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ALEPPO, SYRIA: Remember Benghazi Before You Buy the Latest Propaganda…

The Burning Blogger of Bedlam | May 1, 2016

Aleppo now continues to be the focus of a renewed and nasty propaganda war, with US and Western officials claiming the Syrian regime has been bombing civilian or moderate opposition targets in breach of the ceasefire. Both points – firstly that these are ‘moderate’ opposition targets, and secondly that the Syrian regime has been breaching the cease fire agreement – are refuted, meaning essentially that there’s no real way to know the truth of the matter.

More than 200 civilians, including 35 children, are reported to have been killed as violence erupted again this week, apparently leaving the ceasefire agreement in doubt.

We all know the drill by now, however. When Western officials and corporate media report that an MSF hospital has been destroyed by unknown aircraft, this is basically code for ‘We Did It – But We’re Going to Blame Assad’. We’ve seen all of this strategy before, with the Houla massacre or with the chemical attacks in 2013.

The hospital bombing in recent days, which has sparked outrage, has been blamed on the Syrian government by most Western media, including the comedy act of the US State Department. Both Russian and Syrian officials have refuted this accusation, which in fact is a sequel to the bombing of hospitals that occurred in February, which Washington blamed on Russia, but which Russia accused the US of having carried out.

Just as previous instances, most Western media has fallen into line with the US State Department, running the by-now-familiar stories of ‘Assad, the Butcher’, etc. Even The Guardian, I am disappointed to see, has followed this line, providing a one-sided story and portraying events in Aleppo purely as a regime massacre. It’s worth nothing, however, that their main source appears to be the ‘White Helmets’ (see Vanessa Beeley’s analysis of White Helmets and war propaganda here).

What isn’t highlighted, however, is that for the last several days the government-held parts of Aleppo (and the 2,000,000 inhabitants and refugees there) seem to have been under bombardment with improvised gas-canister mortars and rockets from the al-Nusra (Al-Qaeda) side.

The idea that Aleppo is filled with ‘moderate’ opposition is generally refuted. And if you’re experiencing deja vu, it’s probably because you remember that the US, Britain, France, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and co have played this game before, like when they insisted the Libyan government forces under Gaddafi were carrying out ‘massacres’ in Tripoli and Benghazi when in fact they were simply attempting to retake territories that had been seized by Al-Qaeda and other foreign-backed jihadists/mercenaries.

And just as the much-referenced Benghazi massacre was in fact a Western government/media fiction, we would do well to question the Aleppo narrative now.

According to Russian officials on April 12th, some 10,000 al-Nusra militants were surrounding Aleppo, planning to blockade the city. Russian officials have confirmed that the rebels in Aleppo are primarily al-Nusra (Al-Qaeda – and exempt from the ceasefire) and have asked the United States to prove otherwise. Far from proving otherwise, even US government officials appear to have been acknowledging in recent days that Syrian Army targets in Aleppo are primarily Al-Qaeda – and therefore exempt from the ceasefire agreement.

A week and a half ago, Col. Steve Warren, the US military spokesman in Baghdad, told reporters at the Pentagon that it was “primarily al-Nusra who holds Aleppo, and of course, al-Nusra is not part of the cessation of hostilities”. This implied fairly clearly that the Syrian government would not be breaching the ceasefire agreement if it tried to attack them.

In February, the Apostolic Vicar of Aleppo, had confirmed that “foreign terrorists” and not Syrians were trying to prolong the conflict, saying that “foreign jihadists have been given the green light to intensify the bombing of civilians.”

Mons. Georges Abou Khazen, reported “We have been under continuous bombardment in Aleppo with civilian deaths, injuries and destruction… and these attacks are being carried out by the so-called ‘moderate opposition groups’.” The prelate crucially pointed the finger at the front defended by Saudi Arabia, Turkey and the West. Crucially, he also suggested that the escalation represented the desire to “derail the peace negotiations” by “regional forces” that he believed were trying to prevent Aleppo being liberated from terrorist control.

In all likelihood, it has been al-Nusra escalating the fighting, quite likely encouraged by their foreign backers, in the full expectation that government forces would have to retaliate – and that this retaliation could then be spun into a ‘vicious regime attack’ narrative.

This latest round of propaganda is presumably attempting to derail the peace initiative, so that the much-talked-about ‘Plan B’ can be initiated – ‘Plan B’ (which is essentially ‘Plan A, Part 2’) is basically to resume arming and backing rebel groups. Which seems to have been going on anyway – even during the ceasefire – with the US recently allegedly delivering 3,000 tons of weapons and ammunition to anti-regime fighters (including al-Nusra/Al-Qaeda), most of who aren’t Syrians anyway.

And so on it goes.

May 1, 2016 Posted by aletho | Deception, Illegal Occupation, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Militarism, War Crimes | Al-Nusra, Plan B, Russia, Syria, The Guardian, United States | Leave a comment

Guardian’s Peter Beaumont “Piles on” Ken Livingstone, Mangles Nazi-Era and Zionist History

By Richard Silverstein | Tikun Olam | May 1, 2016

Yesterday, I noted the special relish the Guardian and Haaretz, erstwhile liberal publications, are taking in savaging the UK Labor Party’s left, in the person of one-time London mayor, Ken Livingstone. Given the hundreds of thousands of words and gallons of ink spilled in the vain effort to turn the Labor left into anti-Semites, the current atmosphere in England strikes me as the Night of the Long Knives, when the SS took its revenge on its enemies within the Nazi movement and solidified its hold on the Party.

Now, the Guardian’s Israel correspondent, Peter Beaumont, has gotten into the act. He’s written an odd article that continues the attack on Livingstone, calling his argument “dubious history.” But it does so from a strange angle. Beaumont reviews one of the major pieces of historical evidence raised by Livingstone in his fateful interview, in which the latter said that “Hitler supported Zionism.” I refer to the Haavara Agreement, by which the Yishuv negotiated the ransom of German Jews in return for the Reich confiscating their property and using it to fuel Germany’s pre-World War II military buildup. Beaumont’s purpose seems to be to both acknowledge the validity of the argument that the Zionists collaborated with the Nazis, while at the same time undercutting it. He calls Livingstone’s invocation of it a “twisted kernel of historical truth.”

In the process, the Guardian reporter engages in petulant schoolmarm tactics like criticizing Livingstone for saying the Agreement was negotiated in 1932, when it was negotiated in 1933; and criticizing Livingstone for saying the Agreement was negotiated between Nazi Germany and “Israel,” when the Yishuv didn’t become Israel until 1948 (it was the Palestinian Mandate before then). These are facts that an expert on Zionist history or a PhD student should know. But given the fact-free zone through which MK anti-Semite Inquisitors like John Mann are floating, I think we can safely cut Livingstone a bit of slack.

Beaumont tries to downgrade the significance of Haavara by saying that it was “deeply controversial,” as if this controversy lets the Yishuv off the moral hook for negotiating it in the first place. Of course it would be justified if Beaumont could show that the Zionist leadership renounced the Agreement or whether key leaders protested against it publicly. But nothing of the sort happened.

There are rumors that one of the key negotiators of Haavara, Chaim Arlosoroff, was assassinated (he was murdered shortly after he returned from a negotiation session with the Nazis) because of his role. But this has never been proven. And even if it had been, the murder was likely committed by rightists Lehi, which itself sought to collaborate with the Nazis.

Beaumont also obscures the historical record by saying Haavara was neogiated ” between Germany and German Zionists.” No, it was an agreement negotiated between the Yishuv and the Nazis. Since I’m not a historian of the period it’s entirely possible German Jews were involved. But eliding Yishuv participation is distorting history in an attempt to lessen its culpability.

Beaumont comes up short historically in this passage as well:

The Haavara agreement was designed to encourage the emigration of Jews from Germany in line with National Socialist policies, but it did not have in mind the foundation of a Jewish state in Palestine, a key tenet of Zionism.

That is something like saying I eat ice cream to provide nourishment to my body, but not for the pleasure of eating it. Of course, eating ice cream provides nourishment. But one important reason for doing so is the pleasure of the eating. So in the case of the Nazis, arguing that the reason they agreed to Haavara had nothing to do with Palestine is simply wrong.

Beaumont continues this false argument with the following: “Hitler wanted neither Jews in Germany nor in their own state.”

The Nazis knew the German Jews who emigrated would go to Palestine. Had they really objected to this, they could have done so as part of the negotiations. They could have forced the Yishuv to permit the Jews to emigrate to other countries in addition to Palestine. But they didn’t. The Nazis knew where these Jews were headed and accepted this. Thus the Nazis did provide support for the “Jewish state in Palestine.”

This certainly wasn’t their primary purpose in doing the deal. But it was a clear and known result of the deal.

None other than SS chief, Reinhard Heydrich wrote this in 1935 (thanks to Shraga Elam for forwarding this historical gem):

“‘National Socialism has no intention of attacking the Jewish people in any way. On the contrary, the recognition of Jewry as a racial community based on blood, and not as a religious one, leads the German government to guarantee the racial separateness of this community without any limitations. The government finds itself in complete agreement with the great spiritual movement within Jewry itself, the so-called Zionism, with its recognition of the solidarity of Jewry throughout the world and the rejection of all assimilationist ideas. On this basis, Germany undertakes measures that will surely play a significant role in the future in the handling of the Jewish problem around the world.’

Göring’s January 24, 1939, note to the Interior Ministry gave Heydrich the authority to determine which parts of the world were the most suitable destinations for Jewish emigrants. The SS had consistently favored Jewish emigration to Palestine and would continue to do so with its enhanced authority in emigration policy.”

This passage is from Francis R. Nicosia, The Third Reich and the Palestine Question, University of Texas Press, Austin, 1985. For further historical evidence on this issue, see Shraga’s terrific culling of sources here.

Let’s introduce another inconvenient piece of historical evidence that rebuts Beaumont’s claims. Writing in 1932, the Palestine Post (predecessor of the Jerusalem Post ) published this piece from the Jewish Forward via the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, in which thugs clad in Nazi uniforms assaulted Jews in the Berlin Underground shouting: “Jews to Palestine!” If the Nazis rejected the legitimacy of Palestine, they could’ve shouted simply: “Jews Out!” or “Jews to America.” But they associated German Jewish emigration with the Jewish homeland, Palestine. So one wonders why it’s so important for Beaumont to argue that the Nazis didn’t recognize the legitimacy of Palestine as a destination for German Jewry.

To buttress his argument, Beaumont introduces the claim that Hitler opposed a state for the Jews:

Indeed, by late 1937 an anti-Nazi German official involved in administering the agreement suggested that fear in Nazi circles that it might lead to a Jewish state, to which Hitler was implacably opposed, was leading to suggestions “it should be terminated.”

I have no doubt that this “anti-Nazi” official exists, but Beaumont neither tells us who he is nor does he offer a source for this claim. So it’s hard to judge anything about it. But here is the unvarnished historical truth: the Nazis pursued a policy of partnership with the Zionist leadership almost until 1939. Eichmann himself visited Palestine on a fact-finding mission studying the success in implementing the Haavara Agreement.

Further, whether or not someone feared Haavara might be terminated, it wasn’t. So the claim that Hitler opposed the creation of a Jewish state is irrelevant. If he did, he never let this opposition prevent him from agreeing to collaborate with that future state’s leadership.

In short, the Yishuv’s position in agreeing to Haavara sacrificed any moral high-ground to the cold, hard calculation of saving Jews who would populate Palestine and aid the leadership in their struggle with the Palestinian Arabs to dominate the demographic landscape there. Haavara was collaboration pure and simple. Of course, there are legitimate reasons the Zionists agreed to it. But in doing so they sacrificed morality and also strengthened the Nazi war machine for its coming battles.

Beaumont also omits another key piece of historical evidence of Zionist collusion with the Nazis. The far-right Irgun, the leading political Opposition to the Yishuv leadership, went even farther than the Yishuv in collaborating with the Nazis. They actually drew up an official plan to fight alongside the Nazis in the War. The Irgun was willing to help the Nazis win the War. It read:

“The establishment of the historical Jewish state on a national and totalitarian basis, and bound by a treaty with the German Reich, would be in the interest of a maintained and strengthened future German position of power in the Near East.

Proceeding from these considerations, the NMO [Irgun] in Palestine, under the condition the above-mentioned national aspirations of the Israeli freedom movement are recognized on the side of the German Reich, offers to actively take part in the war on Germany’s side.”

In effect, Lehi was suing for peace even before the War concluded. It did so in hope of securing Nazi support for the Yishuv and in an attempt to guarantee its survival.

While it is true that Lehi was in the political opposition and not a dominant player in the Yishuv, it still maintained a critical role in Palestinian society. Future prime ministers like Yitzhak Shamir and Menachem Begin were its senior leaders. The descendants of Lehi have been ruling Israel virtually since 1977. So it’s important not to dismiss what it did before World War II as an anomaly or historically insignificant.

Mark Elf just coined a great phrase to characterize this pseudo-debate. He calls it “weaponizing anti-Semitism.”

May 1, 2016 Posted by aletho | Deception, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Timeless or most popular | Haavara, Haavara Agreement, Irgun, Israel, Palestine, The Guardian, UK, Zionism | 1 Comment

The Observer Calls on the Benign Empire to Fix Syria

OffGuardian | May 1, 2016

The “Observer view” wants Obama to “knock heads together” and sort out the Syria crisis. The anonymous editorial is not just a government issued press release, and you are a cynical so-and-so for thinking it.

The Guardian editorial concerning the resurgence of violence in Syria is what you’d expect given the paper’s propaganda laden coverage of the war to date. The only surprise is they never directly cite the Syrian Observatory of Human Rights, an “institution” long since turned into a punchline by the BTL comments.

In Aleppo, a hospital was bombed, killing up to 27 people, including doctors and children. The attack by Bashar al-Assad’s air force fitted an established, pre-ceasefire pattern of deliberately targeting civilians in hospitals, schools and markets. What has changed now is that this murderous regime, buoyed by Russian support and reinvigorated by the ceasefire, barely bothers to deny it.

This is classic MSM language. An accusation is made, no evidence is supplied and no questions asked. How do they know it was Assad’s forces? How do they know it was deliberate? They never say. They only mention that the regime “barely bothers to deny” it, an admission that the Assad government DOES deny the attack. Their denial is not published, we are provided with no link to view it. The implication is that lazily denying something is the same as admitting guilt.

In March, Vladimir Putin declared his forces were withdrawing. This now seems to have been a ruse chiefly designed to reassure public opinion at home and defuse international criticism of indiscriminate Russian bombing. As concern over Aleppo grew, Moscow said it would support a temporary, limited “regime of calm”.

It would be good, but ingenuous, to believe Putin is sincere. There is no evidence his broader objectives in Syria – maintaining Russia’s bases, projecting Moscow’s influence across the Middle East, keeping the Americans out – have changed. His bombers may be flying fewer missions, but they continue to shield Assad.

Likewise, Iran’s leadership appears to view Syria, expediently, as just another front in its region-wide power contest with Saudi Arabia and the Sunni Gulf monarchies.

Moscow, Tehran and even our disposable allies are listed as having political motives for involving themselves in Syria – but there is no mention of the root cause of all the unrest. There’s no suggestion of western powers having geopolitical motivations or an Imperial drive for regime change. These are not factors. Russia and Iran exerting influence to protect a legitimate government is portrayed as grubby and self-interested. Again, no questions are asked.

Why are the Syrians in this position? Who walked away from the negotiating table first? Who started shooting first? Where did the besieged “rebels” forces get their weapons?

America is regularly portrayed as being impotent or unwilling to act – and this piece is no exception:

… in terms of practical politics and human decency, Obama must act.

The myth of a reluctant but benign America rousing itself to solve the world problems due to its moral superiority is laughable. America DOES act in Syria. They arm terrorists and rebels to effect regime change. Just like they did in Iran. And Chile. And Indonesia. And dozens of others. Just last week America “acted” by sending 250 more military advisers into Syria – this illegal action is not mentioned at all, despite obviously leading to increased violence on the ground.

The comment section, so rarely open on Syria-related stories theses days, demonstrates just how weary the readership is becoming with this forced narrative:

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May 1, 2016 Posted by aletho | Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | Syria, The Guardian, UK | Leave a comment

Not Feeling the Bern

By Margaret Kimberley | Black Agenda Report | April 20, 2016

“Only Bernie Sanders can break the power of capitalism in the U.S.” So read a bizarre headline in an online edition of the Guardian. It is just one example of the drivel, magical thinking, misplaced concerns and out and out lies produced by liberal love for Bernie Sanders.

How would Bernie Sanders, or any other presidential candidate, break the power of capitalism? The answer is simple. He can’t. It is difficult to imagine capitalists quaking in their boots because a liberal darling was in the oval office. Then again Sanders has never made a claim to want anything of the kind so the headline is doubly foolish.

The Sanders fans do not let any opportunity pass to make much ado about very little. Sanders’ much vaunted trip to the Vatican was nothing but a public relations gimmick carried out by Jeffrey Sachs, one of his foreign policy advisers. Sachs was at the center of every neo-liberal heist which took place in the last twenty years. He coined the term “shock therapy” which means privatization of publicly owned assets, elimination of price controls, withdrawal of state subsidies, job cuts and a litany of measures which create suffering for millions of people. People in Russia, Poland and Bolivia all endured the Sachs punishment.

So while Sachs wangled an invite for Sanders to attend a Vatican academic conference, the episode was used by the starry eyed to further their trip down the rabbit hole. Well paid pseudo-progressive Democratic functionaries like David Sirota waxed poetic about something that didn’t amount to much. Sirota tweeted a photo of Sanders at the Vatican with Bolivian president Evo Morales. “In scope of history, this image is epic: US Jewish POTUS candidate at Vatican with indigenous Latin American leader.” There is nothing epic about a senator meeting a foreign head of state nor is it miraculous that a Jewish and indigenous American man sat next to each other. This nonsense substitutes for politics and serious thought. But then again liberals aren’t very serious about politics or thought.

The Sanders phenomenon is a repeat of the Obama 2008 marketing extravaganza. Sanders is the flavor of the month for people who are disenchanted with the front runner, Hillary Clinton. Her presence creates mass revulsion and first Obama and now Sanders moved up in voter preference when given an opportunity to make a case before the public.

But there is something particularly disconcerting about the Sanders phenomenon. Like Obama he allows liberals to be proud of uttering mealy-mouthed words instead of acting to make the change they say they want. In a recent debate in New York City Sanders famously declared that “we have to treat the Palestinians with respect and dignity.” He added that Israel has a “right to exist” and said only that the Israel massacre in Gaza was “a disproportionate response.”

His words regarding the Palestinians are rarely heard from the mouth of an American politician, certainly not a presidential candidate. However, kudos showered on Sanders give the impression that Palestinians weren’t worthy of respect and dignity until he said they were. The reaction from Sanders acolytes is in fact an indictment of U.S. foreign policy and Americans acquiescence to decades of pro-Israel propaganda. He doesn’t challenge the Zionist project, in fact he constantly mentions that he once lived in Israel and has family there.

The Palestinians get nothing but pats on the head from Bernie Sanders. They need an end to occupation and a right to return to the land and the homes stolen from them. The Sanders paternalistic feint may impress liberals looking for a politician to love but it does nothing to address a grave injustice.

The injustices that Democrats don’t want to fight were much closer to home on primary voting day in New York. Voting in New York state is very restrictive, with long periods needed to change party affiliations or to request absentee ballots. The board of elections is an ineffective patronage mill that doesn’t serve voters’ needs.

The state has one of the lowest rates of voter participation because of these obstacles but no one cared very much until masses of white people were prevented from voting for their new idol. New York has always had closed primaries and no one can vote without a party affiliation. Open primaries allow for mischief such as against left candidates like Cynthia McKinney. The former congresswoman lost her last election in 2006 because Republicans were allowed to vote for her opponent.

A good case can be made for restricting primaries to party members. Suddenly that defensible position is cast aside because people who aren’t politically involved didn’t pay attention and then couldn’t get their way.

The Sanders people are conspicuous in their absence from other disenfranchisement issues. Convicted felons can’t cast a ballot at all but that is less interesting than tales of Bernie supporters who found out they can’t vote. If they want a revolution they can start by helping others get the right to vote too.

There is a long slog ahead until the Democratic party convention in July. Hillary Clinton will continue to repulse and Bernie Sanders will claim the Pope or a king or a queen wanted to meet him. The Sanders people need to do as Black Agenda Report advised and plan for his eventual exit. Despite all the nonsensical hype, they still don’t have their Plan B.

Margaret Kimberley can be reached via e-Mail at Margaret.Kimberley(at)BlackAgendaReport.com.

April 20, 2016 Posted by aletho | Progressive Hypocrite | Bernie Sanders, David Sirota, Hillary Clinton, Israel, Jeffrey Sachs, Palestine, The Guardian, United States, Zionism | 1 Comment

End free speech and save the minorities! (will anyone really fall for this?)

By Blackcatte | OffGuardian | April 14, 2016

The current – and frankly bizarre even by recent standards – Guardian campaign “the web we want” seems to be driven by two main agendas. The first, and probably the major one is the long-simmering plan to “regulate” (i.e. control and censor) free speech on the Web. That the Graun’s effort is part of a coordinated new offensive in that department is pretty conclusively illustrated by the fact the ex minister for “equality”, Maria Miller delivered her own diatribe against the “problem” of internet “abuse” just days after the Guardian’s new campaign took off. The similarity between her invective and that employed by the Guardian’s tame journos puts it beyond question that this is an Establishment-wide move. A concerted plan to use exaggerated claims of “abuse” and its alleged impact on minorities, to mobilise well-meaning liberals in support of internet censorship.

In fact, unlike the feeble Apologists at Graun HQ, Miller at least has the guts to pretty much say so out loud:

“We need better laws and we need better enforcement. Government needs to stop allowing internet providers from(sic) hiding behind arguments about the protection of free speech,”

Right there we have it. The plan they formulated in their focus groups and policy committees. The best way to get the internet censorship they have wanted for so long is to pretend it isn’t censorship at all, but protection! And most particularly protection of those sections of society we all know need it most. The ethnic minorities, the LGBT communities – and women. The mere mention of these groups will be enough to rally many well-meaning but naive liberals to support their own gagging. “I’m happy to have my right to anonymity abolished if it helps stamp out racial abuse” they’ll say. “I’m happy to see comments sections closed if it helps women columnists avoid harassment”, they’ll say. There’ll probably be a social media campaign with a catchy soundbite and the same soft focus unthreatening images of “diversity” they pull up at the Graun. And people will sign up to be silenced.

But of course it won’t end racism or sexism or homophobia. Because it’s not intended to. The people behind this couldn’t give a flying feck for the well being of minorities or anyone else beyond their own narrow class of super-privilege. That’s just window dressing. A lure for the gullible. It’s the Child Catcher prancing about in borrowed gaudy, his cage draped in pictures of candy.

The truth is they want to kill the internet and all its unparalleled power to monitor them and their variously greedy, stupid, paranoid antics. And they know they can’t do that unless they can persuade most ordinary people it’s a good idea.

This is why over the coming weeks and months you’ll see Owen Jones and other unscrupulous hacks (yes, we’re sorry, but Jones deserves no better descriptor after his recent ghastly display), trying to repackage free speech as “elitist” and using tortured pseudo-logic to “prove” that censorship is the only way to have truly open debate.

* * *

The second part of the Guardian agenda is to try to roll back the massive damage being done to its reputation by the current CiF debacle.

Since its inception in 2006, CiF (“Comment is Free”) was hailed as the Guardian’s flagship of credibility, their pledge of openness and inclusiveness. And for a while it was. Most stories were open for discussion. Moderation was decorous. If it was politically motivated sometimes, it was discreet enough to have only minimal impact (mostly on stories about Israel). By and large CiF at that time was a real place for the sharing of information and opinion. All was reasonably well.

But somewhere around 2012-13 things began to change. Did the Government losing the Syria vote and the widespread opposition to a war against Assad signal to the PTB that open discussion of vital news stories was beginning to have unexpected consequences for their control of the narrative? Did the Snowden issue persuade people they’d rather get in line than risk their pension plans?

In any event moderation became more insistent. Not – whatever the official line may be – because the trolls were more prolific or persistent. They weren’t. Trolls are to the internet what rats are to cities. They are always there, but their impact on most of us is minimal. Civilised discussion proceeds above and around them. Trolls are trolls and never really change. No, what changed was that for maybe the first time there was a noticeable tendency to censor for opinion. Not racist opinion, or sexist opinion. Just anti-government opinion. Or minority opinion. At first it was relatively minor. – But then in February 2014 the West decided to go insane and provoke WW3 in Ukraine and everything changed forever.

News outlets like the Guardian and the BBC stood by and vaguely cheered this act of insanity, as if too lobotomised to even understand what was going on. We saw Shaun Walker making facile jokes about vodka and potatoes. Luke Harding, off his meds and off his leash squealing Russophobic paranoia. We saw crazed old NATO generals foaming at the mouth for war, and slick intelligence types citing reams of easily disproven statistics to “prove” Russia was the problem. What we didn’t see – anywhere – in the Establishment media was any voice of sanity, warning that this was a new Cuban Missile crisis and that more was required of us than xenophobia and soundbites.

The CiF sections – naturally – erupted in shock and incredulity that the Guardian – the Guardian – could possibly be fielding such stupid, dangerous, and low-grade propaganda. The comments were something like 10-1, if not more, in opposition to the hardline editorial stance and pleading for some realisation of what madness our governments were engaged in. And that’s when the Great Cull began.

As the official Western narrative on Ukraine unraveled in the face of the Odessa massacre, the black farce of the ATO and multiple revelations of how close the new government’s ties to neo-nazis really were, so the Guardian’s own line became increasingly nakedly propagandist. It set up a network with publications such as the Kiev Post and Radio Free Europe, and disseminated their dishonest hit pieces and fake propaganda stories without question or demur. In a matter of months it had become unrecognisable to those who had formerly respected it. Either it fundamentally changed at this time, or, maybe more likely, it simply stopped pretending. Either way, it stopped being the Guardian in any sense that meant anything.

At the same time moderation in CiF became for the first time overtly politicised, if not draconian. As people reacted more and more to the changing tone ATL, so more and more censorship was required BTL to keep that reaction in check. Comments that asserted a Russian perspective, or that simply called for some sort of middle ground were many times more likely to be blocked than those that supported the NATO position. Extreme racism toward Russians became more and more acceptable both ATL and BTL, while even minor critique of the Guardian’s own authors became punishable by not just blocking but outright banning.

But even the most intense efforts to control the debate proved futile. Whenever they opened a story for comments on Ukraine, Syria, or any other NATO war zone, it would be flooded with people opposing the warmongering of our governments, or questioning the veracity of the article, or linking to different versions of the story or to other stories the Guardian was choosing not to run. Try as they might to take down links, block comments, ban accounts, they couldn’t stop this tide.

And worse, people were now commenting on the censorship of comments, requiring even more censorship in turn. They developed zero tolerance for anyone questioning why a given comment had been taken down. If you dared ask why, you were blocked or banned. They began pre-emptively banning certain accounts for a given period when sensitive news stories were broken, un-blocking them again after a decent interval. They seem to have added certain websites (including this one) to lists of URLS that would be immediately removed whatever content they contained.

But the more they censored, the more they were called out for their censorship, and the harder it became to pretend – even to themselves – that they were still the lovely liberal Guardian embracing free speech. They might tell each other they were censoring “trolls” or “Putinbots”, but in their hearts they knew, and knew that their readers all knew, what was really going on.

CiF is now one of their major problems. They need to preserve it – their once proud flagship – in order to cling to the remnants of their self-image as leaders of free thought. They can rename it “Opinion”, as if that makes the absence of Free Comment somehow less real. They can censor it to the point of destruction. But they can’t close it down. Because that would be admitting what they are and admitting defeat.

“The web we want” is their own, strangely pathetic, attempt at squaring that circle. You can look at it almost like the inner dialogue of a deeply troubled psyche. Self-soothing with repetition and over-assertion.

Those bizarre and strained attempts at “explaining” their comment policy with graphs and “research” so openly bogus it proves nothing beyond their own desperation. Those weird photoshoots of confused but smiling “Best CiF Commenters” (chosen by “cross-referencing a list of the commenters who had the highest average of “recommends per comment” with a list of those with the highest percentage of “staff picks”), designed to show how comfortable they really are with their own readership, but being about as convincing as a kidnap victim reading a scrawled note to camera about how well he is being treated.

Hysterical. Hopeless. And deeply sad. Because even if this new agenda of cuddly censorship to help minorities does get enough of a claw hold to make a difference, and even if we all do lose our remaining freedoms, the Guardian is dead to most of its old readers. Its moral base has been destroyed, its reputation is irreparably shredded. It’s now just a glorified mag for clickbait and badly written agitprop. Its readership is shrinking, its income is vanishing. It’s propped up now by its bosses in Washington and London, existing on their life support until it’s been drained of all possible use, when they will turn off the machines and let it die.

The “journalists” who work for it won’t much care when that happens of course. If they cared about such things they wouldn’t be doing what they do. They’ll just be paid off and move on to different positions, where they can enjoy expense account lunches and spurious feelings of security while it lasts. But many old readers will care quite a lot. Even though it will also feel like putting a suffering animal out of its misery.

April 14, 2016 Posted by aletho | Full Spectrum Dominance, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | Human rights, The Guardian, UK | 1 Comment

The Panama Papers: The People Deceived

By Christopher Black – New Eastern Outlook – 09.04.2016

Umberto Eco in his last book, Numero Zero, in describing the reality of the manipulating and manipulated western media, has a newspaper editor say, “let’s just stick to spreading suspicion. Someone is involved in fishy business, and though we don’t know who it is, we can give him a scare. That’s enough for our purposes. Then we’ll cash in, our proprietor can cash in, when the time is right.”

And that is exactly what is happening with the appearance simultaneously in all the western media, on Sunday, April 3 of a story about what are called the Panama Papers. The story attributed to a shadowy organisation called the International Coalition of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) has all the hallmarks of an operation by western secret services to attempt to subvert targeted governments. The primary target is of course President Putin in order to influence the coming elections and to further attempt to portray him in the eyes of the peoples of the west as a criminal.

But the targets also include FIFA directors, continuing the harassment of FIFA by the United States government, in order to keep Russia out of the next world cup football games, Lionel Messi one of the world’s best football players, perhaps because he refused a request by President Obama’s daughters to meet him when Obama visited Argentina, Jackie Chan, no doubt punishment for supporting the Communist Party of China, and various people blacklisted by the United States for dealing with North Korea, Iran, Hezbollah, Syria and other American designated enemies.

They include President Poroshenko of Ukraine, perhaps signalling they are tired of him, the prime minister of Iceland, since forced to resign, no doubt for jailing bankers, seizing their banks and giving the people some compensation for their losses in the financial crisis of 2008, Hosni Mubarak who has accused the United States of trying to overthrow him, the murdered Gadhafi, and Xi Jinping, president of China. No Americans or NATO leaders are named though David Cameron’s father is named, perhaps a slap at Cameron for allowing a referendum to take place on whether Britain should leave the European Union, which would reduce US influence in Europe.

Essentially these people are all considered by the United States government to be enemies or critics of the United States in one way or another, or no longer reliable partners.

The immediate positioning of President Putin as the principal target of this story, despite the fact he is not mentioned in the documents, coupled with the timing of the story make a reasonable observer conclude that this information was not released just to inform the public but to subvert and discredit chosen governments, that is, it is a propaganda operation, using information that will get the attention of the masses. The rich hiding their money is always a good way to generate anger among the people and to provoke unrest in order to destabilise governments, as we saw just happened in Iceland. It does not matter whether the information in the story is true or not. Some of the information may be but the law firm from which the information was stolen says much of what the story says is untrue. But it doesn’t really matter because the story is what is important and that’s all that people see.

This conclusion is the more inescapable when the true nature of the ICIJ is revealed. For to understand what this story is about it is important to know who put it out, with whom they are connected and who provides the money.

The key is found in the list of the members of the Advisory Board, the Board of Directors and the funders of its parent organisation, the Centre For Public Integrity (CFPI). The ICIJ states on its website that is a non-profit organisation. That technically may be true but they failed to add that they act for the profit of the people who fund them and who control their operations. Funders of the CFPI include the Democracy Fund, the Carnegie Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation, the Open Society Foundations of George Soros, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, the Rockefeller Family Fund and many others of the same pedigree. Individual donors include such people as Paul Volcker, former chairman of the US Federal Reserve and many others of the powerful US corporate and financial elite.

Its Advisory Board includes Geoffrey Cowan, who was appointed Director of Voice of America by President Clinton in 1994 and was in 1994-96 associate director of the United States Information Agency. He is now president of the Annenberg Foundation which has hosted US presidents at its retreat in California, dubbed Camp David West, including President Obama. He is also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations which is the American think tank whose membership includes several former heads of the CIA, several US Secretaries of State, and connected media figures and which has the role of promoting globalisation, free trade and other economic and foreign policies for the benefit of the rich and powerful in America.

The Advisory Board also includes Hodding Carter III, former assistant secretary of state under President Carter and later a journalist for major western media such as BBC, ABC, CBC, CNN, NBC, PBS, Wall Street Journal, and now President of the Knight Foundation. There is Edith Everett, President of Gruntal and Company, one of the oldest and biggest investment banks in New York City, Hebert Hafif, connected establishment lawyer, Kathleen Hill Jamieson, Dean of the Annenberg School for Communication, an expert on the use of the media for political purposes including how to influence political campaigns and elections, and Sonia Jarvis, a lawyer who once worked with President Clinton,

It includes Harold Hongji Koh who was a legal adviser at the US Department of State from 2009 to 2013, nominated by President Obama, who in March 2010 gave a speech supporting the legality of drone assassinations. There is Charles Ogletree, Harvard law professor and a close friend of President Obama, Allen Pusey, publisher and editor of the American Bar Association Journal, Ben Sherwood, co-chair of Disney Media, former president of ABC News and also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Paul Volcker not only is an individual financial supporter but is also on the Board. Aside from his position as a former chairman of the Federal Reserve (1979-1987) he was also chair of the US Economic Advisory Board, appointed by President Obama (2009-2011) a former chair of the Trilateral Commission, worked for the Chase Manhattan Bank and is very close to the Rockefeller family.

It includes Harold Williams, former Chair of the US Securities and Exchange Commission (1977-1981) and member of board of directors of dozens of companies, William Julius Wilson, professor of sociology at Harvard and, last but not least, Christiane Amanpour, chief war propagandist for CNN, who just a few days ago appeared on CNN acting out a charade in which she interviewed a staffer from the ICIJ about the Panama Papers while pretending not to know anything about them. She was in fact interviewing a member of her own organisation but she never informed her viewers of this. For some reason her name does not appear on the CFPI website but her name does appear in the organisation’s latest annual report for 2014-15.

The Board of Directors includes Peter Beale a former head of CNN.com, a former Reuters agent, editor at the London Times, and Microsoft editorial director, as well as Arianna Huffington, president of Post Media, and Bill Kovach, journalist for the New York Times, to name just a few of the establishment figures listed.

The point is made. This is not some independent, muckraking group dedicated to truth and democracy. This is a group of propagandists who, under the cloak of journalism, carry out the art of deception on behalf of the American government and secret services. Indeed in the annual report, they even quote President Obama approving their work. In January this same group launched an attack on the government of China with another story of “leaked” financial documents implicating the Chinese leadership and have done it again in this new story, now doubt part of the “pivot to China.”

So there you have it, the information you need to know but which CNN, The Guardian, the BBC, CBC, the New York Times and all the rest of the media refuse to provide you so that you can properly assess the story they have propagated through the world media. The role of the western media is not to inform the public but, as Umberto Eco says, “to teach people how to think,” to manipulate opinion and action. Their suppression of that information is a lie and as that other great writer, Jose Saramago, wrote, they use “the lie as a weapon, the lie as the advance guard of tanks and cannons, the lie told over the ruins, over the corpses, over humanity’s wretched and perpetually frustrated hopes.” It is time for these people to be exposed for what they are and called to account for their deception of the people they claim to serve, for what greater crime can their be than to deceive the people?

Christopher Black is an international criminal lawyer based in Toronto, he is a member of the Law Society of Upper Canada and he is known for a number of high-profile cases involving human rights and war crimes.

April 9, 2016 Posted by aletho | Corruption, Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Timeless or most popular | David Cameron, ICIJ, International Coalition of Investigative Journalists, Obama, Panama Papers, The Guardian, United States | 1 Comment

‘Corruption’ as a Propaganda Weapon

By Robert Parry | Consortium News | April 4, 2016

Sadly, some important duties of journalism, such as applying evenhanded standards on human rights abuses and financial corruption, have been so corrupted by the demands of government propaganda – and the careerism of too many writers – that I now become suspicious whenever the mainstream media trumpets some sensational story aimed at some “designated villain.”

Far too often, this sort of “journalism” is just a forerunner to the next “regime change” scheme, dirtying up or delegitimizing a foreign leader before the inevitable advent of a “color revolution” organized by “democracy-promoting” NGOs often with money from the U.S. government’s National Endowment for Democracy or some neoliberal financier like George Soros.

We are now seeing what looks like a new preparatory phase for the next round of “regime changes” with corruption allegations aimed at former Brazilian President Luiz Ignacio Lula da Silva and Russian President Vladimir Putin. The new anti-Putin allegations – ballyhooed by the UK Guardian and other outlets – are particularly noteworthy because the so-called “Panama Papers” that supposedly implicate him in offshore financial dealings never mention his name.

Or as the Guardian writes: “Though the president’s name does not appear in any of the records, the data reveals a pattern – his friends have earned millions from deals that seemingly could not have been secured without his patronage. The documents suggest Putin’s family has benefited from this money – his friends’ fortunes appear his to spend.”

Note, if you will, the lack of specificity and the reliance on speculation: “a pattern”; “seemingly”; “suggest”; “appear.” Indeed, if Putin were not already a demonized figure in the Western media, such phrasing would never pass an editor’s computer screen. Indeed, the only point made in declarative phrasing is that “the president’s name does not appear in any of the records.”

A British media-watch publication, the Off-Guardian, which criticizes much of the work done at The Guardian, headlined its article on the Putin piece as “the Panama Papers cause Guardian to collapse into self-parody.”

But whatever the truth about Putin’s “corruption” or Lula’s, the journalistic point is that the notion of objectivity has long since been cast aside in favor of what’s useful as propaganda for Western interests.

Some of those Western interests now are worried about the growth of the BRICS economic system – Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa – as a competitor to the West’s G-7 and the International Monetary Fund. After all, control of the global financial system has been central to American power in the post-World War II world – and rivals to the West’s monopoly are not welcome.

What the built-in bias against these and other “unfriendly” governments means, in practical terms, is that one standard applies to a Russia or a Brazil, while a more forgiving measure is applied to the corruption of a U.S. or European leader.

Take, for instance, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s millions of dollars in payments in speaking fees from wealthy special interests that knew she was a good bet to become the next U.S. president. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “Clinton Stalls on Goldman-Sachs Speeches.”]

Or, similarly, the millions upon millions of dollars invested in super-PACS for Clinton, Sen. Ted Cruz and other presidential hopefuls. That might look like corruption from an objective standard but is treated as just a distasteful aspect of the U.S. political process.

But imagine for a minute if Putin had been paid millions of dollars for brief speeches before powerful corporations, banks and interest groups doing business with the Kremlin. That would be held up as de facto proof of his illicit greed and corruption.

Losing Perspective

Also, when it’s a demonized foreign leader, any “corruption” will do, however minor. For example, in the 1980s, President Ronald Reagan’s denounced Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega for his choice of eyewear: “The dictator in designer glasses,” declared Reagan, even as Nancy Reagan was accepting free designer gowns and free renovations of the White House funded by oil and gas interests.

Or, the “corruption” for a demonized leader can be a modest luxury, such as Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych’s “sauna” in his personal residence, a topic that got front-page treatment in The New York Times and other Western publications seeking to justify the violent coup that drove Yanukovych from office in February 2014.

Incidentally, both Ortega and Yanukovych had been popularly elected but were still targeted by the U.S. government and its operatives with violent destabilization campaigns. In the 1980s, the CIA-organized Nicaraguan Contra war killed some 30,000 people, while the U.S.-orchestrated “regime change” in Ukraine sparked a civil war that has left some 10,000 people dead. Of course, in both cases, Official Washington blamed Moscow for all the trouble.

In both cases, too, the politicians and operatives who gained power as a result of the conflicts were arguably more corrupt than the Nicaraguan Sandinistas or Yanukovych’s government. The Nicaraguan Contras, whose violence helped pave the way for the 1990 election of U.S.-backed candidate Violeta Chamorro, were deeply implicated in cocaine trafficking. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “The Sordid Contra-Cocaine Saga.”]

Today, the U.S.-supported Ukrainian government is wallowing in corruption so deep that it has provoked a new political crisis. [See Consortiumnews’com’s “Reality Peeks Through in Ukraine.”]

Ironically, one of the politicians actually named in the Panama Papers for having established a shadowy offshore account is the U.S.-backed Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, although he got decidedly second-billing to the unnamed Putin. (Poroshenko denied there was anything improper in his offshore financial arrangements.)

Double Standards

Mainstream Western journalism no longer even tries to apply common standards to questions about corruption. If you’re a favored government, there might be lamentations about the need for more “reform” – which often means slashing pensions for the elderly and cutting social programs for the poor – but if you’re a demonized leader, then the only permissible answer is criminal indictment and/or “regime change.”

One stark example of these double standards is the see-no-evil attitude toward the corruption of Ukraine’s Finance Minister Natalie Jaresko, who is touted endlessly in the Western media as the paragon of Ukrainian good governance and reform. The documented reality, however, is that Jaresko enriched herself through her control of a U.S.-taxpayer-financed investment fund that was supposed to help the people of Ukraine build their economy.

According to the terms of the $150 million investment fund created by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), Jaresko’s compensation was supposed to be capped at $150,000 a year, a pay package that many Americans would envy. But it was not enough for Jaresko, who first simply exceeded the limit by hundreds of thousands of dollars and then moved her compensation off-books as she amassed total annual pay of $2 million or more.

The documentation of this scheming is clear. I have published multiple stories citing the evidence of both her excessive compensation and her legal strategies for covering up evidence of alleged wrongdoing. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “How Ukraine’s Finance Minister Got Rich” and “Carpetbagging Crony Capitalism in Ukraine.”]

Despite the evidence, not a single mainstream Western news outlet has followed up on this information even as Jaresko is touted as a “reform” candidate for Ukrainian prime minister.

This disinterest is similar to the blinders that The New York Times and other major Western newspapers put on when they were assessing whether Ukrainian President Yanukovych was ousted in a coup in February 2014 or just wandered off and forgot to return.

In a major “investigative” piece, the Times concluded there was no coup in Ukraine while ignoring the evidence of a coup, such as the intercepted phone call between U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Victoria Nuland and U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt discussing who they would put into power. “Yats is the guy,” said Nuland – and surprise, surprise, Arseniy Yatsenyuk ended up as prime minister.

The Times also ignored the observation of George Friedman, president of the global intelligence firm Stratfor, who noted that the Ukraine coup was “the most blatant coup in history.” [See Consortiumnews.com’s “NYT Still Pretends No Coup in Ukraine.”]

The Propaganda Weapon

The other advantage of “corruption” as a propaganda weapon to discredit certain leaders is that we all assume that there is plenty of corruption in governments as well as in the private sector all around the world. Alleging corruption is like shooting large fish crowded into a small barrel. Granted, some barrels might be more crowded than others but the real decision is whose barrel you choose.

That’s part of the reason why the U.S. government has spread around hundreds of millions of dollars to finance “journalism” organizations, train political activists and support “non-governmental organizations” that promote U.S. policy goals inside targeted countries. For instance, before the Feb. 22, 2014 coup in Ukraine, there were scores of such operations in the country financed by the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), whose budget from Congress exceeds $100 million a year.

But NED, which has been run by neocon Carl Gershman since its founding in 1983, is only part of the picture. You have other propaganda fronts operating under the umbrella of the State Department and USAID. Last year, USAID issued a fact sheet summarizing its work financing friendly journalists around the globe, including “journalism education, media business development, capacity building for supportive institutions, and strengthening legal-regulatory environments for free media.”

USAID estimated its budget for “media strengthening programs in over 30 countries” at $40 million annually, including aiding “independent media organizations and bloggers in over a dozen countries,” In Ukraine before the coup, USAID offered training in “mobile phone and website security,” which sounds a bit like an operation to thwart the local government’s intelligence gathering, an ironic position for the U.S. with its surveillance obsession, including prosecuting whistleblowers based on evidence that they talked to journalists.

USAID, working with billionaire George Soros’s Open Society, also funds the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, which engages in “investigative journalism” that usually goes after governments that have fallen into disfavor with the United States and then are singled out for accusations of corruption. The USAID-funded OCCRP also collaborates with Bellingcat, an online investigative website founded by blogger Eliot Higgins.

Higgins has spread misinformation on the Internet, including discredited claims implicating the Syrian government in the sarin attack in 2013 and directing an Australian TV news crew to what looked to be the wrong location for a video of a BUK anti-aircraft battery as it supposedly made its getaway to Russia after the shoot-down of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 in July 2014.

Despite his dubious record of accuracy, Higgins has gained mainstream acclaim, in part, because his “findings” always match up with the propaganda theme that the U.S. government and its Western allies are peddling. Though most genuinely independent bloggers are ignored by the mainstream media, Higgins has found his work touted by both The New York Times and The Washington Post.

In other words, the U.S. government has a robust strategy for deploying direct and indirect agents of influence. Indeed, during the first Cold War, the CIA and the old U.S. Information Agency refined the art of “information warfare,” including pioneering some of its current features like having ostensibly “independent” entities and cut-outs present U.S. propaganda to a cynical public that would reject much of what it hears from government but may trust “citizen journalists” and “bloggers.”

But the larger danger from this perversion of journalism is that it sets the stage for “regime changes” that destabilize whole countries, thwart real democracy (i.e., the will of the people), and engender civil warfare. Today’s neoconservative dream of mounting a “regime change” in Moscow is particularly dangerous to the future of both Russia and the world.

Regardless of what you think about President Putin, he is a rational political leader whose legendary sangfroid makes him someone who is not prone to emotional decisions. His leadership style also appeals to the Russian people who overwhelmingly favor him, according to public opinion polls.

While the American neocons may fantasize that they can generate enough economic pain and political dissension inside Russia to achieve Putin’s removal, their expectation that he will be followed by a pliable leader like the late President Boris Yeltsin, who will let U.S. operatives back in to resume plundering Russia’s riches, is almost certainly a fantasy.

The far more likely possibility is that – if a “regime change” could somehow be arranged – Putin would be replaced by a hard-line nationalist who might think seriously about unleashing Russia’s nuclear arsenal if the West again tries to defile Mother Russia. For me, it’s not Putin who’s the worry; it’s the guy after Putin.

So, while legitimate questions about Putin’s “corruption” – or that of any other political leader – should be pursued, the standards of evidence should not be lowered just because he or anyone else is a demonized figure in the West. There should be single not double standards.

Western media outrage about “corruption” should be expressed as loudly against political and business leaders in the U.S. or other G-7 countries as it is toward those in the BRICS.

Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his latest book, America’s Stolen Narrative, either in print here or as an e-book (from Amazon and barnesandnoble.com).

April 5, 2016 Posted by aletho | Corruption, Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Timeless or most popular | Central Intelligence Agency, CIA, George Soros, Natalie Jaresko, National Endowment for Democracy, New York Times, Panama Papers, The Guardian, USAID | Leave a comment

When “fundamentally” = “not”

By Black Catte | OffGuardian | March 29, 2016

Jill Abramson, the latest EMT wheeled out to provide life support for Hillary Clinton’s clinically dead reputation, is telling us via the Guardian (where else?) that “this may shock you: Hillary Clinton is fundamentally honest”

Well, Jill (I’m assuming first name terms since we’re all girls together here), I have to say it doesn’t shock me at all. If I were shocked every time some erstwhile well respected commenters, such as yourself, elected to spout morally and intellectually specious clickbait I’d never get anything done.

It’s not shocking, Jill. It’s just not true. And since you claim to have spent many years fearlessly tracking Clinton’s seedy and nefarious deeds – Whitewater and all – you must be well aware of this.

Or maybe you just plum forgot? After all it’s been a while, and none of us are getting any younger.

So, here’s a few reminders about why all those silly old “Hillary is a liar” vids are out there on Facebook.

She had her role in the Honduran coup of 2009 removed from the paperback edition of her memoirs.
Massive and obvious corruption during her time as Secretary of State.
Backed the invasion of Iraq on the back of proven lies and fabrications, and then pretended she had never supported the action.
Lied – sorry, “mis-spoke” – about coming under sniper fire on an official visit to Bosnia.
Claimed to have been “instrumental” in bringing peace to Northern Ireland, a claim which all the players involved have since totally refuted.
During her days as an attorney, she defended a child-rapist she knew to be guilty, vilified his 12 year old victim, and then laughed about it.

See, Jill, even among her political peers (a group not known for its honesty and integrity), Hillary is noteworthy as an unscrupulous, self-serving, compulsive (and psychopathically incompetent) purveyor of terminological inexactitude. Even in Washington she stands out as a moral blank.

Think about that.

PS – I think Vince Foster might also have a few items to draw to your attention on this matter. Except he can’t, of course. Because he’s dead.

But of course you know all this. You know you have no material to help sell the line you’ve been asked to take, which is why your piece is nothing but a loose crochet of generalities and allusions. Seeking to persuade the gullible that black is actually white.

Are you happy with the way it turned out? Are you happy to have that sad and lukewarm defence of this dangerous lunatic hang on your reputation?

Or are you ashamed in the depths of your soul?

I really hope so. If not now then later.

March 29, 2016 Posted by aletho | Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Timeless or most popular | Hillary Clinton, Jill Abramson, The Guardian, United States | 1 Comment

Syria: The Guardian View on… Things they Just Made Up

OffGuardian | March 16, 2016

The Western MSM are all a flutter: Russia are pulling out of Syria (sort of). They can’t quite decide if it’s a victory, or a defeat. They don’t know if it’s because they ran out of money, are giving up, or it’s all a big lie – but they all agree on two things: 1) Russia has not achieved anything and 2) This is a massive a surprise.

Such a surprise that Putin announced the plan five months ago, in a story printed in the Telegraph. This is what the Western world has come to, I suppose, if a politician SAYS he’s going to do something and then actually DOES IT, this is… surprising. How sad.

The Guardian are firmly of the belief that this is “A Bad Thing” – in fact they are so against Russia leaving Syria, that one almost forgets they were just as strongly against Russia entering Syria in the first place. Because Russia and reasons.

Whether in the petulant and childish summation “written” by Shaun Walker, or this one of their ridiculous “Guardian view” editorials (written anonymously, of course), the battle lines are being drawn: The fight is with reality.

The Walker piece is standard Walker-fare. Long on snide one-liners, short on content. Long on narrative, short on evidence. He describes the withdrawal as a move “analysts never saw coming” – presumably because none of them read the Telegraph. It’s threaded throughout with dishonest and inappropriate things:

… the end forever of the burgeoning bromance between the Turkish and Russian presidents…”

A less creative reporter, one with a sense of shame perhaps, would have used the phrase “worsening of Russia-Turkish relations.” Walker is above such things – there is nothing so serious it can’t be livened up with mockery and snarkiness. Not even war. He continues:

Not to mention the repeated insistence that the Syria bombing has not resulted in any civilian casualties, despite ever-mounting evidence to the contrary.”

The link to this “mounting evidence”? It’s a Guardian aticle from 4 months ago – about a family who got bombed. The rebel commanders and American “experts” (the only sources quoted) know it was the Russians because “it happened at night”.

Oh and then this:

But if there is indeed now a withdrawal, it will prevent the Syria mission from turning into a long, drawn-out affair with rising Russian casualties.

Rising… from three. Who were all killed by Turkey.

For while it is true the mission of defeating Isis has not been accomplished…

And here, here we come to the most insidious and important lie. It’s a theme that is repeated in “The Guardian View..”. The headline proclaims:

Russia’s Syria U-turn: no kind of victory”

Which is, literally, as factually incorrect as a statement can be. It is not a U-Turn, observe the Telegraph link above, and it is certainly a kind of victory.

If there is one thing that Mr Putin’s announcement makes plain, it is that Russia’s claim that it was moving into Syria to combat Islamic State”

This has been a favorite line in the press since the Russian operation began – it is a lie. Russia never made such a claim. Sergey Lavrov, on fighting terrorism in Syria, famously said:

If it looks like a terrorist, walks like a terrorist, acts like a terrorist… it’s a terrorist”

The stated aim of the Russian intervention was assisting their ally in combating terrorism and bringing a negotiated settlement to the region – as they have been trying to do since 2012. Additionally, the Russian air force is continuing to bomb ISIS and provide air support for the SAA advance on Palmyra, and then Raqqa. To deny this – when evidence abounds – is to be insane.

More and more we see the Western, neocon narrative is being propped up with utterly baseless statements. From Obama’s foolish description of a Syrian “quagmire”, to the ridiculous idea Russia is trying to unseat Merkel by flooding Europe with refugees. The collapse of analysis and rhetoric into hysteria betrays the inherent dishonesty of the position. As a friend of mine is fond of saying: If they honestly believed the truth to be on their side, they would not feel the need to lie.

Maybe, with Vietnam and Afghanistan and Iraq, western journalists have forgotten that wars are not meant to last – maybe years of reporting on American interventions, designed to prolong conflict for the sake of profit margins, have scrubbed out of our collective mind the idea that an action can be brief, decisive and efficient.

The following are a list of facts totally omitted from the Guardian articles on Syria the last few days:

ISIS main source of income was the oil trade with Turkey. This utilised huge convoys, which America knew about but did not bomb… for reasons of their own.
Russia bombed these convoys, crippling ISIS’ oil trade.
ISIS has been steadily losing for months: first, they lost materiel and ammunition, then they lost men and ground.
The Syrian Arab Army (SAA), is currently advancing on Palmyra under Russian air cover – the Russian intervention has been described as a “god send” by Syrian military commanders.
The Syrian government and opposition have signed a ceasefire agreement, something the rebels have been refusing to do for years. It is the same deal proposed by Kofi Annan 4 years ago.
The refugee flow from Syria is slowing down, with many refugees beginning to return home, far from “weaponising” the refugees.

Huge gains on the ground, destruction of the enemy supply lines, destruction of enemy materiel, extended peace talks, refugees returning home and a ceasefire agreement. This, in the Guardian view, is “no kind of victory”. Which makes you wonder whose side they are on.

March 16, 2016 Posted by aletho | Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Timeless or most popular | Obama, Russia, Syria, The Guardian | Leave a comment

The Caesar photo fraud that undermined Syrian negotiations

By Rick Sterling | American Herald Tribune | March 4, 2016

A 30 page investigative report on the “Caesar Torture Photos” has been released and is available online here. The following is a condensed version of the report. Readers who are especially interested are advised to get the full report which includes additional details, photographs, sources and recommendations.

Introduction

There is a pattern of sensational but untrue reports that lead to public acceptance of US and Western military intervention in countries around the world:

* In Gulf War 1, there were reports of Iraqi troops stealing incubators from Kuwait, leaving babies to die on the cold floor. Relying on the testimony of a Red Crescent doctor, Amnesty Interenational ‘verified’ the false claims.

* Ten years later, there were reports of yellow cake uranium going to Iraq for development of weapons of mass destruction.

* One decade later, there were reports of Libyan soldiers drugged on viagra and raping women as they advanced.

* In 2012, NBC broadcaster Richard Engel was supposedly kidnapped by pro-Assad Syrian militia but luckily freed by Syrian opposition fighters, the “Free Syrian Army”.

All these reports were later confirmed to be fabrications and lies. They all had the goal of manipulating public opinion and they all succeeded in one way or another. Despite the consequences, which were often disastrous, none of the perpetrators were punished or paid any price.

It has been famously said “Those who do not learn from the past are doomed to repeat it.” This report is a critical review of the “Caesar Torture Photos” story. As will be shown, there is strong evidence the accusations are entirely or substantially false.

Overview of ‘Caesar Torture Photos’

On 20 January 2014, two days before negotiations about the Syrian conflict were scheduled to begin in Switzerland, a sensational report burst onto television and front pages around the world. The story was that a former Syrian army photographer had 55,000 photographs documenting the torture and killing of 11,000 detainees by the Syrian security establishment.

The Syrian photographer was given the code-name ‘Caesar’. The story became known as the “Caesar Torture Photos”. A team of lawyers plus digital and forensic experts were hired by the Carter-Ruck law firm, on contract to Qatar, to go to the Middle East and check the veracity of “Caesar” and his story. They concluded that “Caesar” was truthful and the photographs indicated “industrial scale killing”. CNN, London’s Guardian and LeMonde broke the story which was subsequently broadcast in news reports around the world. The Caesar photo accusations were announced as negotiations began in Switzerland. With the opposition demanding the resignation of the Syrian government, negotiations quickly broke down.

For the past two years the story has been preserved with occasional bursts of publicity and supposedly corroborating reports. Most recently, in December 2015 Human Rights Watch (HRW) released a report titled “If the Dead Could Speak” with significant focus on the Caesar accusations.

Following are 12 significant problems with the ‘Caesar torture photos’ story.

1. Almost half the photos show the opposite of the allegations.

The Carter Ruck Inquiry Team claimed there were about 55,000 photos total with about half of them taken by ‘Caesar’ and the other half by other photographers. The Carter Ruck team claimed the photos were all ‘similar’. Together they are all known as ‘Caesar’s Torture Photos’.

The photographs are in the custody of an opposition organization called the Syrian Association for Missing and Conscience Detainees (SAFMCD). In 2015, they allowed Human Rights Watch (HRW) to study all the photographs which have otherwise been secret. In December 2015, HRW released their report titled “If the Dead Could Speak”. The biggest revelation is that over 46% of the photographs (24,568) do not show people ‘tortured to death” by the Syrian government. On the contrary, they show dead Syrian soldiers and victims of car bombs and other violence (HRW pp2-3). Thus, nearly half the photos show the opposite of what was alleged. These photos, never revealed to the public, confirm that the opposition is violent and has killed large numbers of Syrian security forces and civilians.

2. The claim that other photos only show ‘tortured detainees’ is exaggerated or false.

The Carter Ruck report says ‘Caesar’ only photographed bodies brought from Syrian government detention centers. In their December 2015 report, HRW said, “The largest category of photographs, 28,707 images, are photographs Human Rights Watch understands to have died in government custody, either in one of several detention facilities or after being transferred to a military hospital.” They estimate 6,786 dead individuals in the set.

The photos and the deceased are real, but how they died and the circumstances are unclear. There is strong evidence some died in conflict. Others died in the hospital. Others died and their bodies were decomposing before they were picked up. These photographs seem to document a war time situation where many combatants and civilians are killed. It seems the military hospital was doing what it had always done: maintaining a photographic and documentary record of the deceased. Bodies were picked up by different military or intelligence branches. While some may have died in detention; the great majority probably died in the conflict zones. The accusations by ‘Caesar’, the Carter Ruck report and HRW that these are all victims of “death in detention” or “death by torture” or death in ‘government custody” are almost certainly false.

3. The true identity of “Caesar” is probably not as claimed.

The Carter Ruck Report says “This witness who defected from Syria and who had been working for the Syrian government was given the code-name ‘Caesar’ by the inquiry team to protect the witness and members of his family.” (CRR p12) However if his story is true, it would be easy for the Syrian government to determine who he really is. After all, how many military photographers took photos at Tishreen and Military 601 Hospitals during those years and then disappeared? According to the Carter Ruck report, Caesar’s family left Syria around the same time. Considering this, why is “Caesar” keeping his identity secret from the western audience? Why does “Caesar” refuse to meet even with highly sympathetic journalists or researchers?

The fact that 46% of the total photographic set is substantially the opposite of what was claimed indicates two possibilities:

* Caesar and his promoters knew the contents but lied about them expecting nobody to look.

* Caesar and his promoters did not know the contents and falsely assumed they were like the others.

The latter seems more likely which supports the theory that Caesar is not who he claims to be.

4. The Carter Ruck Inquiry was faulty, rushed and politically biased.

The credibility of the “Caesar” story has been substantially based on the Carter-Ruck Inquiry Team which “verified” the defecting photographer and his photographs. The following facts suggest the team was biased with a political motive:

* the investigation was financed by the government of Qatar which is a major supporter of the armed opposition.

* the contracted law firm, Carter Ruck and Co, has previously represented Turkey’s President Erdogan, also known for his avid support of the armed opposition.

* the American on the legal inquiry team, Prof David M. Crane, has a long history working for U.S. Dept of Defense and Defense Intelligence Agency. The U.S. Government has been deeply involved in the attempt at ‘regime change’ with demands that ‘Assad must go’ beginning in summer 2011 and continuing until recently.

* Prof Crane is personally partisan in the conflict. He has campaigned for a Syrian War Crimes Tribunal and testified before Congress in October 2013, three months before the Caesar revelations.

* by their own admission, the inquiry team was under “time constraints” (CRR, p11).

* by their own admission, the inquiry team did not even survey most of the photographs

* the inquiry team was either ignorant of the content or intentionally lied about the 46% showing dead Syrian soldiers and attack victims.

* the inquiry team did their last interview with “Caesar” on January 18, quickly finalized a report and rushed it into the media on January 20, two days prior to the start of UN sponsored negotiations.

The self-proclaimed “rigor” of the Carter Ruck investigation is without foundation. The claims to a ‘scientific’ investigation are similarly without substance and verging on the ludicrous.

5. The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) is involved.

In an interview on France24, Prof. David Crane of the inquiry team describes how ‘Caesar’ was brought to meet them by “his handler, his case officer”. The expression ‘case officer’ usually refers to the CIA. This would be a common expression for Prof. Crane who previously worked in the Defense Intelligence Agency. The involvement of the CIA additionally makes sense since there was a CIA budget of $1Billion for Syria operations in 2013.

Prof. Crane’s “Syria Accountability Project” is based at Syracuse University where the CIA actively recruits new officers despite student resistance.

Why does it matter if the CIA is connected to the ‘Caesar’ story? Because the CIA has a long history of disinformation campaigns. In 2011, false reports of viagra fueled rape by Libyan soldiers were widely broadcast in western media as the U.S. pushed for a military mandate. Decades earlier, the world was shocked to hear about Cuban troops fighting in Angola raping Angolan women. The CIA chief of station for Angola, John Stockwell, later described how they invented the false report and spread it round the world. The CIA was very proud of that disinformation achievement. Stockwell’s book, “In Search of Enemies” is still relevant.

6. The prosecutors portray simple administrative procedures as mysterious and sinister.

The Carter Ruck inquiry team falsely claimed there were about 11,000 tortured and killed detainees. They then posed the question: Why would the Syrian government photograph and document the people they just killed? The Carter Ruck Report speculates that the military hospital photographed the dead to prove that the “orders to kill” had been followed. The “orders to kill” are assumed.

A more logical explanation is that dead bodies were photographed as part of normal hospital / morgue procedure to maintain a file of the deceased who were received or treated at the hospital.

The same applies to the body labeling / numbering system. The Carter Ruck report suggests there is something mysterious and possibly sinister in the coded tagging system. But all morgues need to have a tagging and identification system.

7. The photos have been manipulated.

Many of the photos at the SAFMCD website have been manipulated. The information card and tape identity are covered over and sections of documents are obscured. It must have been very time consuming to do this for thousands of photos. The explanation that they are doing this to ‘protect identity’ is not credible since the faces of victims are visible. What are they hiding?

8. The Photo Catalog has duplicates and other errors.

There are numerous errors and anomalies in the photo catalog as presented at the SAFMCD website.

For example, some deceased persons are shown twice with different case numbers and dates.

There are other errors where different individuals are given the same identity number.

Researcher Adam Larson at A Closer Look at Syria website has done detailed investigation which reveals more errors and curious error patterns in the SAFMCD photo catalog.

9. With few exceptions, Western media uncritically accepted and promoted the story.

The Carter Ruck report was labeled “Confidential” but distributed to CNN, the Guardian and LeMonde.

CNN’s Christiane Amanpour gushed the story as she interviewed three of the inquiry team under the headline “EXCLUSIVE: Gruesome Syria photos may prove torture by Assad regime”. Critical journalism was replaced by leading questions and affirmation. David Crane said “This is a smoking gun”. Desmond de Silva “likened the images to those of holocaust survivors”.

The Guardian report was titled “Syrian regime document trove shows evidence of ‘industrial scale’ killing of detainees” with subtitle “Senior war crimes prosecutors say photographs and documents provide ‘clear evidence’ of systematic killing of 11,000 detainees”

One of the very few skeptical reports was by Dan Murphy in the Christian Science Monitor. Murphy echoed standard accusations about Syria but went on to say incisively, “the report itself is nowhere near as credible as it makes out and should be viewed for what it is: A well-timed propaganda exercise funded by Qatar, a regime opponent who has funded rebels fighting Assad who have committed war crimes of their own.”

Unfortunately that was one of very few critical reports in the mainstream media.

In 2012, foreign affairs journalist Jonathan Steele wrote an article describing the overall media bias on Syria.. His article was titled “Most Syrians back Assad but you’d never know from western media”. The media campaign and propaganda has continued without stop. It was in this context that the Carter Ruck Report was delivered and widely accepted without question.

10. Politicians have used the Caesar story to push for more US/NATO aggression.

Politicians seeking direct US intervention for ‘regime change’ in Syria were quick to accept and broadcast the ‘Caesar’ story. They used it to demonize the Assad government and argue that the US must act so as to prevent “another holocaust’, ‘another Rwanda’, ‘another Cambodia’.

When Caesar’s photos were displayed at the House Foreign Affairs Committee in Congress, Chairman Ed Royce said “It is far past time that the world act…. It is far past time for the United States to say there is going to be a safe zone across this area in northern Syria.”

The top ranking Democrat in the House Foreign Affairs Committee is Eliot Engel. In November 2015 he said “We’re reminded of the photographer, known as Caesar, who sat in this room a year ago, showing us in searing, graphic detail what Assad has done to his own people.” Engel went on to advocate for a new authorization for the use of military force.

Rep Adam Kinzinger is another advocate for aggression against Syria. At an event at the Holocaust Memorial Museum in July 2015 he said, “If we want to destroy ISIS we have to destroy the incubator of ISIS, Bashar al-Assad.”

The irony and hypocrisy is doubly profound since Rep Kinzinger has met and coordinated with opposition leader Okaidi who is a confirmed ally of ISIS. In contrast with Kinzinger’s false claims, it is widely known that ISIS ideology and initial funding came from Saudi Arabia and much of its recent wealth from oil sales via Turkey. The Syrian Army has fought huge battles against ISIS, winning some but losing others with horrific scenes of mass beheading.

11. The Human Rights Watch assessment is biased.

HRW has been very active around Syria. After the chemical attacks in greater Damascus on August 21, 2013, HRW rushed a report which concluded that, based on a vector analysis of incoming projectiles, the source of the sarin carrying rockets must have been Syrian government territory. This analysis was later debunked as a “junk heap of bad evidence” by highly respected investigative journalist Robert Parry. HRW’s assumption about the chemical weapon rocket flight distance was faulty. Additionally it was unrealistic to think you could determine rocket trajectory with 1% accuracy from a canister on the ground. To think you could determine flight trajectory from a canister on the ground that had deflected off a building wall was preposterous.

In spite of this, HRW stuck by its analysis which blamed the Assad government. HRW Director Ken Roth publicly indicated dissatisfaction when an agreement to remove Syrian chemical weapons was reached. Mr. Roth wanted more than a ‘symbolic’ attack.

In light of the preceding, we note the December 2015 HRW report addressing the claims of Caesar.

HRW seems to be the only non-governmental organization to receive the full set of photo files from the custodian. To its credit, HRW acknowledged that nearly half the photos do not show what has been claimed for two years: they show dead Syrian soldiers and militia along with scenes from crime scenes, car bombings, etc…

But HRW’s bias is clearly shown in how they handle this huge contradiction. Amazingly, they suggest the incorrectly identified photographs support the overall claim. They say, “This report focuses on deaths in detention. However other types of photographs are also important. From an evidentiary perspective, they reinforce the credibility of the claims of Caesar about his role as a forensic photographer of the Syrian security forces or at least with someone who has access to their photographs.” (HRW, p31) This seems like saying if someone lies to you half the time that proves they are truthful.

The files disprove the assertion that the files all show tortured and killed. The photographs show a wide range of deceased persons, from Syrian soldiers to Syrian militia members to opposition fighters to civilians trapped in conflict zones to regular deaths in the military hospital. There may be some photos of detainees who died in custody after being tortured, or who were simply executed. We know that this happened in Iraqi detention centers under U.S. occupation. Ugly and brutal things happen in war times. But the facts strongly suggest that the ‘Caesar’ account is basically untrue or a gross exaggeration.

It is striking that the HRW report has no acknowledgment of the war conditions and circumstances in Syria. There is no acknowledgment that the government and Syrian Arab Army have been under attack by tens of thousands of weaponized fighters openly funded and supported by many of the wealthiest countries in the world.

There is no hint at the huge loss of life suffered by the Syrian army and supporters defending their country. The current estimates indicate from eighty to one hundred and twenty thousand Syrian soldiers, militia and allies having died in the conflict. During the three years 2011 – 2013, including the period covered by Caesar photos, it is estimated that over 52,000 Syrian soldiers and civilian militia died versus 29,000 anti-government forces.

HRW had access to the full set of photographs including the Syrian army and civilian militia members killed in the conflict. Why did they not list the number of Syrian soldiers and security forces they identified? Why did they not show a single image of those victims?

HRW goes beyond endorsing the falsehoods in the ‘Caesar’ story; they suggest it is a partial listing. On page 5 the report says, “Therefore, the number of bodies from detention facilities that appear in the Caesar photographs represent only a part of those who died in detention in Damascus.”

On the contrary, the Caesar photographs seem to mostly show victims who died in a variety of ways in the armed conflict. The HRW assertions seem to be biased and inaccurate.

12. The legal accusations are biased and ignore the supreme crime of aggression.

The Christian Science Monitor journalist Dan Murphy gave an apt warning in his article on the Carter Ruck report about ‘Caesar’. While many journalists treated the prosecutors with uncritical deference, he said, “Association with war crime prosecutions is no guarantor of credibility – far from it. Just consider Luis Moreno Ocampo’s absurd claims about Viagra and mass rape in Muammar Qaddafi’s Libya in 2011. War crimes prosecutors have, unsurprisingly, a bias towards wanting to bolster cases against people they consider war criminals (like Assad or Qaddafi) and so should be treated with caution. They also frequently favor, as a class, humanitarian interventions.”

The Carter Ruck legal team demonstrated how accurate those cautions were. They were eager to accuse the Syrian government of “crimes against humanity” but the evidence of “industrial killing”, “mass killing”, “torturing to kill” is dubious and much of the hard evidence shows something else.

In contrast, there is clear and solid evidence that a “Crime against Peace” is being committed against Syria. It is public knowledge that the “armed opposition” in Syria has been funded, supplied and supported in myriad ways by various outside governments. Most of the fighters, both Syrian and foreign, receive salaries from one or another outside power. Their supplies, weapons and necessary equipment are all supplied to them. Like the “Contras” in Nicaragua in the 1980’s, the use of such proxy armies is a violation of customary international law.

It is also a violation of the UN Charter which says “All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other matter inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations”.

The government of Qatar has been a major supporter of the mercenaries and fanatics attacking the sovereign state of Syria. Given that fact, isn’t it hugely ironic to hear the legal contractors for Qatar accusing the Syrian government of “crimes against humanity”?

Isn’t it time for the United Nations to make reforms so that it can start living up to its purposes? That will require demanding and enforcing compliance with the UN Charter and International Law.

March 4, 2016 Posted by aletho | Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Timeless or most popular | Carter Ruck and Co, Carter Ruck Report, Central Intelligence Agency, Christiane Amanpour, CIA, CNN, David M. Crane, Eliot Engel, Erdogan, Human rights, ISIS, LeMonde, Middle East, Qatar, Syria, The Guardian, Turkey, United States | 1 Comment

JEREMY SALT ON ANTI SYRIA PROPAGANDA ESCALATION

thewallwillfall | February 9, 2016

Comment from geopolitical analyst Jeremy Salt on the appalling propaganda piece in the Guardian entitled: UN report: Syrian Government actions amount to extermination

[note holocaust association already introduced by Samantha Powers in relation to #Madaya propaganda storm]

“I have looked through the report, it has all the characteristics of previous UN Human Rights reports on Syria. The timing is extremely suspect – released just as the Syrian army closes in on Aleppo.

We have seen a great spike in propaganda in the past few days, against Russian air strikes and over the number of civilians building up on the Syrian border, said to be 35,000, but 70,000 are said to be coming and yesterday the Turkish deputy PM spoke of 600,000 on the way. All this can be seen as the possible prelude to establishing a buffer zone – we can’t look after any more in Turkey, so the only answer is to look after them inside Syria ….

The UN Human Rights Council speaks of 500 interviews. There is no mention of who these people are, how the UN HRC got their names and where they were interviewed. The HRC’s answer is that names cannot be released but at the same time we cannot accept as credible any report that does not/will not provide such information.

There is absolutely no means of verifying it and given the HRC’s previous record, its word cannot be trusted. You might remember Navi Pillai’s hysterical statements about Syria when she was head of this council . I had a run-in with one of the committee members when i criticised a report on Syria for the same reasons I am giving here. It made many lurid accusations without providing a skerrick of reliable information. In a very heated discussion she admitted what was not in the report, that most of the people interviewed were in Turkey or Jordan, and, I would imagine, in the refugee camps.

I have no doubt that being in a Syrian prison is very unpleasant experience, perhaps as unpleasant as being in prison at Abu Ghraib, but extermination is an extremely powerful word and to make an accusation of a policy of extermination without providing the evidence anyone would need to know to back it up, exposes, I think, the true agenda of this group of people.

Watch how its now going to be used by governments and groups like HRW. ” ~ Jeremy Salt

February 10, 2016 Posted by aletho | Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | Human rights, Navi Pillai, Syria, The Guardian, Turkey | Leave a comment

‘The race to save Peter Kassig’

By Dr Richard Marsden | The Business of Emotions | December 24, 2014

On Thursday, December 18, 2014, The Guardian published The race to save Peter Kassig by Ali Younes, Shiv Malik, Spencer Ackerman and Mustafa Khalili. To refresh memories here is the preface to the story:

The American aid worker was killed by his Isis captors on 16 November. Here, for the first time, is the story of an extraordinary effort to secure his release, which involved a radical New York lawyer, the US government, and the world’s most revered jihadi scholar.

Listen to The Guardian team tell of the daring and extraordinary effort to secure Kassig’s release.

The radical New York lawyer in question is Stanley Cohen, ‘one of America’s most controversial lawyers’. In January he begins an 18-month prison sentence after pleading guilty to a charge from the US Internal Revenue Service. The Guardian article tells a gripping tale of how Cohen put together a team of Islamic scholars and al-Qaeda fellow-travellers to negotiate the release of Peter Kassig from Islamic State’s captivity—only to be thwarted at the last minute by an ill-timed intervention by Jordan’s secret service.

Clearly it’s an important story deserving of a wide readership. How curious then that The Guardian first broke the story just before Christmas, when readers are busy with other things, and that since then corporate news media in the United States have ignored it. On Twitter it’s another matter. Cohen is lauded as a hero for selflessly attempting a rescue mission while the authorities did nothing and his prison cell beckoned. There is talk of a film deal. The Pardon Stanley Cohen movement has more of a spring in its step.

All well and good, then.

And yet, to my ears, ‘The race to rescue Peter Kassig’ does not ring true. Lest it be sanctified by Hollywood without the bother of critical evaluation, I want to register some questions and comments so that we might better understand the fate of Peter Kassig. I fear that Guardian readers, the article’s authors, and even Stanley Cohen, have been taken advantage of by altogether more diabolical forces.

1. Let’s start at the beginning: Where is the evidence that Peter Kassig was ever held captive by ‘Islamic State’ or that they decapitated him? This is so widely assumed that the question is seldom asked. It should be. Questioning assumptions should be a starting point for investigative journalists. If he is to be ‘rescued’ we ought to ask, From whom and where?

Surely the 15 minute video ‘Although the disbelievers dislike it’ is all the evidence we need, even if few have seen it? I do not think so. I’ve studied it carefully and can find evidence only of the Tarantino-like film making skills of whoever created this little masterpiece of deception. (See ISIS Lessons in Terror Marketing: How to Change the World by Deception). No one is decapitated in that video; not anyone of those Syrian servicemen; not Peter Kassig. It’s all camera angles, special effects and clever editing.

What about Kassig’s severed head at the feet of ‘Jihadi John’ in the final segment of that video? It certainly looks like a severed head and it resembles Kassig’s and this is proof of what exactly? The props department of most major theatre and opera companies can produce a severed head on demand, even of a specific individual. Here the Royal Shakespeare Company shows how it is done. Props departments have their counterparts in film; they’re called digital artists. Look carefully: ‘Kassig’s head’ is a digitally inserted prop. It’s not proof of Kassig’s death. It’s proof that someone is attempting to deceive us.

Questions such as these are not asked because ‘we are passive consumers of the pornography of violence’ (Will Self, The Guardian, 2014-12-23). Effectively, public opinion defers to the testimony of ‘Jihadi John’. So when he says ‘This is Peter Edward Kassig, a US citizen of your country’ it surely must be true. From this shaky assumption Ali Younes, Shiv Malik, Spencer Ackerman and Mustafa Khalili set forth on their investigation.

2. Strictly speaking, the byline of ‘The race to save Peter Kassig’ should be ‘Stanley Cohen as told to Younes et al’ for the entire account is based on what Cohen told them he recalled, felt and did. The article reads like an extract from a novel, in which Cohen is the protagonist and Younes et al attempt to breath some life into the character by seeing the world through his eyes. For example, Cohen ‘had other things on his mind’; ‘as he returned from court’; ‘To Cohen, it seemed like fate’; ‘Cohen saw something of himself.’ And so on. The entire article is written like this.

Investigative journalism surely calls for more critical distance from those it investigates. This is especially important since three of the central players in this drama are anonymous and we have no way of checking their account: the FBI official (‘Mike’), the federal prosecutor and an ex-Guantanamo, ‘Kuwaiti member of al-Qaida’ (‘Food’). Essentially, Cohen speaks for them and the coauthors document what he says. The article’s rhetorical style leaves readers no room to make up their own minds about what happened.

3. Even fictional narratives must be plausible; this article stretches plausibility to its limit.

(a) Readers are asked to believe that the United States, with its vast intelligence and diplomatic resources, has no one capable of negotiating with Islamic State for the release of one of its citizens—apart from this maverick Jewish soon-to-be imprisoned lawyer. If so, what’s the point of those ‘diplomats’ in that vast US ‘embassy’ in Baghdad?

(b) How plausible is it that Cohen was given a free hand to negotiate with Islamic State? Let’s look at what he so nearly did with it. According to the article, he concluded that the only way to achieve Kassig’s release was to bring about rapprochement between Turki al-Binali and Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi; or, put another way, to bring about reconciliation between ISIS and al-Qaeda. No kidding. And this would be a good thing? The life of this one American would be worth this exorbitant price would it? Apparently so. The US intelligence and diplomat community, it would seem, was indifferent to this prospect, which, but for the bungling interference of Jordan’s secret service in arresting al-Maqdisi, would have come about.

(c) How likely is it that Jordan’s secret service would act contrary to the wishes of their American counterparts, especially on a mission of such vital importance?

(d) Why would anyone reasonably expect ‘Islamic State’ to be so magnanimous as to free Kassig just so it could have the pleasure of dedicating his release ‘to Muslim political prisoners around the world, including those in Guantánamo’, as Cohen suggested? What is there in ‘Jihadi John’s’ demeanour that suggests this? Yet this prospect, apparently, was enough for Islamic State to agree that Kassig would not be harmed ‘while Cohen was still engaged on the ground.’

(e) The ‘tentative proposal for Kassig’s unilateral release’ was put together by Cohen with the help of three anonymous characters—the FBI official (‘Mike’), the federal prosecutor and an ex-Guantanamo, ‘Kuwaiti member of al-Qaida’ (‘Food’). Why would they want to conceal their involvement in this noble but tragic rescue mission, when others with more to lose are named?

(f) Turki al-Binali is an elusive character. Just 30-years old, but ‘Isis’s chief scholar’ ‘who has his own English language Facebook page’ and ‘the only person who could stay Jihadi John’s knife with a single edict.’ (‘Jihadi John’, then, is in charge.) Just as ‘Jihadi John’ is a man whose face we have not seen and whose voice is not authenticated, Turki al-Binali is encountered more in the virtual realm than in the flesh. No one actually sees him during these negotiations nor is there any mention of where he is physically located. It’s all done via WhatsApp.

(g) Why would the venerable Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi, newly released from 5 years in a Jordanian prison, want to jeopardize his freedom by messaging with al-Binali, Islamic State’s ‘scholar-in-arms’, over such a harebrained scheme and then have his private conversations published in a national newspaper for the whole world to gawp at? Incredibly, he takes the word of Cohen, who he has just met, and his anonymous FBI handler (‘Mike’).

(h) In fact, it’s not clear why al-Maqdisi, ‘who may be the world’s most revered living jihadi scholar’, would agree to meet with Cohen in the first place, let alone immediately invite this stranger into his home. ‘The flat was tidy: on the floor were children’s toys and, on the walls, framed religious quotations.’ This is as close as we come to an explanation:

When Cohen told Mike about his travel plans, the FBI official was surprised. “He said ‘Maqdisi is going to meet with you?’” Cohen recalled. “I said ‘Yeah, he’s waiting for me.’ He said ‘Go’.”

As easy as that then. Could the following help explain this instant cordiality? In an article published in the Arab Daily News, October 28, 2014, one of the authors of ‘The race to save Peter Kassig’, Ali Younes, writes of an interview he conducted with the said Abu Mohamad al-Maqdisi. (There they are together in two photographs, friendly as anything). Younes reveals that he had spoken with al-Maqdisi ‘on several occasions in the past few weeks’. This is the very period that Cohen claims to have been communicating with al-Maqdisi. It surely wasn’t the case that one of the authors of ‘The race to save Peter Kassig’ was a party to these negotiations? We would have been told. Wouldn’t we?

(i) According to ‘The race to save Peter Kassig’ al-Maqdisi and al-Binali tried to reach an agreement on the release of Kassig, not by meeting face-to-face, speaking on the phone or even by writing letters, but via WhatsApp (‘one of Isis’s favoured modes of communication’).

By now it was evening, and for the next two hours or so, Maqdisi and Binali messaged each other on WhatsApp. Their exchange was “very warm,” Cohen says. Maqdisi jokingly called Binali “my ungrateful son” and Binali messaged back and said, “Abu Muhammad [Maqdisi] is my father. All these other sheikhs [in Isis] are my uncles.” Binali was eager to show off: he prefaced some of his messages by saying there was a drone overhead or there had just been an air strike, to impress Maqdisi. He also sent his former teacher a picture of himself wearing an ammunition vest and holding a Qur’an.

Quite touching. These are Cohen’s recollections, mind, not al-Maqdisi’s or al-Binali’s.

Maqdisi told Cohen that he’d had an additional WhatsApp discussion with Binali. They made progress towards a personal rapprochement and had even started to resolve their religious differences. Tomorrow, Maqdisi said, he planned on specifically broaching the subject of Kassig with him.

I cannot even imagine the bookish al-Maqdisi using WhatsApp. Is this really how Jihadi scholars do business these days? They are so trusting. Neither could know for sure who he was messaging with. Having ‘made progress towards a personal rapprochement’ they were to ‘resolve their religious differences’—by WhatsApp. This is how the reconciliation between Islamic State and al-Qaeda was to be achieved? This is how the fate of this young man was to be decided? This is the very best the United States could do to rescue him?

Incidentally, where was al-Binali during these exchanges? This isn’t mentioned in the article. Did Cohen or anyone on his team see him or know where he was? Other than by his appearances on WhatsApp, Twitter and Facebook, how would the skeptical know that the elusive al-Binali actually exists?

For these and other reasons I am not at all persuaded by ‘The race to save Peter Kassig’. I do, however, have a more plausible explanation of the events depicted in the article. As I have argued at length elsewhere, the suite of Islamic State beheading videos (of Foley, Sotloff, Henning and Haines, along with ‘Although the disbelievers dislike it’) are works of military deception (MILDEC) aimed primarily at Western public opinion. No one dies in those videos. Their immediate objective was to facilitate Anglo-American military reengagement in Iraq (unthinkable only a few months ago) by goading an emotional reaction among Brits and Americans. Mission accomplished. Their broader objective is to disguise the real forces behind Islamic State and their motives. Things are not as they seem. I do not know for sure who is behind these particular Islamic State beheading videos, other than that it is not ‘Islamic State’, but if a faction within US/UK intelligence did not create them they surely know who did.

To return to the fate of Peter Kassig and the ‘race’ to save him.

Whenever an American hostage meets an untimely demise the US feels obliged to tell us of the heroic efforts they made to save him or her, only to be foiled by circumstances beyond their control. It happens every time. For simulated hostages there are simulated rescue attempts. The day after the release of the Foley beheading video, for example, ‘senior Obama administration officials’ told of an unsuccessful secret operation to rescue Foley and several other Americans held captive in Syria. The Syrian government said it never happened. ‘The race to save Peter Kassig’ tells of the diplomatic equivalent of these heroically unsuccessful military rescue missions. Even if some or all of the participants were sincere, it was a simulated rescue that was designed to fail. Jordanian and American intelligence are like heart and lung on these matters. They work in unison. If Maqdisi was arrested just as the deal was about to be sealed it’s because the US wanted it.

No actual diplomats would fall for this pantomime, but an amateur one facing prison might. No seasoned journalists would fall for it either; they would raise questions such as the above. So what happened to these Guardianistas ? The accompanying audio (by Phoebe Greenward) tells us that the ‘race’ began with ‘a series of emails obtained by the Guardian.‘ ‘Obtained’ suggests some active investigation. A more accurate word I suggest is ‘fed’ (given to Shiv Malik). By whom? And why to a British rather than an American newspaper? Mustafa Khalili’s first response when he read them—’disbelief’—was correct. But these journalists were so intoxicated by the romance of what they read that their investigation lapsed into fleshing out a narrative on the bare bones of those emails, the whole lot marinated in sentiment. The name for this is ‘creative nonfiction’, not investigative journalism.

The correct answer to ‘What happened to Peter Kassig?’ is ‘We don’t know’. This is a more honest position than seeing beheadings where there are none and taking ‘Jihadi John’s’ word as gospel. To answer the question, researching how ‘The race to save Peter Kassig’ came to be would be a good start.

Dr. Richard Marsden
Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences
Athabasca University
Alberta, Canada T9S 3A3

December 14, 2015 Posted by aletho | Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Timeless or most popular | al-Qaeda, ISIS, Stanley Cohen, The Guardian | Leave a comment

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Rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu: Leave No Palestinian or Arab Alive

By Jonas E. Alexis | Veterans Today | July 23, 2017

Israeli Rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu seems to have picked up where the late Rabbi Ovadiah Yosef left off. The Israeli army, Eliyahu said, must slaughter the Palestinians “and leave no one alive.” The Palestinians, the good rabbi continued, must be “destroyed and crushed in order to end violence.” Here is Eliyahu’s algorithm:

“If they don’t stop after we kill 100, then we must kill 1,000. And if they do not stop after 1,000, then we must kill 10,000. If they still don’t stop we must kill 100,000, even a million.”

There is more to this “logic” than meets the eye and ear. Eliyahu even postulated that the Israeli army ought not to get involved in arresting Palestinians because “If you leave him alive, there is a fear that he will be released and kill other people. We must eradicate this evil from within our midst.”

You may say that this is just an isolated case. No Israeli official believes that, right? … continue

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