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Why Won’t Kerry Leave Syria Alone?

By Daniel McAdams | Ron Paul Institute | May 16, 2014

US Secretary of State John Kerry seems to be on a personal mission to draw the US into an invasion of Syria. At the least, he remains determined to continue backing the rebellion against the Syrian government until the country is completely destroyed.

Meeting yesterday in London, the self-styled “Friends of Syria,” including, in addition to the US and UK, such model democracies as Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey, determined to increase assistance to those who for three years have fought to overthrow the Syrian government.

Kerry took the opportunity at the meeting to again accuse the Syrian government of using chemical weapons, apparently not at all chastened by his fraudulent claims to the same effect last year. “Raw data” suggests the Syrian government used chlorine gas recently, Kerry claimed this time. Very raw, no doubt.

Meanwhile, US Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said on the same day that, “We’ve not seen any evidence” of additional chemical attacks. It seems that the US administration is at war with itself, with Kerry seeming to go rogue at every opportunity.

Recall last summer that Kerry said unambiguously that “we know” that Assad used chemical weapons in Ghouta. Also remember that he was completely wrong, having placed the US on the brink of invading another country on a trumped-up pretext.

But even though an agreement was reached last summer whereby the Syrian government agreed to give up its strategic chemical arsenal — an agreement that was kept — the US only intensified its support for regime change.

In fact, the US recently launched a pilot program to provide deadly TOW missiles to the “moderate” opposition. However, it has already been reported that these missiles almost immediately landed in the hands of radicals in Syria, including fighters from the notorious al-Nusra Front. In short, the US is providing some of the deadliest weapons in its arsenal to affiliates of al-Qaeda.

Were the indefinite detention provisions of the National Defense Authorization Act actually enforced, Secretary Kerry and much of the US Administration would currently be in custody, held incommunicado without charge or access to legal counsel. But such laws do not apply to those in charge of making or executing them.

Tragically, this ramping up of aid to the extremist-dominated rebels in Syria comes amid the first signs of a way out from the three year long nightmare. In Homs, considered the birthplace of the rebellion, government forces and rebels reached an agreement for a peaceful rebel withdrawal from the city. The years-long fight ended and almost immediately the population began returning to their city to begin rebuilding.

Had the US propaganda about the Assad regime been true, we would of course have seen government forces slaughtering the people upon their return. But in fact the opposite was true, as the Syrian flag was raised again in the city and the people set out to return to what is left of their homes.

As even the Los Angeles Times discovered:

“… a group of Christian women headed into the Old City to view the remains of their family home. The Christian minority is generally effusive about the “liberation” of an area central to their ancient identity.  “The Army has swept away all of the bad people from our city,” said Hannan Ragap, 45, a mother of two who sported spike heels and jeans as she walked toward the Old City. In the adjacent Zahra district, people were savoring a victory against what many view as an existential threat from a radical Islamist force.

In Aleppo, still rebel-controlled, anti-government fighters are looking wearily but with hope at the peaceful surrender of Homs.

The publication al-Monitor quotes Syrian rebel “Abdel” fighting in Aleppo:

‘Let’s admit it: Time has come for an agreement,’ Abdel says. … The model, he says, is Homs, where cease-fires are now beginning to appeal to weary rebel fighters in Aleppo. ‘We are not surrendering, because we will prevent Assad from staying in power, but through other means. Nobody can prevail with weapons. Do you know what is there, on the western side, in the direction of this mortar? Do you know what I am shooting at? There is my house. I am shooting at my house.’

The absurdity of the struggle laid bare, a “rebel” reduced to shooting at his own house!

It is against this backdrop that the US seeks to actually intensify and prolong the war. It is against this backdrop that John Kerry continues to push for US involvement in Syria, to the point of again making wild claims with zero evidence. Listen to the disoriented but murderous rage in his voice.

The US Secretary of State yesterday condemned the upcoming presidential vote in Syria, saying, “Together, we are unified in saying that Assad’s staged elections are a farce. They’re an insult. They are a fraud on democracy, on the Syrian people and on the world.”

However, as even the United Arab Emirates’ English language The National (recall that UAE, being one of the “Friends of Syria” is far from pro-Assad), concludes:

But the dirty secret in Syria today is that, if the presidential election were free and fair, Bashar Al Assad would still win.

Kerry is again making up his own reality.

Meanwhile not a word from Kerry about a rebel car bombing yesterday that killed dozens of civilians. Not a word about rebels blocking water to civilians in Aleppo, creating a humanitarian disaster of horrific proportions. Some humanitarian disasters are more equal than others.

Has John Kerry gone mad? Can Obama for some reason not fire him? Are there any adults left?

May 18, 2014 Posted by | Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Militarism | , | 1 Comment

US announces opposition to referendum in eastern Ukraine

Press TV – May 7, 2014

The United States has announced its opposition to a planned independence referendum in eastern Ukraine, saying such a move could trigger new sanctions against Russia.

US Secretary of State John Kerry said on Tuesday that the US and its allies “reject” efforts for organizing the referendum set for Sunday, calling the referendum “bogus” and saying “its pursuit will create even more problems in the effort to try to de-escalate the situation.”

Referring to a referendum in the Autonomous Republic of Crimea on March 16 in which nearly 97 percent of the participants voted for independence from Ukraine, Kerry said, “This is really the Crimea playbook all over again.”

Meanwhile, US Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Victoria Nuland, who disclosed earlier this year that Washington has “invested” about $5 billion in “promoting democracy” in Ukraine over the past two decades, has said that the independence referendum in eastern Ukraine “will be a trigger” for more sanctions against Moscow.

Pro-Russians are planning their own vote on self-determination in Ukraine’s eastern cities of Donetsk and Luhansk.

Meanwhile, Washington and its Western allies support a May 25 presidential poll that they say can prevent Ukraine from plunging into a civil war.

The US Agency for International Development (USAID), which was recently in the headlines for the covert creation of a text-based social network to stir political unrest in Cuba, has said it will support Ukraine’s media financially so that the pro-Western media outlets can cover the planned presidential election in the country.

USAID officials have said they want to add $1.25 million to the more than $10 million already promised by US government agencies to help bring about the expected election.

Russia has opposed the vote saying holding the election during the current violence would be “unusual” and “absurd.”

Following a military offensive against pro-Russian activists in eastern Ukraine ordered by Ukrainian authorities, nearly 90 people have been killed in less than a week.

According to a report published on Sunday in the German newspaper Bild am Sonntag, dozens of CIA and FBI agents are involved in the offensive against the pro-Russian activists.

May 7, 2014 Posted by | Video, War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

Trans-Atlantic global leadership at stake in Ukraine – Kerry

“NATO, the planet’s strongest alliance… can absolutely take advantage of the opportunities that are presented by crisis”

RT | April 30, 2014

NATO must return to its original goal of fending off Russia, seizing the chance presented by the Ukrainian crisis to sever Europe from Moscow and move it closer to America, the US secretary of state said. Or else the bloc’s global leadership may be lost.

John Kerry delivered the confrontational call in a speech to the Atlantic Council think tank in Washington, DC. He said the stand-off in Ukraine had resulted from a “uniquely personally-driven set of choices” and is “a wake-up call” for NATO. He added that now the military bloc must turn the page on two decades of focusing on expeditionary operations and take a stand against “Putin’s Russia.”

“After two decades of focusing primarily on our expeditionary missions, the crisis in Ukraine now call us back to the work that this alliance was originally created to perform,” Kerry told the audience.

NATO’s original purpose was to oppose the Communist Soviet Union, giving the West the military backbone to the ideologically-driven stand-off with the East. Kerry described it as “to defend alliance territory and advance trans-Atlantic security.”

“Today, Putin’s Russia is playing by a different set of rules,” the secretary stated. “Through its occupation of Crimea and its subsequent destabilization of eastern Ukraine, Russia seeks to change the security landscape of Eastern and Central Europe.”

“Together we have to push back against those who try to change sovereign border by force. Together we have to support those who simply want to live as we do,” he added.

Kerry didn’t mention NATO’s own operations against Yugoslavia, which helped change sovereign borders in Europe. But he said NATO must not allow that the situation continue to develop as it is, because Russia is challenging the position NATO members have held since the end of the Cold War.

“Our entire model of global leadership is at stake. If we stand together, if we draw strength from the example of the past and refuse to be complacent in the present, then I am confident that NATO, the planet’s strongest alliance, can meet the challenges, can absolutely take advantage of the opportunities that are presented by crisis,” he stressed.

Kerry suggested three points on how trans-Atlantic partners can preserve their leadership and contain Russia. He said all NATO members must comply with the alliance’s benchmark of 2 percent GDP defense spending, which is not observed by many European members of the alliance, including European economic powerhouse Germany.

“Clearly, not all allies are going to meet the NATO benchmark of 2 percent of GDP overnight or even next year,” Kerry said. “But it’s time for allies, who are below that level to make credible commitments to increase their spending on defense over the next five years.”

NATO members must also help Europe reduce its dependence on Russian energy and develop economic ties with America by speeding down the pipeline the Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership Agreement, Kerry said.

The agreement would certainly give more access to European markets to some US corporations, as it would require freeing up European regulations on things like fracking, GMOs, copyright and finance.

Kerry’s policy remarks are in line with those made recently by some other members of the US political establishment. For example Senator John McCain, one of the most vocal critics of Russia, went on the same lines of presenting Russia’s stance on Ukraine a personal choice by President Vladimir Putin and calling for more defense spending in Europe in his speech at Vilnius University, Lithuania, on Wednesday last week.

“Considering what President Putin is doing right now in Ukraine, it is more important than ever for every NATO ally to spend at least 2 percent of its GDP on defense,” McCain said. “I’m pleased that Lithuania has pledged and is planning to do this, and the sooner you follow through on that commitment the better.”

The US and Russia have been trading accusations of meddling with Ukrainian crisis lately. Washington says Moscow is sowing dissent in eastern Ukraine, fanning up anti-government protests there. Russia says the US sponsored the February coup in Kiev, which brought into power the current Ukrainian central authorities and has been playing a dominant role in defining the policies of the new government.

April 30, 2014 Posted by | Economics, Militarism | , , , , , | Leave a comment

The Sickly Smell of Lies and Death

By John Chuckman | Dissident Voice | April 26, 2014

Only the other day, Benjamin Netanyahu earned a small note of immortality when he said the peace talks were ended by the new arrangements between the Palestine Authority and Hamas: Netanyahu’s announcement bundled a record number of lies into one mouthful of words. There, of course, never was anything properly called peace talks with Israel. There has been only a long series of closed-door personal, and security-scrambled telephonic, exchanges with America’s superbly ineffectual John Kerry, exchanges in which the Palestinians played virtually no role and in which Mr. Netanyahu had absolutely no interest. Netanyahu was always setting an impossible set of conditions as prerequisites to anything happening precisely because he does not want anything to happen, while undoubtedly periodically raging with one of his mind-numbing harangues which are impossible to answer rationally for the simple reason they are not rational.

Netanyahu’s announcement is larded with layers of lies much like layers of rock in stratigraphic formations. Perhaps the chief of these being that Hamas – that democratically elected party led by middle-class professionals whose only concerns have been to obtain a fair deal for Palestinians and to provide clean government after the long-term corruption of Fatah – is a dreadful terrorist organization. Of course, you do have to say something along those lines to excuse your warring on civilians, blockading their needs (starting with a viciously-calculated minimal calorie allowance per person), cutting off services, piracy on the high seas, denying fishing rights, kidnapping and murdering politicians, and constant menaces. You wouldn’t do all that to people just trying to run a democratic, clean government, now would you? You might if you viewed the Palestinians in Gaza as a nightmare (a past Israeli prime minister’s actual word), as a source of constant fear, resembling fears in the Old South of revolt in the slave quarters some dark night, something which caused uneasy sleep for plantation families with pistols and knives tucked under their pillows.

Israel, despite the meaningless outpourings and rages of Netanyahu, is not looking for clean government and it certainly isn’t looking for democracy in any of its neighbors’ arrangements. Israel loved thirty years of corrupt and completely undemocratic government in Egypt, and it is Israel’s silent influence with the United States that has returned Egypt’s eighty million people, after one year of democratic government, to tyranny and openly corrupt arrangements. Israel also likes the absolute government of Saudi Arabia because it makes many secret deals with the Saudi princes, eager themselves to suppress democratic tendencies in the region. Saudi Arabia, with its Islamic fundamentalism, once was viewed as an implacable enemy of Israel, but the less-than-idealistic gritty interests of both states have nicely, quietly meshed in recent years with the fabulously wealthy aristocracy of Saudi Arabia viewing democracy and clean government through the same lens as the Middle East’s Crusader garrison state.

Israel is not even looking for peace, peace as any thoughtful, disinterested person in the world would define it. Netanyahu has given new ferocity to an old strategy towards what every past leader of Israel regarded as the problem of the Palestinians, and that involves the goal either of making them so miserable that they will leave en masse or become so compliant they will agree to arrangements which assure their perpetual isolation, inferiority, and servitude. Either or any combination of those two outcomes is what Netanyahu understands as peace. There is no other way of interpreting years of appallingly abusive behavior and law-breaking and injustice on a scale affecting millions. And there is no other way to interpret the American government’s tolerance for the abuse and law-breaking and injustice beyond its secretly sharing the same hopes as Israel’s malevolent leaders, being sick and tired of having to hear about and deal with a grotesque situation involving a few million people in a world where it tries to direct the destinies of billions.

Israel’s limited dealings with the Palestinian Authority – a kind of quasi-government formed out of the Oslo Accords of 1993 for the purpose of managing basic local services and negotiating with Israel – are themselves built on lies. The existing head of that quasi-government, Mahmoud Abbas, was last elected to serve as president until 2009, but with the connivance of the United States and Israel he regularly extends his term, never receiving the least recrimination for doing so, another demonstration of Israel’s love for democracy and clean government. His democratic credentials are further enhanced by the fact that he “governs” only in the West Bank – at least in those portions not yet seized by Israel – having been driven out of Gaza. Yet he is the only one of the Palestinians even admitted to symbolic membership in the “peace talks.” The reason for this is simple: up until very recently, Abbas has been a passive figure who offers Israel no open challenge to the huge injustices of the status quo, very much in contrast to the late Yasser Arafat, who is believed by many to have been assassinated by Israel after an extended period of abuse and threats including the shelling of his house and denying his even attending religious services. Netanyahu, by the way, is on record as having vigorously denounced as unworkable the now pretty much failed Oslo Accords, a case of self-fulfilling prophecy.

Analyzing “the peace talks,” discovering their rotten construction and the dishonest motives of those involved, yields unpleasant surprises much like those from stumbling accidentally upon a rotten timber and seeing a myriad of critters scrambling and flying off in all directions. John Kerry carries on his charade in the Middle East while at the same time lying about Russian news sources and threatening a red line for Russia to make it pay dearly for its “transgressions” in Ukraine. And there is still the hypocritical pretence about the induced horrors of Syria for which Mr. Kerry along with his boss bear direct responsibility.

Russia Today, the media Kerry recently publicly criticized, can have nothing to its shame to compare with The New York Times which one day published images supposedly proving Russian soldiers were active in Eastern Ukraine and shortly after retracted when the lie was hurled in its face. The same New York Times, it was revealed, passes its reportage on Israel through Israeli censors before publication, providing a standard of journalistic integrity it would be hard to match. What Kerry and Company are actually upset about is Russia’s new, sophisticated use of the press and broadcasting. Gone are the not-believable voices of the Soviet era, words by apparatchiks featuring such colorful expressions as “running dogs.” Instead we find thoughtful reportage and analysis reaching out to people in the West, correcting misrepresentations imposed by their own leaders through outlets like the New York Times and America’s major networks. America’s Cold War era monopoly on “credible press” is gone (in fact, it never was that credible, only seeming so by contrast to the old Soviet efforts). With the monopoly’s disappearance, America’s unrestricted ability to “get a story out there,” as someone from the CIA might say, also has suffered, and Mr. Kerry clearly isn’t happy about the fact.

As for Kerry’s comments about red lines and making Russia pay, it would be difficult to come up with a poorer example of diplomacy from America’s supposed chief of diplomacy. Of course, the last time we heard the expression “red line” concerned the use of chemical weapons by Syria’s government, something that never happened, but the American official words about a red line served as a kind of segue to the actual, totally-immoral use of such chemicals by some of the fanatics America secretly supports. And just a short while before that use of “red line,” we had the world’s most predictable liar talking about red lines for Iran, a country he threatened and continues to threaten but which has never threatened him.

Kerry’s public face on the situation in Ukraine is just as rankly dishonest as his “peace talks” in the Middle East and his words about Syria. The fact is the Ukrainian groups America has supported secretly for years with massive amounts of CIA-infiltrated money, overthrew an elected government, and they did so before previously-agreed arrangements for new elections which were intended to appease the divided factions in Ukraine. Part of the way these groups seized power was through the dirty work of right-wing thugs, who, among other acts, served as snipers shooting many hundreds of people dead in the streets of Kiev. Now, we see this self-proclaimed government receiving visits by America’s CIA Director and Vice President for unexplained reasons. Was there ever a less honest effort at pretending democratic forces are at work in a crisis? Please, Mr. Kerry, who is it that you think you are convincing of anything, beyond your own dishonesty and remarkably limited diplomatic skills?

April 26, 2014 Posted by | Deception, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Israel threatens annexation against Palestinian move to join UN agencies

Al-Akhbar | April 2, 2014

An Israeli minister threatened on Wednesday to annex further territory in the occupied West Bank in retaliation for renewed Palestinian action to join United Nations agencies and international treaties.

“If they are now threatening (to go to UN institutions), they must know something simple: they will pay a heavy price,” Tourism Minister Uzi Landau told public radio.

Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas on Tuesday said he had begun steps to join several UN agencies, abandoning a pledge to freeze such action for the duration of peace talks – which end in just four weeks.

Abbas announced a request to join “15 UN agencies and international treaties.”

“The demands (for membership) will be sent immediately” to the relevant agencies, he said.

The documents Abbas signed, officials said, included the Geneva Conventions – the key text of international law on the conduct of war and occupation.

Palestinians hope it will give them a stronger basis to appeal to the International Criminal Court and eventually lodge formal complaints against Israel for its continued occupation of lands seized in the 1967 war that they want for their state.

“This is not a move against America, or any other party – it is our right, and we agreed to suspend it for nine months,” Abbas said of the decision.

Hamas, the Gaza Strip’s ruling party, welcomed the move by Abbas,

The Palestinians had repeatedly warned that they could resume their action through international courts and the UN over Israel’s settlement expansion on occupied territory in the West Bank and in annexed east Jerusalem.

“One of the possible measures will be Israel applying sovereignty over areas which will clearly be part of the State of Israel in any future solution,” said Landau, a member of the hardline Yisrael Beitenu faction.

Landau’s remarks were referring to areas of the West Bank populated by Jewish settlers which Israel hopes to retain in any future peace deal.

Israeli settlements are illegal under international law.

An Israeli government official, who would not be named, said Abbas’s announcement had thrown everything up in the air.

“Is this Israel’s partner? Is this a partner for peace?” he asked.

“Everything has changed now, is there even a deal now? We don’t know,” he said, referring to the proposal which was being discussed with Kerry.

Israel could also hurt the Palestinians economically by acting “to block financial aid to them,” the minister added.

Abbas made his announcement just hours after Israel reissued tenders for hundreds of settler homes in east Jerusalem, as Washington was working around the clock to resolve a major dispute over Palestinian prisoners.

Israeli NGO Ir Amim described the tenders as “a poke in the eye of both the Palestinians and the Americans,” army radio said.

And Hagit Ofran, from Israeli’s Peace Now NGO, accused the housing ministry of “trying to forcefully undermine the peace process… and John Kerry’s efforts to promote it.”

Israel refused to free a fourth and final group of 26 veteran Palestinian prisoners on Saturday, which would have completed an agreement that had brought the sides back to the table.

On Monday, the Palestinian Authority gave Kerry a 24-hour deadline to come up with a solution to the prisoner row, warning that failure to do so would see them turning to UN bodies to press their claims for statehood.

“America must compel Israel now to follow through on its agreement to release the fourth group of prisoners. We will be watching these efforts and hope they don’t fail,” Palestinian Prisoners Affairs Minister Issa Qaraqe said.

“But our position is clear: we want the release of the fourth group according to the agreement, and without that we won’t accept any other obligations or conditions,” he said.

The standoff came soon after US Secretary of State John Kerry left Israel on Tuesday after a lightning visit.

He had been due to fly back to the region on Wednesday for talks in Ramallah with Abbas but he cancelled his visit following the Palestinian leader’s announcement, while attempting to remain optimistic.

“It is completely premature tonight to draw… any final judgement about today’s events and where things are,” he said in Brussels.

“My team is on the ground meeting with the parties even tonight,” he said. “We urge both parties to show restraint.”

US efforts have been focused recently on getting the parties to agree an extension to the end of the year.

A US proposal to continue talks was to include a limited “freeze” on settlement construction, with Israel adopting “a policy of restraint with (West Bank) government tenders” but would not include annexed east Jerusalem.

Sources close to the negotiations had said Washington was also mulling a proposal to free Jonathan Pollard, who was arrested in Washington in 1985 and sentenced to life in prison for spying on America on Israel’s behalf.

But White House Jay Carney said before the Tuesday afternoon developments that President Barack Obama had not made any decision on Pollard.

Separately, a spokesman for the US Justice Department said Pollard had waived his right to attend a meeting of a parole board that could have re-examined his ongoing detention.

(AFP, Reuters, Al-Akhbar)

April 2, 2014 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Palestinians demand settlements freeze as condition for extending negotiations

MEMO | April 1, 2014

The Palestinian leadership is demanding that Israel freezes its settlement activities in the occupied Palestinian territories as a condition for extending the negotiations.

Maan News Agency quoted on Tuesday the Secretary-General of the Palestinian National Initiative, Mustafa Barghouti, as saying that the Palestinian leadership has demanded for Israel to freeze its settlement activities, including government tenders to construct settlements, in order to extend the negotiations. The leadership has also decided to seek recognition for the State of Palestine from United Nations organisations if Israel does not release the fourth group of Palestinian prisoners as previously agreed.

Barghouti, who attended the Palestinian leadership meeting on Monday to discuss the recent development in the peace process, added that the Palestinians plan to send a delegation of five people to discuss with Hamas ways to end the split with Al-Fatah and reach national reconciliation.

The meeting brought together Al-Fatah movement’s Central Committee, the PLO Executive Committee and the secretaries-general of the Palestinian factions in Ramallah.

Barghouti said the Palestinian leadership will resume its meeting on Tuesday to further discuss the latest developments in the peace process and the results of US Secretary of State John Kerry’s meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Israel has refused to release the fourth group of Palestinian prisoners unless the Palestinian Authority agrees to extend the negotiations for another year unconditionally.

Kerry had cancelled his scheduled meeting with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Monday in Ramallah to meet instead with the Palestinian chief negotiator Saeb Erekat and the head of the Palestinian intelligence service General Majed Faraj in Jerusalem; however, the meeting results were not disclosed to the public.

Diplomatic sources claimed that Kerry cancelled his meeting with Abbas in Ramallah because his first meeting with Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu exceeded its scheduled time, running nearly five hours.

April 1, 2014 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Jimmy Carter concerned about possible breach of international law by Washington

MEMO | March 31, 2014

Former American President Jimmy Carter has warned the US Secretary of State John Kerry of violating international law in his potential peace framework agreement between the Palestinians and the Israeli occupation.

He also expressed his concerns about the remarks of Kerry’s senior aides Martin Indyk, which were delivered before the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and other Jewish groups.

Meanwhile, the Palestinian Authority (PA)’s official news agency Wafa said Carter had shown the letter he sent to Kerry to the PA President Mahmoud Abbas. The letter included efforts to save the peace process and stressed on reaching an agreement to be accepted by the two sides.

According to Wafa, Carter warned of formulating an agreement which “in any form, breaches international law and the reinforced international precedents regarding the Palestinian-Israeli conflict which have been accepted since 1967.”

Carter reiterated the necessity to abide by UN resolution 242, which was accepted by the former Israeli PM Menachem Begin as part of the Camp David peace accords and supported by the Quartet, Arab League and the Organisation of the Islamic Conference.

The sponsor of the first peace treaty between Israel and the Arabs said: “Official US proposal to cancel or breach international law will make it impossible for the Palestinians in the Holy Lands, or outside, to accept the framework agreement as a new basis for peace talks.”

March 31, 2014 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation, Timeless or most popular | , , , , , | Leave a comment

PLO: Israel reneges on final prisoner release

Ma’an | March 28, 2014

RAMALLAH (AFP) — Israel has told the PLO it will not free the final group of prisoners they had been expecting alongside US-brokered peace talks, a senior Palestinian official said on Friday.

Under the deal which relaunched the talks in July, Israel said it would release 104 Palestinians held since before the 1993 Oslo peace accords in exchange for the Palestinians not pressing their statehood claims at the United Nations.

Israel has so far freed 78 prisoners in three batches but cabinet members had warned they would block the final release, anticipated for the end of March, if the Palestinians refused to extend the talks beyond their April 29 deadline.

“The Israeli government has informed us through the American mediator that it will not abide with its commitment to release the fourth batch of Palestinian prisoners scheduled for tomorrow, Saturday 29,” Jibril Rajub told AFP.

“Israel has refused to commit to the names that were agreed upon of prisoners held by Israel since before the 1993 Oslo agreements,” Rajub said.

Israeli officials had no immediate comment.

But Israeli ministers have said previously that the prisoner releases were always conditional on progress in the talks, which had failed to materialize.

Many also baulked at the inclusion of Palestinian citizens of Israel among the prisoners slated for release.

Rajub called the Israeli move a “slap in the face of the US administration and its efforts,” and said the Palestinians would resume their international diplomatic offensive.

“Not releasing the prisoners will mark the beginning of the efforts in the international community to challenge the legality of the occupation,” he said.

The talks have been teetering on the brink of collapse, with Washington fighting an uphill battle to get the two sides to agree to a framework for continued negotiations until the end of the year.

US Secretary of State John Kerry met Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas in Amman on Wednesday in a bid to salvage the talks, with US special envoy Martin Indyk meeting the Palestinian leader in Ramallah on Thursday.

Israel’s government has announced the construction of thousands of settler housing units and its army has killed 60 Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza since the talks began.

The Israeli government has also insisted that it maintain a military and civilian presence in the occupied Jordan Valley, which forms around a third of the West Bank, and has insisted that the PLO recognize it as a “Jewish state,” despite having already officially recognized Israel decades earlier.

Ma’an staff contributed to this report

March 28, 2014 Posted by | Deception, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture | , , , , , | Leave a comment

US bullying UK on Iran: British politicians

Press TV – March 27, 2014

Senior British politicians say the United States is “bullying” UK banks and is hampering legal exports from Britain to Iran.

The politicians, including former British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw and former Chancellor Lord Lamont, made the remarks at a Westminster Hall debate on Wednesday.

British parliamentarians say the US threatens British banks with heavy sanctions and hampers the legal exports of food, pharmaceuticals and medical devices from the UK to the Islamic republic. They add that Washington is hindering UK’s legal trade with Iran.

Lamont said Britain “should not be bullied by the American authorities.”

Straw noted that as British banks fear US sanctions, they do not provide UK companies with banking services for legal exports to Iran.

“The pressure on our banks is intense,” Straw said, adding, “The impact of this unilateral, extraterritorial jurisdiction of the US is discriminatory, especially against UK-based financial institutions, given their multinational nature.”

Straw also said the US authorities would not accept the way that British banks and companies are treated if they were in the same situation.

“The US Congress and government would not tolerate this for a moment were the situation reversed,” Straw stated, saying the move by the US is a direct challenge to the sovereignty of the UK.

Straw, who is also the British head of Iran-Britain Parliamentary Friendship Group, visited Iran at the head of a high-ranking delegation, including Lamont, Conservative lawmaker Ben Wallace and Labor lawmaker Jeremy Corbyn as guests of Iran’s Majlis in January.

The British delegates held meetings with high-ranking Iranian officials. The three-day official visit was the first by a delegation of British politicians since 2008.

Earlier this month, in remarks meant to dissuade foreign countries from planning trade cooperation with the Islamic Republic, US Secretary of State John Kerry said Iran is not an open market for business.

“We have made it crystal clear that Iran is not open for business,” Kerry said, addressing US Senators on Capitol Hill on March 13. He warned that the core sanctions against Iran remain firmly in place.

Several delegations from across the world have visited Iran over the past few months in order to boost trade and ties with the Islamic Republic.

March 27, 2014 Posted by | Economics, Wars for Israel | , , , , | Leave a comment

US offers to release Israeli spy for extended peace talks

MEMO | March 26, 2014

Israel’s army radio reported on Wednesday that the US administration has offered to release the American who spied for Israel, Jonathan Pollard, in exchange for the 26 Palestinian prisoners initially scheduled for release in March, but only if Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas agrees to extend the negotiations with Israel.

The offer was proposed during Abbas’s recent visit to Washington. Western sources had earlier reported that officials in the US administration did not rule out releasing Pollard to encourage Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to release a fourth group of Palestinian prisoners and to push the stalled peace talks forward.

The Palestinian and Israeli sides have not yet reacted to the news.

US Secretary of State John Kerry is scheduled to arrive in the Jordanian capital Amman on Wednesday to meet with Abbas.

The US arrested Pollard, a former analyst in the CIA and US Navy, for supplying Israel with thousands of secret documents revealing US involvement in spying on the Arab world, and sentenced him to life in prison in 1987.

Israel was scheduled to release a fourth group of Palestinian prisoners consisting of 26 Israeli Arab prisoners at the end of March as part of last summer’s deal to re-launch peace talks with the Palestinians under US auspices.

According to the deal, Israel had agreed to release a total of 104 prisoners in four groups. Three groups were released last year; however, Israel now refuses to release the last group, claiming that, “the Palestinian Authority has nothing to do with them because they are Israeli citizens.”

March 26, 2014 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , , , | 1 Comment

Israel-Palestine Talks

US Desperate to keep Futile Peace Process Show on the Road a Little Longer

By Jonathan Cook | Dissident Voice | March 24, 2014

For the first time since the US launched the Middle East peace talks last summer, the Palestinian leadership may be sensing it has a tiny bit of leverage.

Barack Obama met the Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas in Washington last week in what Palestinian officials called a “candid and difficult” meeting. The US president hoped to dissuade Abbas from walking away when the original negotiations’ timetable ends in a month.

The US president and his secretary of state, John Kerry, want their much-delayed “framework agreement” to provide the pretext for spinning out the stalled talks for another year. The US outline for peace is now likely to amount to little more than a set of vague, possibly unwritten principles that both sides can assent to.

The last thing the US president needs is for the negotiations to collapse, after Kerry has repeatedly stressed that finding a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is imperative.

The US political cycle means Obama’s Democratic party is heading this autumn into the Congressional mid-term elections. A humiliating failure in the peace process would add to perceptions of him as a weak leader in the Middle East, following what has been widely presented as his folding in confrontations with Syria and Iran.

Renewed clashes between Israel and the Palestinians in the international arena would also deepen US diplomatic troubles at a time when Washington needs to conserve its energies for continuing negotiations with Iran and dealing with the fallout from its conflict with Russia over Crimea.

Obama therefore seems committed to keeping the peace process show on the road for a while longer, however aware he is of the ultimate futility of the exercise.

In this regard, US interests overlap with those of Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Israel has been the chief beneficiary of the past eight months: diplomatic pressure has largely lifted; Israeli officials have announced an orgy of settlement building in return for releasing a few dozen Palestinian prisoners; and the White House has gradually shifted ground even further towards Israel’s hardline positions.

The Palestinians, on the other hand, have nothing to show for their participation, and have lost much of the diplomatic momentum gained earlier by winning upgraded status at the United Nations. They have also had to put on hold moves to join dozens of international forums, as well as the threat to bring Israel up on war crimes charges at the International Criminal Court.

Abbas is under mounting pressure at home to put an end to the charade, with four Palestinian factions warning last week that the Kerry plan would be the equivalent of national “suicide”. For this reason, the White House is now focused on preventing Abbas from quitting next month – and that requires a major concession from Israel.

The Palestinians are said to be pushing hard for Israel’s agreement to halt settlement building and free senior prisoners, most notably Marwan Barghouti, who looks the most likely successor to Abbas as Palestinian leader.

Some kind of short-term settlement freeze – though deeply unpopular with Netanyahu’s supporters – may be possible, given the Israeli right’s triumph in advancing settlement-building of late. Abbas reportedly presented Obama with “a very ugly map” of more than 10,000 settler homes Israel has unveiled since the talks began.

Setting Barghouti free, as well as Ahmad Saadat, whose PLO faction assassinated the far-right tourism minister, Rehavam Zeevi, in 2001, would be an even harder pill for the Israeli government to swallow. Cabinet ministers are already threatening a mutiny over the final round of prisoner releases, due at the end of the week. But Israeli reports on Sunday suggested Washington might consider releasing Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard, possibly in return for Israel freeing more Palestinians, to keep the talks going.

Simmering tensions between the US and Israel, however, are suggestive of the intense pressure being exerted by the White House behind the scenes.

Those strains exploded into view again last week when Moshe Yaalon, Israel’s defence minister, used a speech to lambast Washington’s foreign policy as “feeble”. In a similar vein, he infuriated the White House in January by labelling Kerry “obsessive” and “messianic” in pursuing the peace process. But unlike the earlier incident, Washington has refused to let the matter drop, angrily demanding an explicit apology.

The pressure from the White House, however, is not chiefly intended to force concessions from Israel on an agreement. After all, the Israeli parliament approved this month the so-called referendum bill, seen by the right as an insurance policy. It gives the Israeli public, raised on the idea of Jerusalem as Israel’s exclusive and “eternal capital”, a vote on whether to share it with the Palestinians.

Washington’s goal is more modest: a few more months of quiet. But even on this reckoning, given Netanyahu’s intransigence, the talks are going to implode sooner or later. What then?

Obama and Kerry have set out a convincing scenario that in the longer term Israel will find itself shunned by the world. The Palestinian leadership will advance its cause at the UN, while conversely grassroots movements inside and outside Palestine will begin clamouring for a single state guaranteeing equality between Israeli Jews and Palestinians. Israel’s vehement and aggressive opposition on both fronts will only serve to damage its image – and its relations with the US.

An unexpected voice backing the one-state solution emerged last week when Tareq Abbas, the Palestinian president’s 48-year-old son, told the New York Times that a struggle for equal rights in a single state would be the “easier, peaceful way”.

Bolstering Washington’s argument that such pressures cannot be held in check forever, a poll this month of US public opinion revealed a startling finding. Despite a US political climate committed to a two-state solution, nearly two-thirds of Americans back a single democratic state for Jews and Palestinians should a Palestinian state prove unfeasible. That view is shared by more than half of Israel’s supporters in the US.

That would constitute a paradigm shift, a moment of reckoning that draws nearer by the day as the peace process again splutters into irrelevance.

March 25, 2014 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation | , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Venezuelan Ombudswoman Accuses “NGOs” of “False” Reports

By Ryan Mallett-Outtrim | Correo del Orinoco | March 22, 2014

Venezuelan ombudswoman Gabriela Ramírez has accused international organizations of misrepresenting human rights conditions in Venezuela.

vtvAccording to Ramirez, non-government organizations have been part of a campaign of “attacks” on Venezuela.

“A few NGOs have forged reports against our institution with false information,” Ramirez tweeted on Monday.

Since last month Venezuela has come under renewed criticism from international human rights monitors.

On 21 February, the United States based Human Rights Watch (HRW) accused Venezuelan security forces of using excessive force, while claiming it couldn’t find evidence of “anti-government protesters carrying firearms or using lethal force against security forces or third parties”.

Since February at least 29 people have been killed amid anti-government demonstrations and opposition violence. Among the dead are security forces and civilians who have been killed by firearms during clashes with the opposition.

The day before the HRW report was released, the brother of a socialist party (PSUV) deputy, Arturo Alexis Martinez was shot dead by a sniper. He was trying to clear an opposition barricade in Lara state when he was killed. On 24 February, motorbike taxi worker Antonio Jose Valbuena was shot by a masked individual in Maracaibo while clearing another opposition barricade. The alleged assailant reportedly demanded Valbuena desist from the attempt to clear the barricade. Since then assailants have shot at least two more civilians trying to clear opposition barricades.

Three national guard soldiers have also been shot dead during clashes with the opposition, including Giovanni Pantoja in Carabobo on 28 February, Acner Isaac Lopez Leon on 6 March in Caracas, Ramzor Bracho in Carabobo on 12 March and Jose Guillen Araque on 17 March.

According to Ramirez, misrepresentations of Venezuela by non-government organizations (NGOs) comes amid an anti-government social media campaign of misinformation.

Since February, photographs have circulated on social media websites including Twitter and Facebook of alleged cases of human rights violations by Venezuelan security forces. However, many of the photographs appear to be taken in countries as diverse as Syria, Chile and Egypt, but with inaccurate captions indicating they were taken in Venezuela.

HRW’s own report is accompanied by a photograph of what is claimed to be “a tank in San Cristobal”. The “tank”, was a statue that had been moved into the middle of the road and vandalized by opposition protesters.

Ramirez accused NGOs of being backed by the US State Department, which has also attacked Venezuela. In a report last month, the department leveled accusations against the Maduro government similar to those issued by HRW, while Secretary of State John Kerry has threatened possible “sanctions”.

Kerry’s comments have since been condemned by the Bolivarian Alliance of the Peoples of Our America (ALBA), along with the Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.

“The Miami lobby is taking measures to sanction Venezuela, but I tell you, you’ll be going down a road without return,” Maduro stated in response to Kerry.

March 23, 2014 Posted by | Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , , , | 1 Comment

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