allow the USS Liberty Veterans Association to have a table or booth at its annual convention and has even banned any participation by the group at its meetings in perpetuity!

So, the treatment of the USS Liberty should surprise no one in a country whose governing class has been for decades doing the bidding of the powerful lobby of a tiny client state that has been nothing but trouble and expense for the United States of America. Will it ever end? As the Israel/Jewish Lobby currently controls the relevant parts of the federal government and much of the media, change is not likely to happen overnight, but there are some positive signs that the public is regarding Israel less favorably. As Israel is countering that trend by supporting legislation at federal and state levels declaring any group that criticizes Israel to be anti-Semitic, recounting the USS Liberty story could fall under that description and be declared a “hate crime” complete with civil and criminal penalties. One has to hope that the American people will finally wake up to realize that they are tired of the entire farce and decide to wash their hands of the Israel contrived narrative relating to the Middle East. Just imagine picking up the morning newspaper and not reading a front-page story about the warnings and threats coming from an Israeli Prime Minister or from Israeli mouthpieces named Biden, Schumer and Pelosi. That would be a quite remarkable development.

Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is inform@cnionline.org.

June 14, 2022 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance, Wars for Israel | , , , | Leave a comment

Israel plans huge park in occupied West Bank

MEMO | June 13, 2022

Israel plans to build a new national park on nearly 1 million dunams (247,000 acres) of land in the occupied West Bank between Jerusalem and the Dead Sea, Israel Hayom has reported.

The park will stretch between the illegal Jewish settlements of Kochav Hashahar north-east of occupied Jerusalem and Gush Etzion.

Tourist attractions such as the Mar Saba Monastery, Nabi Musa Mosque and the ruins of Hasmonean palaces, as well as hotels, will be within the proposed park. The area known as E1 to the east of Jerusalem has long been considered a red line and a point of no return for the internationally-backed two-state solution.

“We want to set up a new national park, the likes of which has never been seen in Judea and Samaria [the occupied West Bank], and create a single network, one product,” explained regional director-general Keren Geffen.

The announcement comes after the Israeli Defence Ministry reapproved the plan to advance a controversial settlement project in the E1 area of the occupied West Bank earlier this month. The Israeli government withdrew the plan in January amid international pressure.

The Civil Administration of the Israeli army, which authorises construction work in the occupied West Bank, published its agenda for an 18 July meeting to discuss objections to projects that have received initial approval. Two E1 plans totalling 3,412 housing units are the only projects on the docket.

June 13, 2022 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation | , , , | Leave a comment

Damascus Airport Runways Out of Service After Israeli Strikes: Syrian Transport Ministry

Samizdat – 10.06.2022

The runways at Damascus airport are out of service as a result of airstrikes conducted by the Israeli air force, the Syrian Ministry of Transport said.

On Thursday, the Syrian Defense Ministry said that Israel had fired missiles at a number of targets south of Damascus. Syria said that Israeli warplanes aimed to hit the airport.

“As a result of the Israeli aggression, which hit the infrastructure of the international airport of Damascus, the runways are significantly damaged in several places along with the navigation lighting,” the ministry said, as quoted by the Shams FM broadcaster.

The attack also damaged the second terminal of the airport.

“At the moment, our specialists are working to eliminate the consequences of the airstrikes and repair what was damaged as a result of the attack. The airport’s operations will be resumed immediately after repair and safety checks,” the ministry added.

Syria’s Cham Wings Airlines said earlier that all of its flights were diverted from Damascus airport to Aleppo in the north of the country.

Russia’s Foreign Ministry Strongly Condemns Israeli Airstrike at Damascus Airport

Also on Friday, Maria Zakharova, the Russian Foreign Ministry’s spokeswoman, said that Moscow strongly condemns the Israeli airstrikes at the airport and calls on the Israeli side to halt such activities.

“In this regard, we are forced to emphasize again that the ongoing Israeli shelling of Syria territory … is absolutely unacceptable. We strongly condemn Israel’s provocative attack on critical Syrian civilian infrastructure,” the spokeswoman said in a statement published by the ministry.

Zakharova also said that such strikes create risks “for international air traffic.”

“We demand from the Israeli side to halt such activities,” Zakharova added.

June 11, 2022 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Militarism, War Crimes | , , | Leave a comment

How the West helped Israel take the IAEA hostage

By Syed Zafar Mehdi | Press TV | June 11, 2022

Israel, the world’s eighth-largest nuclear power, initiated its nuclear program in 1952 with technological support from France and the US, the two countries most vocal about Iran’s peaceful nuclear program.

The first nuclear weapons were developed by Tel Aviv somewhere around 1967-1968, according to military think tanks. After that, the production accelerated rapidly, with zero international outcry.

Today, the regime possesses over 90 nuclear warheads with enough plutonium to produce at least 200 nuclear weapons. Around 5 kg of weapons-grade plutonium is required for one nuclear bomb.

Despite its nuclear program being an open secret – thanks to technician Mordechai Vanunu who blew the lid off Pandora’s Box back in 1986 – the regime has obdurately refused to confirm or deny it.

Vanunu, who worked at the Dimona nuclear facility, was in 1988 convicted of treason and sentenced to 18 years in prison. The same year he was also nominated for the Nobel peace prize.

Vanunu isn’t the only one to blow the whistle. In December 2013, former Israeli Knesset member Avraham Burg in a rare admission said the regime possessed both nuclear and chemical weapons, dubbing the official policy of nuclear ambiguity as “outdated and childish”. He was soon reprimanded.

What has emboldened Tel Aviv to accelerate its nuclear activities while wrapping a cloak of secrecy around them is Western sponsorship made possible by Zionist lobbying groups in the US and Europe.

The two countries most critical of Iran’s nuclear program are Israel’s staunchest allies, who helped the regime become a nuclear power. Israel’s weapons-grade fissile material stocks originated in France in the 1960s and the US in the late 1960s.

The US support, in particular, has allowed Israel to escape accountability for its diabolic activities. In a classic case of double standards, successive regimes in Washington have made a conscious effort not to talk about Israel’s nuclear arsenal despite making hullabaloo for non-proliferation in the region.

It began back in 1968 when then-CIA director Richard Helms informed President Lyndon Johnson that Israel had built nuclear weapons and that its air force had conducted aerial maneuvers to drop them.

Johnson’s response, on expected lines, was muted. A year later, at a meeting between just-elected President Richard Nixon and then Israeli premier Golda Meir, it was agreed that Washington will not force Israel to sign the NPT, which had opened for signature months before, in July 1968.

The US policy of silence continued, which helped the illegitimate regime in Tel Aviv escape the scrutiny of the UN nuclear agency. This silence amounted to both cowardice and complicity.

Importantly, and quite scandalously, Israel is not the signatory to the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT). It has repeatedly rejected calls to join the keystone accord of the international arms control regime and refused to give UN nuclear agency inspectors access to its nuclear sites.

Despite the regime’s dismissive approach, the International Atomic Energy Agency has adopted a remarkably soft approach to the point that many see collusion between the two.

IAEA chief Rafael Grossi’s whirlwind trip to Tel Aviv ahead of the UN nuclear agency’s board of governors meeting in Vienna earlier this week lent credence to the plausible Israel-IAEA collusion theory.

Grossi dashed off to Israel to discuss the anti-Iran resolution drafted by the US and the European troika with Israeli officials, aimed at mounting pressure on Iran to give up its legitimate demands.

Does it make sense that the IAEA chief meets the head of an illegitimate regime, which has secretly built a nuclear arsenal and refused to cooperate with the UN agency, to discuss the nuclear program of a country that has signed the NPT, cooperated fully with the agency and fulfilled all its obligations? It smells of something deeply sinister, extremely despicable.

The resolution against Iran at the IAEA board of governors meeting, which has already seen a “firm and proportionate response” from Tehran, blamed Iran for lack of cooperation with the UN agency.

For those unnerved by Iran’s decision to ramp up its nuclear enrichment capacity, it is essential to understand that the Islamic Republic claims its rights under Article IV of the NPT to pursue a peaceful nuclear program for energy purposes, unlike rogue regimes like Israel.

It’s also imperative to understand that the decision to scale up uranium enrichment from 3.65 percent stipulated in the 2015 nuclear deal came a year after former US President Donald Trump in a unilateral and illegal move pulled his country out of the landmark agreement, followed by reinstatement of sanctions.

The negotiations between Iran and the world powers to salvage the deal have been paused not because of Iran’s excessive demands or non-compliance but due to the West’s obstructionism. Iran did everything to save the deal but the other parties continue to make all-out efforts to kill the same deal.

The latest move to remove cameras operating beyond the NPT safeguards agreement at some Iranian nuclear sites and feed gas into machines including IR-6 is a milder reaction to the hostile move at the IAEA board of governors meeting.

As Iran’s nuclear body chief Mohammad Eslami stated, it’s preposterous that the IAEA has been taken hostage by the illegitimate regime, which raises questions over its credibility and independence.

Unless the agency comes out of the ominous Israeli shadow and makes a concerted effort to focus on its professional and technical mandate, beyond politics, Iran reserves the right to take remedial measures.

And as President Ebrahim Raeisi asserted unambiguously, the Islamic Republic will not back down even an inch. The writing is on the wall.

Syed Zafar Mehdi is a Tehran-based journalist, editor and blogger. He has reported extensively from Kashmir, India, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iran for leading publications worldwide.

June 11, 2022 Posted by | Wars for Israel | , , , | Leave a comment

Leslie Wexner’s Inner Demon

This short excerpt from Whitney Webb’s upcoming book “One Nation Under Blackmail” examines an obscure media profile of Leslie Wexner, Jeffrey Epstein’s mentor, from the 1980s that contains disconcerting revelations about Wexner’s personality and his inner world.

BY WHITNEY WEBB | UNLIMITED HANGOUT | JUNE 10, 2022

1985 was the year that Leslie Wexner became a billionaire. It was also that year that the chairman of The Limited (now L Brands) began to build up his public persona. This effort to “re-brand” himself began with a series of fawning media profiles. The main outlets that participated in Wexner’s first main, personal PR campaign were written by prominent New York City-based outlets, like New York magazine and the New York Times.

The New York magazine profile, which was the cover story for its August 5, 1985 issue, was entitled “The Bachelor Billionaire: On Pins and Needles with Leslie Wexner.” Though filled with photos of a middle-aged Wexner grinning and embracing friends as well as lavish praise for his business dealings and his “tender” and “gentle” personality, one of the main themes of the article revolves around what is apparently a spiritual affliction or mental illness of Wexner’s, depending on the reader’s own spiritual persuasion.

The New York magazine article opens as follows:

“On the morning Leslie Wexner became a billionaire, he woke up worried, but this was not unusual. He always wakes up worried because of his dybbuk, which pokes and prods and gives him the itchiness of the soul that he calls shpilkes [“pins” in Yiddish]. Sometimes he runs away from it on the roads of Columbus, or drives away from it in one of his Porsches, or flies from it in one of his planes, but then it is back, with his first coffee, his first meeting, nudging at him.”

One may interpret this use of shpilkes, literally “pins” or “spikes” in Yiddish and often used to describe nervous energy, impatience or anxiety, as Wexner merely personifying his anxiety. However, his decision to use the word dybbuk, which he does throughout the article, is quite significant. Also notable is how Wexner goes on to describe this apparent entity throughout the article and his intimate relationship with it.

First page of New York magazine’s 1985 profile of Wexner

As defined by Encyclopedia Britannica, a dybbuk is a Jewish folklore term for “a disembodied human spirit that, because of former sins, wanders restlessly until it finds a haven in the body of a living person.” Unlike spirits that have yet to move on but possess positive qualities, such as the maggid or ibbur, the dybbuk is almost always considered to be malicious, which leads it to be translated in English as “demon”. This was also the case in this New York magazine profile on Wexner.

The author of that article, Julie Baumgold, describes Leslie Wexner’s dybbuk as “the demon that always wakes up in the morning with Wexner and tweaks and pulls at him.” Wexner could have easily chosen to frame the entity as a righteous spirit (maggid) or as his righteous ancestors (ibbur) guiding his life and business decisions, especially for the purpose of an interview that would be read widely throughout the country. Instead, Wexner chose this particular term, which says a lot for a man who has since used his billions to shape both mainstream Jewish identity and leadership in both the US and Israel for decades.

As the article continues, it states that Wexner has been with the dybbuk since he was a boy and that his father had recognized it and referred to it as the “churning”. Per Wexner, the dybbuk causes him to feel “molten” and constantly pricked by “spiritual pins and needles”. It apparently left him at some point as a young man, only to return in 1977 when he was 40, half-frozen during an ill-fated trip up a mountain near his vacation home in Vail, Colorado. This specific trip is when Wexner says he both rejoined with his childhood dybbuk and decided to “change his life.”

He told New York magazine that his dybbuk makes him “wander from house to house”, “wanting more and more” and “swallowing companies larger than his own.” In other words, it compels him to accumulate more money and more power with no end in sight. Wexner later describes the dybbuk as an integral “part of his genius.”

Wexner further describes his dybbuk as keeping “him out of balance, emotionally stunted, a part of him — the precious, treasured boy-son part — lagging behind [the dybbuk].” This is consistent with other definitions of the term in Jewish media, including a feature piece published in the Jewish Chronicle. That article first defines the term as “a demon [that] clings to [a person’s] soul” and then states that: “The Hebrew verb from which the word dybbuk is derived is also used to describe the cleaving of a pious soul to God. The two states are mirror images of each other.” Per Wexner’s word choice and his characterization of what he perceives as an entity dwelling within him, the entity — the dybbuk — is dominant while his actual self and soul “lags behind” and is stunted, causing him to identify more with the entity than with himself.

This is also reflected in the concluding paragraph of the New York magazine article:

“Les Wexner picks up his heavy black case and flies off in his Challenger, with his dybbuk sitting next to him, taunting and poking him with impatience, that little demon he really loves. The dybbuk turns his face. What does he look like? ‘Me,’ says Leslie Wexner.”

Outside of the spiritual aspect of this discussion, it can also be surmised from the above that there is a strong possibility that Wexner suffers from some sort of mental disorder that causes him to exhibit two distinct personalities which continuously battle within him. What is astounding is that he describes this apparent affliction to a prominent media outlet with pride and the author of the piece weaves Wexner’s “demon” throughout a piece that seeks to praise his business acumen above all else.

Yet, perhaps the most troubling aspect of Wexner’s experience with his “dybbuk”, whether real or imagined, is the fact that Wexner, in the years before and after this article was published, has had a massive impact on Jewish communities in the US and beyond through his “philanthropy.” Some of those philanthropic efforts, like the Wexner Foundation, saw Wexner mold generations of Jewish leaders through Wexner Foundation programs while others, such as the Mega Group, see the organized crime-linked Leslie Wexner joined by several other like-minded billionaires, many of which also boast considerable organized crime connections, in an effort to shape the relationship of the American Jewish community, as well as the US government, with the state of Israel.

For a man of such influence in the Jewish community, why have there been essentially no questions raised as to Wexner’s role in directing the affairs of that ethno-religious community given that he has openly claimed to be guided by a “dybbuk”? This is particularly odd when one considers that Wexner has come under increased scrutiny in recent years after his protege and closest associate for decades, Jeffrey E. Epstein, was outed as both a pedophile and serial sex trafficker. Did Wexner’s dybbuk draw him to Epstein and prompt him to financially support his horrific crimes against minors?

Note: The above is an adapted excerpt from Whitney Webb’s upcoming book “One Nation Under Blackmail: the sordid union between Intelligence and Organized Crime that gave rise to Jeffrey Epstein”. Those interested may pre-order the book directly from the publisher’s website or from Amazon.

June 11, 2022 Posted by | Book Review | , , | Leave a comment

‘Israel has failed to prove its history in al-Quds despite extensive excavations for decades’

Press TV – June 9, 2022

Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh says the Israeli regime has dismally failed to prove it is steeped in the history of al-Quds despite the regime’s extensive excavations of sacred sites of the occupied holy city for decades.

“Fifty-five years of excavations and tunnel digging did not prove that there is a temple in the city,” Shtayyeh said as he addressed a conference dubbed “Property Documentation and the Historical Status of the Holy al-Aqsa Mosque” in the central West Bank city of al-Bireh on Wednesday.

He added that events like such a conference will reinforce the Palestinian narrative of al-Quds history, and will thwart the Tel Aviv regime’s systematic distortion of facts and its attempts to disguise the Arab, Muslim and Christian identities of the city.

Shtayyeh called on Arab rulers not to contribute to Israel’s Judaization plans in al-Quds, stressing that helping Palestinian residents of the holy city does not go hand in hand with implementing joint projects with the occupying regime.

He demanded that Arab statesmen prop up the Palestinian resistance front in any possible way.

In recent months, the Palestinian Hamas resistance movement has warned that any Israeli attempt to seize al-Aqsa Mosque in the occupied Old City of al-Quds will have “damaging consequences” for Israel.

Hardline Israeli legislators and extremist settlers regularly storm the al-Aqsa Mosque compound – a provocative move that infuriates Palestinians. Such mass settler break-ins almost always take place under the protection and support of Israeli military forces.

The al-Aqsa Mosque compound, which sits just above the Western Wall plaza, houses both the Dome of the Rock and al-Aqsa Mosque.

The Jewish visitation of al-Aqsa is permitted, but according to an agreement signed between Israel and the Jordanian government in the wake of Israel’s occupation of East al-Quds in 1967, non-Muslim worship at the compound is prohibited.

Back in May last year, frequent acts of violence against Palestinian worshipers at al-Aqsa Mosque led to an 11-day war with Palestinian resistance groups in the besieged Gaza Strip, during which the Israeli regime killed at least 260 Palestinians, including 66 children.

June 10, 2022 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular | , , , | Leave a comment

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