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Iranian merchant vessel Saviz struck by blast in Red Sea, suffers minor damage: Official

Press TV – April 7, 2021

Iran says one of its merchant vessels has been targeted by an explosion of unknown origin in the strategic Red Sea, in the second such incident in less than a month.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Saeed Khatizadeh told reporters that the Saviz ship was struck by the blast at around 6 a.m. local time (0300 GMT) on Tuesday, April 5, near the coast of Djibouti, and sustained minor damage.

“Fortunately, no fatalities were caused by the incident, and technical evaluations on how the incident occurred and its origins are underway,” he added.

The Iranian official said Tehran will take all the necessary measures regarding the case through international bodies.

Rejecting media claims, Khatibzadeh said the Saviz is a non-military vessel, whose specifications and mission have been formally registered with the International Maritime Organization (IMO).

He said the ship acts as Iran’s logistic station in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden, protects naval routes and provides security for merchant vessels and tankers against pirates.

A New York Times story published on Wednesday quoted an anonymous US official telling the newspaper that the Tel Aviv regime notified the United States that Israeli forces had attacked an Iranian ship in the Red Sea.

The unnamed US official said Israel called the strike a retaliation, and that the ship had been hit below the water line.

In a similar incident last month, an Iranian cargo ship was damaged after it was targeted by a terrorist attack en route to Europe in the Mediterranean Sea.

Tehran said back then that such acts of terror are a clear example of naval piracy and run counter to international law on the safety of commercial vessels.

On February 25, an explosion struck Israeli-owned and the Bahamas-flagged ship, the MV Helios Ray, in the Sea of Oman near the strategic mouth of the Persian Gulf.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hastily accused Iran of attacking the ship. Iran categorically rejected the charge.

Iranian Ambassador to the United Nations Majid Takht Ravanchi, in a letter addressed to UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres on March 5, warned of consequences of any possible miscalculated measure by Israel over the explosion.

“The incident has all the characteristic of a complicated false flag operation carried out by actors in order to pursue their malign policies and to advance their illegitimate objectives,” Takht Ravanchi wrote.

April 7, 2021 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | , , | Leave a comment

Would Israel Blackmail a US Congressman?

Should there be any doubt?

By Philip Giraldi | Unz Review | April 6, 2021

Israel has been involved in several stories currently making their way through the US media. The most fascinating tale concerns Republican Party Congressman from Florida Matt Gaetz. Gaetz is a Donald Trump loyalist who has up until recently been touted as the party’s future. Young, photogenic and a “firebrand” defender of GOP priorities, he has been much in the news lately.

Per the New York Times coverage of the current story involving him “The Justice Department is investigating whether Gaetz… a close ally of former President Donald Trump, broke federal sex trafficking laws. The inquiry focuses on his relationships with young women who had been recruited online, and whether he had sex with a 17-year-old girl. Investigators believe that he paid for sex with a number of women he met through Joel Greenberg — a former Florida tax collector who was indicted last year on a federal sex trafficking charge, among other offenses… Gaetz has denied paying for sex or sleeping with anyone underage, but it’s clear that the story is far from over. And he’s increasingly isolated: Few Republicans have spoken up in support of him, and today [April 2nd] his own communications director, Luke Ball, resigned.”

There have also been claims that Gaetz, who is engaged but not married, paid for transporting the young woman with whom he had sex across state lines, a federal offense. Reportedly, Gaetz is not well liked by his peers due to his impulsive and even erratic behavior “including a fondness for illicit drugs and younger women” with many considering him to be the proverbial “loose cannon on deck.” CNN reports that “Gaetz had a history of showing off nude photos and videos of women that he said he’d slept with to colleagues on the House floor.”

The Gaetz story also has spawned back stories to the investigation. The Daily Beast is reporting that in April 2018 Matt was involved in a secret midnight visit to the Seminole County Tax Collector’s rooms accompanied by Greenberg, who worked in the office during the day. The two men were recorded on surveillance cameras and they forgot to reset the office alarm, which led to inquiries on the following day that produced a series of text messages in which Greenberg admitted that they had been in the office so he could show the congressman how everything was being done there. They apparently had been going through expired drivers’ licenses, which were stored for disposal in the office.

Greenberg has since lost his job and is being investigated in a “…case has now vastly expanded to a 33-count indictment that includes a diverse list of crimes that range from wire fraud to sex trafficking. Investigators say Greenberg recruited at least one teenager between 14 and 17 years old to engage in a ‘commercial sex act’ between May and November 2017 in Central Florida and elsewhere. Investigators also say that Greenberg used his privileged access to Florida’s drivers’ license database to look up private information on ‘individuals’ with whom he ‘was engaged in “sugar-daddy” relationships.’ Additionally, Greenberg is also accused of making fake IDs—potentially explaining why the 2018 surveillance footage raised concerns that led to that text message conversation handed to investigators.”

What a naughty Gaetz was allegedly up to fits in nicely with what Greenberg was also doing but the fun involving Israel really starts with an apparent extortion scheme linked to the investigation that has involved Gaetz’s father Don, a wealthy former president of the Florida State Senate. Following up on the Gaetz story, the Washington Examiner discovered that Don had been approached by a Florida lawyer named Don McGee who promised that a payment of $25 million would make Matt’s “future legal and political problems go away.” Don Gaetz subsequently contacted the FBI and wore a wire that recorded a second visit made by a former Air Force officer named Bob Kent, who explained that the money would be a loan for “Project Homecoming,” a plan to arrange the liberation of ex-FBI agent Robert Levinson, who is generally believed to be either dead or in prison after an ill-advised somewhat mysterious visit to Iran where he disappeared fourteen years ago.

And then the tale really takes off. The American Conservative magazine has obtained a series of “authenticated” text messages between Scott Adams, creator of Dilbert, and Israeli New York Consulate General’s media officer, Jake Novak, which suggest that the Israeli government was associated with both Kent and McGee and might have been behind the extortion. Presumably Israel was prepared to use its political clout with congress and the media to make Matt’s problems go away in return for the funding of a commando raid that would free Levinson and deliver both a blow to Iran and a major propaganda victory for Jerusalem.

Cartoonist Adams’ alleged connection with the Israeli Consulate is not at this point completely clear, though the texts would suggest that he is a trusted contact. An angry Novak, referring to the Times article on the investigation, wrote to him complaining that “The backstory is that this is screwing up my efforts to free Bob Levinson. Gaetz’s dad was secretly f[u]nding us. So I’m very much wanting this to be untrue. I’ve got a commando team leader friend of mine nervously waiting for the wire transfers to clear.” He then goes on to claim that it was not extortion in a legal sense, “The real documents do not extort. And we only asked for $25 million as an estimate at first. We came way down.”

The two men also exchanged their view of the case against Matt Gaetz. Novak wrote “Scoop I can’t report: Rep. Gaetz is the subject of a secret Grand Jury probe of sex with minors and possibly murder conspiracy. I trust the source. Charges/accusations are apparently ‘very credible.’” Adams responds that “The allegations against him do not sound credible” with Novak answering “I don’t want to believe them but my source says it looks bad from closer in.” Adams then texts “I’m betting against it but the extortion counter claim sounds credible. Has witnesses apparently.” Novak concludes that “Now the Gaetz’s have burned Kent AND Levinson.”

If the American Conservative documents are not part of some elaborate hoax, the evidence of how Israel systematically interferes in American politics is yet again clearly visible. One of the most remarkable aspects of the story is the impression that Israeli consulate employee Jake Novak, who sounds somewhat like an intelligence officer, appears to believe that the exposure of the game he was involved in is annoying but no big deal, confident that Israel is never punished by Washington no matter what it does. He also appeared to have inside information on a confidential Justice Department investigation. Beyond that, the possible extortion scheme itself may be based on a possible set-up “honey trap” followed by what amounts to the blackmailing of an American Congressman.

What exactly did the Israeli Consulate’s proxies McGee and Kent have on Matt Gaetz that might have impelled his wealthy father to fund an implausible rescue operation directed against Iran which could easily escalate into a major international incident, possibly even a war? There are clearly documents, recordings and transcripts…will we the public ever see or hear them? If this all begins to smell like the Jeffrey Epstein saga it should and it is just one more good reason not to trust the Israelis on any issue. One wonders if anyone in the FBI or the Joe Biden Administration has the courage to follow this investigation through to wherever it might lead.

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

April 6, 2021 Posted by | Deception | , | Leave a comment

Oxford Researcher Who Helped Push US to Depixelate Israel in Satellite Snaps Died From Cancer at 34

By Ilya Tsukanov – Sputnik – 05.04.2021

For over two decades, US legislation stopped American companies from creating and publishing high-resolution satellite images of Israel. In July 2020, lawmakers updated the obscure amendment regulating the “pixelated Israel,” paving the way for detailed snaps of everything from Tel Aviv’s nuclear reactor to the country’s activity in the West Bank.

Michael Fradley and Andrea Zerbini, a pair of Oxford University archeologists specialising in the Middle East, were responsible for spearheading the campaign to amend an obscure US law to unblur satellite imagery of Israel and the Palestinian territories.

Speaking to the Australian Broadcasting Company, Dr. Fradley said that he and Zerbini stumbled upon an obscure law, known as the Kyl-Bingaman Amendment, which was passed thanks to Israeli lobbying as part of the National Defence Authorisation Act of 1997, in the mid-2010s after being frustrated by the lack of high-quality satellite images of the region.

“We were archeologists. We didn’t really know anything about space law,” Fradley recalled, adding that beginning in 2017, he and his colleague got to work trying to find a legal way to get around the restrictions.

Eventually, the pair of academics discovered that Airbus, the Western European multinational aerospace giant, has been producing high-resolution sub-2 metre per pixel images of Israel and Palestinian lands since at least 2012, with the European company not subject to the US law.

The academics proceeded to press the United States to change its laws, pointing to a reform mechanism within the Kyl-Bingaman Amendment which allows for restrictions to be reduced if companies outside the US were selling their own satellite imagery at resolutions higher than those set by the law.

After obtaining the clearer images from Airbus, Fradley and Zerbini published a paper in 2018 in Space Policy, a peer-reviewed scientific journal, in which they urged US authorities to pay attention to advances in commercial satellite technology outside the US and update policy accordingly.

In their paper, Fradley and Zerbini stressed that the regulations required an “urgent review,” and recommended that “US imagery should meet what has become the international standard of 0.5m.” The archeologists argued that the restrictions “hampered scientific research” and that their removal would “open up access to modern satellite imagery, as well as historical images captured by spy satellite… [and] allow researchers to record longer-term landscape change.” Other prospective benefits presumably included surveying and monitoring, keeping tabs on heritage sites, climate assessments and more.

In July 2020, someone in the US government finally listened and the Kyl-Bigaman Amendment was updated – its exception for Israel and the Palestinian territories modified to a limit of 0.4 meters per pixel, and a further requirement to drop it to 0.3 meters after Airbus launched its new generation of imaging satellites.

The Israeli military criticised the US decision profusely, with Amnon Harari, head of space programmes at Israel’s Defence Ministry, complaining to local media at the time that the Israeli side was never consulted about the change, and stressing that the military “would always prefer to be photographed at the lowest resolution possible.”

Bittersweet Victory

Recalling the moment when he learned that the rules would be changing, Fradley told ABC that it was “really a happy moment,” but also one “tinged with real sadness.” Dr. Zerbini, his research partner, died of a rare form of liver cancer in 2019 at the age of just 34 after become ill in late 2018.

“He was the only other person who really kind of understood the nuances and how much we put into it,” Fradley said. “We were immensely proud of the work that we had done.”

Unexpected Consequences

In addition to finally opening Israel and the Palestinian territories to be studied by archeologists, Fradley and Zerbini’s footwork allowed for investigators to make major new discoveries related to Israel’s suspected nuclear weapons programme (Israel formally neither confirms nor denies that it possesses nukes).

In February, an independent group of arms-control and non-proliferation experts used commercially available high-resolution images of Israel’s Dimona nuclear power plant snapped by SpaceWill, a Chinese company, to show that “significant construction” activities were taking place at the site. Days later, additional, clearer images provided by Planet Labs, a California-based private Earth imaging company, confirmed the construction.

The Planet Labs’ satellite snaps would not have been made available had it not been for Fradley and Zerbini’s work.

Nor would satellite imagery-based studies of Israeli activities in the West Bank or the occupied Golan Heights, such as the bulldozing of structures, settlement growth, and military emplacements.

April 5, 2021 Posted by | Deception, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , | Leave a comment

Washington Institute Calls Yemeni Forces as New Hezbollah, Warns against Augmenting Military Capabilities of Ansarullah

Al-Manar | April 4, 2021

The augmenting military capabilities of the Yemeni Armed Forces have been increasingly worrying the United States of America and the Zionist entity, according to The Washington Institute for the Near East Policy.

The study, titled “Yemen’s ‘Southern Hezbollah’: Implications of Houthi Missile and Drone Improvements”, called on the US administration to deal with the “Houthis” as a challenge that will go beyond the war in Yemen.

In light of the recent Yemeni attacks on the Saudi home front, the study concentrated on the development of Yemen’s missile and drone industries, calling on U.S. diplomats and military planners to factor this threat complex into their future calculations beyond the current Yemen war.

The study also considered that the Yemeni armed forces can develop missile/drone assembly industry further range increases, adding that the Yemeni forces would be able to reach new targets if they so desire—perhaps ‘Israel’ given their known enmity toward that country, or even Egypt and Jordan as part of a wider effort to exert themselves in the Red Sea (e.g., hindering international shipping, targeting Suez Canal infrastructure).

The study warned against the possible victory of the Yemeni army and popular committees (Ansarullah) in Marib, considering that either a win or a draw would ensconce the Houthis as “a new ‘southern Hezbollah’ on the Red Sea—mirroring the position of Lebanese Hezbollah on the Mediterranean—with a growing arsenal of ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, and drones capable of threatening the Suez Canal, the Bab al-Mandab Strait, the Gulf states, the Red Sea states, and perhaps even ‘Israel’”.

April 4, 2021 Posted by | Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | , , , , | Leave a comment

Australian-British received Israeli training for spying in Iran, analyst affirms

Press TV – April 3, 2021

A political commentator has shed light on the case of Kylie Moore-Gilbert, an Australian-British citizen who served a prison sentence over espionage charges in Iran, highlighting US media’s dishonesty in intentional concealing of the truth about Tehran’s assertion that the academic lecturer had passed a special training course under Israel’s direct supervision for her spying mission in the country.

Tim Anderson, the director of the Center for Counter Hegemonic Studies (CCHS) in Australia, said in an article published on the center’s website  on Friday that the American news mogul Rupert Murdoch’s media outlet had spread misinformation over the convicted Israeli spy, Gilbert, who returned home to Australia from an Iranian jail late last year.

The media outlet claimed that Gilbert had been held in a “hellhole” in Iran for no reason at all.

The British-Australian academic was freed from Tehran’s Evin prison in November after serving about two years of her 10-year jail term.

Iranian media reported that Gilbert had passed a two-year special training course in Israeli occupied territories for her spying mission and she had became fluent in Persian during the course and got prepared to perform espionage activities inside Iran.

Anderson said he had provided Murdoch journalist Stephen Rice with evidence that Gilbert had engaged in Israeli “leadership training” for her spying mission in Iran through a fellowship offer in the Ein Prat Israeli leadership academy at the Alon Shvut settlement, one of many illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank.

Anderson added that Gilbert had received a scholarship for the course from Tikvah Fund, an institution committed to supporting the intellectual, religious, and political leaders of the Jewish people.

As cited by the CCHS’s website, Anderson said, “Stephen Rice was either too lazy or too dishonest” to look at the links he had sent him, and that Rice had mentioned in one Israeli article that the linked article said nothing about “leadership” or “training” and those words were an “invention” by Anderson.

“Murdoch’s Megaphone @riceyontheroad was either too lazy or dishonest to recognize Israeli sources backing Iran’s assertion that @KMooreGilbert took Israeli leadership training in a militarized colony at the heart of Palestine’s occupied West Bank,” Anderson also said in a tweet.

Anderson also underlined that Rice pretended Gilbert’s Israeli “leadership training” did not exist and he misled his readers.

“This willful ignorance and distortion of facts allows the Murdoch stable to keep representing the US backed regional wars in Palestine, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Lebanon, Syria and Yemen as humanitarian exercises,” he noted.

Gilbert traveled to different Iranian cities as part of her mission and gathered information.

Unaware that she was being watched by Iranian intelligence forces, the woman went to religious and tourist places in order to make her sojourn in Iran look normal.

She later tried to get in touch with some figures and targets to obtain economic and military information about Iran as well as the anti-Israel resistance front, but she was arrested in September 2018.

Following legal and judicial proceedings, the spy was sentenced to 10 years in prison for acting against Iran’s national security through her intelligence cooperation with the Israeli regime.

April 3, 2021 Posted by | Deception, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , | Leave a comment

UK school textbooks slammed as “propaganda” for Israel

MEMO | April 2, 2021

Two UK school textbooks on the Middle East have been “significantly altered” following intervention from leading advocates of the Zionist state in favour of the Israeli narrative. The alterations, slammed as “propaganda under the guise of education” and “not fit for purpose” have raised serious concerns over the textbook, prompting a pause in further distribution.

Details of the extensive “biased” and “misleading” alterations were exposed by a report, by Professors John Chalcraft and James Dickins, Middle East specialists in History and in Arabic, respectively, and members of the British Committee for the Universities of Palestine (BRICUP).

Their eight-page report uncovered” dangerously misleading” changes to the books published by Pearson, titled Conflict in the Middle East and The Middle East: Conflict, Crisis and Change, both by author Hilary Brash and are read by hundreds of thousands of GCSE students annually. GCSEs are the academic qualifications studied for by UK high school students to the age of 16.

The alterations were made last year following intervention by the Board of Deputies of British Jews (BoD) working together with UK Lawyers for Israel (UKLFI). Both are amongst the most vocal pro-Israeli groups in the UK.

Describing the scale of the alterations the report noted that there are changes on almost every page, often multiple changes. “In CME (with 84 pages of history) we have counted 294 changes, in MECCC (with 104 pages of history) over 360,” said the report. “There are thus on average more than three changes per page, and the re-writing on some pages is particularly extensive. Alterations have been made to text, timelines, maps and photographs, as well as to sample student essays, and to the questions that students are asked to answer”.

Multiple examples of the changes are highlighted in the report. In one example the original version says that “international law states that a country cannot annex or indefinitely occupy territory gained by force”. This is the overwhelming international legal consensus. The revised version replaces this with: “Some argue that international law states that a country cannot annex or indefinitely occupy territory gained by force”. This change, according to the report’s authors “clearly replaces an accurate and unambiguous description of the internationally accepted legal position by a ‘fudge’ that implicitly throws doubt on that position”.

In the original version of the domestic GCSE textbook there are 10 references to Jewish terrorism and 32 to Palestinian terrorism (in each case including use of ‘terror’, ‘terrorist’ or ‘terrorism’). After revision there are 4 references to terrorism by Jewish groups, and 61 references to terrorism by Palestinian ones.

Concluding the report, the authors said that they had “found the process to have been biased and the outcome misleading. The outcome is two textbooks that distort the historical record, failing to offer students a balanced view of the conflict. These books, we conclude, are not fit for purpose. School children should not be supplied with propaganda under the guise of education”.

Leading experts on the Middle East have raised serious concerns over the alterations. Eugene Rogan FBA, Professor of Modern Middle Eastern History at the University of Oxford said: “Given Britain’s historical responsibility, it is particularly important that the subject be taught in a way that is impartial and objective. It is a betrayal of such objectivity to allow Israel advocates the opportunity to edit teaching materials without giving Palestine advocates an equal opportunity to provide input. The result can only undermine confidence in the impartiality of the teaching of an intensely complex and sensitive issue.”

Neve Gordon, Professor of International Law and Human Rights at Queen Mary University of London, said: “Through their rigorous analysis of two GCSE text books, Professors John Chalcraft and James Dickins uncover how hundreds of revisions have been inserted in order to modify and distort historical and political facts relating to Israel/Palestine. Their report suggests that when accredited publishing houses allow lobbying groups to help develop high-school curriculum, knowledge is replaced by indoctrination and our children are encouraged to adopt biased thinking.”

Khaled Fahmy FBA, Professor of Arabic Studies at the University of Cambridge, said: “While it is laudable that Middle Eastern history books are regularly revised and updated, the manner in which these two school textbooks have been revised is shocking and unacceptable. School textbooks should be revised based on the advice and expertise of academics and scholars, not by reviewers selected by an organisation of lawyers whose rationale is advocating for a foreign country.”

In a statement to Middle East Eye, Pearson said “We stand by our texts but had already taken the decision to pause further distribution while we discuss further with stakeholders.”

April 3, 2021 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , | Leave a comment

US aid is tied to Palestinian acquiescence to the two-state illusion

By Ramona Wadi | MEMO | March 30, 2021

The US has reversed one aspect of the Trump administration’s foreign policy in Palestine; humanitarian aid will be resumed with a $15 million grant for vulnerable Palestinian communities in the occupied West Bank and Gaza. “Our engagements all have the same aim: to build support for a peaceful solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,” the US Representative to the UN, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, declared. Given that Washington used to give $350 million to the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) before Trump stopped the support in 2018, this is a very limited “engagement”.

And it’s very selective support. Moreover, it comes as US Secretary of State Antony Blinken is opposing the Palestinian Authority’s recourse to the International Criminal Court for justice over Israel’s war crimes. Such crimes, and the context of occupation in which they are carried out, contribute to humanitarian aid for the Palestinian being a necessity.

More importantly, humanitarian aid remains tied to the two-state compromise. Now that the US has returned to international consensus over the defunct paradigm, restoring humanitarian aid may be considered the next, logical step, only there is nothing logical about pursuing a strand of diplomacy that spells loss unless it results in a gain for Israel.

PA Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh welcomed the resumption of humanitarian aid as “an important step in the right direction.” However, Palestinians still have no political direction and the PA is merely speaking about its standing in the diplomatic arena. Following restored humanitarian aid, the next step will most likely be renewed diplomatic relations. The PA will then feed upon the illusion that it is an important negotiating partner. Perhaps it is, in terms of “negotiating” the sell-out of what remains of Palestine to the Zionist colonial project.

For ordinary Palestinians, of course, it is a different story. The resumption of humanitarian aid within the context of the two-state compromise only sustains Israeli colonialism, while allowing the Palestinian people the necessary means for daily survival. Resuming the two-state cycle of humanitarian aid in return for acquiescence to the two-state illusion is not a better option than the so-called “deal of the century”. Both have generated loss, and the PA is merely favouring one form of loss over another.

To what extent can such a move be welcomed? Humanitarian aid to promote peace is a recipe for failure, given its reinforcement of the power dynamic bolstered by the billions of dollars that Israel gets each year from the US. It would be understandable if the PA spoke of humanitarian aid in terms of alleviation, but not as an “important step in the right direction” when Israel is not facing any punitive measures for advancing its illegal settlement expansion, for example.

It is to be expected that the US selectively lauds its meager support for Palestine, especially when, in contrast to the Trump administration, US President Joe Biden is yet to face significant scrutiny. For the PA to emulate the US rhetoric, however, is a different story. It seems as if the Ramallah authority is far more interested in asserting its earlier and premature, overtures to Biden even before the new foreign policy was revealed, despite the fact that the politics of humanitarian aid are a mere convenience for the international community in its process of aiding Israel to colonise what is left of Palestine.

March 30, 2021 Posted by | Corruption, Deception, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Progressive Hypocrite | , , , , | Leave a comment

The “Unvaccinated” Question

By CJ Hopkins | Consent Factory | March 29, 2021

So, the New Normals are discussing the Unvaccinated Question. What is to be done with us? No, not those who haven’t been “vaccinated” yet. Us. The “Covidiots.” The “Covid deniers.” The “science deniers.” The “reality deniers.” Those who refuse to get “vaccinated,” ever.

There is no place for us in New Normal society. The New Normals know this and so do we. To them, we are a suspicious, alien tribe of people. We do not share their ideological beliefs. We do not perform their loyalty rituals, or we do so only grudgingly, because they force us to do so. We traffic in arcane “conspiracy theories,” like “pre-March-2020 science,” “natural herd immunity,” “population-adjusted death rates,” “Sweden,” “Florida,” and other heresies.

They do not trust us. We are strangers among them. They suspect we feel superior to them. They believe we are conspiring against them, that we want to deceive them, confuse them, cheat them, pervert their culture, abuse their children, contaminate their precious bodily fluids, and perpetrate God knows what other horrors.

So they are discussing the need to segregate us, how to segregate us, when to segregate us, in order to protect society from us. In their eyes, we are no more than criminals, or, worse, a plague, an infestation. In the words of someone (I can’t quite recall who), “getting rid of the Unvaccinated is not a question of ideology. It is a question of cleanliness,” or something like that. (I’ll have to hunt down and fact-check that quote. I might have taken it out of context.)

In Israel, Estonia, Denmark, Germany, the USA, and other New Normal countries, they have already begun the segregation process. In the UK, it’s just a matter of time. The WEF, WHO, EU, and other transnational entities are helping to streamline the new segregation system, which, according to the WEF, “will need to be harmonized by a normative body, such as the WHO, to ensure that is ethical.”

Here in Germany, the government is considering banning us from working outside our homes. We are already banned from flying on commercial airlines. (We can still use the trains, if we dress up like New Normals.) In the village of Potsdam, just down the road from Wannsee (which name you might recall from your 20th-Century history lessons), we are banned from entering shops and restaurants. (I’m not sure whether we can still use the sidewalks, or whether we have to walk in the gutters.) In Saxony, we are forbidden from attending schools. At the Berliner Ensemble (the theater founded by Bertolt Brecht and Helene Weigel, lifelong opponents of totalitarianism and fascism), we are banned from attending New Normal performances.

In the USA, we are being banned by universities. Our children are being banned from public schools. In New York, the new “Excelsior Pass” will allow New Normals to attend cultural and sports events (and patronize bars and restaurants, eventually) secure in the knowledge that the Unvaccinated have been prevented from entering or segregated in an “Unvaccinated Only” section. The pass system, designed by IBM, which, if history is any guide, is pretty good at designing such systems (OK, technically, it was Deutsche Hollerith Maschinen Gesellschaft, IBM’s Nazi-Germany subsidiary), was launched this past weekend to considerable fanfare.

And this is only the very beginning.

Israel’s “Green Pass” is the model for the future, which makes sense, in a sick, fascistic kind of way. When you’re already an apartheid state, what’s a little more apartheid? Here’s a peek at what that looks like …

OK, I know what the New Normals are thinking. They’re thinking I’m “misleading” people again. That I’m exaggerating. That this isn’t really segregation, and certainly nothing like “medical apartheid.”

After all (as the New Normals will sternly remind me), no one is forcing us to get “vaccinated.” If we choose not to, or can’t for medical reasons, all we have to do is submit to a “test” — you know, the one where they ram that 9-inch swab up into your sinus cavities — within 24 hours before we want to go out to dinner, or attend the theater or a sports event, or visit a museum, or attend a university, or take our children to school or a playground, and our test results will serve as our “vaccine passports!” We just present them to the appropriate Covid Compliance Officer, and (assuming the results are negative, of course) we will be allowed to take part in New Normal society just as if we’d been “vaccinated.”

Either way, “vaccine” or “test,” the New Normal officials will be satisfied, because the tests and passes are really just stage props. The point is the display of mindless obedience. Even if you take the New Normals at their word, if you are under 65 and in relatively good health, getting “vaccinated” is more or less pointless, except as a public display of compliance and belief in the official Covid-19 narrative (the foundation stone of the New Normal ideology). Even the high priests of their “Science” confess that it doesn’t prevent you spreading the “plague.” And the PCR tests are virtually meaningless, as even the WHO finally admitted. (You can positive-PCR-test a pawpaw fruit … but you might want to be careful who you tell if you do that.)

In contrast to the “vaccine” and the “test” themselves, the forced choice between them is not at all meaningless. It is no accident that both alternatives involve the violation of our bodies, literally the penetration of our bodies. It doesn’t really matter what is in the “vaccines” or what “results” the “tests” produce. The ritual is a demonstration of power, the power of the New Normals (i.e., global capitalism’s new face) to control our bodies, to dominate them, to violate them, psychologically and physically.

Now, don’t get all excited, my “conspiracy theorist” friends. I haven’t gone full QAnon just yet. Bill Gates and Klaus Schwab are not sitting around together, sipping adrenochrome on George Soros’ yacht, dreaming up ways to rape people’s noses. This stuff is built into the structure of the system. It is a standard feature of totalitarian societies, cults, churches, self-help groups, and … well, human society, generally.

Being forced to repeat a physical action which only makes sense within a specific ideology reifies that ideology within us. There is nothing inherently diabolical about this. It is a basic socialization technology. It is how we socialize our children. It is why we conduct weddings, baptisms, and bar mitzvahs. It is how we turn young men and women into soldiers. It is how actors learn their blocking and their lines. It is why the Nazis held all those rallies. It is why our “democracies” hold elections. It is also basic ceremonial magic … but that’s a topic for a different column.

The issue, at the moment, is the Unvaccinated Question, and the public rituals that are being performed to make the New Normal ideology “reality,” and what to do about those of us who refuse to participate in those rituals, who refuse to forswear “old normal” reality and convert to New Normalism so that we can function in society without being segregated, criminalized, or “diagnosed” as “sociopathic” or otherwise psychiatrically disordered.

For us “conspiracy-theorizing reality deniers,” there is no getting around this dilemma. This isn’t Europe in the 1930s. There isn’t anywhere to emigrate to … OK, there is, temporarily, in some of the US states that have been staging rebellions, and other such “old normal” oases, but how long do you think that will last? They’re already rolling out the “mutant variants,” and God only knows what will happen when the long-term effects of the “vaccines” kick in.

No, for most of us denizens of the global capitalist empire, it looks like the New Normal is here to stay. So, unless we are prepared to become New Normals, we are going to have to stand and fight. It is going to get rather ugly, and personal, but there isn’t any way to avoid that. Given that many New Normals are our friends and colleagues, or even members of our families, it is tempting to believe that they will “come to their senses,” that “this is all just a hysterical overreaction,” and that “everything will go back to normal soon.”

This would be a monumental error on our parts … very possibly a fatal error.

Totalitarian movements, when they reach this stage, do not simply stop on their own. They continue to advance toward their full expressions, ultimately transforming entire societies into monstrous mirror-images of themselves, unless they are opposed by serious resistance. There is a window at the beginning when such resistance has a chance. That window is still open, but it is closing, fast. I can’t tell you how best to resist, but I can tell you it starts with seeing things clearly, and calling things, and people, exactly what they are.

Let’s not make the same mistake that other minorities have made throughout history when confronted with a new totalitarian ideology. See the New Normals for what they are, maybe not deep down in their hearts, but what they have collectively become a part of, because it is the movement that is in control now, not the rational individuals they used to be. Above all, recognize where this is headed, where totalitarian movements are always headed. (See. e.g., Milton Mayer’s They Thought They Were Free: The Germans 1933-45.)

No, the Unvaccinated are not the Jews and the New Normals are not flying big Swastika flags, but totalitarianism is totalitarianism, regardless of which Goebbelsian Big Lies, and ideology, and official enemies it is selling. The historical context and costumes change, but its ruthless trajectory remains the same.

Today, the New Normals are presenting us with a “choice,” (a) conform to their New Normal ideology or (b) social segregation. What do you imagine they have planned for us tomorrow?

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March 29, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Science and Pseudo-Science | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Israel detains 3 prominent Hamas leaders in West Bank

MEMO | March 26, 2021

The Israeli army detained three prominent Hamas leaders the occupied West Bank city of Hebron.

Eyewitnesses told Anadolu Agency that an Israeli soldier detained Hatem Qaffeisha, 58, a top Hamas leader in Hebron and a Palestinian lawmaker.

Former Local Governance Minister Isa Al-Jabari, 55, and top Hamas figure Mazen Al-Natsha, 49, were also detained.

The three figures have been jailed several times by the Israeli army.

Hamas has warned of Israeli plans to stage a mass arrest campaign against its members ahead of the Palestinian elections slated for May.

In February, key Hamas members were detained including Mustafa Al-Shannar, Adnan Asfour, Yaser Mansour, Khalid El-Haj, Abdel-Basit El-Haj, Omar Al-Hanbali and Faze’ Sawafteh.

Hamas says the Israeli authorities aim to disrupt the Palestinian elections and affect the results.

Hamas also accused the Israeli authorities of threatening its members with imprisonment if they run in the upcoming elections.

Palestinians are scheduled to vote in the legislative elections on 22 May, presidential polls are to be held on 31 July and the National Council elections on 31 August.

The last legislative elections were held in 2006, with Hamas coming out on top.

March 26, 2021 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Palestinian Rockets: The Hidden Facts

If Americans Knew | March 15, 2021

U.S. media reports focus on Palestinian rockets fired into Israel from Gaza, but the reports leave out essential facts, making the aggressors seem like victims, and the victims like aggressors.

For facts and citations see https://iakn.us/rockets​ and https://ifamericansknew.org/history/​

For ongoing news and analysis see https://israelpalestinenews.org/​.

For information on the Israel lobby, see http://iakn.us/aList​ and https://youtu.be/AC8pJvY8Wdo​ and https://youtu.be/6PsGZz19cHk​

For information on media distortions on Israel-Palestine see https://ifamericansknew.org/media/​ and https://israelpalestinenews.org/media…​ .

A video showing Israel’s strategies for manipulating Americans is at https://youtu.be/RvH47pAm1MA​

For a thoroughly sourced book on the early days of the pro-Israel lobby in the US, see http://iakn.us/AOBJ-book​

Also see this video letter to Congress woman Manning: https://youtu.be/Glc0GjobM9M​

March 23, 2021 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular, Video | , , | Leave a comment

The Probe into the Israeli Vaccine Policy and its Outcome is beyond Damning

By Gilad Atzmon | March 23, 2021

In Israel yesterday, an independent legal body that calls itself the Civilian Probe (CP)* published its finding regarding the catastrophic impact of the Pfizer vaccine on the nation.

In their report, which they submitted to the Attorney General and the Health Minister, the committee listed a chain of critical legal and ethical failures that point at a possible attempt to mislead not just Israelis but also the entire world. Since the beginning of January I have been reporting on an undeniable correlation between vaccinations, cases and deaths (here , here, here and here ). The CP confirms my suspicions but their study also presents alarming medical findings regarding the scale of lethal side effects.

In the document the CP points at a government attempt to conceal its dealing with Pfizer. The document states that “the Pfizer-Israel agreement is suffocated with redacted segments, consequently, it is not possible to analyze it legally and/or fully grasp Its implications as far as public health is concerned… This concealment casts a heavy shadow over anyone who took part in the (Israeli/Pfizer) negotiations…”

The CP then continues arguing that “in order to generate demand (amongst the people) for the vaccine, the government and the Ministry of Health have launched an unprecedented aggressive campaign, aiming to make Israelis rush to ‘get vaccinated.’ During that campaign all the basic rules of medical caution and ethics were disregarded, and with them also key guidelines formed after WWII regarding participation in medical trials (the Nuremberg Code). Instead of transparent and clear explanations, the public was misled by repeated official statements that the (Pfizer vaccine) has been ‘approved by the FDA’ after passing ‘rigorous tests.’”

The CP is accusing the state of Israel of intentionally reckless conduct… “Monitoring systems that enable the detection of side effects are a basic and critical condition for granting a permission for mass use of any new medicine, certainly when a mass operation of treatment that is defined as experimental is given to millions, and especially when this treatment is given to an entire country…”.

But Israel failed to set such a monitoring system.

“On the one hand, the state did not inform the citizens that Pfizer’s vaccine is in experimental stages that have not yet been completed, and that at this stage they are actually taking part in the experiment. On the other hand, the state did not maintain transparent and open control and monitoring systems for the public. As a result, there is a serious concern that this critical and negligent omission stems from: (a) the fear that such disclosure could interfere with the fulfilment of the objectives that may be implied by the Israel-Pfizer agreement or (b) the fear of diminishing demand for the exceptional number of vaccines that were purchased by Israel in advance, and / or (c) the fear of revealing unflattering results of the ‘experiment’ being carried out in Israel.”

The CP is brave to admit that the lack of a monitoring system isn’t just a potential crime against the Israeli people, it may also be a crime against the rest of the world (i.e., humanity):

“In the absence of a transparent monitoring system that reports on side effects, not only have the Israeli government and the Ministry of Health failed citizens by providing them with misleading information, the Israeli government have failed both Pfizer and the rest of the world awaiting the results of the (so called) ‘real world experiment’ (that is taking place in Israel).”

To remove any doubt, the CP alerts the Israeli Attorney General to the possible criminal act implied by Israel’s vaccine policy.

“This is an alleged deception, suspiciously criminal, which should be thoroughly examined before the Attorney General allows the Israeli government to continue the alleged campaign of deception of Israel’s citizens and the (rest of the) world.”

The CP extended their study well beyond the legal realm, as it also attempts to fill the wide hole created by the State’s lack of a monitoring system.

“What do we learn from the facts on the ground?” the CP report asks. “An examination of mortality data published by the government shows that there is a correlation between number of vaccinations and the number of deaths. The excess mortality is noticeable among people up to 70 and also among adults over the age of 70, and remains even after offsetting the deaths attributed to Corona. In the population over the age of 70 – in January 2021 an excess mortality of 19.5% was observed compared to October 2020 – the month when the corona data were highest, and 22.4% compared to January 2020. In the younger population – an excess mortality of 7% was observed in January 2021 compared to the month October 2020 – the month in which the corona death numbers were the highest, and 7% compared to January 2020. It should be noted that this trend continues in the following month as well.”

As mentioned above I have been writing about the devastating correlation between vaccines and deaths since early January. In Britain and the USA, we detect identical correlation between mass vaccination and death. However, far more problematic is the realm of side effects, something which governments, the WHO, the corrupted pharmaceutical industry, and of course social media giants attempt to suppress in the most Orwellian manner. The Israeli CP seems to have produced the first robust report on Pfizer’s vaccine side effects. They published a table of their findings, which they summarize here:

“As one can detect looking at the table – there are close to 200 deaths, and this – only by examining about 800 reports of cases of serious side effects. As mentioned, the CP is still working on analyzing side effects and we have hundreds of additional reports that are subject to analysis. Our study so far indicates that about 25% of deaths are from people under the age of 60. About 15% of them are under 50 years old. 7 of the deceased are at young ages – below age 30. Also, the study identified 27 cases of heart problems in people under the age of 60, of which 24 cases are among young people aged 17-30.  Regarding the issues to do with female medical complications (including labor-complication, delayed menstruation or irregular menstruation, etc.) – it should be noted that the committee has about 200 additional reports that have not yet been included in the final list of our findings.”

For many years, I doubted whether there was a force in the middle east that could face, let alone defeat, Israel. I am pretty convinced now that with Netanyahu at the helm and Pfizer taking care of the nation’s wellbeing, Israel doesn’t really need enemies. However, every world citizen who is concerned about the future of humanity should be alarmed by the CP’s findings and particularly by the desperate and relentless attempts to suppress free academic, scientific and ethical discussion about Covid, the so-called ‘vaccines’ or anything else.

*To read the CP report click here

March 23, 2021 Posted by | Corruption, Deception | , , | Leave a comment

The Nakba of Sheikh Jarrah: How Israel uses ‘the law’ to ethnically cleanse East Jerusalem

By Ramzy Baroud | MEMO | March 23, 2021

A Palestinian man, Atef Yousef Hanaysha, was killed by Israeli occupation forces on 19 March during a weekly protest against illegal Israeli settlement expansion in Beit Dajan, near Nablus, in the northern West Bank. Although tragic, this news reads like a routine item from occupied Palestine, where the shooting and killing of unarmed protesters is part of the daily reality. That reality, though, is part of a wider, more sinister development.

Since right-wing Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, announced in September 2019 his intention to formally and illegally annex nearly a third of the occupied Palestinian West Bank, tensions have remained high. The killing of Hanaysha is only the tip of the iceberg. In occupied East Jerusalem and the West Bank, a massive battle is already underway. On one side, Israeli soldiers, army bulldozers, and illegal armed Jewish settlers are carrying out daily missions to evict Palestinian families, displace farmers, burn orchards, demolish homes and confiscate land. On the other side, Palestinian civilians, often unorganised, unprotected and leaderless, are fighting back.

The territorial boundaries of this battle are largely located in occupied East Jerusalem and in so-called “Area C” of the West Bank — which covers nearly 60 per cent of the total area of the occupied territory — which is under complete and direct Israeli military control. No other place represents the perfect microcosm of this uneven war than the neighbourhood of Sheikh Jarrah in occupied East Jerusalem.

On 10 March, fourteen Palestinian and Arab organisations issued a “joint urgent appeal to the United Nations Special Procedures on forced evictions in East Jerusalem” to stop the Israeli evictions in the area. Successive decisions by Israeli courts have paved the way for the Israeli army and police to evict fifteen Palestinian families — 37 households of around 195 people — in the Karm Al-Ja’ouni area in Sheikh Jarrah as well as Batn Al-Hawa neighbourhood in the town of Silwan.

These imminent evictions are not the first, nor will they be the last. Israel occupied Palestinian East Jerusalem in June 1967 and formally, though illegally, annexed it in 1980. Since then, the Israeli government has vehemently rejected international criticism of the occupation, declaring instead that Jerusalem is the “eternal and undivided capital of Israel”.

To ensure that its annexation of the city is irreversible, the Israeli government approved the Master Plan 2000, a massive scheme that was undertaken to rearrange the boundaries of the city in such a way that it would ensure the permanent demographic majority of Israeli Jews at the expense of the city’s indigenous inhabitants. The Master Plan was no more than a blueprint for state-sponsored ethnic cleansing, which saw the destruction of thousands of Palestinian homes and the subsequent eviction of numerous families.

While news headlines occasionally present the habitual evictions of Palestinian families in Sheikh Jarrah, Silwan, and other parts of East Jerusalem as if it is simply a matter of counterclaims between Palestinian residents and Jewish settlers, the story is, in fact, a wider representation of Palestine’s modern history. Indeed, the innocent families which are now facing “the imminent risk of forced eviction” are re-living their ancestral nightmare of the Nakba, the very deliberate ethnic cleansing of historic Palestine in 1948.

Two years after the native inhabitants of historic Palestine were dispossessed of their homes and lands and ethnically cleansed, Israel enacted the so-called Absentees’ Property Law of 1950. The law, which has no legal or moral validity, simply granted to the State the properties of Palestinians who were driven out or fled from the war, to do with it as it pleases. Since those “absentee” Palestinians have never been allowed to exercise their legitimate right of return, as enshrined in international law, the Israeli law was state-sanctioned theft on a grand scale. It aimed ultimately to achieve two objectives: to ensure that Palestinian refugees do not return or attempt to claim their stolen properties in Palestine; and to give Israel a legal fig leaf for permanently confiscating Palestinian land and homes.

The Israeli military occupation of the remainder of historic Palestine in 1967 necessitated, from an Israeli colonial perspective, the creation of fresh laws that would allow the State and the illegal settlement enterprise to claim yet more Palestinian properties. This took place in 1970 in the form of the Legal and Administrative Matters Law. According to the new legal framework, only Israeli Jews were allowed to claim lost land and property in Palestinian areas.

Many of the evictions in East Jerusalem take place within the context of these three interconnected and strange legal arguments: the Absentees’ Property Law, the Legal and Administrative Matters Law, and the Master Plan 2000. Understood together, we can easily decipher the nature of the Israeli colonial scheme in East Jerusalem, where Israeli Jewish individuals, in coordination with settler organisations, work together to fulfil the vision of the State.

In their joint appeal, Palestinian human rights organisations describe how the flow of eviction orders issued by Israeli courts culminate in the construction of illegal Jewish settlements. Confiscated Palestinian properties are usually transferred to a branch within the Israeli Ministry of Justice called the Israeli Custodian General. The latter holds on to these properties until they are claimed by Israeli Jews, in accordance with the 1970 Legal and Administrative Matters Law. Once Israeli courts honour Jewish individuals’ legal claims to the confiscated Palestinian lands, these individuals often transfer their ownership rights or management to settler organisations. In no time, the latter utilise the newly-acquired property to expand existing settlements or to start new ones. All settlements are, of course, illegal under international law.

While the Israeli State claims to play an impartial role in this scheme, it is actually the facilitator of the entire process. The final outcome manifests in the ever-predictable scene, where an Israeli flag is triumphantly hoisted over a Palestinian home and a Palestinian family is assigned a tent from the UN and a few blankets.

While the above picture can thus be dismissed by some as another routine, common occurrence, the situation in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem has become extremely volatile. Palestinians feel that they have nothing more to lose and Netanyahu’s government is more emboldened than ever. The killing of Atef Hanaysha, and others like him, is only the beginning of an imminent and widespread confrontation.

March 23, 2021 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation, Timeless or most popular | , , , , | Leave a comment

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