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Biden accuser Tara Reade sues FBI

The whistleblower says she was targeted for retaliation

RT | December 20, 2023

Former US Senate aide Tara Reade, who has accused US President Joe Biden of sexually assaulting her while serving as a senator, filed a civil rights complaint against the FBI on Wednesday. Reade’s attorney says the federal government sought to intimidate and harass her during and after the 2020 election campaign.

In a complaint sent to the Office of the Inspector General of the US Department of Justice, Reade called for an investigation of FBI practices that “target Biden family whistleblowers for exercise of their First Amendment right to free speech,” according to a press release by Dr. Jonathan Levy, her London-based attorney.

Reade also requested copies of all information about her that the FBI may have obtained “through unconstitutional surveillance, search, and seizure tactics” and to have her FBI file expunged.

In a letter to the DOJ seen by RT, Levy described how the FBI – and, in particular, its Sacramento, California office – allegedly began an “operation” against Reade after April 2019 “in order to silence and surveil her and if possible falsely arrest her for criminal activities.”

At the time that the purported FBI probe began, Reade had just made public that Biden, then a US senator, had allegedly subjected her to a “violent sexual assault” on the Capitol grounds in 1993. Though she had reported the incident through the proper channels, her case was “suppressed by Congressional investigators to protect Senator Biden and the records sealed,” according to Levy.

Reade was not “an agent or associate” of former President Donald Trump, whom Biden challenged in the 2020 election, nor was she sponsored by any political organization or made any monetary demands of Biden, Levy noted. The attorney also pointed out that there was no indication of her involvement in any criminal activity.

According to the complaint, the FBI launched its operation “for the specific purpose of unlawfully intimidating, harassing, surveilling, and discrediting,” as well as potentially arresting Reade. Among those allegedly involved, Levy named Director Christopher Wray, Special Agent Michael Catalano, and NCA1 Supervisory Senior Resident Agent Andrew D. Forristel.

The lawsuit demands “an investigation of FBI practices” that led to a whistleblower becoming the target of a federal grand jury investigation and a criminal probe in California, “even after she requested FBI protection from death threats.” The DOJ IG was also asked to investigate the extent of the FBI’s alleged surveillance of Reade, including her “social media, communications and financial accounts,” and to provide copies of all the records thus obtained before they are expunged from her FBI dossier.

Reade has sought to protect her reputation by writing a book and starting a podcast. She has also contributed a number of articles to RT about the weaponization of sexual misconduct charges and whistleblower retaliation, among other subjects.

Earlier this year, fearing arrest for “an ominous menu of kangaroo-court offenses,” she sought political asylum in Russia while visiting Moscow.

December 20, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , | Leave a comment

The dangers NATO names and makes

By Radhika Desai | CGTN | November 28, 2023

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg stated in his pre-ministerial press conference on the eve of the NATO Foreign Ministers’ meeting in Brussels on November 28 and 29, that the almost 75-year-old organization faces “the most dangerous world in decades.”

However, little that the military alliance does seems designed to diminish those dangers. Instead, by holding out the hope of prevailing in these conflicts, most of which it has been instrumental in causing in carefully selected theaters outside itself, it is exacerbating them.

There is, upper-most on the world’s mind, the six-week-old Israel-Hamas conflict. While U.S. officials routinely invoke the danger that it will spiral out of control into a Middle Eastern war and even a World War III, rather than damping it down, the U.S. and NATO seem hell-bent on stoking it further. They back Israel militarily, financially, and diplomatically (with NATO members routinely vetoing or abstaining from numerous UN Resolutions calling for even a pause in the conflict) so one-sidedly that NATO governments face veritable revolts, not only on the streets but in its own ranks and those of the normally loyal national media.

The U.S. and NATO’s hopes of victory against Middle East countries are vain and hubristic. This is already clear from their failure to win the war in Ukraine. With defeat all but announced, the search for scapegoats is already on in Kyiv. If, after 20 months of war, billions in aid and armaments, boomeranging sanctions and unrelenting propaganda the war could not be won, the addition of new wars can hardly bring victory closer.

Finally, Stoltenberg referred to “growing global competition,” a code word for the aggression towards China into which the U.S. is trying to dragoon its NATO allies. It has, in recent years, entailed the revitalization of the Quad of Japan, Australia, India and the U.S., the launching of the AUKUS alliance between Australia, the United Kingdom and the U.S. and the shift from “Asia Pacific” to “Indo-Pacific” to designate the U.S. concerns and commitments beyond its western sphere with India positioned as a key U.S. and Western ally in the region.

It has also entailed unprecedented explicit mention of Asian objectives in NATO communiques since the Madrid Summit in 2022, and the attendance of leaders and ministers of Japan, the Republic of Korea, Australia and New Zealand as regular guests at NATO meetings and summits.

However, this strategy is far from assured. Quite simply, China’s winning, development- and growth-based diplomacy continues to engage all these countries and even NATO members with considerable success. While enervated and financialized Western economies offer only subjection, political and financial, China’s vibrant economy, productive and technological dynamism and benign international [ism] offer/exert an economic gravity that leaves no country untouched.

There are many reasons why NATO is being too hubristic and vain: It is too used to being the top dog, too many of its governments have invested too much into these wars and potential wars and it needs achievements to celebrate next July, not failures. But, as became clear in U.S. President Joe Biden’s speech a few days ago, when he once again delusionally called his country the “indispensable nation,” he wishes to fight the next election as a war president and then some: with wars on two and possibly three fronts.

Given his abysmal ratings, that is the thin thread on which his victory hangs.

Radhika Desai, a special commentator on current affairs for CGTN, is a professor of political studies at the University of Manitoba in Canada.

December 18, 2023 Posted by | Aletho News | , , , , | Leave a comment

Election fraud, impeachment inquiries, prosecution of political opponents… Can American politics get any worse?

By Drago Bosnic | December 15, 2023

The mainstream propaganda machine’s (ab)use of the term “conspiracy theory” (coined by the likes of the CIA in an attempt to stifle and discredit any information that could hurt their interests) has made it virtually impossible to talk about election fraud in the United States. Anyone even remotely suggesting that this could be possible in the “lighthouse of global democracy” was considered a “conspiracy nut”. Former president Donald Trump was even threatened with legal action if he doesn’t drop the idea. Worse yet, some Democrats have even accused him of supposed “treachery”, as the claims of election fraud could further undermine the otherwise “impeccable” image and reputation of the US.

However, the latest poll, conducted jointly by Heartland Institute and Rasmussen Reports, based in Illinois and New Jersey, respectively, found that 20% of voters who cast mail-in ballots during the 2020 presidential election admit to participating in at least one kind of voter fraud. Heartland and Rasmussen claim that when asked, “During the 2020 election, did you fill out a ballot, in part or in full, on behalf of a friend or family member, such as a spouse or child?”, 21% of respondents who said they voted by mail answered “yes”. It should be noted that filling out a ballot on someone else’s behalf is illegal in all US states (although some allow people to assist others with voting).

In addition, 17% of mail-in voters said they voted “in a state where you were no longer a permanent resident”, while the same percentage also admitted to signing a “ballot or ballot envelope on behalf of a friend or family member”. Both actions are illegal and automatically invalidate votes. The report further points out that over 43% of voters cast ballots by mail, which is by far the highest percentage in US history. Another 10% of all respondents — not just those who said they voted by mail — claimed that they know “a friend, family member, co-worker, or other acquaintance who has admitted … that he or she cast a mail-in ballot in 2020 in a state other than his or her state of permanent residence”.

However, more disturbingly, 8% of all respondents said “a friend, family member, or organization, such as a political party” offered them “pay” or a “reward” for agreeing to vote in the 2020 election. The results of the poll show that election fraud was not only present during the 2020 election, but was actually quite common, particularly in the case of mail-in ballots. It also shows that Trump’s claims were certainly not exaggerated, much less a “conspiracy theory”. However, the troubled Biden administration will certainly keep insisting on this notion, for obvious reasons, of course. And yet, this isn’t where their troubles end, as President Joe Biden is faced with an impeachment inquiry.

Namely, on December 13, the House of Representatives approved the launch of a formal impeachment probe, just hours after Hunter Biden refused a Congressional testimony. According to the Wall Street Journal, formalizing the impeachment process will give Congress additional power by improving the likelihood that a court will authorize access to grand jury materials, as well as boosting the chances that the GOP will be able to overcome objections such as executive privilege. The White House has been trying to torpedo Congressional subpoenas and demands for transcribed interviews with Biden family members since they were launched back in September.

These refusals were based on the grounds that the existing impeachment probe was invalid because the House didn’t vote to authorize it. However, with a 221-212 vote in favor of the inquiry, the Biden administration can’t use this as an excuse anymore. House Speaker Mike Johnson even directly accused the White House of impeding the investigation, which has so far been two-pronged. Namely, the House Oversight Committee is focusing on the Biden family’s corruption, while the House Judiciary Committee is investigating the weaponization of the Justice Department and FBI, as both are being used by the DNC to prosecute political opponents, with a particular focus on Donald Trump.

The sheer number of cases launched against him is absolutely unprecedented. No president has ever been indicted in the US, but Trump now has over half a dozen major cases and a plethora of smaller ones, including for alleged “election subversion”. Trump’s business-minded approach to politics and geopolitics has made him quite a lot of enemies among the political elites in Washington DC, which he, ever so “endearingly” (but not without reason), likes to call “The Swamp”. His statements about Putin and Russia are effectively considered “heresy” among both Democrat neoliberals and his “fellow” Republican neocons. Trump’s aversion toward warmongering is his “gravest crime”.

While in office, he had tremendous problems with warhawks within his own administration, resulting in several high-profile sackings, such as the case of the infamous John Bolton, one of the leading members of the so-called “war party” in Washington DC. Trump’s realpolitik approach stands in stark contrast to the warmongering elite’s overly ideological and completely impractical foreign policy framework that has not only created enemies everywhere, but has also effectively united them. He regularly criticizes his political opponents for underestimating Russia, a resurgent global superpower, rightfully calling it dangerous for US and global security.

However, Trump’s repeated warnings have not only been ignored, but simply rejected by the political establishment. It seems that high-profile US political figures committing any crime can get away with it, including sexual misconduct with minors, as long as they support the official narrative, even when the said narrative leads to a world-ending thermonuclear exchange. However, fighting the narrative in order to prevent such a conflict will almost certainly result in years of incessant and largely unfounded slandering (at best) or even land one in jail on trumped-up (no pun intended) charges. Either way, the current political situation completely dispels the illusion that the US is a democracy.

Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst.

December 15, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Corruption, Full Spectrum Dominance, Militarism | , | Leave a comment

Biden Announces He’s Signed ‘Another $200 Million Drawdown’ From Pentagon for Ukraine

By Ian DeMartino – Sputnik – 12.12.2023

US President Joe Biden announced during a Tuesday joint meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky that he has “just signed another $200 million drawdown” from the Pentagon for Ukraine.

Biden used the “drawdown” provision in the Foreign Assistance Act that allows him to provide Defense Department stockpiles to countries without congressional approval. The $200 million package is the 53rd such drawdown package provided to Ukraine since March 2022, in addition to billions of dollars in aid authorized by Congress.

The announcement comes as Congress remains deadlocked on authorizing more aid to Ukraine. Biden has asked Congress to provide $60 billion in aid to Ukraine in a funding package that also includes aid for Israel and money to secure the southern US border.

However, some Republicans have asked for more concessions on the border, including changes to the asylum system, a non-starter for many Democrats, in exchange for increased funding in Ukraine. The House of Representatives also passed a standalone aid bill for Israel, which the Senate has refused to consider.

Zelensky visited Washington in what has been described by US media as a “last-ditch effort” to convince Congress to authorize more aid to his country. Part of that visit included separate meetings with House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY).

Both Johnson and Schumer said their meetings with Zelensky went well but had different opinions on the details of their meetings.

Johnson criticized the Biden administration for not articulating how Ukraine can win against Russia. “The Biden administration appears to be asking for billions of dollars without specifics, without a clear strategy for winning, and without the answers I think the American people deserve,” he said at a news conference following his meeting with Zelensky.

Meanwhile, Schumer, who has been extremely hawkish on Ukraine since the start of the special military operation, claimed that Zelensky explained Ukraine’s path to victory to him.

“He [Zelensky] described in detail what kind of help was needed and how it would help win. Even many of our Republican politicians were saying that we were winning this war,” Schumer claimed.

Schumer said he called Johnson and asked him to keep the House open after this week so the $61 billion aid package can be approved.

“Last night, I spoke with Speaker Johnson and urged him to keep the House in session a little longer to give the supplemental a chance to come together,” Schumer said at a briefing.

The much smaller aid package announced by Biden on Tuesday uses an authorization provided in the Foreign Assistance Act (FAA) which allows the president to provide foreign aid using stocks the Defense Department has on hand without congressional approval.

This latest drawdown is at least the 53rd drawdown ordered by the Biden administration since the start of Russia’s special military operation in Ukraine.

The last drawdown, costing $175 million, was ordered by the Biden White House last week.

According to US media, the latest package includes High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS), anti-armor systems, artillery rounds, demolition munitions, small arms ammunition, high-speed anti-radiation missiles, generators and spare parts, among other equipment.

US media also reported the Defense Department has about $4.4 billion in weapons remaining that it can use through drawdown authorizations.

According to a 2004 Department of Defense Security Cooperation handbook on the drawdown procedure, all equipment sent using drawdown authorization must be replaced with operations and maintenance funds already part of the Defense Department budget.

During the meeting with Biden, Zelensky told reporters that he wants to use the $300 billion in frozen Russian assets to fight the conflict if Congress will not provide more aid. When asked if his country could win against Russia without aid from Congress, Zelensky reportedly did not answer verbally, shrugging his shoulders instead.

December 12, 2023 Posted by | Militarism | , , | Leave a comment

Hamas: Biden’s sexual violence claims “cheap Zionist propaganda”

Palestine Information Center – December 6, 2023

GAZA – The Hamas Movement has strongly denounced US president Joe Biden for adopting the Israeli narrative that accuses Palestinian resistance fighters of committing sexual assaults on October 7.

In a statement on Tuesday, Hamas said Biden’s sexual violence claims against its fighters reflected his moral decline and his adoption of Israeli propaganda.

Hamas said that Biden was “supposed to have a minimum level of objectivity and avoid repeating empty and baseless accusations and adopting cheap Zionist propaganda.”

“Repeating such a blatant lie is a Zionist behavior aimed at covering up the ethnic cleansing and genocidal crimes that are being committed by the criminal Nazi occupied army against our people, with American cover and weapons,” Hamas underscored.

Hamas also described Biden’s remarks as “an attempt to mislead the public opinion after the world has seen the good treatment the detainees received from the resistance.”

The Movement called on the international media outlets to side with the truth and debunk the new Zio-American claims against the Palestinian resistance, as they did before when they exposed the lies of beheading children and using Al-Shifa Hospital as a command and control center.

December 6, 2023 Posted by | Deception, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Biden moves to lift all restrictions on Israel’s access to US weapons stockpile: US media

Press TV – November 26, 2023

US President Joe Biden has requested the removal of nearly every restriction on Israel’s use of the stockpiles of weapons and ammunition stored by the United States in Israel, according to an American report.

The Intercept said on Saturday that Biden is seeking to remove all restrictions on the usage of the little-known US weapons stockpiles in Israel that the Pentagon established for use in regional conflicts, to which the Israeli regime had been previously permitted to have access in limited circumstances.

The move was included in the White House’s supplemental budget request, sent to the Senate on October 20, according to the report.

“This request would allow for the transfer of all categories of defense articles,” the proposed budget says.

The War Reserve Stockpile Allies-Israel (WRSA-I) was created in the 1980s to supply the United States with equipment in the case of a regional war, which is the largest node in a network of de facto US foreign arms stockpiles. These warehouses are controlled by a set of strict requirements.

Under the conditions outlined in these requirements, the Israeli regime has been able to tap into these stockpiles and purchase weapons at low costs if effective subsidization of US military aid is used.

The report notes that with WRSA-I, Biden seeks to remove nearly all meaningful restrictions on the stockpile and arms transfer to Israel, with plans to lift restrictions on obsolete or surplus weapons, waive an annual spending cap on replenishing the stockpile, remove weapon-specific restrictions, and curtail congressional oversight.

All of the changes in the Biden budget plan would be permanent, except for lifting the spending cap, which is limited to the 2024 fiscal year. The changes would come in an arms-trade relationship that is already shrouded in secrecy.

The House has already passed legislation reflecting the White House’s request last month, and it now stands before the Senate.

“By dropping the requirement that such articles be declared excess, it would also increase the existing strain on US military readiness in order to provide more arms to Israel,” said Josh Paul, who was the director of congressional and public affairs for the State Department’s Bureau of Political-Military Affairs, for over 11 years.

Paul, whose resignation last month due to US military aid to Israel caused a stir in Washington, admitted that “the President’s emergency supplemental funding request, would essentially create a free-flowing pipeline to provide any defense articles to Israel by the simple act of placing them in the WRSA-I stockpile, or other stockpiles intended for Israel.”

According to experts, the White House request would make it much harder for Congress or the public to monitor US arms transfers to Israel.

Under US law, there must be 30 days prior notice to Congress before arms transfer, but the Biden budget request would allow this to be shortened in “extraordinary” circumstances.

In a report last January, The New York Times, citing US and Israeli officials, revealed that the Pentagon sent hundreds of thousands of artillery shells to Ukraine from the so-called American emergency stockpile in Israel to help meet Ukraine’s need for artillery shells in the war with Russia.

The US has been a steadfast supporter of Israel for decades, both diplomatically and militarily. Each year, the US provides around $4bn of military support to the regime.

In early November, the American news outlet Bloomberg stated that the Pentagon has secretly increased its military aid to Israel, including more sophisticated missiles and equipment such as thousands of Hellfire missiles, which have been used extensively by Israel in Gaza war.

On Saturday in a phone call with Israeli minister of military affairs, Yoav Gallant, Pentagon chief Lloyd J. Austin underscored the US’s unwavering support for Israel and received updates as a temporary ceasefire continues across the besieged Gaza Strip following nearly seven weeks of Israeli genocidal war.

According to the Gaza-based health ministry, nearly 15,000 Palestinians have been killed in the Israeli strikes, most of them women and children, and injured around 36,000 others. 7,000 Palestinians are still missing.

November 26, 2023 Posted by | Corruption, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Militarism, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

Marching for Israel? American and Israeli war criminals celebrate together

BY PHILIP GIRALDI • UNZ REVIEW • NOVEMBER 24, 2023

For those who missed it or chose to ignore it, there was a large demonstration in Washington on Tuesday the 14th dubbed the “March for Israel” with many posters and signs featuring “Israel We Stand With You.” I have no big problem with Americans “standing with Israel” as long as they go over to Israel to do it and in some cases at least put their own lives at risk in so doing, but that is not the way they operate. What I do have a problem with is the cause they are supporting, namely the ethic cleansing of an entire nation or even, if required to do that, a military style genocide of the inhabitants of an area that was entirely populated by an ethnic group called Palestinians before Israel’s mostly European immigrants entered the scene and used foreign provided force majeur to steal the land and property. While so doing they were also killing thousands of locals and forcing three quarters of a million more to abandon their homes and spend their lives in refugee camps, a process of ethnic cleansing that has continued and been expanded through the creation of illegal settlements since the founding of the Jewish state 75 years ago.

The rally was organized by the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations and the Jewish Federations of North America in solidarity with Israel’s response to the October 7th Hamas attack. Apart from backing the Israeli government in its devastating counterattack on Gaza, the stated goals of the rally were to support Israel in general, to call for the release of the hostages taken by Hamas, and to combat antisemitism. “Rising antisemitism” allegedly followed the October 7th Hamas attack and the Israel reaction that marked the start of the war. The usually cited source the Anti-Defamation League has stated that antisemitism has increased 388% in the US since October 6, 2023. Now one must observe that the ADL is not a reliable source when it comes to antisemitism as its agenda is clearly to send the message that Jews as a group are threatened, which is just not true to anything near the extent that is being implied. The reason why antisemitism and holocaust denial are used so often against critics is to discredit them without having to provide any evidence. For ADL, a Jewish college student walking on campus and passing a pro-Palestinian poster and being upset by it is an antisemitic incident. What I am saying is that this is an entirely faked exercise to convince the audience that Israel and Jews are the victims in spite of the fact that many more Palestinians have been killed and dispossessed since the founding of Israel in 1948. If there is any real increase in actual antisemitism it is in response to the highly visible bestiality that the Jewish state has exhibited against the original occupants of what was once Palestine. Israel wants the Pals gone and these are the first steps in what might be termed a final solution, aided and abetted by American monsters like Joe Biden and Donald Trump, who have made the United States complicit in war crimes.

Many participants in the Israel rally came by charter buses organized by Jewish houses of worship and schools. Most of the crowd appeared to be Jews but there was also a strong Christian Zionist component. Groups came from New York, New Jersey, Los Angeles, Houston, Miami, Boston, Kansas City, New York, Philadelphia and Miami plus other domestic and even international locations. US college students were given $250 in travel and expenses money to attend as an incentive. The crowd was considerable though there is some confusion about how many were actually in attendance. The organizers predicted 60,000 which was the number initially accepted, but other estimates of the crowd were as low as 10,000 or 25,000. The numbers quickly grew in some news stories to uncorroborated estimates of 270,000 to 300,000. There is, of course, certain bragging rights in large numbers and the March was in competition with a Palestinian rally that attracted 300,000 the week before, so let’s just accept that there was a large group present on the Mall.

Joe Biden did not personally attend the rally but he said on the following day “[that] Israel’s military operation in Gaza would stop when Hamas no longer maintains the capacity to murder, abuse, and do horrific things to the Israelis.” He left out the part of continuous abuse of Palestinians, going back 75 years and clearly is not paying attention to senior Israeli government officials who are making comments that indicate that the grand objective is to remove the Palestinians from what will soon be Eretz or Greater Israel.

Speakers at the three-hour long rally included Israel’s self-described protector in Congress Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, House Speaker Mike Johnson, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, Senator Joni Ernst, Pastor John Hagee, and Israeli President Isaac Herzog (via video from Jerusalem), who praised US President Joe Biden for his “moral clarity and bold actions…” Johnson predictably declared that “The calls for a ceasefire are outrageous!” while the State Department’s Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Antisemitism Deborah Lipstadt also delivered on demand a plea “Do not cower, allow no one to make you afraid.” Meanwhile Donald Trump’s US Ambassador to Israel David Friedman, who served mostly as an apologist for the Jewish state while in office, roamed the Mall expressing his joy at developments. Other notable speakers included Natan Sharansky and actress Debra Messing. Speeches followed the predictable narrative, with descriptions of how Israel had been attacked by terrorists who sought to destroy the Jewish state, that Israel is America’s best friend and closest ally, and how Israel is only defending itself from attack. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who did not speak, stated in an interview in Israel that if his country does not succeed in crushing Hamas, the next terrorist attacks would be directed against America, an evidence free claim to strengthen US resolve, but as Netanyahu hardly ever tells the truth it should be taken for what it’s worth.

And, of course, everyone’s openly stated or subliminal message was that the United States must stand by and do whatever it takes to help defend its good friend and ally, including rejecting a cease fire or negotiations and letting the slaughter of Gazan women and children continue. The discredited tales of torture and mass rapes of Israeli women and the killing by beheading of Jewish babies, which are still being replayed by President Joe Biden, were also part of the rally agenda and appeared as the messages on signs and posters. What was not mentioned however was the systematic Israeli bombing of hospitals, schools, churches, and infrastructure, all of which are war crimes, as are the attacks on high density civilian targets which have produced more than 11,000 deaths as of this writing, mostly consisting of women and children. Targeting civilians in that fashion in those numbers can and should be construed as genocide. Israel’s war on hospitals can also be regarded as part of a systematic campaign of genocide. The deliberate targeting of civilian populations, children, medical and aid workers has been elevated to an Israeli government policy to drive the Palestinians from what was once Palestine.

Official Washington was on parade and in lockstep to demonstrate its unshakable loyalty to Israel even as opinion polls suggest that the American public is tired of the charade. A couple of brave peaceniks dared to move on the fringes of the crowd with signs calling for a ceasefire to end the carnage, but they were openly derided and threatened so they kept their distance. One truly shocking attendee at the rally was former Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard, who was present and spouting the straight Israel line about how it was the victim of terrorists. Tulsi said “It is inspiring to see how many people are flooding into Washington – understanding the seriousness of this moment, coming from all over the country. Many Jewish people [and] many people who are not Jewish . . . are coming and saying that we must stand up against antisemitism. We must stand up for our Jewish brothers and sisters, and we must take a strong stand against the Islamist terrorists who seek to not only exterminate the Jewish people but also to exterminate and kill anyone who does not adhere to their radical interpretation of Islam.” She sounded something like the State Department’s despicable number two Victoria Nuland looking for another country to attack. Now that RFK Jr has also obligingly rolled over for the Jewish state there is no genuine peace candidate anywhere on the horizon with the exception of the Green Party’s Jill Stein and the beat of the war drums will continue to sound.

More out of sync perhaps was the presence as an ally of convenience evangelical Pastor John Hagee of the Christians United for Israel (CUFI) group which was well represented both at the rally and as the key largest Christian Zionist component of the Israel Lobby in the US. Hagee has said that Hitler was a “half-breed Jew,” created and sent by God as a “hunter” to drive European Jews on a divine mission to fulfill prophecy by creating the state of Israel to bring about the End Time and the Second Coming of Christ followed by the Rapture of all true believers into heaven. Jews will have to convert to participate. One brings someone as controversial as Hagee out of the woodwork only to send a message that this is not about making sure that Jews are safe. It’s about showing solidarity with Israel, no matter what it does. And what kind of rally against antisemitism includes racist signs calling for more war, more bombings, and the destruction of not just Hamas but also the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians? Or as one sign held by a masked protester read, “From the river to the sea, Israel is all you will see.”

The so-called holocaust was evoked a number of times by speakers, particularly when it came time to describe Gaza on November 7th as the biggest killing of Jews since the Second World War. Nor did anyone mention the fundamental dysfunction in the US-Israeli relationship, which is that Israel calls nearly all the shots, including the killing of 34 sailors on the USS Liberty in 1967 and the more recent shooting of American citizen journalists covering Palestinian protests by Israeli Army sharpshooters. Israelis who kill Americans are never punished unlike the demands or retribution being made by speakers in Washington at the rally to kill not only all of Hamas but also the Gazan voters who elected Hamas in the first place. Though it is somewhat repetitive to say so, lest there be any confusion, that is referred to as genocide which is regarded as the most serious crime against humanity. And no one spoke up at the rally against the involvement of the US military in the operation against Gaza, which Biden is lying about and which is opposed by a majority of the public. Nor did anyone cite recent comments by US General Richard Clark that American soldiers must be “prepared to die for the Jewish state.”

Perhaps the politicians in Washington should ask US soldiers whether they are “prepared to die for the Jewish state.” Or maybe there should be called a national referendum asking the public whether it wants to continue arming and sending billions of dollars to Israel and to Ukraine as well. Evidence suggests that a clear majority would oppose both policies, which have hardly been debated at all in any serious way. Americans who want to “stand with Israel” should be allowed to go there with a one-way ticket in exchange for which they have to turn in their US passports as another major issue is “Who are they actually loyal to?” I’ll bet I know the answer to that one!

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.

November 24, 2023 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

North Korea Scraps 2018 Military Pact with South After Seoul Walks Backs Commitments

By Kyle Anzalone | The Libertarian Institute | November 23, 2023

Amid escalating tensions in the region, North Korea has withdrawn from a 2018 agreement with South Korea that reduced military tensions on the Korean Peninsula. Pyongyang took the step after Seoul announced it would resume surveillance operations along the DMZ.

The relationship between Pyongyang and Seoul has been in a downward spiral since President Joe Biden took office. Tensions between North and South Korea spiked last week when Pyongyang successfully placed a military satellite into orbit.

North Korean state media reported the satellite allowed Kim Jong Un to view images of a US military facility in Guam.

Seoul and its backers in Tokyo and Washington condemned the satellite launch, claiming it violated UN resolutions. Pyongyang insists that it is within North Korea’s rights as a sovereign country to have spaced-based surveillance technology.

In response to North Korea’s successful launch, South Korea walked back its commitments to a 2018 inter-Korean Comprehensive Military Agreement (CMA). The CMA reduced tensions on the Peninsula by limiting military activities.

South Korea announced it was breaking the CMA on Wednesday by resuming surveillance flights along the North Korean border. Seoul’s Defense Minister Shin Won-sik explained, “North Korea’s satellite launch is a clear violation of UN Security Council resolutions and a serious provocation against [South Korea] and the international community.” South Korean Ministry of National Defense Spokesman Heo Tae-keun stated, “North Korea’s behavior shows again that it has no will to comply with the agreement.”

The North Korean Defense Ministry said Pyongyang would completely vacate the agreement. “We will immediately restore all military measures that have been halted according to the North-South military agreement,” Pyongyang’s state media outlet, KCNA, reported.

“We will withdraw the military steps taken to prevent military tension and conflict in all spheres including ground, sea, and air, and deploy more powerful armed forces and new-type military hardware in the region along the Military Demarcation Line.”

The ministry’s statement continued that South Korea must “pay dearly for their irresponsible and grave political and military provocations that have pushed the present situation to an uncontrollable phase.”

After Biden took office, the US and South Korea resumed large-scale live-fire war games on the Korean Peninsula. Pyongyang views the operations as preparations for regime change in North Korea. The White House has further escalated tension by deploying multiple strategic weapons systems to South Korea and forming a trilateral military pact with Seoul and Tokyo that Pyongyang views as an Asian NATO.

November 23, 2023 Posted by | Militarism | , , | Leave a comment

White House anxious Gaza truce will shed light on devastation caused by Israel: Report

The Cradle | November 22, 2023

US planners are concerned that a four-day truce agreement reached between the Israeli government and Palestinian resistance factions on 22 November in Gaza will have the “unintended consequence” of turning global opinion further against Israel.

“There was some concern in the administration about an unintended consequence of the pause: that it would allow journalists broader access to Gaza and the opportunity to further illuminate the devastation there and turn public opinion on Israel,” POLITICO reported on Tuesday.

The DC-based outlet also says that the White House “remains wary” about the long-term strategy of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for what to do in Gaza. “There was no sense that the pause would turn into a lengthier cease-fire,” an unnamed US official is cited as saying.

Forty-seven days since the start of Operation Al-Aqsa Flood by the Palestinian resistance and Israel’s ensuing ethnic cleansing campaign in Gaza, early on Wednesday, the two sides announced a temporary truce that will see hostilities pause for four days and badly needed humanitarian aid enter the besieged coastal enclave.

The deal also includes the release of 150 Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails in exchange for 50 settlers held captive by Hamas in Gaza.

“I am extraordinarily gratified that some of these brave souls […] will be reunited with their families once this deal is fully implemented,” US President Joe Biden said in a statement released by the White House.

Since the start of the war in Gaza, Biden pledged his unconditional support for Israel and more than once whitewashed war crimes committed against civilians and even spread disinformation about the 7 October attack.

His unshakeable stance has landed him in deep water ahead of next year’s ballots, with recent polls showing 70 percent of voters aged 18 to 34 disapprove of Washington’s handling of the war.

“Joe Biden is at a uniquely low point in his presidency, and a significant part of this, especially within the Biden coalition, is due to how Americans are viewing his foreign policy actions,” Hart Research Associates Democratic pollster Jeff Horwitt told NBC News this week.

“This poll is a stunner, and it’s stunning because of the impact the Israel-Hamas war is having on Biden,” said Public Opinion Strategies Republican pollster Bill McInturff, who added he “has never seen” a foreign policy issue not directly involving US troops impacting domestic politics to this level.

The four-day truce comes as the death toll in Gaza has surpassed 12,000, nearly half of them women and children. Over the past 47 days, the Israeli army has indiscriminately targeted hospitals, schools, Mosques, residential neighborhoods, civilian caravans, and vital infrastructure across what many consider to be the world’s largest open-air prison.

November 22, 2023 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , , , , | Leave a comment

Joe Biden’s Washington Post op-ed shows the US never learns its lessons

By Tarik Cyril Amar | RT | November 20, 2023

The president of the United States, Joe Biden, has recently published an op-ed. Appropriately released through the Washington Post, it is, of course, really the equivalent of a regime policy declaration – a laying down of the party line, if you wish. As such, the text deserves attention, never mind that it is impossible that America’s leader, clearly challenged by worsening senescence, has written it himself. This is, to borrow a phrase from the Russia-watching crowd, America’s “collective Biden” speaking.

Translated from official jargon and scrubbed of empty rhetoric and euphemisms, the long proclamation makes only two substantial points about what the US and its “allies” (really clients and vassals) must do: Continue waging a proxy war against Russia in Ukraine and continue backing Israel in its genocidal war against the Palestinians (no, it is not a “war against Hamas,” that’s a side effect).

In that sense, there is nothing surprising, or hopeful, in collective Biden’s announcement: It took them more words this time, but this Democratic administration of neocons is simply repeating the equally tone-deaf slogan of a former Republican president representing a past gaggle of neocons: Stay the course, as George W. Bush put it succinctly during the Iraq disaster. Deja Vue all over again, in the words of America’s greatest philosopher.

But the details of the text still merit scrutiny. Let’s pick out a few highlights: 

Hamas is repeatedly denounced as carrying out “pure, unadulterated evil” and such. Every fair observer would reserve such terms by now for what the Israelis are doing in Gaza. But let’s set that aside for now and let’s also set aside that we now know that substantial numbers of Israelis were killed by Israeli forces. Let’s instead focus on Hamas. Is such language factual? The rational answer to that question is not a matter of opinion, and it has to be “no”: In reality, the empirical record shows that Hamas is a resistance organization engaged in a legally and ethically justified struggle against massive national oppression. It has attacked military targets, which is legitimate, as well as committed terrorist crimes. But if any political and armed organization that does both engage in legitimate violence and terrorist crimes is carrying out “pure evil,” then almost every halfway powerful state in this world has done just that or is doing it even now. Clearly, we are dealing with an absurd statement here.

Usually, the cause of such absurdities is strategic dishonesty. That holds here as well. For the Biden administration is transparently pursuing two aims with this Orwellian abuse of terminology: First, make Israel’s crimes against the Palestinians appear, if not justified, then at least so “understandable” or “inevitable” that we stop objecting to them (and, if we are Americans, vote for Democrats, even while they support these perfectly avoidable crimes).

Secondly, prepare the ground for the proposal, following further down in the proclamation, to entirely eliminate Hamas from any post-assault settlement and, instead, “ultimately” make a “revived Palestinian Authority” rule both the West Bank and Gaza, while work on some lasting settlement continues.

This proposal is wrapped in deceptive and revoltingly cynical rhetoric: If Joe Biden has a broken heart over the slaughtered children of Gaza, then Andrew Jackson must have cried while signing the Indian Removal Act. If Biden wants a two-state solution, then why is he allowing and helping one of the “two states” to wipe out the other? If he has “counselled” Israeli leaders to refrain from excessive violence, then why has he not backed up his kind words with using his massive leverage and stopping the flow of arms, money, information, and diplomatic cover to help their genocidal attack? If Biden is worried about antisemitism spreading, why does he allow far-right Zionists to claim that their policies, which lead to deaths of thousands upon thousands of Palestinian children, are somehow “Jewish”?

Hypocrisy like that may still fool some Americans, namely those who really believe that the adequate answer to the umpteenth mass shooting at home is “thoughts and prayers.” But a US president and those writing and thinking for him would be well-advised not to embarrass themselves further before everyone else, at home and abroad.

The real policy proposal, meanwhile, is nothing else but an attempt to return to the post-Oslo Accords system on even worse terms. That means, creating a situation in which urgent, vital Palestinian needs and crystal-clear Palestinian rights will, once again, be de facto suspended in an endless dishonest “process,” which really only serves as a screen and stalling device for Israel, while the latter settles occupied land, practices the internationally recognized crime of apartheid, and conducts the occasional massacre.

But the proclamation addresses more than the Middle East. Turning on Russia, the collective Biden personalizes the issue, in bad old neocon style. Instead of any attempt at a rational – albeit critical, even hostile – approach to Moscow’s actions and interests, we find the usual daft insults: Russian President Vladimir Putin is juxtaposed with Hamas, as if he were a one-man “terrorist organization.” (Never mind that Hamas is not, actually, a terrorist organization, although it also engages in terrorist acts; see above.)

The war in Ukraine is reduced to Putin’s personal “drive for conquest,” as if there has been no history of two decades of American provocations by reckless over-expansion, bad faith, and refusal to negotiate serious issues of international security in earnest and constructively. In that regard, Russia is receiving the same rhetorical treatment as the Palestinians: When it fights, we are forbidden to notice all the very real reasons it was given to do so.

And finally, both “Putin” – read: Russia – and Hamas stand accused of two things: Wanting to “wipe a neighboring democracy off the map” and taking us to a new, vile international order, where the strong abuse the weak and might makes right.

Newsflash: Actually, neither Israel nor Ukraine are democracies. In Israel’s case, the claim is vitiated by the simple fact that its government exerts de facto control over millions of Palestinians, all of whom face discrimination and the vast majority of whom do not have a vote, or, for that matter any ordinary civil and human rights. Ukraine, meanwhile, has Vladimir Zelensky, Washington’s darling in decline, who started dismantling the country’s brittle democratic structures – for what they were worth – in 2021, well before the war, and clings to power by cooperating with a violent far-right, eliminating the political opposition, streamlining the media, and delaying elections. Again, these are not matters of opinion but facts.

Secondly, Hamas is not trying to wipe out Israel, despite endless claims to the contrary. In the past, it has repeatedly signaled a willingness to compromise and accept a two-state solution. Claiming Hamas wants the total destruction of Israel is akin to using one idiotic quote from former US President Ronald Reagan to “prove” that he wanted to erase the whole Soviet Union. Hamas also simply does not have the capacity – not by a very far stretch – to do so.

Likewise, Russia is not trying to abolish Ukraine. As its compromise proposals of late 2021 clearly showed, its key aim is a neutral Ukraine that is not used as a proxy by the West. It is true that Russia, by now, claims some Ukrainian territory. Depending on how long the war continues, it may end up claiming and taking even more. You may very well object to that. Yet it is not the same as a will to exterminate a whole state or, for that matter, its population.

Finally, regarding the warning that Hamas, Russia, and who knows who else (China? India? Brazil? Simply everyone who won’t do as told by Washington?) are hellbent on dragging us all into new dark ages of ultra-cynical realpolitik and brute force, guess what: That is precisely where we are now. And have been for the last quarter of a century, under the benevolent aegis of the USA. Don’t believe it? Ask Gaza.

In sum, all we can really learn from this letter from on-high is that the Biden administration has understood nothing and is determined to learn even less. If, in the words of the declaration, the world is ever supposed to have even a slight chance of seeing “more hope, more freedom, less rage, less grievance, and less war,” then we first need to see much less of Joe Biden and everything and everyone he stands for.

Tarik Cyril Amar is a historian from Germany working at Koç University, Istanbul, on Russia, Ukraine, and Eastern Europe, the history of World War II, the cultural Cold War, and the politics of memory.

November 20, 2023 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Progressive Hypocrite, Russophobia | , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

U.S.-China Reset? Biden Offers Hand of Friendship to Xi While Holding Enmity in the Other

Strategic Culture Foundation | November 17, 2023

Despite the hype in the U.S. media about their much-anticipated summit in California this week marking a putative return to normal bilateral relations, the Biden administration continues pushing unprecedented aggression towards China.

Just like San Francisco’s notorious Third World-like homelessness and squalor being hurriedly cleaned up (swept under the rug, more like it) for the media spectacle, all the signs point to no return to decent U.S.-China relations in the longer term. It’s all a duplicitous facade for a passing moment on a path of enmity.

Biden held a four-hour summit with Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping on Wednesday in San Francisco ahead of the annual conference for the 21-nation Association of Pacific and Economic Cooperation (APEC).

It was highly notable that Biden and Xi did not hold a joint press conference following their lengthy discussions. Nor did the two leaders issue a joint statement. So much for a new beginning!

Almost comically, the supposed positive meeting was later thrown into disarray when Biden at the end of his solo press conference made a hallmark embarrassing gaffe by repeating an earlier epithet for Xi. Asked by a reporter if he still considered the Chinese president “a dictator”, Biden responded, “Yes”.

Antony Blinken, the U.S. Secretary of State, was visibly perplexed by his tone-deaf boss’s remarks, sensing that all the effort to create an apparent amiable reset in relations was in danger of collapsing in farce.

Chinese media tended to overlook Biden’s undiplomatic gaucheness. Surprisingly, China’s foreign ministry and media appeared to talk up the presidential summit as bearing prospects of more friendly bilateral relations. Global Times reported in an upbeat mood on a “strategic summit” for “greater stability in the world”.

The American and Chinese media spinning or wishful thinking about a seeming turnaround in positive relations is misplaced.

As Biden’s foolish and gratuitous remark about Xi being a “dictator” shows, the U.S. rulers have nothing but contempt for China. Biden may have held out a friendly hand to Xi, but the American president and the U.S. establishment are harbouring endemic and growing hostility towards Beijing.

The two presidents last met a year ago during the G20 gathering in Bali, Indonesia. Since that encounter there has been a worrying downturn in U.S.-China relations with many commentators in the U.S. and China, as well as around the world, fearing a possible outbreak of war between the two global nuclear powers.

Frankly, the belligerence stems from one side: the United States. It’s not just the administration of President Joe Biden that espouses aggression by deploying contrived economic sanctions against China. There is a preponderance of irrational hostility in Congress towards Beijing as well as among the U.S. military. Only a month ago, the Pentagon once again labelled China as a growing military threat to American global interests. The alleged threats that Washington traduces are baseless or, ironically, a projection of its own intimidatory actions, such as sending countless naval and aviation patrols near China’s borders on the cynical pretext of “freedom of navigation”.

The Biden White House has continually provoked China with false claims of Chinese expansionism in the Asia-Pacific while the U.S. relentlessly builds up its own military power in the region. Washington is also assiduously recruiting regional allies to gang up on China in the event of war. The AUKUS coalition with Australia and Britain armed with nuclear submarines is a particularly tendentious development. So too is the Quad group involving the U.S., Japan, South Korea and India which arrogantly denigrates China as a hemispheric threat, thereby turning reality completely on its head.

Biden is merely continuing an escalation in hostility that began ramping up under the Obama administration (2008-16) more than a decade ago. Trump maintained the belligerence during his four years (2016-20), which Biden has redoubled. The latter was vice president when Obama launched the so-called Pivot to Asia in 2011.

The trajectory unmistakably shows a systematic policy of U.S. power to confront China, and that policy prevails regardless of who sits in the White House, and no matter whether the president is a Democrat or Republican. So much for democratic choice!

As American hegemonic dominance goes into rapid decline owing to inherent economic and societal failure under sclerotic late U.S. capitalism, it has become all the more imperative for Washington to try to scale up military aggression towards perceived geopolitical rivals. It’s a desperate gambit to offset an historic decline.

China, being the world’s ascendant second largest economy after the U.S., is logically seen as the Number One threat. So too are Russia and other nations that advocate a multipolar world order free from arbitrary U.S. and Western privileges. This is the geopolitical context for why the NATO axis is waging a proxy war in Ukraine against Russia, and why the United States seems hellbent on fomenting chaos and conflict in the Middle East. The would-be hegemon needs violence, chaos and tension like a drug addict craving a narcotic fix.

The deterioration in U.S.-China relations has caused many observers to be apprehensive of a looming war. Pentagon commanders remark openly about an anticipated armed conflict breaking out between the two nuclear powers, especially in relation to tensions over Taiwan.

One reason why Biden seems to be seeking a belated easing of tensions with China is precisely because Washington has stoked the war tendency too much and therefore needs to dampen it, albeit for short-term practical reasons.

Another reason for seemingly engaging with President Xi this week is Biden’s electioneering. He faces a tight presidential race next year and no doubt is looking for something positive to show American voters. Significantly, Biden chose to prioritize his top achievement from discussions with Xi as “counter-narcotics policy”. Over 70,000 Americans die every year from opioid overdosing, more than from gun violence or road accidents. It is a major national scandal in the U.S. China is blamed as a source of fentanyl precursor chemicals. Biden boasted this week that the U.S. and China would cooperate more on controlling illicit drug trade. It seems that Biden was looking more at scoring favour with the U.S. electorate than to genuinely restoring normal bilateral relations with China based on principles of ensuring global peace.

Under Biden, the U.S. has recklessly intensified military and political interference in Taiwan, an island province of China. The Biden administration has proliferated weapons sales to Taiwan in flagrant defiance of China’s warnings to desist.

High-level political delegations from the U.S. to Taiwan have gone hand-in-hand with the increasing American militarization of the island, which is only some 130 kilometres from China’s southeast mainland. The provocation is similar to how the U.S. and NATO weaponized Ukraine to antagonize Russia.

The breakdown in military communications between the U.S. and China was instigated by the visit to Taiwan in August 2022 by Nancy Pelosi, the then Speaker of the House of Representatives, which is the third most senior political office in the U.S. after the president.

This week’s summit between Biden and Xi declared a resumption in military communications between the U.S. and China.

We’ll see how long the supposed detente lasts. Not for long, one suspects going by past form.

After Biden met with Xi in Bali at the end of last year, there were similar professions from the U.S. side of tamping down tensions and resuming normalcy. A couple of months after that supposed “reset”, the Biden administration sparked a crisis when it shot down a Chinese weather balloon that had been blown off course.

The notion that the U.S. can easily repair relations with China is naive. All the signals indicate that Washington is on a collision course with China. Provocative name-calling of China as a threat, the relentless arming of Taiwan and the pursuit of aggressive trade war policies all spell out confrontation.

That dire direction is, unfortunately, unavoidable because the U.S. sees itself as the indispensable sole superpower that will not tolerate any global arrangement other than its hegemonic dominance. That zero-sum mindset of the United States is intrinsic to its imperialist power. That is why the U.S. as it is currently formulated as a state is destined to be a warmonger. World peace is anathema to U.S. imperial power.

China, Russia and other nations aiming for a new multipolar world must be cognizant of that nefarious reality. Aspiring to have normal relations with the U.S. as a global hegemonic power is like trying to have normal relations with a psychotic predator.

President Teddy Roosevelt (1900-10) once jocularly described the practice of U.S. foreign policy as speaking softly while carrying a big club. That’s the essence of a global bully. U.S. power always relies on wielding a military club. The only difference now under Biden is that instead of speaking softly, the U.S. stutters over its lies and deceptions.

November 18, 2023 Posted by | Militarism | , , | Leave a comment

Biden admin justifies Israel’s assault on Gaza hospitals with recycled Israeli ‘intelligence’

BY WYATT REED · THE GRAYZONE · NOVEMBER 15, 2023

As Israel assaults Gaza’s Shifa Hospital, the Biden administration claims that “Hamas does use hospitals” as military bases. Once again, Washington appears to be relying on dubious Israeli propaganda rather than independent analysis.

With Israeli troops storming Gaza’s Al-Shifa and Al-Rantisi hospitals, the United States and Israel are doubling down on discredited claims that Hamas has been maintaining “command centers” out of the basements of hospitals in Gaza, even after so-called evidence produced by Tel Aviv was thoroughly debunked.

“I can confirm for you that we have information that Hamas, and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, used some hospitals in the Gaza Strip, including Al-Shifa, and tunnels underneath them, to conceal and to support their military operations and to hold hostages,” National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told reporters Tuesday.

Kirby’s claim echoed the assertion by National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, who maintained that “open-source reporting” shows “Hamas does use hospitals, along with a lot of other civilian facilities, for command-and-control, for storing weapons, for housing its fighters.”

On November 14, Pentagon spokeswoman Sabrina Singh told reporters that US intelligence had no “boots on the ground,” nor any intelligence assets capable of independently gathering intelligence from or about Shifa. When asked if the declassified intel briefing spun out by Kirby and Sullivan arrived through Washington’s “Israeli counterparts,” she refused to answer. But she strongly suggested the intelligence dump was politically motivated.

“This is newly-downgraded information that we felt was important to get out today, because there have been a lot of questions about the hospital and how Hamas operates, and so it was important to get out there,” Singh insisted.

Hamas denies using hospitals for military purposes, and both local healthcare workers and international humanitarian organizations back that up. “I’m sick and tired of these [Israeli] claims that there are Hamas command centers [in hospitals],” Norwegian physician Dr. Mads Gilbert told Al-Jazeera on November 12. Having performed life-saving procedures for several weeks inside Shifa during Israel’s 2014 assault on Gaza, Gilbert noted, “As I’ve said 100 times… we’ve never seen high-ranking Hamas people in Al-Shifa,” adding “we’ve been able to roam freely.”

But that did little to prevent Israeli troops from waging an all-out assault on the facilities. As Israeli forces surrounded Shifa hospital on Tuesday with the full-throated support of the Biden administration, arresting journalists outside the facility and violently clearing displaced people from its grounds, doctors inside were forced to move babies in intensive care from one wing of the hospital to another to save their lives. A lack of fuel had already forced many of those infants off vital oxygen supply units.

Meanwhile, Israeli forces have been unable to find any presence of hostages inside or around the hospital. As Israeli Army Radio reported on November 15, “There is no indication of the presence of abductees inside the hospital.”

Systematic Israeli misinformation campaign dismissed by US as “fog of war”

Israeli and American officials have yet to produced any proof that Hamas operates a “command center” under Al-Shifa. Video published by the Israeli military purporting to prove Hamas kept hostages in the basement of Al-Rantisi Children’s Hospital, Gaza’s last remaining medical center with a pediatric cancer ward, was less than convincing.

In that video performance, top Israeli army spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari claims that what appears to be a bomb shelter for young children is actually a Hamas torture chamber, citing objects as unlikely as a baby bottle and a woman’s clothes. In one particularly memorable and widely panned moment, Hagari insisted the days of the week written in Arabic on a calendar were actually the names of the “terrorists” meant to guard captive Israelis ostensibly being held there.

The Israeli military has since attempted to downplay the deception as a “mistake in translation.”

It was hardly the first round in Tel Aviv’s fake news campaign. In the weeks since Palestinian resistance groups launched their shock assault on October 7, native Arabic speakers have taken to social media to mock the audio recordings Israel regularly publishes which purport to show Hamas members gleefully discussing carrying out war crimes.

In November alone, official Israeli social media accounts have been forced to walk about at least a half-dozen false assertions. A video showing a crying woman describing how she retrieved her son’s decomposing body from the streets of Gaza was transformed by Israel’s embassy to the US, which used fake captions to falsely claim she was blaming Hamas for the siege. When questioned, the embassy subsequently deleted the post.

The same week, Israel’s main government account on Twitter had to delete its false claim that “AP, CNN, NY Times, and Reuters had journalists embedded with Hamas terrorists on October 7th massacre” – a lie which the New York Times condemned as “reckless” and said put its journalists on the ground in Israel and Gaza “at risk.”

Days later, Israel’s official Arabic-language Twitter account deleted footage of a woman dressed in nursing scrubs who claimed to work as a nurse in Gaza’s Al-Shifa hospital denounced Hamas for supposedly stealing fuel and medicine. Other doctors and nurses at the medical center reportedly told journalist Younis Tirawi: “We don’t know this woman; she has never worked here before & we’ve never seen her at the hospital.”

Social media users claimed the woman was Israeli actress Hannah Abutbul, who moonlights as a social media manager of an Israeli company named Aish International that works alongside the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Abutbul denies appearing in the video.

On November 10, Israel’s Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) claimed Hamas was “INSIDE the Indonesian hospital last night,” citing a video which appeared to show a firearm being displayed. An observer who pointed out that the object was actually a billy club had their reply ‘hidden’ by the official Israeli account.

Throughout the blood-spattered onslaught on the Gaza Strip, US officials have consistently taken Israeli claims at face value, even parroting Tel Aviv’s excuses when prompted. Following Biden’s now-retracted claim to have seen “confirmed pictures of terrorists beheading children,” US officials continue to exhibit a remarkable willingness to side with the Israeli government and echo its talking points.

During a November 14 press briefing, a reporter asked State Department spokesman Matthew Miller about the Israeli government’s habitual spreading of “misinformation.” Miller responded by brushing off Israel’s parade of fabrications as an inevitable feature of the “fog of war.”

“In the fog of war, from thousands of miles away at the podium,” the spokesman insisted, “I have no way to independently adjudicate the various claims that are being made.”

November 16, 2023 Posted by | Deception, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , , , , , | Leave a comment

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