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Bahrain detains Shia cleric for protesting Nimr killing

Press TV – January 4, 2016

Bahraini forces have reportedly detained another Shia cleric following protests in the tiny Persian Gulf Arab country against Saudi Arabia’s recent execution of prominent Shia clergyman Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr.

According to the Bahrain Center for Human Rights, Sheikh Ahmad al-Jidhafsi was arrested on Sunday after he attended protest rallies against Nimr’s execution.

Bahraini opposition group ‘February 14 Revolution Youth Coalition’ has slammed the cleric’s arrest as heinous, saying Manama is after sparking sectarianism and a religious conflict.

In December 2014, the Bahraini regime also took into custody prominent Shia cleric and opposition leader, Sheikh Ali Salman.

Sheikh Salman, the head of al-Wefaq National Islamic Society, was arrested shortly after he called for serious political reforms in Bahrain following his re-election as the secretary general of al-Wefaq, Bahrain’s main opposition bloc.

The charges brought against him include “incitement to promote the change of the political system by force, threats and other illegal means,” among others. However, the 49-year-old has strongly denied the charges, emphasizing that he has been seeking reforms in the kingdom through peaceful means.

Meanwhile, the Bahrain Interior Ministry said in a Sunday statement that the country’s security forces detained an unspecified number of people protesting Sheikh Nimr’s execution over social media posts.

The regime in Bahrain has warned of criminal prosecution against those protesting the execution of Sheik Nimr.

On Saturday, the Saudi Interior Ministry announced that Sheikh Nimr had been put to death along with 46 others who were convicted of being involved in “terrorism.”

January 4, 2016 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , | Leave a comment

‘Saudis seek Muslim division by Nimr execution’

Press TV – January 3, 2016

Press TV has conducted an interview with political analyst Ibrahim Mousavi to talk about the Al Saud regime in Saudi Arabia’s execution of Shia cleric Sheikh Nimr Baqir al-Nimr.

Below is a rough transcription of that interview:

Press TV: Let’s start with one of the main points of [secretary general of Lebanon’s resistance movement Hezbollah] Seyyed Hassan Nasrallah’s speech which basically he is talking about how all Muslims should be diligent and not to basically play the game that the Saudis have initiated, trying to ignite division in the Muslim community and that everyone must remain united.

Mousavi: Indeed this is a very important message at this juncture of history and this sensitive moment when Seyyed Nasrallah talks we hear the voice of reason, we hear the voice of wisdom, we hear the voice of responsibility. Those who are responsible for the Ummah, for the nation, for the people, they should be very aware of what they say, when they say it, and to who they say. The message that should be sent is that this unjust ruling of the Saudi dynasty, those supporters of Takfiri groups, the oppression against the Saudis whether Shia Muslims or non-Shia Muslims—and we know very well that when we talk about the Saudis who are outside the country—you go to Europe, you see how many have applied for political asylum. So we are talking here about a national crisis that is taking place when the Saudi rulers are oppressing their own people.

They are trying at the same time to say that this is a conflict between the Shias and the Sunnis. The execution of Sheikh Nimr Baqir al-Nimr and the execution of every single Yemeni individual regardless of his age, regardless of his belonging on the factional and conventional level, tells you that this is a kind of attack against humanity.

That’s why it is very important to highlight the direction of the message. The message that we should not be misled by what they are trying to do. They are trying to sow the seeds of discord and sedition among the people, among the Arabs, among the Muslims. We should not be in any way under the pressure or under the impact of the Saudi propaganda.

Press TV: And Mr. Mousavi, another point, basically that Seyed Hasan Nasrallah also talked about the desperation of the Saudi regime and that with the spilling of the blood of Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr and other innocent people, it is the beginning of the end of the Saudi regime. Your perspective on that point sir.

Mousavi: This is again, a very clear point and a very evident point. We know very well that when you are strong enough you can handle your problems and go through. When a kingdom, when a dynasty that has tens and hundreds of billions of dollars that they spend in order to annihilate Yemen and the civilization in Yemen and the Yemeni people. When they have all these F-16s that are being supplied to them by the Americans. Why would they go and execute Sheikh Nimr if they are afraid of the voice of one man when they wage wars against their neighbors? When they go and invade Bahrain against the will of the Bahraini people, trying to support the regime of Al Khalifa? When they go and send booby-trapped cars to Iraq? When they interfere in here and there. When they try to topple the authorized and legitimate government in Syria by supporting Takfiri groups?

This all tells you that when they go to these wars and try to execute a man who had always been preaching for change, for political rights, via peaceful means, via political means, this tells you that they are very weak. And yes indeed this is a very important indicative, this is very important and evident reason that proves that they are very weak and they are accumulating more and more mistakes that is going to bring their end in a more hasty way than expected.

January 3, 2016 Posted by | War Crimes | , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Israel benefits most from regional conflicts: Iran

Press TV – January 3, 2016

The Israeli regime is benefiting the most from the conflicts in the region, Iran’s Foreign Ministry says.

In a Saturday meeting with Palestinian Ambassador to Tehran Salah al-Zawawi, Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokesman Hossein Jaberi Ansari said the issue of Palestine is of prime significance to the Muslim world.

He called on Muslim countries to make use of their utmost capacities to resolve the existing conflicts in the region.

“The Islamic Republic of Iran follows up on the principle of dialog to end the problems and supports negotiations among various groups in regional countries with the purpose of putting an end to the existing crises,” Jaberi Ansari said.

Zawawi, for his part, said the current situation of the Arab and Muslim world is harmful to the Palestinian cause and added that the Zionist enemy aims to undermine the strengths of the Muslim world in its resistance against the Israeli regime.

He added that religious conflicts in the region are detrimental to Palestine and only benefit the Israeli regime.

January 3, 2016 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Solidarity and Activism, Wars for Israel | , , , , | Leave a comment

Creating Sunnistan: Foreign Affairs Calls for Syria and Iraq to be Balkanized

By Steven MacMillan – New Eastern Outlook – 31.12.2015

On the 29th of November, 2015, Foreign Affairs – the publication of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) – published an article titled: Divide and Conquer in Syria and Iraq; Why the West Should Plan for a Partition. It was written by Barak Mendelsohn, an Associate Professor of Political Science at Haverford College and a Senior Fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute. In the article, he argues that the “solution” to the current crisis in Syria and Iraq is the creation of an “independent Sunni state” (or Sunnistan), in addition to separating “the warring sides:”

“The only way to elicit indigenous support is by offering the Sunnis greater stakes in the outcome. That means proposing an independent Sunni state that would link Sunni-dominated territories on both sides of the border. Washington’s attachment to the artificial Sykes–Picots borders demarcated by France and Britain a century ago no longer makes sense. Few people truly believe that Syria and Iraq could each be put back together after so much blood has been spilled. A better alternative would be to separate the warring sides. Although the sectarian conflict between Sunnis and Shias was not inevitable—it was, to some extent, the result of manipulation by self-interested elites—it is now a reality.”

Mendelsohn’s so-called “solution” for the region is in fact the strategy Western powers have been pursuing in the Middle East for years. His proposal is pretty much identical to the preferred “outcome” for Syria articulated by the former US Secretary of State and CFR member, Henry Kissinger. Speaking at the Ford School in 2013, Kissinger reveals his desire to see Syria Balkanized into “more or less autonomous regions (from 27.35 into the interview):

“There are three possible outcomes. An Assad victory. A Sunni victory. Or an outcome in which the various nationalities agree to co-exist together but in more or less autonomous regions, so that they can’t oppress each other. That’s the outcome I would prefer to see. But that’s not the popular view…. I also think Assad ought to go, but I don’t think it’s the key. The key is; it’s like Europe after the Thirty Years War, when the various Christian groups had been killing each other until they finally decided that they had to live together but in   separate units.”

Carving out Sunnistan in the region was also recently advocated by the former US Ambassador to the United Nations, John Bolton, in his NY Times article: To Defeat ISIS, Create a Sunni State. Bolton wants to create an“independent Sunni State” to act as a “bulwark” against Bashar al-Assad and Baghdad. Make no mistake about it; the strategy of the US had always been to create a Sunni micro-state in Eastern Syria and Western Iraq to isolate Assad. In the 2012 declassified report from the DIA, the document reveals that the powers supporting the Syrian opposition – “Western countries, the Gulf states and Turkey” – wanted to create a “Salafist principality in Eastern Syria in order to isolate the Syrian regime, which is considered the strategic depth of the Shia expansion (Iraq and Iran).”

Obviously, Salafism (which some argue is synonymous with Wahhabism; whilst others argue that Wahhabism is a more extreme form of Salafism) is a branch of Sunni Islam. Many have argued that “violence” is “central” to Wahhabism and Salafism, as Catherine Shakdam expresses in her article, Wahhabism, Al Saud and ISIS – the Unholy Trinity:

“Wahhabism is no more than an engineered perversion, a division, an abomination which has but spread like a cancer onto the Islamic world and now threatens to destroy all religions… Wahhabism is not of Islam and Islam will never be of Wahhabism – it is a folly to conceive that Islam would ever sanction murder, looting and atrocious barbarism. Islam opposes despotism, injustice, infamy, deceits, greed, extremism, asceticism – everything which is not balanced and good, fair and merciful, kind and compassionate. If anything, Wahhabism is the very negation of Islam. As many have called it before – Islam is not Wahhabism.” […]

“Wahhabism is merely the misguided expression of one man’s political ambition – Mohammed Abdel Wahhab, a man who was recruited by Empire Britain to erode at the fabric of Islam and crack the unity of its ummah (community). Wahhabism has now given birth to a monstrous abomination – extreme radicalism; a beast which has sprung and fed from Salafis and Wahhabis poison, fueled by the billions of Al Saud’s petrodollars; a weapon exploited by neo-imperialists to justify military interventions in those wealthiest corners of the world. ISIS’s obscene savagery epitomises the violence which is inherent and central to Wahhabism and Salafism, its other deviance. And though the world knows now the source of all terror, no power has yet dared speak against it; instead, the world has chosen to hate its designated victim – Islam.”

Fracturing Iraq

In relation to Iraq, the plan to split the country into three parts has been publicly advocated by US officials ad nauseam. The President Emeritus of the CFR, Leslie Gelb, argued in a 2003 article for the NY Times that the most feasible outcome in Iraq would be a “three-state solution: Kurds in the north, Sunnis in the center and Shiites in the south.” In 2006, a potential map of a future Middle East was released by Lieutenant-Colonel Ralph Peters which depicted Iraq divided into three regions: a Sunni Iraq to the West, an Arab Shia State in the East and a Free Kurdistan in the North. The current US Vice President, Joe Biden, also penned an article which was co-authored by Gelb titled: United Through Autonomy in Iraq. The 2006 article argues for a decentralized Iraqi state where power is held by three “ethno-religious” groups: “Kurd, Sunni Arab and Shiite Arab.” Furthermore, the NY Times published an article in 2013 titled: Imagining a Remapped Middle East; How 5 Countries Could Become 14, which envisages the Middle East and Libya completely Balkanized.

Responding to the strategy of the West in Iraq, Russian Foreign Minister, Sergey Lavrov, called the division of the country “unacceptable.” Lavrov stated that this was “social engineering” and “state structure manipulation from far outside,” adding that Russia believes “Iraqis – Shia, Sunnis and Kurds – should decide for themselves how to live together.”

The Western elite’s strategy is to create a Middle East (and a world for that matter) devoid of strong, sovereign, independent nation-states that can resist imperial advances. Fracturing countries into feuding micro-states ensures Western interests are not confronted with a cohesive entity which can collectively unite to oppose this belligerent force. “Divide and conquer” as Mendelsohn’s article is titled, the ancient strategy used by an array of imperial powers, from the Romans to the British, remains the strategy of the Western Empire today.

Steven MacMillan is an independent writer, researcher, geopolitical analyst and editor of  The Analyst Report.

December 31, 2015 Posted by | Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Gearoid O Colmain talks with Dr Zeinab Assaffar of Al-Mayadeen [Lebanon] TV

December 27, 2015

English language interview begins at 3:40

December 29, 2015 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular, Video, Wars for Israel | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Kuwait to send ground troops to protect Saudi Arabia from Houthi incursions – report

RT | December 29, 2015

Kuwait, which is formally part of the Saudi-led coalition conducting a military crackdown in Yemen, is to send an artillery battalion to protect southern regions of its Gulf neighbor from cross-border attacks, according to a report.

“Kuwait decided on the participation of its ground forces, represented by an artillery battalion, in operations to strike at positions of Houthi aggression against the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia,” the Kuwaiti daily Al-Qabas reported Tuesday, citing an informed source.

Saudi Arabia has provided the bulk of the fighting forces for the Yemen campaign, with the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain also playing significant parts. Other members of the coalition were hesitant in providing ground troops.

Riyadh went to war in Yemen to put back into power ousted President Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi, who fled from the Shiite Houthi rebels after his two-year term expired in January. His predecessor, Ali Abdullah Saleh, who used to be an opponent of the rebels, is now their ally, assisting them with his loyal tribal troops.

Saudi Arabia sees the Houthis as a proxy force of its regional nemesis Iran, something both the rebels and Tehran deny.

The Yemeni campaign has proved to be more difficult than Saudi Arabia expected. Since it started in March, the conflict has claimed the lives of almost 6,000 people, many of them civilians killed by coalition bombings. Human rights groups have accused Riyadh of committing war crimes during the attacks.

The Houthis have staged several attacks on the Saudi regions of Najran and Jazan from their stronghold in northern Yemen. These include a number of ground incursions and several ballistic missile launches in recent months.

December 29, 2015 Posted by | Illegal Occupation, Militarism, War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

Foreign Weapons, Fighters and Agenda: Syria’s War is Not a Civil War – it Never Was

By Ulson Gunnar | New Eastern Outlook | December 28, 2015

The weapons are foreign, the fighters are foreign, the agenda is foreign. As Syrian forces fight to wrest control of their country back and restore order within their borders, the myth of the “Syrian civil war” continues on.

Undoubtedly there are Syrians who oppose the Syrian government and even Syrians who have taken up arms against the government and in turn, against the Syrian people, but from the beginning (in fact before the beginning) this war has been driven from abroad. Calling it a “civil war” is a misnomer as much as calling those taking up arms “opposition.” It is not a “civil war,” and those fighting the Syrian government are not “opposition.”

Those calling this a civil war and the terrorists fighting the Syrian state “opposition” hope that their audience never wanders too far from their lies to understand the full context of this conflict, the moves made before it even started and where those moves were made from.

When did this all start? 

It is a valid question to ask just when it all really started. The Cold War saw a see-sawing struggle between East and West between the United States and Europe (NATO) and not only the Soviet Union but also a growing China. But the Cold War itself was simply a continuation of geopolitical struggle that has carried on for centuries between various centers of power upon the planet. The primary centers include Europe’s Paris, London and Berlin, of course Moscow, and in the last two centuries, Washington.

In this context, however, we can see that what may be portrayed as a local conflict, may fit into a much larger geopolitical struggle between these prominent centers of special interests. Syria’s conflict is no different.

Syria had maintained close ties to the Soviet Union throughout the Cold War. That meant that even with the fall of the Soviet Union, Syria still had ties to Russia. It uses Russian weapons and tactics. It has economic, strategic and political ties to Russia and it shares mutual interests including the prevailing of a multi-polar world order that emphasizes the primacy of national sovereignty.

Because of this, Western centers of power have sought for decades to draw Syria out of this orbit (along with many other nations). With the fall of the Ottoman Empire, the fractured Middle East was first dominated by colonial Europe before being swept by nationalist uprising seeking independence. Those seeking to keep the colonial ties cut that they had severed sought Soviet backing, while those seeking simply to rise to power at any cost often sought Western backing.

The 2011 conflict was not Syria’s first. The Muslim Brotherhood, a creation and cultivar of the British Empire since the fall of the Ottomans was backed in the late 70s  and early 80s in an abortive attempt to overthrow then Syrian President Hafez al-Assad, father of current Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. The armed militants that took part in that conflict would be scattered in security crackdowns following in its wake, with many members of the Muslim Brotherhood forming a new US-Saudi initiative called Al Qaeda. Both the Brotherhood and now Al Qaeda would stalk and attempt to stunt the destiny of an independent Middle East from then on, up to and including present day.

There is nothing “civil” about Syria’s war. 

In this context, we see clearly Syria’s most recent conflict is part of this wider struggle and is in no way a “civil war” unfolding in a vacuum, with outside interests being drawn in only after it began.

The Muslim Brotherhood and its Al Qaeda spin-off were present and accounted for since the word go in 2011. By the end of 2011, Al Qaeda’s Syrian franchise (Al Nusra) would be carrying out nationwide operations on a scale dwarfing other so-called rebel groups. And they weren’t this successful because of the resources and support they found within Syria’s borders, but instead because of the immense resources and support flowing to them from beyond them.

Saudi Arabia openly arms, funds and provides political support for many of the militant groups operating in Syria since the beginning. In fact, recently, many of these groups, including allies of Al Qaeda itself, were present in Riyadh discussing with their Saudi sponsors the future of their joint endeavor.

Together with Al Nusra, there is the self-anointed Islamic State (IS). IS, like the Syrian conflict itself, was portrayed by the Western media for as long as possible as a creation within a vacuum. The source of its military and political strength was left a mystery by the otherwise omniscient Western intelligence community. Hints began to show as Russia increased its involvement in the conflict. When Russian warplanes began pounding convoys moving to and from Turkish territory, bound for IS, the mystery was finally solved. IS, like all other militant groups operating in Syria, were the recipients of generous, unending stockpiles of weapons, equipment, cash and fighters piped in from around the globe.

The Syrian conflict was borne of organizations created by centers of foreign interests decades ago who have since fought on and off not for the future of the Syrian people, but for a Syria that meshed more conveniently into the foreign global order that created them. The conflict has been fueled by a torrent of weapons, cash, support and even fighters drawn not from among the Syrian people, but from the very centers of these foreign special interests; in Riyadh, Ankara, London, Paris, Brussels and Washington.

How to settle a civil war that doesn’t exist?

If the Syrian conflict was created by foreign interests fueling militant groups it has used for decades as an instrument of executing foreign policy (in and out of Syria), amounting to what is essentially a proxy invasion, not a civil war, how exactly can a “settlement” be reached?

Who should the Syrian government be talking to in order to reach this settlement? Should it be talking to the heads of Al Nusra and IS who clearly dominate the militants fighting Damascus? Or should it be talking to those who have been the paramount factor in perpetuating the conflict, Riyadh, Ankara, London, Paris, Brussels and Washington, all of whom appear involved in supporting even the most extreme among these militant groups?

If Damascus finds itself talking with political leaders in these foreign capitals, is it settling a “civil war” or a war it is fighting with these foreign powers? Upon the world stage, it is clear that these foreign capitals speak entirely for the militants, and to no one’s surprise, these militants seem to want exactly what these foreign capitals want.

Being honest about what sort of conflict Syria is really fighting is the first step in finding a real solution to end it. The West continues to insist this is a “civil war.” This allows them to continue trying to influence the outcome of the conflict and the political state Syria will exist in upon its conclusion. By claiming that the Syrian government has lost all legitimacy, the West further strengthens its hand in this context.

Attempts to strip the government of legitimacy predicated on the fact that it stood and fought groups of armed militants arrayed against it by an axis of foreign interests would set a very dangerous and unacceptable precedent. It is no surprise that Syria finds itself with an increasing number of allies in this fight as other nations realize they will be next if the “Syria model” is a success.

Acknowledging that Syria’s ongoing conflict is the result of foreign aggression against Damascus would make the solution very simple. The solution would be to allow Damascus to restore order within its borders while taking action either at the UN or on the battlefield against those nations fueling violence aimed at Syria. Perhaps the clarity of this solution is why those behind this conflict have tried so hard to portray it as a civil war.

For those who have been trying to make sense of the Syrian “civil war” since 2011 with little luck, the explanation is simple, it isn’t a civil war and it never was. Understanding it as a proxy conflict from the very beginning (or even before it began) will give one a clarity in perception that will aid one immeasurably in understanding what the obvious solutions are, but only when they come to this understanding.

December 28, 2015 Posted by | Deception, Timeless or most popular | , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Hillary Clinton’s Strong Proclivity toward the Use of Force

By Edward S. Herman | Dissident Voice | November 5, 2015

Diana Johnstone has written an extremely valuable book on Hillary Clinton, which not only examines in detail Mrs. Clinton’s political history and record, but places them in their evolving political context, which enlightens readers on the domestic and international political environment within which she works and into which she adapts and serves. Mrs. Clinton played an important role in the termination of Honduran democracy in 2009 and in the war on Libya in 2011, during her term as Secretary of State, and she had a lesser role but staked out definite positions in the 1999 war on Yugoslavia and the escalating hostilities against Russia in more recent years. Johnstone has excellent analyses of these cases: in her introductory chapter (a section on “A Taste of Hillary in Action: Hypocrisy on Honduras”) and in separate chapters on Yugoslavia (“Yugoslavia: the Clinton War Cycle”), Libya (“A War of Her Own”) and Russia (“Not Understanding Russia”).

410GsPu3iRL._SX322_BO1,204,203,200_As Johnstone indicates Mrs.Clinton quickly and clearly displayed her regressive, intellectually lightweight and hypocritical policy agenda in connection with the June 28, 2009, military coup in Honduras. She attended an OAS meeting in Honduras just a few weeks earlier, where she saw as her first order task how to prevent the lifting of the 47-year-old ban excluding Cuba, which a large majority of the OAS now considered “an outdated artifact of the Cold War”. Johnstone notes that Hillary and staff solved the problem by pouring the old wine into a new bottle. “No more Cold War, no more ‘communist threat’. ‘Given what President Obama had said about moving past the stale debates of the Cold War,’ Hillary wrote in her memoir Hard Choices, ‘it would be hypocritical of us to continue insisting that Cuba be kept out of the OAS for the reasons it was first suspended in 1962, ostensibly its adherence to ‘Marxism-Leninism’ and alignment ‘with the communist bloc.’ It would be more credible and accurate to focus on Cuba’s present-day human rights violations, which were incompatible with the OAS charter.’”

As Johnstone points out, Hillary sees nothing hypocritical in inventing a transparent device to keep Cuba out while pretending to let Cuba in: “What if we agreed to lift the suspension, but with the condition that Cuba be reseated as a member only if it made enough democratic reforms to bring it in line with the charter? And, to expose the Castro brothers’ contempt for the OAS itself, why not require Cuba to formally request readmittance?” Indeed, this proved just hypocritical enough to persuade the fence-hangers, Brazil and Chile, to go along. Thus Hillary began her diplomatic career in Latin America by rebranding hostility to any independent socio-economic policy from “anti-communism” to defense of “human rights”, by transparent hypocrisy enforced by arm-twisting, and by enforcing the Monroe Doctrine in both domestic and international affairs.

During and after the Honduran coup that followed, the Clinton State Department refused to call it a coup, and engaged in steady apologetics and protection of the coup leaders and their terroristic and corrupt new order. As Johnstone concludes, following a useful account of the negative outcome: “When a white hat appears on the horizon of a wretched place like Honduras proclaiming his intention to try to improve conditions [here the ousted president Manuel Zelaya], couldn’t the rich and powerful United States react otherwise than stigmatizing him as a potential ‘dictator’? Instead of giving an advocate of change the opportunity to try, Hillary’s State Department connived to help bundle him out of power. All is back to normal; however below normal that particular normal happens to be…. As we will see throughout this book, the foreign policy of Hillary Clinton amounts to the application of an enlarged Monroe Doctrine to the entire world.”

Mrs. Clinton has portrayed herself as an employer of “soft power,” but in reality Johnstone shows that she has had a strong proclivity toward the use of force. She hasn’t been bothered by its extensive use in post-coup Honduras, she pushed for it in Yugoslavia in 1999, she supported the invasion of Iraq, and it was central in her own war in Libya in 2011. She has been extremely hostile to Putin and seems to be anxious to fight with him in Ukraine and possibly elsewhere..She was a strong supporter of the war-mongering Madeleine Albright during Bill Clinton’s tenure, and her own appointments have included a string of militant women –Victoria Nuland, Susan Rice, and Samantha Power. Johnstone observes that: “A salient trait of the new school of women diplomats is that they are strikingly undiplomatic. Indeed, Madeleine Albright’s greatest diplomatic success [in the Yugoslavia war], was to obstruct diplomacy.” Secretary of State Clinton also appointed the notorious neocon husband of Victoria Nuland, Robert Kagan, as an adviser.

One of her soft power triumphs was the intense politician-media-human rights organizations’ campaign on the trials and tribulations of the Pussy Riot group in Russia. This group achieved notoriety by arrests following their occupation and interruption of the service in the Cathedral of Christ the Savior in Moscow, which offended worshipers on the spot with anti-Christian obscenities, not by any “political messages.” They had their escapade videotaped, with a post-occupation addition of an attack on Putin. This was made in the West into a telling proof of a free speech crackdown, and by Putin, although the police had been called in by Church officials. And this group had been carrying out similar antics for some years without arrest or trial. Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch made this into major campaigns in defense of Russian freedom, although these same organizations put up no defense at all for Chelsea Manning, Thomas Drake or Edward Snowden. A similar group Semen, specializing in female bare breast exhibition, had similar success in France. Hillary Clinton was proud to be photographed with the Pussy Riot heroines, and her former State Department associate Susan Nossel, pushed the Pussy Riot-anti-Putin campaign aggressively from her position as head of Amnesty International (a low point in AI history). Johnstone has a valuable analysis of this episode and campaign.

Johnstone places Mrs. Clinton in the context of the triumph of the military-industrial complex and the derived forward actions of the warfare state. The gradual triumph of the MIC and rising inequality have made domestic reform out of bounds for political leaders in this country. But aggressive actions abroad are actually required to demonstrate belief in the “exceptional” nation called upon to “shape” the world in accord with U.S. free market ideology, and to feed the demands of the MIC. Johnstone argues that “The United States no longer even makes war in order to win, but rather to make sure that the other side loses.” Thus the fact that Mrs. Clinton’s wars were not won in any meaningful sense has not dented her popularity where it counts. She has kept the MIC busy and dealt blows to proper targets.

The American people swallow this nonsense because the wars are kept at a distance, no U.S. homes are blown up, and “for most Americans, U.S. wars are simply a branch of the entertainment industry, something to hear about on television but rarely seen.” Popular illusions are maintained by the “political branch of the entertainment industry: politicians, mass media news coverage, defense intellectuals, commentators.” These are sponsored by members of the underlying power structure, and Johnstone suggests that we can learn about these sponsors by examining the list of Clinton Foundation donors who have contributed millions of dollars, supposedly for charity:

“Eight digit donors [10 million or more] include: Saudi Arabia, the pro-Israel Ukrainian oligarch Victor Pinchuk, and the Saban family.”… Seven digit sponsors include: Kuwait, Exxon Mobil, ‘Friends of Saudi Arabia,’ James Murdoch, Qatar, Boeing, Dow, Goldman Sachs, Walmart, and the United Arab Emirates,” Earlier in her book Johnstone notes that billionaire Haim Saban was especially taken with Mrs. Clinton, declaring in a Bloomberg interview in July 2014 that he would contribute “as much as needed” to elect her to the presidency; also mentioning that “I’m a one-issue guy, and my issue is Israel.”

Johnstone asks “What is it about the Clintons that makes them so popular, particularly with Saudi Arabia?” She answers: “With friends like that, you need enemies. And Hillary knows where to find them – in countries these friendly donors don’t like. In her driving ambition to be the First Woman President of the United States, Hillary Rodham Clinton has made herself a figment of the collective imagination by fitting herself into the role of top salesperson for the ruling oligarchy:

• She has shifted her interest from children’s rights, a field with no big money backers, to promotion of military power (also known as ‘the only language they understand’).
• She has spread the message that U.S. interference in other countries is motivated by the generous impulse to spread ‘our ideals’ to the dark corners of elsewhere.
• She readily treats foreign heads of state with dehumanizing contempt, declaring that they have ‘no soul’, or ‘no conscience’, and dismissing them as lowly creatures that ‘must go’.
• She ‘misspeaks’, but sees nothing wrong with that. In politics, who doesn’t ‘misspeak’? She is not there to tell the truth, but to tell her story.
• She can still pose as a woman whose only aspiration is to ‘break the glass ceiling’ for the benefit of all women, who will now be able to fill all the top jobs in the country… thanks to Hillary!”

“In short, she has used all the stereotypical clichés of the ‘exceptional America’ narrative as rungs in her ladder to the top. Hillary Clinton’s performance as Secretary of State was a great success in one respect: it has made her the favorite candidate of the War Party. This appears to have been her primary objective. But Hillary Clinton is far from being the whole problem. The fundamental problem is the War Party and its tight grip on U.S. policy.”

Diana Johnstone has written an exceptional book that enlightens on Hillary Clinton’s history, role and threat and the war system context in which she thrives.

• First Published at Z Magazine. November 2015

December 26, 2015 Posted by | Book Review, Militarism | , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Syria: Has Anyone Stepped Back from the Brink?

By Michael Jabara CARLEY | Strategic Culture Foundation | 26.12.2015

John Kerry, the US Secretary of State, recently visited Moscow to discuss the Syrian crisis with his colleague Sergei Lavrov and President Vladimir Putin. Journalists observed handshakes, smiles, even hearty laughter, between Kerry and his Russian counterparts. Syrian President Bashar al Assad does not have to resign immediately, Kerry declared, and the United States is not trying to isolate Russia. What good news, and what a surprise for the Russians. The Moscow show seemed a great success. Kerry strolled along Stariy Arbat Street, met smiling Russian pedestrians and bought souvenirs to take home. A few days later the UN Security Council passed a resolution, calling for a ceasefire and negotiations. Russian and western journalists alike now say there is some hope to avoid the worst in Syria. And as you may already know, if the United States wants a ceasefire, it’s because their «moderate» Jihadist allies are getting beaten up now by the Syrian Arab Army backed by Russian air support.

Is cautious optimism warranted about a Syrian peace? It is hard to see how. Kerry may say whatever he wants in Moscow, but when he gets back to Washington, he sings a different song, or his colleagues do. His boss, President Obama, said «Assad has to go» only a few days after Kerry returned home. And then there is the new phantasmagorical story published by Seymour B Hersh, the muckraking US journalist, who has revealed that not everyone inside the US government is brain dead. It’s a remarkable discovery when you think about US foreign policy. Some military officials, and no less than the former Chief of Staff, General Martin Dempsey, were actually indirectly, and very secretly, passing military intelligence to the Syrian government to help it fight Daesh, Al-Qaeda and allied Jihadist forces operating in Syria. At the same time, the CIA, with Obama’s support, was sending arms hither and thither in Syria to help the Jihadists overthrow the Assad government.

General Dempsey left office in September 2015 and was replaced by General Joseph Dunford, a true blue Russophobe, who says Russia is an «existential threat» to the United States. It is a classic Washington response: the US aggressor accuses its intended victim of aggression. Just the other day (22 December), the United States slapped on gratuitous new sanctions against Russia. It’s the same old pretext: Russian «aggression» in the Ukraine.

Yet another US provocation, you might think, as Russia searches for a peaceful settlement of the Syrian war. The Russian government is taking a sensible position, but in the present circumstances, is a negotiated peace a real possibility? If the war in Syria were simply a civil war, as is often repeated in the media, you could encourage the belligerents to put on suits and ties and sit down at a table to negotiate a settlement. Unfortunately, the war in Syria is not a civil war: it is rather a proxy war of aggression led by the United States, Britain, and France (until the Paris massacre in November), and pursued vigorously in the region by Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Jordan, and Apartheid Israel.

Turkey is playing a dirty, evil role. It provides arms and supplies across its borders for Daesh in Syria. Oil taken from Syrian wells by Daesh travels in the opposite direction, sold at cut rate prices, to provide revenue to the Jihadists for their war against Assad. It is estimated that Daesh was obtaining $40 millions a month from exported oil (before Russian intervention), but this is a bagatelle in terms of the money necessary for the Jihadists to wage war against Syria. Hundreds of millions are required. Saudi Arabia and Qatar are important suppliers and financiers of the Salafi Jihadist movement. Jordan permits training of Jihadists on its territory and allows passage across its frontiers into Syria. Israel also provides support from the occupied Golan territory, even providing medical care to wounded Jihadists. A coalition of states, four of which are NATO members, is waging a war of aggression against Syria. Against this array of deadly enemies, the Syrian government and the Syrian Arab Army, in a remarkable feat of arms, has been able to hold out for more than four years. President Assad has proven his courage and tenacity as a leader by refusing US summons to resign and by staying in Damascus to share the personal danger which all Syrians must endure simply to live in their country. No wonder Obama wants to get rid of Assad before talk about Syrian elections for he would almost certainly win them.

Sputnik in Moscow has estimated that there are as many as 70,000 foreign Jihadists fighting in Syria.

These forces appear for the most part are well motivated, supplied largely with US weapons and deeply entrenched in various parts of Syria. Since the Russian intervention on the side of the Syrian government, progress has been made in rooting out Jihadist forces, but as long as supply routes remain open across Turkey, Iraq, Jordan, Israel, even Lebanon, the war in Syria is not going to end.

Turkey’s role is particularly dangerous. It is a NATO member and it uses this privileged position to commit acts of aggression against Iraq and Syria. It shot down a Russian warplane in a well-planned ambush, likely with US connivance, and then ran to hide in NATO’s skirts. Apparently, the Turkish government hoped to sabotage budding European cooperation with Russia against Daesh, or to provoke a NATO-Russian war, as insane as that might seem. Other NATO members, the United States, France, and Britain, have also been deeply involved in the proxy war against Syria. Indeed, after the destruction of Libya, it has been reported that NATO planes were secretly used to transport Jihadists and Libyan arms to other Middle Eastern fronts. NATO members are effectively allied with Daesh and its Al-Qaeda derivatives against the Syrian government.

To be sure, the United States and its European vassals have attempted to cover up their links to the Jihadist war in Syria by launching make-believe air attacks on Daesh targets, occasionally bombing a caterpillar tractor here or there and blowing up a lot of sand in people’s eyes. Russian intervention exposed the double game of the United States and changed the balance of military forces in Syria.

Even now however, the US air force sends warning messages to Jihadist truck drivers to get away from their vehicles before it attacks them. Or it refuses altogether to attack trucks carrying Daesh oil, claiming it’s private civilian property. How preposterous! Since World War II, when has the United States hesitated to attack civilian targets? It is understandable that Obama and the CIA, having been caught red-handed in Syria, are furious with Putin for exposing them. Nevertheless, the Russian government has offered the United States, a porte de sortie, pushing for an anti-Jihadist alliance and peace talks to settle the war.

Peace is a marvelous idea and the US escape route, a practical gesture, but how is Foreign Minister Lavrov going to get Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Qatar, Jordan, and Israel, not to mention the United States and Britain, to stop supporting the Jihadist movement in Syria and Iraq? Talk about an impossible alliance: it’s like taking a writhing nest of asps to your breast and hoping they won’t bite you. Are such hopes realistic? «Maybe not but that’s diplomacy,» Lavrov might respond: «we have to try nevertheless». These days it takes infinite patience and great theatrical skills to be a Russian diplomat. Russia is trying to finesse the United States into dropping its support of «moderate» Jihadists. In fact, such moderates do not exist.

Neither does the so-called Free Syrian Army (FSA). The Jihadists decapitate a few hapless victims, and FSA volunteers run away in horror leaving their arms for Daesh. Or, they laugh at the infidels’ stupidity and go over, arms in hand, to the Jihadist side.

Even if Russia could get real commitments from the United States, which is as yet quite uncertain, what is to be done about Turkey, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states? And what is to be done with all the foreign Jihadists in Syria? Are these terrorists and war criminals going to be encouraged to return to the 40+ different countries whence they came to stir up violence there? And what is to be done about the Syrian Jihadists, though there is no open source information about their numbers? Will they be allowed to remain at large, or worse, will they be recognised as a legitimate Syrian opposition?

Even an anti-Jihadist coalition of willing members will have hard work rooting out Daesh and its allies. But the coalition of asps which Russia is trying to organise is composed of Daesh supporters. How is that going to work? One fears not at all well since the would-be alliance members, with the possible exception of France, have not abandoned their backing of Daesh, whatever one hears to the contrary notwithstanding. The United States remains the chief culprit continuing to pursue its two-faced, dangerous policies.

«The four core elements of Obama’s Syria policy remain intact today», Seymour Hersh says: «an insistence that Assad must go; that no anti-IS (Islamic State) coalition with Russia is possible; that Turkey is a steadfast ally in the war against terrorism; and that there really are significant moderate opposition forces for the US to support».

Policy based on false premises invariably leads to failure. Obama’s policy is no exception. Assad is a courageous leader of Syrian resistance against the Jihadist invasion. The only possible successful coalition against Daesh, Al-Qaeda and their affiliates is with Assad and with Russia. Turkey is a dangerous provocateur, playing with matches amongst open kegs of gunpowder, trying to drag NATO into a deeper de facto alliance with Daesh or even war with Russia. Finally, there are no «moderate» Jihadist forces in Syria. The Free Syrian Army barely exists at all, and the so-called moderates are no less murderous than their Daesh allies.

One cannot fault the Russians for trying to organise an anti-Jihadist alliance in Syria, but their potential allies, apart perhaps from the apparently repentant French, are all snakes in the grass. And Obama, the Nobel Peace Prize winner, is the biggest snake of all. «Do you realise what you have done?» Putin asked at the UN in September. Not yet apparently, reports to the contrary notwithstanding. But then, as we know, there are none so blind as those who will not see.

December 26, 2015 Posted by | Aletho News | , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Amnesty International: Imperialist Tool

AI

By Prof. Francis A. Boyle | thewallwillfall

July 31, 1998

Dear Amnesty Friends:

I am in receipt of the response by three members of the AIUSA Middle East Coordination Group to my message that was entitled “NGOs As Western Tools.” You will note that they never denied any of the basic facts set forth in my original message. When Israel invaded Lebanon in 1982 and murdered 20,000 Arabs/Muslims with the full support of the United States, both Amnesty International and AIUSA said absolutely nothing at all despite vigorous efforts by AIUSA Members to get them both to say and to do anything. When it became clear that AIUSA was not going to say or do anything about Israel’s wholesale slaughter of Arabs/Muslims in Lebanon because of the marked pro-Israel bias by the AIUSA Staff, Board, and Funders, I called the Irish Nobel Peace Prize Winner Sean MacBride at his home in Dublin and asked him to intervene with AI/London. What little AI/London said and did about 20,000 Arabs/Muslims in Lebanon murdered by Israel with the full support of the United States was due to Sean MacBride.

MacBride then convinced the then AI Secretary General to appoint me a Consultant to Amnesty International on the human rights situation in the Middle East. In that capacity, I attended the founding meeting of what would become the AIUSA Middle East Coordination Group. In other words, I was one of the founders of the AIUSA Mid-East Co-Group, some of whose members are now defending its work. At that founding meeting I said quite emphatically that Amnesty International and AIUSA would have absolutely no credibility whatsoever in the Middle East unless they dealt forthrightly and vigorously with violations of the human rights of Arabs and Muslims by Israel, and, in particular, Israeli atrocities against the People of Lebanon and the Palestinian People. Soon thereafter, I found out that the Members of the AIUSA Mid-East Co-Group had been instructed to have nothing more to do with me by a direct order coming from the AIUSA Board of Directors.

It is fair to say that Amnesty International has quite recently released some reports dealing with Israeli violations of human rights of the Palestinian People and the Lebanese People. But Israel has been consistently murdering, torturing and destroying the Palestinian People since at least the time when the occupation of their lands began in 1967–and with the full support of the United States Government. And only now has Amnesty International got around to condemning it. Almost a decade ago while on the AIUSA Board, I tried to get AI/London and AIUSA to act on the basis of the infamous Landau Report whereby the Israeli Government officially sanctioned torture against Palestinians. Over a decade ago while on the AIUSA Board, I pointed out that this made Israel the only state in the world to officially sanction torture. It is nice to see that a decade later Amnesty International has finally agreed with me and said something about it.

Likewise, Israel has been rampaging around Lebanon with the full support of the United States to the grave detriment of the Lebanese People and Palestinians living there since at least the time when Israel first invaded Lebanon in 1978. The primary reason why Amnesty International has put out these latest reports condemning Israeli human rights violations in Lebanon and against the Palestinian People after decades of silence is because there are now several other human rights organizations which have acted against Israel when AI/London and AIUSA refused to act because of their marked pro-Israel bias. When it comes to protecting the human rights of Palestinians, Lebanese, Arabs/Muslims from atrocities by Israel, the United States, and Britain, AI/London and AIUSA have always been too little, too late, and on purpose.

While on the AIUSA Board I once saw the itinerary drawn up by AIUSA for the visit to the United States by the then AI Secretary General coming from London. On the list was almost every major pro-Israel group in New York and Washington and about one Arab Group. Given their standard operating procedures, I am confident the pro-Israel groups threatened the AI Secretary General that they would have their members withhold or reduce their contributions to AI and AIUSA if AI/London did not reign in its pathetic, pitiful, and meager criticisms of Israel. While I was on the AIUSA Board, AIUSA paid about 20% of the budget for AI/London. He who pays the piper calls the tune.

You will also note that the three AIUSA Mid-East Co-Group members’ response to my original message said absolutely nothing at all about the scandalous Kuwaiti Dead Babies Report and Campaign that both Amnesty International and AIUSA used for the purpose of promoting war against Iraq. As a Member of the AIUSA Board, I received a pre-publication copy of the Dead Babies Report. I read it immediately and quite carefully. First, this report contained technical errors that should have precluded its publication. Second, even if all these sensational allegations had been true, it was clear that publication of this report at that critical moment in time (December 1990) would only be used by the United States and Britain to monger for war against Iraq. I expressed these opinions in the strongest terms possible and that this report should not be published because it was inaccurate; or that if for some reason it were to be published, it must be accompanied by an errata sheet. Amnesty International published the Dead Babies Report anyway despite my vigorous objections, and launched their Disinformation Campaign against Iraq. From this episode I could only conclude that AI/London deliberately intended the Dead-Babies Report and Campaign to be used in order to tip the balance in favor of war against Iraq.

This is exactly what happened. In January of 1991 the United States Senate voted in favor of war against Iraq by only five or six votes. Several Senators publicly stated that the AI/AIUSA Dead Babies Report and Campaign had influenced their votes in favor of war against Iraq. That genocidal war waged by the United States, the United Kingdom and France, inter alia, during the months of January and February 1991, killed at a minimum 200,000 Iraqis, half of whom were civilians. Amnesty International shall always have the blood of the Iraqi People on its hands!

Once it became clear that there never were any dead babies in Kuwait as alleged by Amnesty International, AI/London proceeded to engage in a massive coverup of the truth. For all I know, the same people at AI/London who waged this Dead-Babies Disinformation Campaign against Iraq are still at AI/London producing more disinformation against Arab/Muslim states in the Middle East in order to further the political and economic interests of the United States, Britain, and Israel. Because of its Dead-Babies Disinformation Campaign against Iraq and its ensuing coverup, Amnesty International will never have any credibility in the Middle East!

During the past eight years, about 1.5 million People in Iraq have died as a result of genocidal sanctions imposed upon them primarily at the behest of the United States and Britain, including in that number about 500,000 dead Iraqi children. While on the AIUSA Board of Directors, I tried to get them and AI/London to do something about this genocidal embargo against the People of Iraq, and especially against the Iraqi Children. Both AI/London and AIUSA adamantly refused to act despite the grievous harm that their Dead-Babies Disinformation Campaign had inflicted upon the People of Iraq. It was clear to me at the time that there was no way AI/London and AIUSA were going to take on Britain and the United States on behalf of the completely innocent People of Iraq.

Now we are told that there is something in the AI Mandate that precludes AI action against such genocidal economic embargoes. Of course this is nonsense. While I served on the AIUSA Board, one of our Board Chairs personally put me in charge of handling Mandate issues for the AIUSA Board. I know all about the Mandate. It was my responsibility.

Generally put, when AI/London and AIUSA want to take action on a matter because it will bring them publicity, money, members, and “influence,” they pay no attention whatsoever to their so-called Mandate. Likewise, when AI/London and AIUSA decide for political or economic reasons that they will not work on human rights problem, they trot out their so-called Mandate to justify non-action.

The same type of bogus argument was used by AI/London and AIUSA to prevent the organizations and their memberships from taking any effective action against the criminal apartheid regime in South Africa that had been oppressing millions of Black People for decades. To the best of my knowledge, Amnesty International is the only human rights organization in the entire world to have refused to condemn apartheid and work against it. The spurious argument made here was that Amnesty International could take no position on a type of government. But the truth of the matter was that Amnesty International is headquartered in London, and AIUSA is headquartered in New York and Washington. The biggest political supporters of the criminal apartheid regime in South Africa were the governments of Britain, the United States, and Israel. Likewise, the biggest sources of economic investments in the criminal apartheid regime in South Africa came from Britain and the United States. Once again, he who pays the piper calls the tune.

There was no way AI/London and AIUSA were ever going to work against the political and economic interests of Britain, the United States, and Israel operating together in support of the criminal apartheid regime in South Africa. So AI/London and AIUSA concocted this spurious rationale for non-action. The same is being done today by AI/London and AIUSA to justify their non-action in light of the genocidal economic embargo imposed now primarily by the United States and Britain against the People of Iraq. There is no way AI/London and AIUSA will ever act against the political and economic interests of the United States, Britain, and Israel in the Middle East, and certainly not on behalf of the People of Iraq, whose blood AI and AIUSA now have on their hands.

Notice too how this latest specious justification for AI non-action fits in quite neatly with the strategic objectives of the United States around the world. Right now the United States Government is primarily responsible for imposing genocidal economic sanctions against the People of Iraq, the People of Cuba, and the People of North Korea. Amnesty International will do nothing at all about it. In other words, by their deliberate non-action AI and AIUSA are supporting the genocidal policies of the United States, Britain and Israel against these Third World countries–just as AI and AIUSA supported the criminal apartheid regime in South Africa by their deliberate non-action. If you want to do effective human rights work in opposition to the imperial, colonial and genocidal policies of the United States, Britain, or Israel, there is no point working with Amnesty International or AIUSA. You will simply be wasting your time, your efforts, your resources, and your enthusiasm.

Permit me to further substantiate this assertion that Amnesty International and AIUSA are imperialist tools by reference to other areas of the world. It is well known that AI/London has done little effective work to help Irish Catholics in Northern Ireland. As Sean MacBride once said: Amnesty International will never treat Irish Catholics fairly so long as it is headquartered in London. The long and sordid history of AI/London non-action in the face of genocidal violations of the most fundamental human rights of Irish Catholics living in Northern Ireland by Britain is well known among Irish Americans and Irish People living in Ireland, Northern Ireland, and around the world. For example, a letter by a former AI Secretary-General sabotaged public support for the defense of Joe Doherty here in the United States. Just recently, it required a massive internet campaign to force AI/London to do anything at all to save the life of Loinnir McAliskey and to obtain the freedom of Roisin McAliskey.

Let me now move from the British colony in Northern Ireland to the American colony in Puerto Rico. While I was still on the AIUSA Board, a fellow Board Member asked me to draft a resolution for adoption by the Annual General Meeting (AGM) of AIUSA calling for a comprehensive AI Campaign against human rights violations by the United States in Puerto Rico. This resolution passed the AIUSA/AGM overwhelmingly, and without any dissent that I could detect. I was then invited by Amnesty International/Puerto Rico to give the Keynote Address at their Annual General Meeting in San Juan on the subject of the right of Puerto Rican political prisoners in American jails to be treated as prisoners of war. Immediately thereafter, AI/London and AIUSA applied massive pressure on AI/Puerto Rico to prevent this speech. AI/Puerto Rico refused to cave in.

I went down to Puerto Rico to attend their AGM, gave the Keynote Address, and also investigated U.S. human rights violations in Puerto Rico, including torture, summary executions and disappearances. Upon my return home, AIUSA attempted to stiff me out of my expenses despite the fact that I was attending the AI/Puerto Rico AGM in my official capacity as an invited AIUSA Board Member. Perhaps I missed it due to the press of other duties at the time, but I am not aware of any comprehensive Amnesty International Campaign against U.S. human rights abuses in Puerto Rico as overwhelmingly called for by the AIUSA/AGM.

Finally, let me say a few words about the deliberate non-action of AI/London and AIUSA on behalf of indigenous peoples living in the United States and its imperial ally, Canada. Back when I was on the AIUSA Board, AI/London decided to launch an international campaign on behalf of indigenous peoples. As usual, I received a pre-publication copy of the campaign material. On reading it, I immediately noticed that almost nothing was to be done to help the indigenous peoples living in the United States and Canada. I protested this to AI/London and AIUSA, and demanded that the indigenous peoples living in the United States and Canada be added as an integral part of this campaign. To the best of my knowledge, this was never done. I leave it to the indigenous peoples living in the United States and Canada to decide for themselves how helpful AI/London and AIUSA have been to them.

I will not belabor the obvious any longer in this brief Memorandum. But based upon my over sixteen years of experience having dealt with AI/London and AIUSA at the highest levels, it is clear to me that both organizations manifest a consistent pattern and practice of following the lines of the foreign policies of the United States, Britain, and Israel. You can certainly see this in all of AI’s non-work with respect to the Middle East, Northern Ireland, Puerto Rico, South Africa, indigenous peoples living in North America, etc. Effectively, Amnesty International and AIUSA function as tools for the imperialist, colonial and genocidal policies of the United States, Britain, and Israel.

There are many people of good will and good faith working at the grassroots level of Amnesty International and AIUSA who genuinely believe that they are doing meaningful and effective work to protect human rights around the world. But at the top of these two organizations you will find a self-perpetuating clique of co-opted Elites who deliberately shape and direct the work of AI and AIUSA so as to either affirmatively support, or else not seriously undercut, the imperial, colonial, and genocidal policies of the United States, Britain, and Israel. The Leadership Elites of AI/London and AIUSA have always considered themselves to be the so-called “loyal opposition” to the imperial, colonial, and genocidal policies of the United States, Britain and Israel. I would ask the people at the grassroots of AI and AIUSA whether you want to continue being part of the “loyal opposition” to imperialism, colonialism and genocide perpetrated by the United States, Britain and Israel? It is not for me to tell those people of good faith and good will currently working with AI/London and AIUSA what to do. But I have found other organizations to work with and support.

Francis A. Boyle, Professor of International Law, Board of Directors, Amnesty International USA (1988-92), Co-Founder AIUSA Middle East Coordination Group, Consultant to Amnesty International on the Middle East

Cover Image:  Courtesy of WrongKindofGreen.

December 25, 2015 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

No Matter Who Becomes President Israel Wins

Saban and Adelson should register as foreign agents

By Philip Giraldi • Unz Review • December 22, 2015

The next American president will almost certainly be bought and paid for by the Israel Lobby. Hillary Clinton has already declared that that when she is elected president she intends to take relations with Israel “to the next level” and has also promised to invite Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to visit on her very first day in office. It is difficult to imagine what the next level might actually be in America’s already servile deference to Israeli interests so she should perhaps be careful regarding what she commits herself to do. Netanyahu just might feel empowered to remain in the Oval Office on his visit, possibly also moving the Knesset to Washington so it will be closer to the U.S. Treasury if Israel’s budget comes up a bit short as well as just across the river from the Pentagon and all those nifty weapons that can be used to kill Palestinian children.

Hillary’s pledge of fealty to Israel took place at a meeting of the Saban Forum, which is an annual dialogue between American and Israeli leaders from across the political and social spectrum, hosted by the Brookings Institute, which also has a Center for Middle East Policy, formerly also named after Saban. The eponymous Saban is Haim Saban an Israeli who has made his billions of dollars in the United States in the television and entertainment industry. His best known brand is the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers. He is consistently one of the largest donors to the Democratic Party, contributing $10 million in 2001-2, whose stated formula for influencing American politics is to donate to politicians and parties, establish think tanks and control the media message. He has worked hard to do all three on behalf of Israel, to include paying for the Democratic National Committee headquarters in DC.

Saban’s dealings with the Democrats have apparently not inhibited his cooperation with Israel’s intelligence service Mossad. In 2009 Congressman Jane Harman was contacted by an Israeli intelligence “agent” and reportedly agreed to attempt to influence a reduction in the espionage charges in the then ongoing trial of accused American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) spies Steve Rosen and Keith Weissman. In return, Harman’s contact promised to support her bid to become chairman of the House Permanent Committee on Intelligence. The Israeli, who some suspect was Haim Saban himself, indicated that he would pressure House speaker Nancy Pelosi using threats to withhold political contributions from Saban if Harman were not given the position. Harman was later spoken of as a possible candidate to become Director of Central Intelligence and, without the FBI recordings of her phone conversations, which were made known to Pelosi, she might have obtained either position or possibly both in succession.

Saban has also long been associated with the Clintons and he and a tight group of like-minded donors may indeed constitute the most financially significant part of Hillary’s political base. When Bill was president Saban was a regular overnight visitor at the White House. He has pledged to spend “whatever it takes to elect Hillary in 2016 because “the relationship with the US and Israel will be significantly reinforced.” Saban has repeatedly claimed that “I’m a one-issue guy, and my issue is Israel.” Hillary and Bill appear to agree and one might even argue that Bill has a soft spot for money coming from Israeli spies, witness his pardoning of fugitive Marc Rich in 2001. So put it all together if you will and if you think that the wag the dog relationship between Washington and Tel Aviv is bad now, just wait because it will be moving “to the next level” if Hillary is elected.

So who is standing up for the interests of the American people? Nobody, apparently. Senator Ted Cruz has no less than 69 press releases on his web site pledging support for Israel. Jeb Bush has pledged to ban the pro-Palestinian Boycott Divest and Sanction (BDS) movement in the U.S. which most people would consider to be free speech. Every Republican candidate also continues to pander directly and personally to Benjamin Netanyahu, including Donald Trump who planned to drop in on Bibi but had to cancel the trip because of the reaction to his comments about Muslims. Trump had also caused somewhat of an uproar by telling a Jewish Republican audience in New York City that they wouldn’t support him because he didn’t need their money. Imagine the cheek of Trump to link Jews with money with buying influence! In any event, Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), determined that Trump’s comments were not anti-Semitism because they had been misinterpreted and I for one am relieved that we have a brave and enlightened organization like the ADL to keep us on our toes when it comes to potential hate speech.

George Washington could not have envisioned the manner in which money has corrupted American politics. Congressmen complain that much of their time is spent fundraising and, in such a system, it is inevitable that the most generous donors are able to position themselves for favors from the political class. Some become Ambassadors even though they are completely unqualified. Others choose to push certain legislative agendas, to include tax breaks and bailouts that enrich them personally.

But now we have something that goes way beyond that in the new breed of mega-rich, colossally wealthy multi-billionaires who are well positioned to use their resources to support a political candidate willing to accept the money and sell out his or her principles to someone advancing the interests of a foreign country. We are now on the verge of having a Manchurian Candidate president.

Last November an organization called the Israel-America Council (IAC), which ostensibly represents expatriate Israeli citizens residing in the United States, hosted an inaugural bash in Washington. Present were Saban and Sheldon Adelson sharing a stage. Adelson, the principal funder of IAC, was born in the United States and lives in Las Vegas but also has a home in Israel and presumably has Israeli citizenship. His wife is Israeli and he has said that he regrets serving in the US Army in World War Two while also expressing a fervent desire to have a son who would serve as an Israeli military sniper. Both Adelson and Saban are essentially Israelis who live in the United States for economic reasons. Scott McConnell has described them as having “maximal loyalties to Israel and minimal ones to the United States.”

Adelson is the Republican version of Saban. He believes that the United States should nuke Iran as a “negotiating tactic,” has an estimated $23.8 billion fortune derived mostly from casinos in Las Vegas and in Asia. He is a Republican funder for those prospective candidates who promote unlimited US support for Israel. He bankrolled Newt Gingrich’s bid for the GOP nomination in 2012 as well as Mitt Romney for a total of $150 million and also contributed $10 million to Republican candidates in the 2014 congressional campaign. Newt Gingrich in return repaid the favor by praising Israel in his foreign policy pronouncements, taking a hard line with Iran and describing the Palestinians as an “invented people.”

Adelson and Saban’s “spirited public discussion” at IAC included a number of zingers that have been widely reported in the alternative media. Saban commented that in the event of a “bad” deal between Washington and Tehran over the latter’s nuclear program (bad as being defined by Israel) Netanyahu “should bomb the living daylights out of the sons of bitches.” Adelson noted that “the purpose of the existence of Palestinians is to destroy Israel” before dismissing the possibility of a democratic state including both Arabs and Jews by responding “So Israel won’t be a democratic state, so what?” He added that democracy was not mentioned in the Torah. The two also joked about combing their resources to buy the New York Times by offering to pay “more than it’s worth” to make its coverage of Israel even more favorable than it already is. Saban added that he had even used “threats” to obtain favorable media reporting about Israel. The seven hundred “Israeli-Americans” in the audience reportedly responded to the conversation with “wild applause.”

Adelson and Saban concluded that “there’s no right or left when it comes to Israel” and the conference Chairman Shawn Evenhaim joked at its conclusion that “After the election in 2016 one of you will get me a private tour of the White House.” The jest was on target. At this point it is almost certain that both Saban and Adelson will become the largest single donors for whoever becomes the GOP and Democratic candidates. That will buy them enormous access, as Hillary Clinton has already demonstrated. Given that reality one has to accept the obvious conclusion that the two Israeli billionaires might well be able to substantially define the relationship between Washington and the Muslim world, to Israel’s benefit.

That Adelson and Saban might think privately that they have become political kingmakers is one thing, but stating as much in a public forum defies belief. They should be recognized for what they really are: agents of a foreign government and there is no reason why the Justice Department should not require them to register as such under the Foreign Agents Registration Act of 1938. Their close and continuing relationships with Israeli government can no doubt be demonstrated, validating the claim and registering as foreign agents would make illegal their funding of American politicians.

And once one starts recognizing foreign advocacy groups for what they are, other organizations like IAC, the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP) and AIPAC should also be required to register as agents of the Israeli government. And there are many more such organizations, a virtual alphabet soup. Registration would mandate transparency in their funding and end their phony status as educational tax exempt organizations.

It does not require any particular genius to realize that someone living in one country while favoring the interests of another is not a desirable citizen but we retain at least some semblance of freedom of speech and anyone should be able to advocate anything. But it would be nice for a change if our two venerable national parties might for once seize the high ground and act respectably. I would suggest that the Democratic National Committee and the Republican National Committee might consider developing some backbone and combine in issuing a joint statement refusing to take any donations from either Adelson or Saban in the current election cycle. It could remove both considerable influence peddling and Israel itself from the electoral process, which would be a blessing all around. Might it actually happen? Almost certainly not.

December 22, 2015 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Algeria calls for direct talks between Saudi and Iran

MEMO | December 21, 2015

An Algerian diplomat has revealed that his government has suggested that Saudi Arabia and Iran should hold direct talks to solve regional conflicts and regain stability in the Arab world, Anadolu reported on Sunday.

“Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika offered an initiative to Eshaq Jahangiri, the first deputy of the Iranian president,” explained the anonymous official. Jahangiri visited Algeria last Wednesday and Thursday. The same suggestion was made to Saud Bin Mohamed Al-Saud, an aide of the Saudi monarch, who was also in Algiers last week.

The initiative apparently includes an invitation to both countries to sit for direct talks in order to solve the armed conflicts in the Arab region. Neither government has responded as yet.

Bouteflika met with Jahangiri on Thursday at the end of his two-day visit to Algeria, during which he attended a meeting of the High Cooperation Committee which discusses matters of direct relevance to Algiers and Tehran. According to Jahangiri, the situation in Syria and Iraq was on the agenda for the talks with the Algerian president.

December 21, 2015 Posted by | Solidarity and Activism | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

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