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The Jewish Plan for the Middle East and Beyond

By Gilad Atzmon | June 13, 2014

Surely, what’s happening now in Iraq and Syria must serve as a final wake-up call that we have been led into a horrific situation in the Middle East by a powerful Lobby driven by the interests of one tribe and one tribe alone.

Back in 1982, Oded Yinon an Israeli journalist formerly attached to the Israeli Foreign Ministry, published a document titled ‘A Strategy for Israel in the Nineteen Eighties.’ This Israeli commentator suggested that for Israel to maintain its regional superiority, it must fragment its surrounding Arab states into smaller units. The document, later labelled as ‘Yinon Plan’, implied that Arabs and Muslims killing each other in endless sectarian wars was, in effect, Israel’s insurance policy.

Of course, regardless of the Yinon Plan’s prophesies, one might still argue that this has nothing to do with Jewish lobbying, politics or institutions but is just one more Israeli strategic proposal except that it is impossible to ignore that the Neocon school of thought that pushed the English-speaking Empire into Iraq was largely a Jewish Diaspora, Zionist clan. It’s also no secret that the 2nd Gulf War was fought to serve Israeli interests –  breaking into sectarian units what then seemed to be the last pocket of Arab resistance to Israel.

Similarly, it is well established that when Tony Blair decided to launch that criminal war, Lord Levy was the chief fundraiser for his Government while, in the British media, Jewish Chronicle writers David Aaronovitch and Nick Cohen were busy beating the drums for war. And again, it was the exact same Jewish Lobby that was pushing for intervention in Syria, calling for the USA and NATO to fight alongside those same Jihadi forces that today threaten the last decade’s American ‘achievements’ in Iraq.

Unfortunately, Yinon’s disciples are more common than you might expect. In France, it was the infamous Jewish ‘philosopher’ Bernard Henri Levy who  boasted on TV that ‘as a Jew’ campaigning for NATO intervention, he liberated Libya.

As we can see, a dedicated number of Jewish Zionist activists, commentators and intellectuals have worked relentlessly in many countries pushing for exactly the same cause – the breaking up of Arab and Muslim states into smaller, sectarian units.

But is it just the Zionists who are engaging in such tactics? Not at all.

In fact, the Jewish so-called Left serves the exact same cause, but instead of fragmenting Arabs and Muslims into Shia, Sunnis, Alawites and Kurds they strive to break them into sexually oriented identity groups (Lesbian, Queer, Gays, Heterosexual etc.)

Recently I learned from Sarah Schulman, a NY Jewish Lesbian activist that in her search for funding for a young ‘Palestinian Queer’ USA tour, she was advised to approach George Soros’ Open Society institute. The following account may leave you flabbergasted, as it did me:

A former ACT UP staffer who worked for the Open Society Institute, George Soros’ foundation, suggested that I file an application there for funding for the tour. When I did so it turned out that the person on the other end had known me from when we both attended Hunter [College] High School in New York in the 1970s. He forwarded the application to the Institutes’s office in Amman, Jordan, and I had an amazing one-hour conversation with Hanan Rabani, its director of the Women’s and Gender program for the Middle East region. Hanan told me that this tour would give great visibility to autonomous queer organizations in the region. That it would inspire queer Arabs—especially in Egypt and Iran… for that reason, she said, funding for the tour should come from the Amman office” (Sarah Schulman -Israel/Palestine and the Queer International p. 108).

The message is clear, The Open Society Institutes  (OSI) wires Soros’s money to Jordan, Palestine and then back to the  USA in order to “inspire queer Arabs in Egypt and Iran (sic).”

What we see here is clear evidence of a blatant intervention by George Soros and his institute in an attempt to break Arabs and Muslims and shape their culture. So, while the right-wing Jewish Lobby pushes the Arabs into ethnic sectarian wars, their tribal counterparts within George Soros’ OSI institute, do exactly the same — attempt to break the Arab and Muslims by means of marginal and identity politics.

It is no secret that, as far as recent developments in Iraq are concerned, America, Britain and the West are totally unprepared. So surely, the time is long overdue when we must identify the forces and ideologies within Western society that are pushing us into more and more global conflicts. And all we can hope for is that  America, Britain and France may think twice before they spend trillions of their taxpayers’ money in following the Yinon Plan to fight ruinous, foreign wars imposed upon them by The Lobby.

June 13, 2014 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

School witch-hunt fuels UK Islamophobia

By Finian Cunningham | Press TV | June 10, 2014

An official British probe this week into alleged “Islamic extremism” in schools is replete with rumor, hearsay and sensationalist accusations.

But, as it turns out, the government report is based on scant factual evidence.

What this amounts to is a “witch-hunt” against British Muslims fuelled at the highest level of government.

This exercise in fear mongering not only denigrates Muslim communities; it recklessly adds to an already hostile climate of Islamophobia in British society, where ordinary citizens are being targeting by racism and hate crimes.

This week the British government’s regulatory body, Ofsted, released a report into more than 20 schools in the midlands city of Birmingham, where it has been alleged that there is a secret plot to infiltrate the education system with “Islamic extremism.”

Six of the schools investigated have been accused of promoting “intimidation” and “intolerance” of non-Muslims. The British government has now placed the schools on a watch-list, which will involve future no-warning snap inspections.

British Prime Minister David Cameron has vowed “a robust response to protect children” with “an extremism taskforce” that will from now on promote “British values” in schools.

The Birmingham establishments in question may now see their governors and staff sacked, and replaced by government-vetted personnel.

The local education trust that runs the facilities in Birmingham has flatly rejected the Ofsted report and the “baseless allegations.”

A senior member of Parkview Trust, which governs three of the schools investigated, said the government probe has found no evidence to support its claims. Trust chairman David Hughes said:

“This report has been conducted in a climate of suspicion… Ofsted inspectors came to our schools looking for extremism, looking for segregation, looking for proof that our children have religion forced upon them as part of an Islamic plot. The Ofsted reports find absolutely no evidence of this because this is categorically not what is happening at our schools.”

So, what is going on here? The whole affair into alleged extremism in the Birmingham schools, both secondary and primary, began some four years ago when an anonymous teacher supposedly wrote a letter to the British government claiming that there was a “Trojan Horse” plot operating in schools in majority Muslim communities across Birmingham.

That plot was said to involve the takeover of teaching staff at the schools and the infiltration of students with extremist ideology.

The letter has since been widely seen as a hoax. Even right-wing British newspapers, such as The Daily Mail, have acknowledged that the document and its accusations therein are fabrications.

Nevertheless, the allegations have taken on a life of their own and have gained credibility, largely due to incessant media vilification of the schools and Muslim communities in general.

Reprehensibly, senior British government ministers have heightened this climate of fear and the ensuing Islamophobia by giving these groundless claims of extremism credence.

Last week, the interior minister Theresa May and education minister Michael Gove engaged in a bizarre public row, accusing each other of “being soft on Islamic fundamentalism.” Then Conservative party leader David Cameron stepped in to the war of words – not to dismiss the damaging allegations against Muslim majority schools, but to merely discipline his ministers for their public bickering.

There is more than a suspicion that the Conservative ministers, May and Gove, are each exploiting the issue as a way of garnering personal publicity and to further their ambitions for taking over the party leadership from the hapless Cameron. For his part, Cameron seems to be reacting in a heavy-handed way to shore up his image as a “tough leader” instead of being seen as the lame duck premier that he is increasingly appearing to be.

With the release of the Ofsted report this week, Cameron has not challenged the dubious premise of the probe, but has instead promised a “robust response,” thus giving its claims a veneer of veracity.

Teachers, parents and community leaders in Birmingham have roundly condemned the “political agenda” of the government’s so-called probe into Islamic extremism.

Lee Donaghey, a principal at the now black-listed Parkview Academy, said the accusations were “absolutely untrue,” adding: “This is a normal state school, like thousands of others across Britain – 98 percent of our pupils just happen to be Muslims. British Muslims.”

As several local people also pointed out, the schools being targeted by the British government report have staff of different religious faiths, including Muslim and Christian. Some are agnostic.

One parent, Arshad Malik, said the conclusions of the Ofsted report claiming the existence of extremism were “completely alien” to him.

“The only thing extreme about our school is the excellence of student achievement in exams,” he added, saying that Park View had been turned around from an academically failed school into an award-winning one in recent years, thanks to the resilient efforts of the teaching staff.

What forms the basis of the British government probe is nothing but a litany of hearsay and unfounded rumor, which has been pursued with prejudice among the government school-regulators. That is a symptom of the worrying trend of increasing Islamophobia in British society at large, not the existence of “hard-line Islamic” influence in schools.

This very real and unconscionable Islamophobia is now being further whipped up at senior government level for self-serving political reasons that bear no relation to alleged problems.

Furthermore, what is even more deplorable is that the government fuelled anti-Muslim attitude in Britain is placing the lives of ordinary Muslims, including young students, at grave risk. Already, there is disturbing evidence of a soaring number of physical attacks, some of them lethal, on Muslim citizens across Britain. In the mindset of racist street thugs, all Muslims are dehumanized as “terrorists.”

What the British government is doing with its scaremongering reports of “extremist plots” at schools in Muslim communities is setting the stage for even more hate crimes.

Ironically, the one entity that can be most associated with so-called Islamic extremism is the British government itself, with its covert support for terrorists in Syria and Libya, as well as its long-held cozy relationship with the Wahhabi rulers of Saudi Arabia.

Tragically, Muslim communities across Britain are at risk of paying an even bigger price of human suffering for the reckless policies of the British government and its so-called “British values.”

June 10, 2014 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Islamophobia, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Video | | Leave a comment

Intelligence agencies have direct access to telecoms infrastructure, Vodafone reveals

RT | June 6, 2014

Government intelligence agencies have direct access to telecommunication companies’ infrastructure which allows them to spy and record phone calls leaving no paper trail, the UK’s largest mobile phone company Vodafone has revealed.

The British operator said wires have been attached to its phone networks in some of the 29 countries in which it operates in Europe, as well as around the world, the Guardian reported. Governments similarly connect to other telecom groups, reportedly allowing them to listen to or record live conversations. In some cases, the surveillance agencies can also track the whereabouts of a customer.

“For governments to access phone calls at the flick of a switch is unprecedented and terrifying,” Liberty director Shami Chakrabarti told the Guardian. “Snowden revealed the internet was already treated as fair game. Bluster that all is well is wearing pretty thin – our analogue laws need a digital overhaul.”

But now Vodafone is pushing back against government surveillance through direct access to the pipes. On Friday, it will publish its first Law Enforcement Disclosure Report about how governments spy on people through the company’s infrastructure.

“These pipes exist, the direct access model exists,” the telecom giant’s group privacy officer, Stephen Deadman told the Guardian. “We are making a call to end direct access as a means of government agencies obtaining people’s communication data. Without an official warrant, there is no external visibility. If we receive a demand we can push back against the agency. The fact that a government has to issue a piece of paper is an important constraint on how powers are used.”

“We need to debate how we are balancing the needs of law enforcement with the fundamental rights and freedoms of the citizens,” Deadman said.

The problem with many of the laws on the books that governments use to receive the warrants is “most of the legislation on privacy and surveillance predates the internet and needs to be updated,” the Guardian wrote, citing the report’s introduction.

Agencies do not have to identify the targeted customers to the telecom companies in any way, and the direct-access systems do not require warrants.

“These are the nightmare scenarios that we were imagining,” Gus Hosein, executive director of Privacy International, which has brought legal action against the British government over mass surveillance, told the Guardian.

“I never thought the telcos [telecommunications companies] would be so complicit,” he said. “It’s a brave step by Vodafone and hopefully the other telcos will become more brave with disclosure, but what we need is for them to be braver about fighting back against the illegal requests and the laws themselves.”

In its report, the company asks for the direct-access pipes to be disconnected, for countries to outlaw the practice and for governments to “discourage agencies and authorities from seeking direct access to an operator’s communications infrastructure without a lawful mandate.”

Vodafone began working on the report last autumn, in the wake of the first Snowden leaks about government spying. It insists that its comprehensive survey of government warrant applications is not because of consumer backlash, the Guardian reported, though analysts contend that losing customers’ trust could cost the company tens of millions of pounds.

But Vodafone isn’t opening up about everything. One of the first of the Snowden revelations last June was about Project Tempora, which allows the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) spy agency to intercept and store for 30 days huge volumes of data, like emails, social network posts, phone calls and much more, culled from international fiber-optic cables. On the one-year anniversary of the first Snowden leak the location of secret GCHQ bases in Oman tapping into underwater cables was revealed. The Vodafone report makes no mention of revelations about its participation in secret GCHQ operations.

June 6, 2014 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Corruption, Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Genetic Testing of Citizens Is a Backdoor into Total Population Surveillance by Governments and Companies

By Helen Wallace | GeneWatch UK | June 5, 2014

The new Chief Executive of the National Health Service (NHS) in England, Simon Stevens, was recently reported arguing that the NHS must be transformed to make people’s personal genetic information the basis of their treatments (1).

His proposition is unsurprising since it is in line with the efforts of successive UK governments to build a DNA database in the NHS in England by stealth. In particular, sequencing every baby at birth and storing whole genomes in electronic medical records is a plan backed by Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt (2). The current version of this plan would involve sharing whole or partial DNA sequences (genomes or genotypes) with companies like Google, which would use genetic information and health data to calculate personal risk assessments for feedback to patients (3). Massive investment from taxpayers would be required as part of a public-private partnership that would allow commercial exploitation of the data.

Building a DNA database within the NHS would be a massive waste of public money. But it would also create a system of total surveillance which would enable the government and private companies to track every individual, not to mention their relatives. This is not speculation; as wikileaks revealed, the United States government is already actively collecting DNA samples and biometric data on foreign officials and populations.

Commercial companies wish to exploit genetic information to market products such as drugs and supplements to healthy people, based on genetic risk assessments. If current trends continue, this will harm, not benefit, health: it is personalised marketing not personalised medicine. The potential for misuse is very high. Doctors could be replaced by computer algorithms used to market medication, massively expanding the drug market to include large numbers of healthy people, rather than smaller numbers of (often poorer) people who are sick. There is also the danger that prescribing would be driven by vested interests, rather than medical need: with high financial costs and more harmful side effects. Genetic risk assessments could also be misused, leading to stigma or discrimination, for example by insurers.

Why does the NHS want to collect genetic information?

There is one element of truth to Simon Stevens’ remarks. Some cancer drugs have been successfully tailored to genetic mutations that arise in the cancer tumour. However, attempts to select drugs for people based on the genetic make-up they are born with (their genome or genotype) have largely been a failure. This is because genetic differences only account for a part of individual differences in metabolism. For example, a recent study found that targeting warfarin treatment based on genetic make-up did not improve health outcomes, although this application was regarded as the ‘poster child’ of this approach (4).

Why did it not work? An important misconception, apparently shared by Simon Stevens, is that genes are good predictors of most diseases and adverse drug reactions in most people. However, contrary to misleading claims made to promote the Human Genome Project, this is not true (5). Moreover, even if it were true, there is no evidence that genetic selection of individuals, for example into high risk and low risk groups, improves outcomes or cuts costs. All of which begs the question of the purpose of taking and storing genetic information as a default medical procedure.

The online gene testing company 23andMe, funded by Google, has been forced to withdraw its gene tests from the US market due to failure to prove they can reliably predict individual risks of many common conditions using computer algorithms. The company now wants to target the UK market, where genetic testing is not regulated (6). Patrick Chung, a 23andMe board member and partner at the venture-capital firm NEA told Fast Company (7): “… 23andMe will make money by partnering with countries that rely on a single-payer health system. “Let’s say you genotype everyone in Canada or the United Kingdom or Abu Dhabi,” he says, “and the government is able to identify those segments of the population that are most at risk for heart disease or breast cancer or Parkinson’s. You can target them with preventative messages, make sure they’re examined more frequently, and in the end live healthier lives, and the government will save massive expenses because they halted someone who’s prediabetic from getting diabetes. 23andMe has been in discussion with a bunch of such societies“. Yet there is not a scrap of evidence that this approach is good for health. This is because genomic tests have limited clinical validity or utility; so in reality there is no health benefit to targeting segments of the population in this way.

Genetic testing remains useful to diagnose rare genetic disorders, mainly in babies and young children, and whole genome sequencing has helped to identify new mutations causing these diseases. Rare familial (largely inherited) forms of many common diseases also exist, including breast cancer, but these account for only a small percentage of cases of these conditions.

Use of genetic testing in the NHS should focus on prioritising resources for the limited applications that do work, not on introducing misleading and harmful screening of the whole population and creating unnecessary, expensive databases. Certainly it should not be driven by ulterior commercial and government interests.

References

(1)   New NHS boss: service must become world leader in personalised medicine. The Guardian. 4th June 2014. http://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/jun/04/nhs-boss-world-leader-personalised-medicine

(2)   Children could have DNA tested at birth. The Telegraph. 8th December 2013. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/10501788/Children-could-have-DNA-tested-at-birth.html

(3)   GeneWatch UK PR: GeneWatch UK report exposes plans to build a DNA database by stealth in the NHS. 23rd May 2013. http://www.genewatch.org/article.shtml?als[cid]=569352&als[itemid]=572536

(4)   Pharmacogenomic Warfarin Dosing: Worth the Cost? Medscape. 23rd December 2013. http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/818088

(5)   Human Genetic Predispositions – the hidden politics of genomic science. Bioscience Resource Project. http://www.bioscienceresource.org/resources/human-genetic-predisposition/

(6)   Gene startup 23andme casts eyes abroad after U.S. regulatory hurdle. Reuters. 6th May 2014. http://in.reuters.com/article/2014/05/07/23andme-genetictesting-idINL2N0NT05I20140507

(7)   Inside 23andMe founder Anne Wojcicki’s $99 DNA Revolution. Fast Company. 14th October 2013. http://www.fastcompany.com/3018598/for-99-this-ceo-can-tell-you-what-might-kill-you-inside-23andme-founder-anne-wojcickis-dna-r

Dr Helen Wallace is Executive Director of GeneWatch UK

June 6, 2014 Posted by | Corruption, Deception, Economics, Science and Pseudo-Science | , , , | Leave a comment

Secret Trials: UK Holds A Secret Terror Trial, As US Appeals Court Holds Secret Hearing In Terror Case

By Mike Masnick | Techdirt | June 5, 2014

To have a functioning judiciary in an open democracy, part of the point is to make sure that court proceedings are open to the public. Yes, there may be certain instances where certain aspects must be kept secret, but the default should be open and public. Unfortunately, in both the US and UK this week, it appears that when it comes to the bogeyman word “terrorism,” courts are willing to go dark. The more serious situation is over in the UK, where it has just come out that a secret terrorism trial is being held — the first one in centuries. Even the names of the two defendants are not known (they’re listed as merely AB and CD). Journalists had even been barred from mentioning the existence of the trial, until a gag order was just overturned. Note that the Guardian’s page linked above had to turn off comments for legal reasons. Journalist Tim Cook has also spoken out eloquently about why this cannot stand.

I cannot say how broken-hearted I am about the prospect of a major criminal trial involving two men charged with serious terrorism offences being held entirely in secret for the first time in modern British legal history. I have spent my entire journalistic life campaigning against courtroom secrecy and this represents a nadir and indication of abject failure.

But the proposal is being contested by the process of law; albeit very limited and garrotted by the lack of a constitutional paradigm for freedom of the media and expression. We have been paying the price for not having a First Amendment for many years. Now we are entering the endgame of something beyond the dissolution of open justice.

Meanwhile, back here in the good, old United States, where we do have a First Amendment, at least we know that Adel Daoud is on trial. But the 7th Circuit Court of appeals kicked everyone out of the courtroom to hold a “secret hearing” with just the DOJ. As we wrote a few months ago, Daoud’s lawyers are asking to actually see the FISA court orders that were used to gather evidence against their client — and the DOJ is flipping out about that. While some of the hearings were held openly, at one point, Judge Richard Posner abruptly kicked everyone but the DOJ out, including Daoud’s lawyers.

As the arguments concluded, Judge Richard Posner announced the public portion of the proceedings had concluded and ordered the stately courtroom cleared so the three-judge panel could hold a “secret hearing.” Daoud’s attorney, Thomas Anthony Durkin, rose to object, but Posner did not acknowledge him. Deputy U.S. marshals then ordered everyone out – including Durkin, his co-counsel and reporters.

Only those with the proper security clearance — including U.S. Attorney Zachary Fardon, his first assistant, Gary Shapiro, and about a dozen FBI and U.S. Department of Justice officials – were allowed back in the courtroom before it was locked for the secret session.

Some reporters tried to ask what was going on, but Posner simply told them “No!” and kicked them out. Daoud’s lawyer was similarly perplexed:

“Not only do I not get to be there, but I didn’t even get to object,” Durkin said. “I had to object over the fact that I couldn’t even make an objection.”

As the article notes, this is highly unusual. While in national security cases, certain information may be filed under seal, or certain portions may be held “in camera” without reporters or the public, it’s not at all common to have just one side present. And while you may say that it makes sense in this case, where the three judge panel has to determine whether or not it’s appropriate to share the FISC orders with Daoud’s lawyers, it’s still somewhat troubling to see the ease with which secret court proceedings may occur.

June 5, 2014 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance, Progressive Hypocrite | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Israel gags famous nuclear whistleblower invited to speak at human rights conference

RT | June 2, 2014

A decade after his release from prison for leaking information on Israel’s nuclear weapon program, Mordechai Vanunu has been denied permission to attend a human rights conference in London.

Vanunu, who was released in 2004 after spending 18 years in prison for leaking details of Israel’s nuclear program to British media, had planned to visit the UK capital for three days to attend a conference sponsored by Amnesty International and address the British parliament, Haaretz, the Israeli daily reported on Monday.

Israeli Interior Minister Gideon Sa’ar and Attorney General Yehuda Weinstein, however, refused to approve the trip. Vanunu petitioned the High Court of Justice to reverse the decision, but judging by previous appeals that does not seem likely.

Since leaving prison in June 2004, the nuclear technician has been forbidden to leave the country or speak with foreigners without permission from the Shin Bet security service.

The High Court has rejected seven successive petitions presented by Vanunu’s lawyers to reverse course. Most recently, in December 2013, the court said the top-secret material they were shown proves that Vanunu “still has a treasure of classified information and hasn’t recanted his intent to disseminate this information.”

In last week’s petition, Vanunu’s attorney, Avigdor Feldman, reiterated the argument he has made in previous petitions: their client’s information no longer presents much of a threat to Israel’s national security.

“The information about Israel’s nuclear capabilities that has been published since the petitioner’s release is incomparably greater, both quantitatively and qualitatively, than anything the petitioner could add today, more than 20 years after he stopped working at the Dimona nuclear reactor,” Feldman wrote.

Feldman further argued that preventing Vanunu from traveling abroad actually works more to Israel’s disadvantage because, he said, the petitioner’s failure to appear at the Amnesty conference and the British parliament “would spark international protests against this severe administrative restriction on Citizen Vanunu.”

Although Vanunu is no longer behind bars, his lawyers say he is, for all intent and purposes, still a prisoner.

“It’s true the petitioner was released from jail, but his freedom is still limited,” the petition said. “This is a harsh punishment that has been imposed on the petitioner. It’s not enough that he served a lengthy prison sentence; now, he is restrained, and his freedom limited, as if he hadn’t finished serving his sentence.”

Feldman told Haaretz that – to the best of his knowledge – the constraints imposed on their client has no precedent anywhere in the world. The ban on speaking with foreigners without the security service’s permission “would surely be acceptable in North Korea, but not in a country that defines itself as the only democracy in the Middle East,” he complained.

In 2012, Nobel-Prize winning German poet Gunter Grass praised Vanunu in a poem entitled ‘A Hero in Our Time’, in which Grass describes the former worker at Israel’s Dimona nuclear facility as a “hero” and a “model,” admiring his decision to pass Israeli nuclear secrets to the Sunday Times in 1986.

Meanwhile, Vanunu’s lawyer had harsh words for the High Court for continuing the restrictions for the last decade on the basis of material that neither he nor Vanunu were authorized to see, “and about which it’s doubtful that any of the Supreme Court justices understood anything,” but which they nevertheless accepted as evidence that “Vanunu, who worked at the Dimona nuclear reactor 40 years ago, knows information that would almost certainly endanger Israel’s security.”

Israeli officials, meanwhile, insist that Vanunu’s determination to threaten national security has not subsided, and the information in his possession is still relevant.

Sa’ar wrote in his rejection of Vanunu’s request, “Your client retains the ability to cause… damage, which would be irreversible, via the information in his possession that hasn’t yet been published, and which, as has been proven in court, is still relevant even today.”

Following the failed petition to travel abroad in December, Vanunu’s lawyer said his client merely wishes to leave the country to “marry his girlfriend and live out his life quietly.”

The Justice Ministry said that in accordance with the court’s instructions, it would file a response to the latest petition by June 10.

June 2, 2014 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance, Timeless or most popular | , , , | Leave a comment

UK announces Yuan clearing Bank in London

The BRICS Post | June 2, 2014

The UK government has agreed to establish a yuan-clearing bank in London that would “act as a signal for London’s growing yuan activities”.

Mark Boleat, policy chairman for the City of London Corp said consultations were ongoing for a long time with the People’s Bank of China, Bank of England and many banks in London, and the PBOC has now decided to appoint the clearing bank.

“We assume it’s going to be a Chinese bank, because that’s the way the PBOC does things,” Boleat said in an interview to a Chinese daily in London.

China and the UK had signed an agreement last year to establish a reciprocal 3-year sterling/renminbi (RMB, or Chinese yuan) currency swap line.

UK Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne had said earlier this year that a clearing bank was the next logical step to take in building trade ties with China.

“It would be an important further milestone both in the development of the renminbi as a currency of the world’s economic future, but also of London and the U.K. as the western center for renminbi trading,” said Osborne.

China has also signed an agreement with Germany to work on appointing a clearing bank in Frankfurt.

Meanwhile, the UK administration would also allow Chinese banks to open new branches in the country soon.

Previously, Chinese banks, as well as many other international banks, were only allowed to set up subsidiaries, which are subject to the strict capital requirements that apply to Britain’s local banks, hence the lending and financing capacity is proportional to the balance sheet of the subsidiary.

June 2, 2014 Posted by | Economics | , | Leave a comment

America’s Role in the Creation of the State of Israel

Review of Alison Weir’s “Against Our Better Judgement: How the U.S. was used to create Israel”

By Karin Brothers | Global Research | May 29, 2014

Weir’s fascinating history focuses on how the State of Israel came into existence through a cynical using of the United States and how it was defended from American critics who saw the support for Israel as violating US principles and damaging US interests.

The significance of the 1917 Balfour Declaration, the British “gentleman’s agreement” between the British government and Lord Rothschild that pledged British support for a Jewish homeland, has not been understood by many for the quid pro quo that it represented. The agreement, which occurred when it appeared that Germany was winning WW I, was that Zionists would work to get the United States involved in the war if Britain would deliver Palestine as a Jewish homeland. The reason for the American involvement in the war and the American contribution to the arrangement have not been widely understood: the Balfour Declaration (as well as the later British Mandate) were drafted in both Britain and the US, including by U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis.

Germany had no inkling of this deal until the post-war 1919 Paris Peace Conference, which Zionists attended to ensure that Britain would come through with its part of the agreement.

Even before Britain washed its hands of Palestine, Zionists recognized that they needed the support of the United States for Israel to survive and thrive, so the U.S. became the focus of propaganda and political pressure. Harry Truman, the US President who recognized the State of Israel immediately after it declared itself a state, had received a then-staggering $2 million from a Zionist donor during what had appeared to be a losing presidential campaign. State Department leaders were against supporting Israel because it damaged U.S. relations with Arab countries and, more importantly, violated important American principles of self-determination and justice. Elected leaders, vulnerable to political pressure and access to campaign funding, were not able to maintain such America-first integrity.

Weir has documented various little-known Zionist efforts to support the creation of their state. The activities — basically bribes, lies, subterfuge, threats and violence– included:

  •  Zionist leaders’ “mixed reaction” to Nazism, with some seeing that the convergent goals would benefit a Jewish state that required a Jewish population;
  •  Secret American Zionist clubs (including the elite Parushim with Felix Frankfurter) which pledged to work for Israel behind the scenes;
  • Creating the myth that a refuge was needed for Jews (including falsifying anti-Semitism in Germany and Poland and, more importantly, sabotaging western countries’ efforts to open their doors to Jewish refugees after WW II in order to ensure that Jews had few choices of refuge outside of Israel); and
  •  Zionists’ role in the creation of Christian Zionism and the Scofield Reference Bible.

Weir ends her short history of Israel’s creation by documenting some key examples of how Israel-firsters were able to destroy the careers — if not the lives — of prominent Americans in government, journalism and academia who warned of the loss of American credibility in supporting a state that was based on religious discrimination.

Weir keeps her book focused on the early history of Israel, ignoring highly significant later events, particularly those concerning Senator William Fulbright: his uncovering of Jewish charity fraud that recycled charitable donations into U.S. propaganda, his attempts, with JFK, to force the main Zionist organization to register as an agent of a foreign government and the loss of Fulbright’s Senate seat to the then-unheard of Dale Bumpers.

The main messages from Weir’s history are that the Jewish community has not legitimately needed a homeland- refuge from anti-Semitism and that Americans must take back their country by insisting that their elected officials place the interests of the United States before those of Israel.

May 31, 2014 Posted by | Book Review, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | , , , , | Leave a comment

Eurosceptic parties win dozens of European Parliament seats

May 26, 2014 Posted by | Economics, Video | , , | Leave a comment

West Funds Insurgencies

By Felicity Arbuthnot | Dissident Voice | May 19, 2014

Thursday, May 15 marked Nakba Day, Yawm an-Nakba, “Day of Catastrophe”, the onset of the displacement of up to 800,000 Palestinians, at the time 67% of the population, followed by the destruction of over 500 villages since the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, under the commitment agreed to by the then British Foreign Secretary, Lord Arthur Balfour, in November 1917.

This week: “Figures released by the Ramallah-based Central Bureau of Statistics … put the number of registered Palestinian refugees at 5.3 million. Those refugees live in 58 United Nations-run camps in Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, the West Bank and Gaza Strip.” Tragedy on a scale near unimaginable – ongoing.

Hardly the day to plan another one. However, undaunted, Britain’s current Foreign Secretary, William Hague (“I have been a Conservative Friend of Israel since I was sixteen”) hosted a meeting of the “Friends of Syria” group (Egypt, France, Germany, Italy, Jordan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, the UK and the US) to continue plotting to further decimate another Middle East country and overthrow yet another sovereign head of State.

As increasingly chilling, verified images appear of “opposition” – read insurgent – atrocities in Syria: beheadings, behandings, crucifixions, summary executions and, of course, cannibalism, Hague announced that: “the Syrian opposition would have its diplomatic status in the UK upgraded”, according to the BBC.

The Foreign Secretary was clearly following in his master’s footsteps since last week the Obama regime granted diplomatic foreign mission status to the “Syrian National Coalition” offices in New York and Washington, with a welcome present of a further promised $27 million increase in “non-lethal assistance to rebels fighting to oust President Bashar al-Assad.”  This brings the total US support for the above crimes to $287 million.

Strangely, two days before the London meeting, it was announced that Israel’s Justice Minister Tzipi Livni was awarded “special mission” temporary diplomatic status to visit London, “to protect her against arrest and potential prosecution for alleged breaches of international law, including war crimes” relating to Israel’s attack on Gaza in December 2008-January 2009.

In December 2009 Livni cancelled a visit to Britain after an arrest warrant was issued by a London Court. “The British government subsequently changed the law on universal jurisdiction … in connection with international war crimes … Previously, citizens could apply directly to a Judge for an arrest warrant.”

Currently, London lawyers Hickman Rose working with Gaza’s Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) had again been seeking a warrant for Livni’s arrest, Hickman Rose requesting that the Crown Prosecution Service advise the police to apprehend her: “for suspected war crimes and to liaise with the Attorney General to approve criminal charges.”

PCHR Director Raja Sourani commented of the Foreign Office’s stunt: “As lawyers for the victims of widespread suspected Israeli war crimes, PCHR is very concerned that these kind of political acts endorse the ‘rule of the jungle’ rather than the ‘rule of law.’”  Indeed.

The Foreign Office is remarkably selective when it comes to alleged war criminals. Livni’s visit met “all the essential elements for a special mission, and for avoidance of any doubt on the matter, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office has confirmed consent to the visit as a special mission”, they commented.

The reason for Livni’s visit was shrouded in secrecy. What is known that the evening of the “Friends of Syria” meeting, she was to address a fund- raising dinner for the Jewish National Fund at London’s luxury Jumeirah Carlton Tower Hotel ($725 a night current lowest available rate, no wonder funds are needed.) But all those Foreign Office diplomatic sleights of hand to enable something she could have done by video-link?

Well, here’s a thought. Two days before Ms Livni’s arrival in London aided by the Foreign Office’s diplomatic goal post displacements, Major General Amos Yadlin, former Deputy Commander of the Israeli Air Force, who headed military intelligence between 2006-2010 said that “ Israel should weigh launching a military strike at Syria if the Assad regime uses chemical weapons against his civilian population …”

Preferable, though, mooted the General, would be a NATO led action led by the US, with Turkey the key country, establishing a no fly zone over Syria “at the very minimum.”  Libya revisited. There should also be “standoff strikes” by NATO aircraft at strategic government targets.

“If Israel discovers that Assad is using chemical weapons against his people in mass attacks, it should intervene militarily”, said the representative of a regime who has used chemical weapons – not alone white phosphorous but also depleted uranium, both a chemical and radioactive weapon – against the Palestinians. Ironically, the article is headed: “Israel should punish Assad for killing civilians”, an expertise Israel has honed with impunity over sixty-six years.

Right on cue, on May 13th, in the lead to the London Conference, Human Rights Watch produced a report of “strong evidence” that Syrian government forces were using chlorine bombs.

Coincidentally, the previous day a letter had been sent to Kenneth Roth, Executive Director of Human Rights Watch, querying the organization’s seemingly extraordinarily partisan relationship with the US government.1

A flavour of the content is at paragraph 2:

For example, HRW’s Washington advocacy director, Tom Malinowski, previously served as a special assistant to President Bill Clinton and as a speechwriter to Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. In 2013, he left HRW after being nominated as Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights & Labor under John Kerry.

The letter was also signed by former UN Assistant Secretary General, Hans von Sponeck, current UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in the Palestinian Territories, Richard Falk and over one hundred scholars

John Kerry was, of course, also in London for the meeting, two days after he and President Obama had met with alleged former brothel owner Ahmed al-Jabra, who heads the “Syrian National Coalition”, in Washington. Jabra too had hopped on a ‘plane to London to attend the up-market plotting venue. A world away from the prison cell in Syria where he allegedly spent time for drug dealing.

Al-Akhbar has written regarding Ahmed al-Jabra of security records showing him:

“as a fugitive wanted for criminal offenses, including fraud, corruption, and even assassination plots that were not carried out. According to the source, records show that Riyadh handed over ‘the suspect Ahmad al-Jarba’ to Damascus in 2008, on charges of drug trafficking, in accordance with an extradition agreement between Saudi and Syrian security services … Jarba was tried and sentenced to a prison term at the time.”

Moreover:

“ … another entry involving Jarba, which the Qatari security services undoubtedly also have in their records. After the coup staged by the outgoing Emir of Qatar Hamad against his father Khalifa al-Thani, the latter’s Foreign Minister fled to Syria, where he became a vocal supporter for restoring the previous Emir. At the time, according to the records, Emir Hamad’s people asked Ahmad al-Jarba to assassinate the exiled Qatari Foreign Minister … Al-Jarba even received payment after accepting to carry out the mission, the source claimed.”2

Perhaps these most serious allegations regarding the man who now has upgraded diplomatic status in the US and UK have passed the State Department and Whitehall by. Whatever, they certainly seem to play fast and loose with awarding diplomatic credentials. In context, if the real reason for the action over Justice Minister Livni’s status change was not so she could attend the plotting against Syria – just over three weeks before the Syrian Presidential election on 3rd June, which President Assad is widely expected to win – it would be beyond astonishing.

Incidentally, at the Jewish National Fund cash-making bash, Livni told an illuminating tale:

“Recalling her family history, the minister also jokingly confided to the audience that as Justice Minister it was ‘embarrassing that my parents met while they were robbing a British money train to buy weapons to fight against the British army.’

“Ms Livni told her audience: ‘The first thing I want to emphasise is my parents were freedom fighters and not terrorists. I am not willing to accept any comparison with terrorists like Hamas who are looking for civilians to kill.’”

Clearly this was a week of triumph for selective perception.

Meanwhile, double standards at all levels are the order of the days. Obama, Kerry and Hague repeat the same words: “(President) Assad has no place in Syria’s future” (will any one ever ask what business it is of theirs?) Syria’s election has been declared a “farce”, but that of the US imposed fascist Junta in Ukraine on 25th May is regarded by as a “vote crucial to finding a way out of the crisis and preventing the country from tearing apart further …”

“The US and its allies are working ‘to send a unified message to pro-Russian separatists …’” that interference will not be tolerated. Whilst in sovereign Syria they are giving ever escalating $millions and arms to up to 80 groups of foreign terrorists led by an alleged serial criminal to bloodily interfere at mass murderous level.

In all there is only one consistency: illegal interference in nation states and barely believable levels of double standards. Incidentally Mr al-Jarba refers to the coming “new Syria.” For anyone looking at the ruins of the US’ “new Iraq” and “new Libya”, that should be enough to send all banging on government doors, emailing, telephoning, demonstrating: “Never, ever again.”

  1. See: “Nobel Peace Laureates to Human Rights Watch: Close Your Revolving Door to U.S. Government.”
  2. See also: “The Criminal Record of the Head of the Syrian National Coalition.”

May 19, 2014 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Militarism, War Crimes, Wars for Israel | , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

UK grants Israel’s Livni diplomatic immunity ahead of diplomatic visit

Al-Akhbar | May 14, 2014

Israeli Justice Minister Tzipi Livni has been granted temporary diplomatic immunity for an upcoming visit to the United Kingdom, in order to protect her against arrest for her alleged war crimes, British media reported on Tuesday.

The British Foreign Office confirmed it had granted “special mission” status to Livni, The Guardian wrote, ahead of a planned meeting between the Israeli politician and Foreign Office ministers in London.

Livni’s office confirmed the news, Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported.

The Gaza-based NGO Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR) and London law firm Hickman & Rose have been leading efforts to prosecute Israeli officials accused of breaching international law.

Livni had a key role in the 2008-2009 Israeli attack on Gaza, also known as Operation Cast Lead, in which more than 1,400 Palestinians were killed.

Raji Sourani, PCHR director, told The Guardian that he was very disappointed at the British government’s decision to grant immunity to Livni.

“The [British government’s] stated policy of ‘ending impunity for international crimes’ can only be properly pursued if the rule of law and due process is allowed to prevail, rather than Britain giving a safe haven to suspected war criminals, even for a few hours,” Sourani said.

He noted that a British judge had ruled in December 2009 that there was sufficient evidence to justify Livni’s arrest over her role in Operation Cast Lead.

The UK’s law on universal jurisdiction – which allows for foreign leaders to be arrested on British soil for breaches of international law – was changed in recent years to make approval from the Director of Public Prosecutions mandatory before an arrest warrant can be issued.

The change in legislation took place shortly after Livni canceled a visit in 2009 over fears of arrest. She has since been granted diplomatic immunity for an October 2011 visit to the UK.

In July 2013, Israel’s army chief, Lieutenant General Benny Gantz was also granted judicial immunity during a visit to the European country in order to discuss military cooperation. Gantz has been accused of involvement in the commission of war crimes, particularly in the November 2012 assault on the Gaza Strip, codenamed Operation Pillar of Defense.

May 14, 2014 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

Number of UK Afghan war veterans seeking mental help doubles in a year

RT | May 12, 2014

There has been a “significant increase” in the number of UK Afghanistan veterans seeking treatment for mental disorders, a charity has said. The number is likely to rise as the British military prepares to withdraw from the country this year.

The charity Combat Stress has released new statistics to the British press on the number of UK war veterans seeking help for mental trauma. It documents a 57 percent rise in referrals in 2013 of veterans who have served in the Afghanistan conflict.

There were over 358 cases last year, in comparison with 228 referrals for Afghanistan-related mental trauma in 2012. At the moment, the charity is supporting over 660 Afghanistan veterans, but the organization expects the number to rise with the full withdrawal of US-led NATO troops scheduled for the end of this year.

According to the charity’s research, most veterans do not usually seek mental help until over a decade after serving in the army. However, in the case of Afghanistan veterans, the charity has found the average time lag has fallen as low as 18 months.

Commodore Andrew Cameron, the chief executive of Combat Stress, told The Guardian newspaper that mental disorders take time to present themselves, and as such the UK should be ready for a dramatic increase of cases off the back of the 13-year Afghan conflict.

“These statistics show that, although the Iraq war ended in 2011 and troops are withdrawing from Afghanistan later this year, a significant number of veterans who serve in the armed forces continue to relive the horrors they experienced on the front line or during their time in the armed forces,” Cameron said.

Combat Stress estimates that a large proportion of the 42,000 people who served in conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq may develop some form of mental disorder in the coming decade. Conditions range from post-traumatic stress disorder to depression, and the veterans’ struggle against these disorders can “tear families apart,” Cameron said.

The charity says that even now it is still taking on cases from veterans of the Falklands War (1982) and the Gulf war (1990-1991).

According to figures by the BBC at least 453 members of the UK Armed Forces have been killed in Afghanistan since the US-led NATO invasion in 2001. The last of the alliance forces stationed in the country at set to be withdrawn at the end of this year.

However, Washington is pushing for a security pact to be signed by the Afghan government that will allow for a contingent of troops to remain in Afghanistan to aid in the security effort after alliance troops pull out.

Outgoing Afghan President Hamid Karzai has refused to sign the pact, but presidential elections were held this year in April and both the frontrunners have said they are prepared to put pen to paper on the deal.

May 12, 2014 Posted by | Illegal Occupation, Militarism, Subjugation - Torture, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

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