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US posts $15mn bounty for help with ‘disrupting’ finances of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps

RT | September 4, 2019

The US government has offered a reward of up to $15 million for information that helps “disrupt” the financial operations of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), while slapping a new round of sanctions on Tehran.

The lavish bounty was announced on Wednesday as part of the Rewards for Justice program, run by the State Department, which offers financial incentives for information on alleged “terrorist activities” that target the US. The IRGC, an elite branch of Tehran’s military, was designated by Washington as a terrorist organization in April.

The US State Department is seeking information on any companies and individuals who allegedly help the IRGC with “evading US and international sanctions” as well as those who merely “do business” with the military unit.

Apart from issuing the bounty notice, Washington has issued a new sanctions package against an “oil-for-terror” network – as they put it – allegedly run by the IRGC. The sanctions broadside targeted 16 companies and nine individuals, allegedly involved in supplying Iranian oil to Syria in breach of US sanctions. Six oil tankers linked to such activities were also placed on the list.

The new round of sanctions and the bounty offer were lauded by top US officials, who gave themselves a pat on the back for taking action against the alleged network.

Washington will continue to impose new sanctions on the country to maintain “maximum pressure,” US special representative for Iran Brian Hook said, adding that “we are not looking to grant any exceptions or waivers.”

Such an approach effectively buries France’s idea to provide Tehran with a $15 billion credit line, suggested earlier by Foreign Minister Jean-Yves le Drian, who explicitly said that such a deal would require sanction waivers from the US. The proposed credit arrangement would be guaranteed by Iranian oil revenues and require Tehran to comply with the 2015 nuclear deal, known as the JCPOA, as well as to enter negotiations on regional security.

Tehran has repeatedly urged the EU countries to actually do something to save the 2015 agreement and secure sanctions relief from the US. Earlier on Wednesday, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani gave Europe two months to do so, promising to further rollback on its commitments under the JCPOA if this doesn’t happen.

September 4, 2019 Posted by | Wars for Israel | , , | Leave a comment

Imprisoned Stratfor hacker & WikiLeaks source moved to Virginia to ‘testify against Assange’

RT | September 4, 2019

Jeremy Hammond, who helped feed millions of emails from ‘private CIA’ Stratfor to WikiLeaks, has reportedly been moved to Virginia to testify before a grand jury, which he refuses to do, jeopardizing his early release from prison.

Hammond has been moved to the same Eastern District where whistleblower Chelsea Manning is currently being held for refusing to testify against Julian Assange, the Jeremy Hammond Support Committee revealed on Tuesday in a statement. While neither Hammond nor his supporters are certain of the nature of the summons, he pled guilty to hacking Stratfor in 2013 in order to avoid giving up information on his fellow activists, including those at WikiLeaks, and has no intention of doing so now.

“Jeremy pled guilty to put an end to the case against him. He pled guilty because he had no interest in cooperating with the government.”

While Hammond received the maximum 10 year sentence in exchange for his non-cooperating guilty plea, he was granted immunity from further prosecution in all other federal courts and was due to be released in December, having received a sentence reduction for participating in the Federal Bureau of Prisons’ Residential Drug Abuse Program. Transferring him from Memphis, Tennessee, where he was incarcerated, to Alexandria, Virginia, cuts short his participation in the program and guarantees he will serve at least another year in prison.

And he could be locked up much longer, given his refusal to testify, which will place him in the same legal limbo where Manning is currently entrapped. The former military analyst, imprisoned since May after having her sentence for leaking the classified military documents comprising the Iraq and Afghanistan War Logs to WikiLeaks commuted by former President Barack Obama, faces up to 18 months more prison time and nearly half a million dollars in fines for refusing to testify against Assange.

“Like brave grand jury resisters before him, including Chelsea Manning, Jeremy firmly believes that grand juries are repressive tools of the government, used to investigate and intimidate activist communities and are abused by prosecutors to gain access to intelligence to which they are not entitled,” the Support Committee’s statement continues, condemning “a clear pattern of targeting, isolating, and punishing outspoken truth-tellers and activists.”

Hammond, working with the online activist group Anonymous, hacked into Stratfor’s servers in 2011 and funneled over five million emails from the self-styled “private CIA” to WikiLeaks, including thousands which revealed details of the government’s pursuit of Assange and the organization he helped found. Assange is currently imprisoned in the UK and faces potential extradition to the US – specifically, the Eastern District of Virginia, which has never failed to convict a whistleblower. He is charged with multiple violations of the Espionage Act carrying a total of 175 years in prison.

September 4, 2019 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception | , | Leave a comment

UN calls out US, UK & France for complicity in Yemen war crimes

RT | September 4, 2019

The UN Human Rights Council slammed the US, UK and France for their complicity in alleged war crimes in Yemen by the Saudi-led coalition, warning that abetting such crimes by selling arms or other aid is also illegal.

“States that knowingly aid or assist parties to the conflict in Yemen in the commission of violations would be responsible for complicity in the relevant international humanitarian law violations,” the UNHRC’s Group of Eminent International and Regional Experts on Yemen declared in a lengthy report published on Tuesday.

“With the number of public reports alleging and often establishing serious violations of international humanitarian law no State can claim not to be aware of such violations being perpetrated in Yemen.”

The 274-page report enumerated possible war crimes committed by both sides in the conflict, including airstrikes and shelling, landmines, “siege-like tactics,” attacks on hospitals and other vital infrastructure, arbitrary arrests and executions, torture, and forced conscription of children into combat. The writers claimed to have forwarded the names of top military and political individuals from Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Yemen, and the Houthi movement to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights for further investigation and possible prosecution.

The UK and France fall under special scrutiny as signatories to the Arms Trade Treaty, which bars the sale of weapons if a country believes they will be used to commit “mass atrocities.” However, even non-parties to the ATT may face “criminal responsibility for aiding and abetting war crimes” since after five years of fighting “there can no longer be any excuses made for failure to take meaningful steps to address” the humanitarian crisis and international law violations taking place in Yemen.

The UK Court of Appeal ruled in June that the government had “made no attempt” to determine whether Saudi Arabia was using its weapons to violate international law, and while Secretary of State Liam Fox said he would suspend licenses for export to the Saudi coalition, the Department for International Trade said it would appeal the ruling. A rare bipartisan-supported bill to end weapons sales to Saudi Arabia by the US was vetoed in July by President Donald Trump, who complained it would “weaken America’s global competitiveness” and damage relationships with allies. And the French government hid the arms sales from its people entirely, then threatened the journalists who exposed the sales with arrest for publishing confidential information.

The UNHRC report also provided an update on the shocking scale of the humanitarian crisis, revealing that nearly a quarter of the Yemeni population was malnourished at the start of 2019, according to the Office of the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, with 230 of 333 districts at risk of famine and 24.1 million people in need of assistance merely to survive.

Also on rt.com:

‘Comical & tragic’ when US officials say arms sales to Saudis are about ‘exporting human rights’

September 4, 2019 Posted by | War Crimes | , , , , , | Leave a comment

‘Hostile news policy’: US-funded Arabic channel exposé unites Iraqi Sunnia & Shia v foreign meddling

RT | September 4, 2019

Iraq’s sectarian political scene is having a rare moment of unity, driven by an unlikely culprit. Recent reporting by a US-funded Middle Eastern news outlet has piqued claims of American meddling in Iraq’s internal affairs.

Alhurra, a US-based and -funded television channel that broadcasts to the Arab world, has landed in hot water with Iraq’s official media watchdog, as well as religious and political leaders, over a report alleging misuse of government funds among Sunni and Shia officials.

Rivals united in outrage

In a 12-minute documentary broadcast this weekend – titled “The Holy Persons of Sacred Corruption in Iraq” – Alhurra reported that Iraqi political figures were personally benefiting from the administration of religious sites and real estate deals involving state funds. The report also posited that Iraq’s highest religious authorities were involved in the corruption, including the Sunni Grand Mufti, Sheikh Mahdi al-Sumaidaie, as well as Shia leader Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani.

Responding to the exposé on Monday, Iraq’s media watchdog, the Communication and Media Commission (CMC), suspended Alhurra’s operations for three months, arguing the report “caused angry reactions in Iraqi public opinion, both official and popular,” and that the outlet sought to “undermine the position” of “highly respected” institutions.

The CMC also slammed Alhurra for reporting “accusations … as credible facts without corroboration from other impartial sources,” and threatened “a tougher punishment” if the “offense is repeated.”

Alhurra stood by its work in a statement on Monday, insisting the report was “fair, balanced and professional,” and added that individuals named in the report were given a chance to respond, “which they declined.”

But religious and political figures both Sunni and Shia lashed out at Alhurra, with some arguing the outlet’s reporting reflects American hostility toward Iraq.

Head of the powerful Shia militia Asaib Ahl al-Haq, Qais al-Khazali, said the Alhurra piece is “a dangerous indication of US foreign policy,” while the largely Shia paramilitary umbrella group Hashd al-Shaabi slammed the outlet for “a hostile news policy,” according to the Lebanese Daily Star.

Parliamentary speaker Mohammed al-Halbousi, who belongs to the Sunni Al-Hal political alliance, also accused the outlet of “abusing state and religious intuitions without checking for accuracy or facts,” according to the National.

Though none of the high profile figures presented any substantial factual challenge to Alhurra’s reporting, this is not the first time the outlet has come under scrutiny.

Perception mismanagement

Founded in 2004 by the US government to combat “negative images” of the United States in the Middle East, Alhurra has more often been a disaster of mismanagement than a slick propaganda outfit. A project of the US Agency for Global Media (USAGM), Alhurra survives on over $112 million in US government funding annually.

The USAGM – which has been described as the “US propaganda arm” – oversees a number of American-backed media projects, including several outlets intended for exclusive foreign consumption, such as Radio Free Europe, Radio Free Asia and Radio y Televisión Martí, which transmits in Spanish to Cuba. Until 2013, many of those stations were forbidden from broadcasting within the United States in order to protect US citizens from government disinformation disseminated abroad.

A joint report by 60 Minutes and ProPublica in 2008 found that American taxpayers had already dropped nearly $500 million propping up Alhurra in its first four years of operation, despite the fact that the outlet’s “reporters and commentators operate with little oversight.”

Alhurra’s first president, Brian Conniff, did not speak a word of Arabic – and therefore could not understand what his own agency was broadcasting – and had no prior experience in journalism, working previously as a government auditor. Conniff was finally replaced in 2017 by former American diplomat Alberto Fernandez, who reportedly does speak the language.

Before taking the job, Fernandez slammed Alhurra for putting “radical Shi’a Islamists” on its payroll, many of them not even Iraqi, and noted the US Embassy in Baghdad complained about the outlet year after year.

The joint investigation also found that Alhurra consisted of “largely foreign staff with little knowledge of the country whose values and policies they were hired to promote,” even as the US federal government continued to pour millions into its coffers. Starting with a $67 million budget in 2004, by 2009 the outlet was taking in $112 million, which it continues to receive every year, despite ongoing mismanagement.

Whether a sophisticated media shop designed to advance US interests in the Middle East, or a poorly-functioning, over-funded wreck of a government program, Alhurra, much like the USAGM’s other foreign media projects, is stirring up trouble abroad. Perhaps it is serving its purpose after all.

September 4, 2019 Posted by | Aletho News | , | Leave a comment

The Future of the Spectacle … or How the West Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Reality Police

By CJ Hopkins | Consent Factory, Inc. | September 3, 2019

If you want a vision of the future, don’t imagine “a boot stamping on a human face — for ever,” as Orwell suggested in 1984. Instead, imagine that human face staring mesmerized into the screen of some kind of nifty futuristic device on which every word, sound, and image has been algorithmically approved for consumption by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (“DARPA”) and its “innovation ecosystem” of “academic, corporate, and governmental partners.”

The screen of this futuristic device will offer a virtually unlimited range of “non-divisive” and “hate-free” content, none of which will falsify or distort the “truth,” or in any way deviate from “reality.” Western consumers will finally be free to enjoy an assortment of news, opinion, entertainment, and educational content (like this Guardian podcast about a man who gave birth, or MSNBC’s latest bombshell about Donald Trump’s secret Russian oligarch backers) without having their enjoyment totally ruined by discord-sowing alternative journalists like Aaron Maté or satirists like myself.

“Fake news” will not appear on this screen. All the news will be “authentic.” DARPA and its partners will see to that. You won’t have to worry about being “influenced” by Russians, Nazis, conspiracy theorists, socialists, populists, extremists, or whomever. Such Persons of Malicious Intent will still be able to post their content (because of “freedom of speech” and all that stuff), but they will do so down in the sewers of the Internet where normal consumers won’t have to see it. Anyone who ventures down there looking for it (i.e., such “divisive” and “polarizing” content) will be immediately placed on an official DARPA watchlist for “potential extremists,” or “potential white supremacists,” or “potential Russians.”

Once that happens, their lives will be over (i.e., the lives of the potentially extremist fools who have logged onto whatever dark web platform will still be posting essays like this, not the lives of the Persons of Malicious Intent, who never had any lives to begin with, and who by that time will probably be operating out of some heavily armed, off-the-grid compound in Idaho). Their schools, employers, and landlords will be notified. Their photos and addresses will be published online. Anyone who ever said two words to them (or, God help them, appears in a photograph with them) will have 24 hours to publicly denounce them, or be placed on DARPA’s watchlist themselves.

Meanwhile, up where the air is clean, Western consumers will sit in their cubicles, or stagger blindly down the sidewalk like zombies, or come barrel-assing at you on their pink corporate scooters, staring down at the screens of their devices, where normal reality will be unfolding. They will stare at their screens at their dinner tables, in restaurants, in bed, and everywhere else. Every waking hour of their lives will be spent consuming the all-consuming, smiley, happy, global capitalist Spectacle, every empty moment of which will be monitored and pre-approved by DARPA.

What a relief that will finally be, not to have to question anything, or wonder what is real and what isn’t. When the corporate media tell us the Russians hacked an election, or the Vermont power grid, or are blackmailing the president with an FSB pee-tape, or that the non-corporate media are all “propaganda peddlers,” or that the Labour Party is a hive of anti-Semites, or that some boogeyman has WMDs, or is yanking little babies out of their incubators, or gratuitously gassing them, or attacking us with crickets, or that someone secretly met with Julian Assange in the Ecuadorian embassy, or that we’re being attacked by Russian spy whales, and suddenly self-radicalized Nazi terrorists, or it’s time for the “International Community” to humanitarianly intervene because “our house is burning,” and our world is on fire, and there are “concentration camps,” and a “coup in Great Britain” … or whatever ass-puckering apocalyptic panic the global capitalist ruling classes determine they need to foment that day, we will know that this news has been algorithmically vetted and approved by DARPA and its corporate, academic, and government partners, and thus, is absolutely “real” and “true,” or we wouldn’t be seeing it on the screen of our devices.

If you think this vision is science fiction, or dystopian satire, think again. Or read this recent article in Bloomberg, “U.S. Unleashes Military to Fight Fake News, Disinformation.” Here’s the lede to get you started …

“Fake news and social media posts are such a threat to U.S. security that the Defense Department is launching a project to repel ‘large-scale, automated disinformation attacks’ … the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) wants custom software that can unearth fakes hidden among more than 500,000 stories, photos, video and audio clips. If successful, the system after four years of trials may expand to detect malicious intent and prevent viral fake news from polarizing society …”

What could be more reassuring than the knowledge that DARPA and its corporate partners will be scanning the entire Internet for content created with “malicious intent,” or which has the potential to “polarize” society, and making sure we never see that stuff? If they can’t do it, I don’t know who can. They developed the Internet, after all. I’m not exactly sure how they did it, but Yasha Levine wrote a book about it, which I think we’re still technically allowed to read.

Anyway, according to the Bloomberg article, DARPA and its corporate partners won’t have the system up and running in time for the 2020 elections, so the Putin-Nazis will probably win again. Which means we are looking at four more years of relentless Russia and fascism hysteria, and fake news and divisive content hysteria, and anti-Semitism and racism hysteria, and … well, basically, general apocalyptic panic over anything and everything you can possibly think of.

Believe me, I know, that prospect is exhausting … but the global capitalist ruling classes need to keep everyone whipped up into a shrieking apoplectic frenzy over anything other than global capitalism until they can win the War on Populism and globally implement the New Normality, after which the really serious reality policing can finally begin.

I don’t know, call me crazy, or a Person of Malicious Intent, but I think I’d prefer that boot in the face.

#

September 3, 2019 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Russophobia, Timeless or most popular | , | Leave a comment

Is the U.S. Government the Enemy of the People? America’s Lost Liberties, Post-9/11

By John W. Whitehead | The Rutherford Institute | September 3, 2019

Take heed, America.

Our losses are mounting with every passing day.

What began with the post-9/11 passage of the USA Patriot Act  has snowballed into the eradication of every vital safeguard against government overreach, corruption and abuse.

The rights embodied in the Constitution, which have been steadily chipped away at, undermined, eroded, whittled down, and generally discarded, are now on life support.

Free speech, the right to protest, the right to challenge government wrongdoing, due process, a presumption of innocence, the right to self-defense, accountability and transparency in government, privacy, press, sovereignty, assembly, bodily integrity, representative government: all of these and more have become casualties in the government’s war on the American people, a war that has grown more pronounced since 9/11.

Since the towers fell, the U.S. government has posed a greater threat to our freedoms than any terrorist, extremist or foreign entity ever could. Indeed, the U.S. government—the government that was supposed to be a “government of the people, by the people, for the people”—has become the enemy of the people.

This is a government that has grown corrupt, greedy, power-hungry and tyrannical over the course of the past 240-plus years.

This is a government that is laying the groundwork to weaponize the public’s biomedical data as a convenient means by which to penalize certain “unacceptable” social behaviors. Incredibly, as part of a proposal being considered by the Trump Administration, a new government agency HARPA (a healthcare counterpart to the Pentagon’s research and development arm DARPA) will take the lead in identifying and targeting “signs” of mental illness or violent inclinations among the populace by using artificial intelligence to collect data from Apple Watches, Fitbits, Amazon Echo and Google Home.

This is a government that railroads taxpayers into financing government programs whose only purpose is to increase the power and wealth of the corporate elite.

This is a government—a warring empire—that forces its taxpayers to pay for wars abroad that serve no other purpose except to expand the reach of the military industrial complex.

This is a government whose wall-to-wall surveillance has given rise to a suspect society in which the burden of proof has been reversed such that Americans are now assumed guilty until or unless they can prove their innocence.

This is a government that treats its people like second-class citizens who have no rights, and is working overtime to stigmatize and dehumanize any and all who do not fit with the government’s plans for this country.

This is a government that uses free speech zones, roving bubble zones and trespass laws to silence, censor and marginalize Americans and restrict their First Amendment right to speak truth to power.

This is a government that adopts laws that criminalize Americans for otherwise lawful activities such as holding religious studies at home, growing vegetables in their yard, and collecting rainwater.

This is a government that persists in renewing the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which allows the president and the military to arrest and detain American citizens indefinitely.

This is a government that saddled us with the Patriot Act, which opened the door to all manner of government abuses and intrusions on our privacy.

This is a government that, in direct opposition to the dire warnings of those who founded our country, has allowed the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to establish a standing army by way of programs that transfer surplus military hardware to local and state police.

This is a government that has provided cover to police when they shoot and kill unarmed individuals just for standing a certain way, or moving a certain way, or holding something—anything—that police could misinterpret to be a gun, or igniting some trigger-centric fear in a police officer’s mind that has nothing to do with an actual threat to their safety.

This is a government that has allowed private corporations to get rich at taxpayer expense by locking people up for life for non-violent crimes.

This is a government that has created a Constitution-free zone within 100 miles inland of the border around the United States, paving the way for Border Patrol agents to search people’s homes, intimately probe their bodies, and rifle through their belongings, all without a warrant. Nearly 66% of Americans (2/3 of the U.S. population, 197.4 million people) now live within that 100-mile-deep, Constitution-free zone.

This is a government that is operating in the negative on every front: it’s spending far more than what it makes (and takes from the American taxpayers) and it is borrowing heavily (from foreign governments and Social Security) to keep the government operating and keep funding its endless wars abroad. Meanwhile, the nation’s sorely neglected infrastructure—railroads, water pipelines, ports, dams, bridges, airports and roads—is rapidly deteriorating.

This is a government that has empowered police departments to make a profit at the expense of those they have sworn to protect through the use of asset forfeiture laws, speed traps, and red light cameras.

This is a government whose gun violence—inflicted on unarmed individuals by battlefield-trained SWAT teams, militarized police, and bureaucratic government agents trained to shoot first and ask questions later—poses a greater threat to the safety and security of the nation than any mass shooter.

This is a government that has allowed the presidency to become a dictatorship operating above and beyond the law, regardless of which party is in power.

This is a government that treats dissidents, whistleblowers and freedom fighters as enemies of the state.

This is a government that justifies all manner of government tyranny and power grabs in the so-called name of national security, national crises and national emergencies.

This is a government that exports violence worldwide, with one of this country’s most profitable exports being weapons.

This is a government that routinely undermines the Constitution and rides roughshod over the rights of the citizenry, eviscerating individual freedoms so that its own powers can be expanded.

This is a government that believes it has the authority to search, seize, strip, scan, spy on, probe, pat down, taser, and arrest any individual at any time and for the slightest provocation, the Constitution be damned.

In other words, this is not a government that believes in, let alone upholds, freedom.

So where does that leave us?

As always, the first step begins with “we the people.”

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, our power as a citizenry comes from our ability to agree and stand united on certain freedom principles that should be non-negotiable.

September 3, 2019 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Timeless or most popular | , | Leave a comment

Japan won’t join US-led maritime coalition in Gulf: Report

MEMO | September 3, 2019

Japan will not join the United States in a security mission to protect merchant vessels passing through key Middle Eastern waterways and will instead consider deploying its military independently, the Yomiuri newspaper reported on Tuesday, Reuters reports.

Japan has been reluctant to join the United States, its most important ally, in its efforts to set up the coalition because of its close economic ties with Iran, a major supplier of oil.

Citing unidentified government sources, the Yomiuri said Japan was considering a plan to send its Maritime Self-Defense Force (SDF) on information-gathering missions in the areas around the Strait of Hormuz and Bab al-Mandab shipping lane between Yemen, Djibouti and Eritrea.

It would also consider including the Strait of Hormuz in the SDF’s sphere of activity if Iran agrees, the paper said.

Iran has denounced US efforts to set up the coalition and says countries in the region can protect waterways and work towards signing a non-aggression pact.

The Japanese government is set to make a final decision, including whether the plan is feasible, after the United Nations General Assembly later this month, the Yomiuri said.

Global commodity trading has been rocked in recent months by the seizure of a British tanker and a series of attacks on international merchant vessels that the US and Britain have blamed on Iran. Tehran denies involvement.

Britain last month became the first US ally to announce its participation, although most European countries have been reluctant to sign up for fear of adding to the tension in the region.

September 3, 2019 Posted by | Militarism | , , | Leave a comment

Iran’s Rouhani Rules Out Any Bilateral Talks with US

Al-Manar | September 3, 2019

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said Tuesday that holding bilateral talks with the United States is not on the table.

“We’ve said it before time and again, and we say it again: We have no intention to hold bilateral talks with the United States. We never did and never will. It has been the case in the past year and a half, and even in previous years. There have been calls for talks, but we never responded to them,” the Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said in a Parliament session on Tuesday.

Rouhani was attending the session to defend his two candidates for the ministry of education and the ministry of tourism and cultural heritage.

Stressing that holding bilateral talks with the US is not on the table, Rouhani added “we said that the US, as part of the 5+1, held talks with us and we took part in the talks. If the US lifts all of its sanctions against Iran, whether it returns to the JCPOA or not, it does not matter to us, but if it lifts all sanctions, it is still possible for the US to be part of the 5+1; granted that it first removes all sanctions.”

“When we talk about negotiations, we only mean it under the situation where all sanctions have been lifted; that is, the situation we previously had under the JCPOA. Our stance is clear,” Rouhani stressed.

Tensions started to build up between the US and Iran after President Trump withdrew Washington from the 2015 nuclear deal, officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) in May 2018, and imposed sanctions against Tehran in a bid to restrict the country’s trade transactions with the world. The Trump administration has been making empty calls for talks, but the Islamic Republic stresses that as long as sanctions are in place and the US refuses to return to the JCPOA, negotiations will be meaningless.

“Our progress is a testament to the fact that resisting [against pressure] works. On the other hand, an active diplomacy can pave the way for us. We have never closed the doors of diplomacy and never will do so…we don’t believe that only one of these two tools should be used,” said Rouhani.

About Iran’s measures to scale down commitments to the JCPOA, Rouhani said “If the remaining signatories to the nuclear deal can live up to a part of their commitments, we may reconsider reducing our commitments. But if they fail to take any solid step, we will definitely take the third step in a few days.”

As a first step, Iran increased its enriched uranium stockpile to beyond the 300 kilograms set by the JCPOA. Next, it announced that it had begun enriching uranium to purity rates beyond the JCPOA-limit of 3.76 percent.

Rouhani went on to add, “the further we move along this path, it may make solving the issue more difficult, but since our steps are designed in a way that we can return to the starting point at any given time we desire, it will not take any time, and we will continue our talks even after taking the third step.”

“The basis of our talks with the European side is that we want them to preorder our oil and the revenues to be in our possession. This will ease the situation for us to decide against making more cuts to our commitments to the JCPOA,” Rouhani added.

“We haven’t reached a final agreement yet, but negotiations are still underway. If we fail to reach a conclusive result by Thursday, we will announce the third stage of our cuts to the JCPOA commitments,” Rouhani concluded.

Some officials have noted that Iran’s measures for the third step may include installing a new generation of centrifuges, increasing the stockpile of enriched uranium, or restoring the Arak heavy water reactor to its previous design.

September 3, 2019 Posted by | Aletho News | , | Leave a comment

It’s Necessary to Find Way to Counter US, Otherwise Nuclear Deal Won’t Be Only Loss: Zarif

Sputnik – September 3, 2019

Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif said on Monday that Washington’s actions regarding the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action are a blow to international law, and if the accord is not preserved, the nuclear deal “will not be the only loss”.

On Sunday, Tehran said it would make a third reduction of commitments agreed to under the deal and that this round would be the harshest yet. A spokesman for the Iranian government, Ali Rabiei, said on Monday that Iran would wait until Thursday for the deal’s signatories to take steps toward implementing the accord and make a decision on whether to further scrap its commitments depending on these actions.

“America’s actions are not only a blow to the JCPOA, but to the whole framework of international law. That is why, if we do not find a way to counteract the United States, the JCPOA will not be the only loss. Therefore, we share the same views with Russia on this issue”, Zarif told the Rossiya 24 broadcaster.

Earlier in the day, Zarif said that Tehran would return to full implementation of the deal, if there was progress in negotiations on the implementation by Europeans of their part of the agreement.

The JCPOA was signed in 2015 by Iran, China, France, Germany, Russia, the United Kingdom, the United States, and the European Union. It required Iran to scale back its nuclear programme and severely downgrade its uranium reserves in exchange for sanctions relief. In 2018, the United States abandoned its conciliatory policy on Iran, withdrawing from the JCPOA and hitting Iranian petroleum industries with sanctions.

September 3, 2019 Posted by | Aletho News | , , , | Leave a comment

Israel’s Many Wars

Escalating could be intended to involve the United States

By Philip Giraldi • Unz Review • September 3, 2019

Two years ago I wrote an article entitled “America’s Jews Are Driving America’s Wars.” Though I made clear in the piece that I was writing about specific, identifiable Jews who fund and staff the think-tanks and foundations that make up the Israel Lobby, I was immediately fired by the Editor of The American Conservative (TAC) magazine and website, a timid little man who had been trying to get rid of me for some time. He evidently wished to do so because I did not share his “restraint” in my allusions to Jewish power in the United States and was particularly incensed over my suggestion that when Zionist propagandists like Bill Kristol appear on television the network should be required to display a warning label under the picture advising that Kristol was toxic.

As I had been writing for TAC for fifteen years and had been regarded as very popular among the magazine’s supporters, my dismissal was noted by many. I therefore followed up with a second article entitled “How I got fired,” which, inter alia, noted that Pat Buchanan, the TAC co-founder, had pretty much written the same thing that I did back in 2003 in a famous essay entitled “Whose War?”, though he had definitely been more polite than I was.

Pat Buchanan continues to be one of the few publicly visible political analysts currently active who dares to tell it like it is when it comes to Israel’s power in America. His article last week “Will Israel’s War Become America’s War” as always gets to the heart of the problem, i.e. that the completely contrived “special relationship” with Israel could easily lead the United States into another totally unnecessary war or even a series of wars in the Middle East.

Pat starts with “President Donald Trump, who canceled a missile strike on Iran after the shoot-down of a U.S. Predator drone to avoid killing Iranians, may not want a war. But the same cannot be said of Bibi Netanyahu.” He observes that Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu is facing re-election on September 17th, and though most polls indicate that he will win, the opposition to him is strong based on his personal corruption and his pandering to the country’s most extreme right-wing parties. So Bibi is concerned that he might lose and even go to jail and there is nothing like a little war to make a leader look strong and righteous, so he is lashing out at all his neighbors in hopes that one or more of them will be drawn into what would be for Israel, given its massive military superiority, a manageable confrontation.

Buchanan sums up Netanyahu’s recent escalation, writing that on “Saturday, Israel launched a night attack on a village south of Damascus to abort what Israel claims was a plot by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards’ Quds Force… Sunday, two Israeli drones crashed outside the media offices of Hezbollah in Beirut. Israel then attacked a base camp of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command in north Lebanon. Monday, Israel admitted to a strike on Iranian-backed militias of the Popular Mobilization Forces in Iraq. And Israel does not deny responsibility for last month’s attacks on munitions dumps and bases of pro-Iran militias [also] in Iraq. Israel has also confirmed that, during Syria’s civil war, it conducted hundreds of strikes against pro-Iranian militias and ammunition depots to prevent the transfer of missiles to Hezbollah in Lebanon.”

So, Israel has staged literally hundreds of attacks against targets in Lebanon, Syria and now Iraq while it is also at the same time shooting scores of unarmed demonstrators inside Gaza every Friday. Netanyahu has also threatened both perennial foe Iran and the Houthi rebels in Yemen. As the Jewish state is not at war with any of those countries it is engaging in war crimes. Both Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Force are vowing revenge.

Pat Buchanan goes on to make the case that Netanyahu is willy-nilly pulling the United States into a situation from which there is no exit. Indeed, one might well conclude that the trap has already been sprung as the Trump Administration is reflexively blaming Israel’s actions on Iran. The Jewish state’s escalation produced a telephone call to Bibi by American Secretary of State Mike Pompeo promising that the United States would unconditionally support Israel. Vice President Mike Pence also joined in, boasting of a “great conversation” with Netanyahu and tweeting that “The United States fully supports Israel’s right to defend itself from imminent threats. Under President @realDonaldTrump, America will always stand with Israel!”

So, if a war in the Middle East does begin one can count on a number of developments in Washington, all of which favor Netanyahu. As Pompeo and Pence have made clear, the Trump Administration already accepts that whatever Israel does is fully justified and there are even reports that the White House will endorse Israeli annexation of all the illegal settlements on the West Bank at some point either before or immediately after the upcoming Knesset election to help Bibi. And don’t look for any dissent from even the most extreme views developing inside the White House or the State Department. The president has completely surrendered to the Israel Lobby while National Security Adviser John Bolton, Pence and Pompeo are all outspoken supporters of war with Iran. And nearly all the important government posts dealing with the Middle East are staffed by Jewish Zionists, to include the president’s son-in-law and two Donald Trump lawyers. The most recent addition to that sorry line-up is Peter Berkowitz, who has been appointed head of the Policy Planning Staff at State. Berkowitz studied at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and is co-founder and director of the “Israel Program on Constitutional Government.”

And Congress would also be singing the “amen” chorus in support of U.S. intervention to help the country it has ridiculously but nevertheless repeatedly described as America’s “best friend and closest ally.” The occupied mainstream media would echo that line, as would the millions of Christian Zionists and every one of the more than 600 American Jewish organizations that in one way, shape or form support Israel.

Buchanan warns that the U.S. could find itself in real trouble, particularly given the attacks on Iraq, where Washington still has 5,000 troops, hugely outnumbered by the local pro-Iranian militias. And American aircraft carriers could find themselves vulnerable if they dare to enter the Straits of Hormuz or Persian Gulf, where they would be in range of the Iranian batteries of anti-ship missiles. He concludes that a war for Israel that goes badly could cost Trump the election in 2020, asking “… have we ceded to Netanyahu something no nation should ever cede to another, even an ally: the right to take our country into a war of their choosing but not of ours?”

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.

September 2, 2019 Posted by | Wars for Israel | , , , , | Leave a comment

DARPA unleashes anti-meme militia to fight deepfakes & ‘polarizing’ viral content

By Helen Buyniski | RT | September 2, 2019

The Pentagon has unveiled an initiative to fight ‘large-scale, automated disinformation attacks’ by unearthing deep-fakes and other polarizing content – with the eventual goal of rooting out so-called ‘malicious intent’ entirely.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is seeking software capable of churning through a test set of half a million news stories, photos, and audio/video clips to target and neutralize potentially viral information before it spreads. In DARPA jargon, the aim is to “automatically detect, attribute, and characterize falsified multi-modal media to defend against large-scale, automated disinformation attacks.”  “Polarizing viral content,” however, includes inflammatory truths, and the program’s ultimate goal seems to be to stamp out dissent.

© DARPA

The Semantic Forensics program will scan news stories and social media posts with a barrage of algorithms in the hope of identifying inconsistencies that could mark a story as fake. The desired program will not just identify a meme as inauthentic – it will identify the source of that meme, the alleged intent behind it, and predict the impact of its spread.

To hear them tell it, the Pentagon just wants to even the playing field between the ‘good guys’ – the fake-hunters pursuing the cause of truth in media – and the ‘bad guys’ sowing discord one slowed-down Nancy Pelosi speech at a time. But the Pentagon’s targets aren’t limited to deepfakes, the bogeyman-of-the-month being used to justify this unprecedented military intrusion into the social media and news realm, or fake news at all. If the program is successful after four years of trials, it will be expanded to target all “malicious intent” – a possibility that should send chills down the spine of any journalist who’s ever disagreed with the establishment narrative.

To adequately test the program, the Pentagon has to spike its array of 500,000 test stories with 5,000 convincing fakes, some of which could conceivably make their way into the “live” news stream – although the mainstream media has not exactly had trouble generating false stories on its own in recent weeks. MSNBC’s wholly unverified and still incompletely-retracted “Russian cosigners” fiction and the scare story that the Trump administration would end birthright citizenship for the children of US service members born overseas both took social media by storm before the fact-checkers could boot up their computers.

And the government itself, including the Pentagon, has an extensive history of running fake social media profiles to collect data on persons of interest, including through the NSA’s JTRIG information-war program revealed in the Snowden documents. Agents regularly deploy reputational attacks against dissidents using false information. Fake identities are used to cajole unsuspecting individuals into collaborating in fake FBI “terror” plots, a phenomenon which might once have been called entrapment but is merely business as usual in post-9/11 America.

© DARPA

Which begs the question – how will DARPA handle the malicious falsehoods generated by “friendly” media? This, it would seem, is where the “impact” and “intent” fields come in – fakes from “trusted sources” will be let through, while fakes (and real stories) designed to “undermine key individuals and organizations” will be terminated before they have an impact. When “disinformation” is redefined to include all potentially polarizing stories that don’t conform to the establishment narrative, reality is discarded as so much fake news and replaced with Pentagon-approved pablum.

Helen Buyniski is an American journalist and political commentator.

September 2, 2019 Posted by | Full Spectrum Dominance, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , | Leave a comment

McCarthyism 101: Actors demand ‘blacklist’ of Trump supporters in Hollywood

RT | September 2, 2019

Entertainment industry figures could soon find themselves on a “blacklist” of Donald Trump supporters if Will & Grace co-stars Debra Messing and Eric McCormack have their way. Have we reached peak neo-McCarthyism?

The pair are demanding that the Hollywood Reporter prints a full list of attendees for an upcoming Trump fundraiser in Beverly Hills – an appeal which has drawn natural comparisons to the late Sen. Joe McCarthy’s efforts in the 1950s to rid Hollywood of “Communist sympathizers.”

The difference is, this time the calls for a political blacklist are coming from the Hollywood left itself.

McCormack was the first to request a list of “everyone attending” the upcoming Beverly Hills fundraiser, “so the rest of us can be clear about who we don’t wanna (sic) work with.” Messing soon joined in, tweeting that the “public has a right to know” who is supporting Trump.

The public does indeed have a “right to know” who a political candidate’s donors are – particularly when those donors are rich and powerful. This is exactly why campaign finance information is made publicly available online. Few would argue against this kind of transparency in a democracy, because voters are entitled to know how their elected officials are being influenced on policy matters.

The motivation behind Messing and McCormack’s blacklist, however, is entirely different and even sinister. They are not concerned that Hollywood celebrities might be influencing Trump on policy. It’s far simpler than that: They want those who disagree with their politics to be publicly shamed and punished for it.

Responding to criticism, Messing tweeted that she would be“happy to be listed” when she attends a political fundraiser. Why wouldn’t Trump supporters feel the same? she asked.

Perhaps because of people like you, Debra, who advocate for those people to be targeted for public harassment, intimidation and shaming while demanding professional repercussions for their political views.

If voters aren’t happy with their favorite celebrity’s political leanings, they are absolutely free to abstain from viewing their movies, listening to their music or reading their books etc. That’s the risk public figures take when they make their political views public.

The difference is, when Messing and McCormack contribute to the candidates of their choosing, no one demands that they are placed on a list to make it easier for their industry colleagues to avoid working with them.

The Trump blacklist is reminiscent of ‘Red Channels’ – a 1950s pamphlet on “communist influence in radio and television” that listed 150 industry figures whose loyalties to the US were questioned because of their leftist political beliefs. Red Channels was published in the right-wing Counterattack journal, the purpose of which was to “expose” the alleged communists to the wider public.

Messing and McCormack’s crusade is empty activism emblematic of the ‘Resistance’ celebrities. It requires no courage or effort to “expose” Trump supporters in Hollywood on Twitter. It does not help to produce political change – and serves purely as an egoic exercise for those who crave public approval and pats on the back from their colleagues.

Messing has become known for lobbing ad hominem Twitter attacks at those who fall foul of her own political agenda in a craven effort to fit in with the Hollywood crowd.

She has been one of those leading the attacks against fellow actress Susan Sarandon since 2016, delusionally attempting to pin blame on the vocal Bernie Sanders supporter for Hillary Clinton’s defeat. Messing’s disturbing obsession with Sarandon indicates she is more interested in grandstanding and condemning others for wrongthink than she is in engaging in substantial, impactful activism.

If ‘Resistance’ Hollywood was really interested in fighting Trump on the issues, they wouldn’t waste their time on vindictive witch hunts and personal vendettas, designed to plump up their own profiles.

There is a big difference between political donors having their names publicly available online in the appropriate context and actually demanding an industry blacklist with the express purpose of damaging careers and reputations.

That is the very definition of McCarthyism.

By Danielle Ryan, an Irish freelance writer based in Dublin.

September 2, 2019 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Progressive Hypocrite | | Leave a comment

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