‘Russian troll firm’ says it has a $50bn grudge to settle with US after indictment dropped by DoJ
RT | March 17, 2020
A Russian firm that the DoJ failed to prosecute for “sowing discord” during the 2016 election aims to take its pound of flesh – or at least a hefty compensation for its tarnished reputation.
The February 2018 indictment of Concord Management & Consulting LLC, one of several issued by the team of Special Counsel Robert Mueller, was praised by the Russiagate crowds as a crucial step in uncovering the holy grail of Trump-Russia collusion. The case was dropped just weeks before going to trial, with prosecutors claiming that the firm’s defense strategy – demanding evidence that the company had waged ‘information warfare’ against America – posed a threat to US national security.
Concord had been “eager and aggressive in using the judicial system to gather information about how the United States detects and prevents foreign election interference,” the motion to dismiss said.
Protecting “sources and methods” is the cookie cutter explanation that the US intelligence community uses to justify evidence-free accusations. But it may not work this time; Concord CEO Yevgeny Prigozhin – dubbed ‘Putin’s chef’ by the Western media, says he didn’t consider the case closed with the charges dropped.
The DoJ’s decision proves that statements like “Prigozhin interfered in the US presidential election” were “lies and fiction,” he said in a statement. Concord will seek $50 billion in damages from the US government for “illegal persecution and sanctions,” he warned.
“I have found only two things positive in the biased US justice systems. One is attorney Eric Dubelier, who had the guts to fight against the American government and has secured a victory. The other is Special Counsel Robert Mueller, who had the courage to resign after realizing the kind of lawlessness he had been dragged into,” Prigozhin added.
Mueller resigned in May 2019 after his much-hyped probe ended with an anticlimactic report and criminal charges against 34 individuals and three entities, including Concord. The team that decided to call off the indictment against the company included two prosecutors who were part of Mueller’s investigation.
Meet Eli Rosenbaum, the Justice Department’s Nazi Hunter
American taxpayers still paying for World War 2
By Philip Giraldi • Unz Review • March 17, 2020
The New York Times is reporting somewhat ruefully that “The Mission to Hunt Nazis Has Become a Race Against Time.” The U.S. Government’s zeal in going after alleged former “Nazis” began in 1979 when the Office of Special Investigations (OSI) was established within the Justice Department. In 2002, OSI included 13 attorneys, almost all of whom were Jewish, backed up by 10 “historians.” In 2010 it merged with the Criminal Division’s Domestic Security Section to create a new unit, the current Human Rights and Special Prosecutions Section (HRSP).
HRSP engages in a range of enforcement activities, but one of its principal focuses is the arrest and repatriation of claimed human rights violators associated with the German concentration and prison camp system preceding and during the Second World War. In the cases of those individuals linked to the camps, the HRSP has reportedly pursued the cases with some urgency because “These people are old, and they’re dying,” suggesting that the pursuit of World War II’s possible surviving criminals is more about revenge than justice. The Times article describes it as a “race against natural life spans.”
The man in charge of ferreting out hidden Nazis is Eli Rosenbaum, highly educated in the usual places and a lawyer. Wikipedia describes him as an Israeli-American, the dual-bit, if true, presumably in spite of the fact that he holds a high-level and highly paid American government job, an all too common feature of officials who engage in so-called holocaust related issues. Rosenbaum has been seeking out what he describes as Nazis as what amounts to a full-time job since 1980, though he disdains descriptions of him as a Nazi hunter
The most recent victim of the Department of Justice’s HRSP and Rosenbaum is a 94 year-old man living in Tennessee named Friedrich Karl Berger, who was recently ordered by Memphis federal judge Rebecca Holt to be returned to Germany. Holt ruled that he was deportable under the 1978 Holtzman Amendment to the Immigration and Nationality Act due to his “willing service as an armed guard of prisoners at a concentration camp where persecution took place” which constituted rendering voluntary assistance to a Nazi-sponsored persecution.
Some facts regarding Berger’s involvement on World War II were presented by his defense and do not seem to have been disputed by the prosecution represented by Rosenbaum, who regretted that the passage of 75 years since 1945 means that Berger might be the last real live “Nazi” that he is able to punish.
Berger was drafted in 1943 when he was 17 years old, at the height of the war, and was enlisted in the navy. In 1945, he was seconded to the Neuengamme prison camp near Hamburg as a guard. Neuengamme was in fact a complex of as many as 80 camps and subcamps that were relatively low security. Berger was at a subcamp near Meppen. Jews, Poles, Russians, Danes, Dutch, Latvians, French, Italians and political opponents of the Nazis were imprisoned in the camps and it is believed that some of the prisoners, mostly Russians, were the victims of medical experiments or were gassed to death. Many prisoners also reportedly died from malnutrition and abuse as well as from actual starvation when the allies began to bomb the railroads and roads that provided food to the camps.
The camps were run by the SS, but the guards, which included women for women inmates, were drawn from a number of branches of the military services as well as from the police. Berger was therefore not SS even though the prosecution kept referring to Neuengamme as an SS camp, and he was not even armed except possibly for a brief period when the prisoners were being moved to the main camp near Hamburg as the war was ending. The prosecution claimed that the prisoners were forced to work outside digging defensive trenches during the winter of 1945 “to the point of exhaustion and death… Berger was part of the SS machinery of oppression that kept concentration camp prisoners in atrocious conditions of confinement.”
In fact, the largest loss of life of the Neuengamme prisoners took place when 9,000 of them were being evacuated in late April 1945 on the passenger liners Deutschland and Cap Arcona and two large commercial steamers the Thielbeck and Athen. The British bombed the ships, possibly thinking that they were full of fleeing government officials, killing at least 7,100 prisoners and crew.
In his justification for revoking citizenship and expatriating Berger, Rosenbaum claimed that the man had made two mistakes: “Mr. Berger made his choice to enlist in 1943 in the German military” and he then made another choice “not to request a transfer when he was assigned to a sub-camp overseeing prisoners…” Both claims are not completely credible as Berger was drafted and, as a low-ranking enlisted man being ordered to take up a position, he was hardly in control of where he was sent and what he would be called upon to do. If he had objected at that point in the war he might have been shot.
After the war Berger emigrated legally to Canada and then on to the United States in 1959. His entry into the country was completely legal and he eventually became a citizen, married and had children who are American citizens and settled down in a modest house in Oak Ridge Tennessee. He worked in a factory that made wire stripping machines. Acquaintances recall him as friendly and talkative, a kind man who took care of his sick wife until she died some years ago. One neighbor who knew him for 30 years described him as “proud to be living in the United States.”
The Times article illustrates what critics of the media have sometimes described as the “poisoned pen.” In the second paragraph of the article it describes Berger as one of many “under-the-radar Nazi collaborators.” It goes on to report on the “cases that played out over the years in the long shadow of World War II and the Holocaust, as collaborators were discovered and rooted out from often-cozy American existences that had normalized them and scrubbed them of their complicity.” The piece concludes with “Devora Fish, the director of education for the Tennessee Holocaust Commission, who opined that prosecutions like those of Mr. Berger help ensure that the sins of the past will not be forgotten. ‘Every time that somebody is brought to justice, even from 50 years ago or longer, that is a message to the world. Because we are not going to stop until everybody is brought to justice. Even if it’s something you did years ago, it will catch up to you.’” In another comment, Efraim Zuroff, a holocaust historian (sic) and currently the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s top Nazi hunter, praised the deportation of Berger, saying his age did not diminish his guilt, adding the usual spin of Jewish perpetual victimhood, and observing “Especially these days, when we see anti-Semitism on the rise and the rise of right-wing movements, this is a reminder that, if you commit such crimes, even many years later, you will be held accountable.”
How destroying the end of the life of a 94 year-old who was seventeen when he got caught up in a war that victimized him as much as millions of others provides justice is not completely clear, particularly as Berger was not a decision maker and was not personally linked to any mistreatment of anyone. Revenge is not justice but it is something that the United States government and the U.S. media promote relentlessly through the activity of taxpayer funded Rosenbaum and also the ridiculous bizarre State Department offices of Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Antisemitism and the Special Envoy for Holocaust Issues.
And going after “Nazis” with such virulence ignores other war crimes like the fire bombings of Tokyo which killed 100,000 and Dresden where 25,000 died, mostly civilians. Or Hamburg itself, close to camp Neuengamme, where 35,000 died in a firestorm that destroyed the city and which was possibly witnessed by Berger. And then there are Hiroshima and Nagasaki, 2 million dead Vietnamese and more than a million dead Muslims since 9/11. Inevitably, he who controls the media controls the narrative while the winner in a war writes the history books and also decides who is guilty.
One also has to wonder about modern day war crimes and what Eli Rosenbaum would do about them. Israel has just killed its 10,000th Palestinian since 2000. In Gaza alone, Israeli snipers shooting unarmed demonstrating Arabs in the past year have killed more than 200 and injured 8,000. The favored sniper tactic has become shooting the Palestinians in their knees. One leading sniper boasts that on one day alone he shot forty-two knees, mostly of teenagers, crippling them for the rest of their lives. “I remember the knee in the crosshairs, bursting open” said another marksman. Will Eli Rosenbaum, once he runs out of potential victims and stops chasing “Nazis,” be representing the interests of those severely injured in Gaza to punish the Israeli war criminals and bring justice?
Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is inform@cnionline.org.
DOJ drops charges against ‘Russian trolls’ after they dared demand evidence in US court
RT | March 17, 2020
The US is dropping the much-hyped indictment for ‘election meddling’ against a company supposedly behind the so-called Russian troll farm, closing the opening chapter of special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russiagate investigation.
Further pursuing the case against Concord Management & Consulting LLC, “promotes neither the interests of justice nor the nation’s security,” the Department of Justice wrote to the federal judge overseeing the case on Monday, in a motion to drop the charges.
DOJ lawyers cited “recent events and a change in the balance of the government’s proof due to a classification determination,” saying only that they submitted further details in a classified addendum.
Concord was one of the three companies – the Internet Research Agency is another – and 13 individuals charged in February 2018 with waging “information warfare against the United States of America” using social media.
The DOJ rationalizes the motion to dismiss by arguing that Concord is “a Russian company with no presence in the United States and no exposure to meaningful punishment in the event of a conviction.” That has always been the case, however. What really changed since the indictment was filed is the complete implosion of Mueller’s case, helped in part by Concord fighting the case in court.
The motion inadvertently reveals that Mueller’s prosecutors never intended the case against Concord, two other entities and 13 individuals to actually go to trial, otherwise they would have anticipated what ended up happening: Concord’s lawyers demanding discovery documents from the DOJ, which the US authorities say risks “exposure of law enforcement’s tools and techniques.”
Mueller’s team tried to fight the discovery proceedings by arguing in January 2019 that Concord was leaking them to “discredit” the investigation. Within two months, however, the investigation discredited itself, by having to admit there was no “collusion” between US President Donald Trump during the 2016 presidential election.
They still insisted that Russia had “meddled” in the election, but there too the case proved a problem. Concord successfully petitioned Judge Dabney L. Friedrich in May last year to rebuke the prosecutors for presenting their allegations as facts.
This is not to say that the DOJ is ready to disavow ‘Russiagate’ as a debunked conspiracy theory, however. Though the Concord case was dropped, the charges against the Internet Research Agency and the 13 Russian individuals were not. Given that none of them have a presence in the US, and have not dignified the indictment with a response, it is unclear how – if at all – the DOJ intends to proceed with the case.
Keeping it on the books may keep the flames of ‘Russiagate’ alive, though, which is very convenient for the media and others heavily invested in the narrative of Moscow somehow menacing US elections, despite not a shred of actual evidence being presented to back it up.
US-Led Coalition Closing Several Bases in Iraq Following Rocket Attacks – Reports
Sputnik – March 16, 2020
The US-led coalition against Daesh is departing from several of its smaller bases in Iraq after several recent rocket attacks against them, CNN reported on Monday citing a statement it obtained from the coalition.
“As a result of the success of Iraqi Security Forces in their fight against Daesh, the Coalition is re-positioning troops from a few smaller bases,” the coalition said as quoted by CNN. “These bases remain under Iraqi control and we will continue our advising partnership for the permanent defeat of Daesh from other Iraqi military bases.”
Earlier this month, two rocket attacks hit coalition troops near Baghdad, killing two American soldiers and a British servicewoman. It prompted massive strikes against the local Shia militants by the US-led coalition.
The attacks against the coalition forces came after the US had announced that it would move air and missile defence systems into Iraq to defend against ballistic missile and drone threats. Washington blamed the attacks on Iranian-backed militants but Tehran has rejected the accusations.
Iraq has warned the US and other foreign forces against using attacks on the coalition troops as a pretext for unauthorised military action in the country. The US command claimed they had consulted with Iraqi authorities about the “defensive” strikes but it was not clear if Baghdad had approved it.
Circle in the Darkness: Memoir of a World Watcher – Book Review
By Jim Miles | Palestine Chronicle | March 16, 2020
(Circle in the Darkness – Memoir of a World Watcher. Diana Johnstone. Clarity Press, Atlanta Georgia. 2020)
Diana Johnstone has done a masterful job of writing her autobiography, Circle in the Darkness, that provides many details of her life, her early influences, and the various stages of her career throughout the second half of the Twentieth Century and the first part of Twenty-first.
It is a wild ride through various aspects of society, concentrating on the historical events of her era.
Much of what she writes is not news to those who do follow alternative news sites, but what is added is a strong personal perspective based on – not surprisingly – facts and truth, both from her own experiences in regions of concern and a wide arrange of conversations with both people of significant influence and those with no influence but feeling the impact of developments in their country.
The details Johnstone adds are a strong and valuable retort to mainstream media disinformation that has “moved farther and farther away from informing the public and nearer and nearer to instructing them in what they should think.”
Themes
One of three themes that impressed me and are developed throughout the book, the media takes a large hit. While discussing NATO crimes of the Balkan, she writes, “The journalist was no longer asked to dig for new information and provide fresh analysis, but to contribute to the “common narrative”” as originated by NATO and the media.
When discussing mass media and the Military Industrial Complex she writes, “those private interests coincide quite closely with those of the U.S. government, since the same economic powers are behind both.”
Relying on “open sources and thoughtful analysis of known facts” rather than “spook revelations” her work is significantly more accurate than the mainstream.
NATO and European unity cover another large thematic area. She discusses how NATO and the European Union actively promote the neoliberal order as conditioned by the U.S. and other global hegemonic financial powers against the best interests of their own people and against the best interests of many sovereign states in the world.
When discussing the idea of Joint Criminal Enterprise as argued by the U.S. in relation to Serbia (essentially all Serbs are guilty of war crimes) she reverses the argument with clear examples, and summarizes, “U.S. strategy basically boils down to the implicit or explicit threat to wipe out the whole nation it is attacking…. This war is not the result of a clever plan by some ragtag Balkan clan leaders. This war was deliberately planned and carried out by the real Joint Criminal Enterprise: NATO.”
The third theme was her development of ideas concerning the development of the “left”.
It has changed from operating with the best interests of the people in mind – anti-war, support for workers and societal infrastructures – to becoming a supporter of war and more interested in the distractions of identity politics, “The Left has evolved from a program to an attitude.”
Certainly, there is merit in people’s identity but it comes at the cost of no longer working against class structures that keep workers down and keep the rich getting richer.
Johnstone follows the developments in France to its present-day neoliberal U.S. supporting government of Macron and follows the developments in Sweden as it turned away from the left of Olaf Palme towards a strong non-NATO supporter of all NATO adventures.
A Host of other Ideas
Many other ideas are presented in Circle in the Darkness.
Israel is discussed directly only briefly but Zionism’s influence is related throughout. While discussing false flags, the USS Liberty attack is mentioned threading into the theme of the media as ”the mainstream media have persisted in ignoring what happened, even as evidence mounted that General Moshe Dayan personally ordered the attack.”
The relationship between the dropping of the gold standard and the introduction of the petrodollar is touched upon, a topic that is rare if ever in mainstream journalism. Again just touching on it she discusses the “debt trap” on a personal level when two local Minnesota farmers commit suicide after being enticed to overextend themselves into debt.
In general, however, this is Diana Johnstones’ story of the many people she meets and interviews, or argues with, debates with, or simply discusses the many issues of her career spent mostly within European journalism. That overlapped with her employment by the German Green party and how she watched it change from an anti-war truly green party to a pro-war neoliberal supporter of capitalism.
She continues to write as an independent journalist today, with her work published globally in several alternate news sites. While I am familiar with the same history background as Ms. Johnstone, I do not have the expertise of overseas experience, the philosophical background, and the wide range of contacts she has had available throughout her career.
Circle in the Darkness covers an amazing and productive lifetime and provides valuable insights and factual details in support of her views and reporting.
It is entertaining – not in the distractive sense but for the quality of the writing and her combination of anecdotal stories combined with researched ideas.
Thus it is a very strong informative work on our modern history, an important read to more clearly understand the machinations of the modern political-military scene.
– Jim Miles is a Canadian educator and a regular contributor/columnist of opinion pieces and book reviews to Palestine Chronicles. His interest in this topic stems originally from an environmental perspective, which encompasses the militarization and economic subjugation of the global community and its commodification by corporate governance and by the American government.
Woman Sues TSA for Inserting Fingers Inside of Her During “Search”
By Jonathan Corbett | Professional Troublemaker | March 9, 2020
Michele Leuthauser was traveling from Las Vegas-McCarran International Airport last June wearing yoga pants that should have made it quite easy to determine that she was concealing nothing on the lower half of her body. But, because the TSA uses body scanners with a false positive rate somewhere in the range of 20-40% (some studies higher), Michele was flagged for additional screening: a pat-down of her “groin area.”
Unfortunately, a yet-to-be-identified TSA screener used this as an opportunity to violate Michele. While typically body scanner alarms are resolved with a quick and limited (yet still often invasive) pat-down right next to the machine, the screener directed Michele to a “private room.” Screening in a private room is supposed to be an option offered to passengers who feel more comfortable (an option I advise all travelers against taking at all costs), but for Michele it was mandatory.
When doing pat-downs, the TSA has little mats with footprints painted on to indicate to the passenger how to stand. But, the screener told Michele to spread her legs far wider than the mat — an order that seems common for TSA screeners about to inflict abuse.
She then proceeded to rub her hand on Michele’s vulva, pressing firmly enough to penetrate her labia with her finger through her leggings, and then continuing to rub her vulva until Michele, in shock, finally recoiled and told the screener to stop.
On Friday, I filed suit on behalf of Michele after TSA supervisors, local police, and TSA’s Office of the Chief Counsel refused to do anything about this incident.
While TSA policies (and the Constitution) obviously prohibit checkpoint body cavity searches, no one seems to care when normal screening turns to blatant sexual assault. I look forward to giving TSA incentive to care in the U.S. District Court for the District of Nevada.
Leuthauser v. TSA – Complaint (.pdf)
Jon Corbett is a civil rights attorney known for filing the first lawsuit against the deployment of TSA nude body scanners, as well as defeating the body scanners live in “How to Get ANYTHING Through TSA Nude Body Scanners.” Twitter: @_JonCorbett, Web: https://professional-troublemaker.com/
US CDC Director Robert Redfield Admitted that Coronavirus Deaths Have Been Miscategorized as Flu
By Larry Romanoff | Global Research | March 13, 2020
The US has been lying all along.
Robert Redfield, CDC director, testifying to Congress, today admitted that virus deaths have been miscategorised as the flu.
He also stated that the standard practice has been to first test people for the flu and, if the test is positive, they stop there. They don’t test for the coronavirus.
So Japan and Taiwan were correct. Many of the US deaths attributed to the flu were actually from the coronavirus.
One Senator asked Redfield if post-mortems were performed to learn the cause of death, and he stated that such were done, and they revealed mis-diagnoses.
The infections and deaths have been knowingly mis-categorised for months, and the CDC ‘strongly’ recommended that hospitals not test for the virus except as a last resort. It is not an accident that the US has no reliable tests. They don’t want to test. Blame everything on the flu.
And now all meetings and discussions on the virus are classified, and all public information must be first cleared through the White House.
Larry Romanoff is a retired management consultant and businessman. He has held senior executive positions in international consulting firms, and owned an international import-export business. He has been a visiting professor at Shanghai’s Fudan University, presenting case studies in international affairs to senior EMBA classes. Mr. Romanoff lives in Shanghai and is currently writing a series of ten books generally related to China and the West. He can be contacted at: 2186604556@qq.com.
‘Zionist’ Biden in His Own Words: ‘My Name is Joe Biden, and Everybody Knows I Love Israel’
By Ramzy Baroud | MEMO | March 14, 2020
“I am a Zionist. You don’t have to be a Jew to be a Zionist,” current Democratic Presidential candidate, Joe Biden, said in April 2007, soon before he was chosen to be Barack Obama’s running mate in the 2008 elections.
Biden is, of course, correct, because Zionism is a political movement that is rooted in 20th century nationalism and fascism. Its use of religious dogmas is prompted by political expediency, not spirituality or faith.
Unlike US President, Donald Trump, or Bernie Sanders, Biden’s only serious opponent in the Democratic primaries, Biden’s stand on Israel is rarely examined.
Trump has made his support for Israel the cornerstone of his foreign policy agenda since his inauguration into the White House in January 2017. The American President has basically transformed into Israel’s political genie, granting Tel Aviv all of its wishes in complete defiance of international law.
Sanders, on the other hand, came to represent the antithesis of Trump’s blind and reckless support for Israel. Himself Jewish, Sanders has promised to restore to the Palestinian people their rights and dignity, and to play a more even-handed role, thus ending decades of US unconditional support and bias in favor of Israel.
But where does Biden factor into all of this?
Below is a brief examination of Biden’s record on Palestine and Israel in recent years, with the hope that it gives the reader a glimpse of a man that many Democrats feel is the rational alternative to the political imbalances and extremism of the Trump administration.
August 1984: Palestinians and Arabs are to Blame
Biden’s pro-Israel legacy began much earlier than his stint as a vice-President or presidential candidate.
When Biden was only a Senator from Delaware, he spoke at the 1984 annual conference of ‘Herut Zionists of America’. Herut is the forerunner of Israel’s right-wing Likud party.
In his speech before the jubilant right-wing pro-Israel Zionist crowd, Biden derided the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and Arab governments, for supposedly derailing peace in the Middle East.
Biden spoke of “three myths (that) propel U.S. policy in the Middle East” which, according to the American Senator, are, “the belief that Saudi Arabia can be a broker for peace, the belief that King Hussein (of Jordan) is ready to negotiate peace, and the belief that the Palestine Liberation Organization can deliver a consensus for peace.”
April 2007: ‘I am a Zionist’
Time only cemented Biden’s pro-Israel’s convictions, leading to his declaration in April 2007 that he is not a mere supporter of Israel – as has become the standard among US politicians – but is a Zionist himself.
In an interview with Shalom TV, and despite his insistence that he does not need to be Jewish to be a Zionist, Biden labored to make connections with the ‘Jewish State’, revealing that his son is married to a Jewish woman and that “he had participated in a Passover Seder at their house,” according to the Israeli Ynet News.
March 2013: ‘Qualitative Edge’
This commitment to Israel became better articulated when Biden took on greater political responsibilities as the US vice-president under Obama’s administration.
At a packed AIPAC conference in March 2013, Biden elaborated on his ideological Zionist beliefs and his president’s commitment to ‘the Jewish state of Israel’. He said:
“It was at that table that I learned that the only way to ensure that it could never happen again was the establishment and the existence of a secure, Jewish state of Israel. I remember my father, a Christian, being baffled at the debate taking place at the end of World War II ..” that any country could object to the founding of Israel on the ruins of the Palestinian homeland.
“That’s why we’ve worked so hard to make sure Israel keeps its qualitative edge in the midst of the Great Recession. I’ve served with eight Presidents of the United States of America, and I can assure you, unequivocally, no President has done as much to physically secure the State of Israel as President Barack Obama.”
December 2014: ‘Moral Obligation’
In one of the most fiercely pro-Israel speeches ever given by a top US official, Biden told the annual Saban Forum at the Brookings Institution in Washington on December 6, 2014, that, “If there weren’t an Israel, we would have to invent one”.
In his speech, Biden added a new component to the American understanding of its relationship with Israel, one that goes beyond political expediency or ideological connections; a commitment that is founded on “moral obligation”.
Biden said, “We always talk about Israel from this perspective, as if we’re doing (them) some favor. We are meeting a moral obligation. But it is so much more than a moral obligation. It is overwhelmingly in the self-interest of the United States of America to have a secure and democratic friend, a strategic partner like Israel. It is no favor. It is an obligation, but also a strategic necessity.”
April 2015: ‘I Love Israel’
“My name is Joe Biden, and everybody knows I love Israel,” Biden began his speech at the 67th Annual Israeli Independence Day Celebration held in Jerusalem in April 2015.
“Sometimes we drive each other crazy,” the US vice-president said in reference to disagreements between Israel and the US over Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu’s refusal to halt construction of illegal Jewish settlements.
“But we love each other,” he added. “And we protect each other. As many of you heard me say before, were there no Israel, America would have to invent one. We’d have to invent one because … you protect our interests like we protect yours.”
July 2019: US Embassy Stays in Jerusalem
In response to a question by the news website, AXIOS, which was presented to the various Democratic party candidates, on whether a Democratic President would relocate the American embassy back to Tel Aviv, the Biden campaign answered:
“Vice President Biden would not move the American embassy back to Tel Aviv. But he would re-open our consulate in East Jerusalem to engage the Palestinians.”
October 2019: Support for Israel Unconditional
In an interview with the Wall Street Journal on October 31, 2019, Biden was asked whether he agrees with the position taken by his more progressive opponent, Bernie Sanders, regarding US financial support to Israel and Jewish settlement.
Sanders had said that, “if elected president he would leverage billions of dollars in U.S. military aid to Israel to push Jerusalem to change its policies toward the Palestinians,” The Hill news website reported.
Biden’s response was that, “… the idea that we would draw military assistance from Israel, on the condition that they change a specific policy, I find to be absolutely outrageous. No, I would not condition it, and I think it’s a gigantic mistake. And I hope some of my candidates who are running with me for the nomination — I hope they misspoke or they were taken out of context.”
March 2020: ‘Above Politics, Beyond Politics’
Biden’s fiery speech before the pro-Israel lobby group, AIPAC, at their annual conference in March 2020, was a mere continuation of a long legacy that is predicated on his country’s blind support for Israel.
Biden’s discourse on Israel – a mixture of confused ideological notions, religious ideas and political interests – culminated in a call for American support for Israel that is “above politics and beyond politics”.
“Israelis wake up every morning facing an existential threat from their neighbors’ rockets from Gaza, just like this past week .. That’s why I’ve always been adamant that Israel must be able to defend itself. It’s not just critical for Israeli security. I believe it’s critical for America’s security.”
Palestinians “need to end the rocket attacks from Gaza,” Biden also said. “They need to accept once and for all the reality and the right of a secure democratic and Jewish state of Israel in the Middle East.”
Iraq military demands foreign forces swiftly withdraw following US air raids
Press TV – March 14, 2020
The Iraqi military has called for an immediate withdrawal of all American and foreign troops from the country in accordance with a parliamentary resolution passed earlier this year, and in light of a string of airstrikes carried out by the United States against multiple locations of the Popular Mobilization Units (PMU), better known by the Arabic name Hashd al-Sha’abi.
On Saturday, the military asked all US-led forces to act within the resolution and pull out of Iraq.
Iraqi lawmakers unanimously approved a bill on January 5, demanding the withdrawal of all foreign military forces led by the United States from the country following the assassination of Lieutenant General Qassem Soleimani, the commander of the Quds Force of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps, along with the deputy head of the PMU, Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, and their companions in US airstrike authorized by President Donald Trump near Baghdad International Airport two days earlier.
Later on January 9, former Iraqi prime minister Adel Abdul-Mahdi called on the United States to dispatch a delegation to Baghdad tasked with formulating a mechanism for the move.
According to a statement released by his office at the time, Abdul-Mahdi “requested that delegates be sent to Iraq to set the mechanisms to implement the parliament’s decision for the secure withdrawal of (foreign) forces from Iraq” in a phone call with US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.
The 78-year-old politician said that Iraq rejects violation of its sovereignty, particularly the US military’s violation of Iraqi airspace in the airstrike that assassinated General Soleimani, Muhandis and their companions.
Iraqi MP: We demand immediate withdrawal of US forces
Meanwhile, an Iraqi lawmaker from the Fatah (Conquest) alliance has called for the “immediate” pullout of American-led forces from the country through diplomatic means.
“Our fellow countrymen and women have become fully convinced that whatever has happened or happens in our country over the past 16 years is due to foreign interference in general, and the American interventions in particular in Iraq’s domestic affairs,” Ahmed al-Kinani said in a press release.
He added, “I would like to refer to repeated attacks on the sovereignty of Iraq by the occupying US forces, including the bombing of the headquarters of our security forces, army and the PMU, which led to their martyrdom and injury besides destruction of civilian facilities.”
“Such repeated attacks do not show that US forces have good intentions, and that they must leave our land as demanded by the government, the parliamentary resolution and the Iraqi nation, who took part in a million-march demonstration and called for their immediate departure,” Kinani pointed out.
‘Next Iraqi PM must be someone who can stop US recklessness’
Another Iraqi legislator lambasted US airstrikes as blatant violation of the Arab country’s sovereignty.
Nada Shaker Jawdat said that the country’s next prime minister must be someone who can firmly act against the US recklessness and its utter disdain for Iraq’s national sovereignty.
Attack on Camp Taji cannot serve as pretext for foreign ops: Baghdad
The Iraqi military also cautioned the US and other foreign forces on Saturday against taking any military action in Iraq without the government’s approval, emphasizing that recent missile strikes against the Camp Taji can’t serve as a pretext for unauthorized actions.
The military noted in a statement that 33 Katyusha rockets had been launched on the military base, which is located approximately 27 kilometers (17 miles) north of the capital Baghdad and houses US-led troops, and that the attack critically injured several Iraqi air defense servicemen.
The statement added that the military found seven rocket launchers and 24 unused rockets in the nearby Abu Izam area.
The Iraqi Interior Ministry’s Security Media Cell announced in a statement that “at 01:15 local time on Thursday (2215 Wednesday) an American aerial bombardment struck headquarters of Hashd al-Sha’abi, emergency regiments as well as commandos from the 19th Division of the army.”
The statement added that the airstrikes targeted positions in Jurf al-Nasr town, located about 60 kilometers southwest of the capital Baghdad, Musayyib town in the central province of Babil, the holy shrine city of Najaf as well as the ancient central city of Alexandria.
The US military did not estimate how many people in Iraq may have been killed in the strikes, which officials said were carried out by piloted aircraft.
US Defense Secretary Mark Esper, in a Pentagon statement detailing the strikes, cautioned that the United States was prepared to respond again, if needed.
“We will take any action necessary to protect our forces in Iraq and the region,” Esper said.
Separately, an Iraqi official said an airstrike had hit an airport under construction in Karbala, located about 100 kilometers (62 miles) southwest of Baghdad.
The official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Arabic-language al-Sumaria television network on Friday that US military aircraft fired three missiles at the airport building, which is located in al-Haidariya district and near the border with neighboring Najaf province.
He added that the air raid killed a worker, and left great material damage at the site.
Meanwhile, CNN, quoting a US military official, reported that the airstrikes were carried out against five weapons storage facilities.
The early Friday US airstrikes were carried out about 24 hours after at least 18 PMU fighters were killed in air raids targeting an area southeast of the city of al-Bukamal in eastern Syria and near the border with Iraq.
That deadly attack was conducted hours after the US-led military coalition purportedly fighting the Daesh Takfiri terrorist group announced that three of its personnel – two Americans and one Briton – had been killed in a rocket attack on Iraq’s Taji military camp, located some 30 kilometers (18.6 miles) north of Baghdad.
More American Blunders in the Middle East: U.S. Envoys Embrace Terrorists Yet Again
By Philip Giraldi | American Herald Tribune | March 14, 2020
The spread of the coronavirus has meant that much of the other news about developments around the world has disappeared from the normal news cycle. The situation in Syria, which involves not only the government in Damascus but also Turkey, Russia, Iran and a remaining American force in part of the country has been proving increasingly unstable. Russian President Vladimir Putin has met face-to-face with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to come up with a de-escalation plan that would avoid any head-to-head confrontation. An agreement was reached that included a cease fire, which most observers are describing as a surrender by Erdogan that accepted all Russian-Syrian army gains in the Idlib Province, but it remains to be seen what exactly will be sustainable. There have been subsequent reports that have included claims of the downing of two Syrian aircraft and several helicopters.
The United States for its part has been sending mixed messages to appeals from the Turks for support. Donald Trump has had an on and off again relationship with Erdogan and he has more-or-less approved the Turkish presence in the border areas and continues to endorse something like regime change in Damascus. Though it seems that at least for the moment the danger of a major armed conflict between Russia and Turkey has faded, many believe that more incidents are likely and could easily escalate.
And there is a truly dangerous connection in that Turkey and the United States are, of course, members of NATO. Under Article 5 of the NATO treaty, an attack on any one member is considered to be the same as an attack on all members and all members must respond by coming to the defense of the victim of the attack. Turkey has asked the United States for Patriot missiles to defend its troops on the ground in Syria. It has also called for NATO to enforce a no-fly zone in Idlib Province, air space that is currently controlled by Russia. Omer Celik, speaking for Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party, said that in his government’s view “The attack against Turkey is an attack against NATO. NATO should have been with Turkey, not starting today but from before these events.” Washington, for its part, has reportedly offered to provide Patriot batteries if the Turks do not deploy their recently purchased Russian built S-400 missiles. Trump has otherwise deferred to the Europeans for any direct assistance and NATO has not entertained seriously any no-fly commitment.
Under normal circumstances and in a normal world, the very idea that a member of a defensive alliance should be able to attack another country, as Turkey has done in Syria, and then demand assistance from other members of the alliance when the attacked country fights back would be a non-starter. But the problem with that kind of rational thinking is that NATO has long since ceased to be a defensive alliance. Both as an alliance and also acting through several of its member states, it has been actively involved in wars that have nothing to do with defense of Europe or of the Atlantic relationship with Washington. NATO troops are currently in Afghanistan and have also been in Iraq, Syria and Libya. Alliance members including the U.S. fought in Bosnia and Kosovo.
And there are the usual head cases on the American side also demanding action against Russia and Syria. Senator Marco Rubio of Florida tweeted that “The prospects of a direct military confrontation between Turkey & Russia in Syria are very high & increasing by the hour… [Erdogan] is on the right side here. Putin & Assad are responsible for this horrific humanitarian catastrophe.”
The American ambassador to NATO Kay Bailey Hutchison told reporters “This is a big development, and our alliance is with Turkey, it is not with Russia. We want Turkey to understand that we are the ones that they’ve been allied with.”
The United States has further complicated the game through a recent visit made by the entourages of two senior U.S. officials who visited Syria’s Idlib on March 3rd and pledged $108 million aid for Syrian civilians, hours after Turkey downed its second Syrian warplane in the province. Who exactly would receive the money and how it would be distributed was, inevitably, not immediately clear.
The two diplomats slipped over the border from Turkey with the connivance of Ankara and several Syrian “resistance” groups. They conspicuously met with the so-called White Helmets, a group that claims to be involved in nonpartisan humanitarian rescue missions but which really is affiliated with terrorists, most notably the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), which is affiliated with al-Qaeda. HTS is the principal terrorist group operating in Idlib.
The group of American diplomats was headed by U.S. representative to the United Nations Kelly Craft, along with U.S. Special Envoy for Syria James Jeffrey. It was the first visit by American diplomats to Idlib. Craft announced that the aid package was for “the people of Syria in response to the ongoing crisis caused by Assad regime, Russian, and Iranian forces”. Jeffrey struck a more directly belligerent pose, saying that Washington would be providing ammunition in addition to the humanitarian assistance. “Turkey is a NATO ally. Much of the military uses American equipment. We will make sure that equipment is ready and usable.”
U.S. policy in Syria serves no American interest, but both Craft and Jeffrey are well known to be in the pocket of Israel. Craft, a big time GOP donor, who, in her fifteen months spent as Ambassador to Canada was remarkable for flying back to the U.S. from Ottawa 128 times, 70 of which were to her home in Kentucky. All on the government dime even though she is an extremely wealthy woman.
Craft left Canada when she replaced the arch Zionist Nikki Haley at the U.N. She emphasized in her confirmation hearing before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that she would “fight against anti-Israel resolutions and actions by the U.N. and its affiliated agencies.” She also “made a case for America returning to a leading role at Turtle Bay [the U.N.] as a way of protecting Israel… Without U.S. leadership, our partners and allies would be vulnerable to bad actors at the U.N. This is particularly true in the case of Israel, which is the subject of unrelenting bias and hostility in U.N. venues. The United States will never accept such bias, and if confirmed I commit to seizing every opportunity to shine a light on this conduct, call it what it is, and demand that these outrageous practices finally come to an end.”
Jeffrey is even more the zealot. His full title is as United States Special Representative for Syria Engagement and the Special Envoy for the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIL. He is, generally speaking, a hardliner politically, closely aligned with Israel and regarding Iran as a hostile destabilizing force in the Middle East region. He was between 2013 and 2018 Philip Solondz distinguished fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP), a think tank that is a spin-off of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). He is currently a WINEP “Outside Author” and go-to “expert.”
Professor John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago and Stephen Walt, academic dean at Harvard University ‘s Kennedy School of Government, describe WINEP as “part of the core” of the Israel Lobby in the U.S. They examined the group on pages 175-6 in their groundbreaking book The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy and concluded as follows:
“Although WINEP plays down its links to Israel and claims that it provides a ‘balanced and realistic’ perspective on Middle East issues, this is not the case. In fact, WINEP is funded and run by individuals who are deeply committed to advancing Israel’s agenda … Many of its personnel are genuine scholars or experienced former officials, but they are hardly neutral observers on most Middle East issues and there is little diversity of views within WINEP’s ranks.”
Jeffrey set the tone for his term of office shortly after being appointed by President Trump back in August 2018 when he argued that the Syrian terrorists were “. . . not terrorists, but people fighting a civil war against a brutal dictator.” Jeffrey, who must have somehow missed a lot of the head chopping and rape going on, subsequently traveled to the Middle East and stopped off in Israel to meet Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. It has been suggested that Jeffrey received his marching orders during the visit.
So, Trump bleats incessantly about how he wants to withdraw the U.S. from the senseless wars that it has been drawn into but at the same time his State Department sends two Zionist hardliners to Syria on a semi-secret mission to support a policy of regime change in Damascus while also providing aid that will inevitably fall into the pockets of an al-Qaeda linked terrorist group. And ammunition will also be forthcoming for the invading Turks to shoot Syrians, Russians and Iranians. If anyone is seriously interested in what is wrong with U.S. foreign policy, the activity of Craft and Jeffrey might serve as a decent case study on how not to do it. Unless, of course, the actual objective is to screw things up and involve the United States in quarrels that it could easily avoid.
Philip M. Giraldi is a former CIA counter-terrorism specialist and military intelligence officer who served nineteen years overseas in Turkey, Italy, Germany, and Spain. He was the CIA Chief of Base for the Barcelona Olympics in 1992 and was one of the first Americans to enter Afghanistan in December 2001. Phil is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a Washington-based advocacy group that seeks to encourage and promote a U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East that is consistent with American values and interests.
Featured Video
Weaponized Journalism: 2021 Sayer Ji Interview with NPR
or go to
Aletho News Archives – Video-Images
Book Review
The Zeolite Book — First Edition, 2026, Paperback
The volcanic mineral medicine will not patent — for the toxic burden medicine will not name
Lies are Unbekoming – October 30, 2026
Zeolite is old. It is in Roman concrete that has held for two thousand years. It’s in the water filters of ancient cisterns. It’s in the stomachs of Pacific livestock whose keepers knew, somehow, that this grey crumbling rock made the animals healthier. It’s in Soviet clinical protocols from the 1960s. It’s in the standard emergency response to the Chernobyl explosion.
In 1986, after the Chernobyl reactor failure, the Soviet Union manufactured and distributed natural zeolite at industrial scale — for soil remediation, for livestock feed, for human consumption, for the cleanup itself. Karl Hecht, who had been director of the Institute for Experimental and Clinical Pathophysiology at the Charité of Humboldt University Berlin, spent the six decades after that building the clinical research base — on silicon’s role in human health, on zeolite’s clinical safety, on its applications in ageing. In 2018, Pavelić and colleagues published a comprehensive clinical safety review of natural clinoptilolite in Frontiers in Pharmacology. In 2019, Mastinu analysed its binding affinities. In the Western medical literature, these works sit largely uncited.
What has not been treated at book length, until now, is how a volcanic mineral with six decades of Soviet clinical work behind it, two major peer-reviewed Western reviews, and ongoing clinical use across the former Eastern Bloc, remains almost entirely absent from Western medical practice — and what the toxic burden it’s meant to address actually is.
The Zeolite Book gathers the Soviet clinical record, the Western peer-reviewed studies, three contemporary practitioner voices, and three serious counterviews into one honest treatment. That’s why the book runs to seven appendices. 288 pages, four parts, three practitioner voices, three counterviews, seven appendices. The honest treatment is the argument.
Blog Roll
Aletho News- London tourism expo promotes Israeli agency linked to theft of Palestinian land
- Dockworkers launch global strike against Israeli and US military shipments
- Europe facing gas price shock – Gazprom chief
- Ukraine continues recruiting people with disabilities
- Weaponized Journalism: 2021 Sayer Ji Interview with NPR
- Beyond Netanyahu: what Israel’s election means for Palestinians
- Lithuania plans universal conscription
- Lies, Damn Lies, and Ukraine News
- Financial Times rejects Nordic demands to correct Putin call story – media
- The Case for Less Unity in Europe
- If Americans Knew
- An error has occurred; the feed is probably down. Try again later.
- No Tricks Zone
- Germany’s Green Energy Transition Becoming Increasingly Expensive…Another 6 Trillion Euros!
- Sudden Stratospheric Warming, Powerful El Niño Combination May Lead To Extreme Europe Cold, Energy Crisis!
- Two New Studies Find Thwaites Glacier Melt Cannot Be Driven By Human Activity Or A Warming Ocean
- E-Cars Reduce CO2 Emissions By Only 41% Compared To Internal Combustion Engine Vehicles
- Predictions Made By Renowned Climate Professor Over Past Decades Have Been Proven To Be Poor
- New Study Suggests Large Regions Of The Pacific Ocean Have Been Cooling For The Last 80 Years
- Germany’s Green Energy Debacle: High Energy Costs Force Kahla Porzellan to Close After 182 Years!
- New Study: 50 Years Of The Most Aggressive ‘Net Zero’ Policies Can Only Affect The Global Climate By 0.03°C
- US September “Heat” Was No Record…Many Records Set Decades Ago
- Latest European Green Energy Debacle; Portugal’s Largest Flagship Solar Park Insolvent!
