The Bowdlerized Bush Obituaries
Something is missing
By Philip Giraldi • Unz Review • December 11, 2018
When George H.W. Bush died on November 30th, America’s two self-proclaimed newspapers of record The Washington Post and The New York Times were both quick off the mark in publishing what appeared to be definitive obituaries of the former president and statesman that had clearly been prepared in advance. The obit by The Times and that by The Post differed little in substance but they had one curious omission, i.e. President G.H.W. Bush’s eighteen month confrontation with Israel and its powerful domestic lobby.
In 1991-1992 President Bush engaged in a series of sharp exchanges with Israel and its American lobby over the issue of $10 billion in loan guarantees to the Jewish state to pay for the resettlement of Russian Jews, who were beginning to arrive in both Israel and the West in large numbers. Bush correctly assumed that the loans would in fact also subsidize the expansions of illegal settlements on the West Bank and in Gaza, which the U.S. government opposed, so he said “no” to the loans. After a series of increasingly acrimonious exchanges back and forth, Bush, facing election, withdrew his objections and the loans were approved, but he was the only U.S. president since John F. Kennedy to confront the Israel Lobby in any serious way. Kennedy was, of course, assassinated and Bush was defeated for reelection.
Both G.H.W. Bush and many other observers of the campaign and election believed the loss to Bill Clinton in 1992 was at least in part attributable to the actions of Israel and its friends. The conflict between Bush and the Israeli government backed up by the Israel Lobby and a number of congressmen and media outlets began in the spring of 1991. By September, President Bush refused to approve the loan guarantees as he believed that withholding approval of the money would give the U.S. leverage in peace negotiations with the Arabs that were planned for the end of the year in Madrid. Bush felt that Israeli Prime Minister was not taking the U.S. seriously because he believed that he would get what was wanted from Congress in any event without stopping settlement construction or having to concede anything to the Palestinians. There was also a distinct possibility that the Israelis would not bother to participate in Madrid without some kind of possible financial inducement.
Bush fought hard against the Israeli government and the thousands of American Jews plus their organizations that mobilized against him. Thomas Dine, Executive Director of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) declared that the day when Bush rejected the loan guarantees would prove to be “a day that lives in infamy for the American pro-Israeli community.” Sentiment against the president in the Jewish community was so intense that many prominent American Jews to this day consider any nostalgia towards the man or his presidency to be an expression of anti-Semitism.
Bush did not roll over. He famously called a press conference in which he said: “We’re up against very strong and effective, sometimes, groups that go up to the Hill. I heard today there were something like a thousand lobbyists on the Hill working the other side of the question. We’ve got one little guy down here doing it… The Constitution charges the president with the conduct of the nation’s foreign policy… There is an attempt by some in Congress to prevent the president from taking steps central to the nation’s security. But too much is at stake for domestic politics to take precedence over peace.”
In October Bush obtained a four-month delay in the loans, a defeat for the Israel Lobby, but the process dragged on into the following summer. On August 12, 1992, Bush, in trouble with his presidential campaign, finally approved the guarantees, which would enable the Israelis to borrow money at a low interest rate. Ironically, by June 1993, none of the borrowed money had been used and Israeli sources admitted that they have never needed the loans. The entire affair was actually a test of strength against the U.S. government, a competition that the Israelis and their friends had persevered in and won.
None of the tale of the Israeli loans appeared in either obituary. Nor was there any hint that Bush might have lost the election in part because pro-Israel forces worked actively against him. Voting tallies reveal a sharp shift in Jewish votes in swing districts to favor Clinton but the impact of Jewish money into the campaign as well as the anti-Bush media onslaught are inevitably more difficult to assess. The Times of Israel observed that “He made clear the cost of an American president waging a political fight against the vast coalition of pro-Israel lobbying groups. In doing so, he exposed the limits of what the world’s most powerful man can do…” George Herbert Walker Bush certainly believed that he was defeated by the Israeli government and its lobby, and he passed that judgment on to his son George W. who was careful not to anger the Israeli/Jewish constituency.
G.H.W. Bush was not the first American statesman to be on the receiving end of a bowdlerized obituary over the subject of Israel. In February 1995, former Senator William Fulbright was remembered by The Times without any reference to his views on the Middle East that had led to his failure to be reelected. As head of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Fulbright’s was a powerful voice that could not be ignored. He wrote: “So completely have many of our principal officeholders fallen under Israeli influence that they not only deny today the legitimacy of Palestinian national aspirations, but debate who more passionately opposes a Palestinian state. The lobby can just about tell the president what to do when it comes to Israel.”
In Fulbright’s case, the Lobby launched a media and personal vilification campaign against him when he came up for reelection in 1974. Late in the campaign, they came up with an opposition candidate Dale Bumpers whom they generously funded and Fulbright was defeated. His obituaries in the mainstream media would have the reader believe that none of that had actually happened.
Fulbright was followed a decade later by Senator Charles Percy of Illinois who was targeted by the Israeli Lobby because he had voted to approve the sale of AWACS planes to Saudi Arabia. His defeat was choreographed by the Israel Lobby and wealthy Jews and was henceforth called the “Percy Factor,” a warning to even the most established politicians never to trifle with Jewish power. Percy died in 2011 and he too received an obituary from The New York Times that ignored his involvement with the Middle East and the Israel Lobby.
The self-censorship by the media when the topic is Israel is remarkable, nowhere more evident than in the obituaries of leading politicians who had anything at all to do with the Middle East. George H.W. Bush, William Fulbright and Charles Percy all confronted the Israel Lobby because they were patriots aware of the terrible damage it was doing to the actual interests of the United States. In a sense, all three of them enjoyed some success but were eventually defeated by Israel and its friends within the American oligarchy. No other foreign policy lobby, indeed, no other lobby of any sort, has that kind of power in the United States. The obituary of G.H.W. Bush should serve as a warning, recalling a comment sometimes attributed to Voltaire: “To learn who rules over you, simply find out who you are not allowed to criticize.”
Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is www.councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is inform@cnionline.org.
Kremlin blasts Pompeo’s ‘squandering’ remark, says US military budget ‘enough to support all Africa’
RT | December 11, 2018
Mike Pompeo is in no position to claim that sending two strategic bombers to Venezuela was a “squandering” of public funds, Moscow countered, saying half of the US military budget is enough “to support all of Africa.”
The US Secretary of State produced a lengthy tirade on Twitter on Tuesday, claiming the arrival of two Russian Tu-160 bombers was an example of “two corrupt governments squandering public funds, and squelching liberty and freedom while their people suffer.” Later in the day, the remark was met with a sharp rebuke from the Kremlin.
“This is indeed very undiplomatic,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told journalists, adding, “we think it was an utterly inappropriate comment.” US President Donald Trump might “give his own assessment” of Pompeo’s statement as he did in the past, he said.
Saying that, Peskov made a veiled reference to President Trump’s inflammatory tweet in which he accused Rex Tillerson, Pompeo’s predecessor, of lacking the “mental capacity” to do his job. “He was dumb as a rock and I couldn’t get rid of him fast enough. He was lazy as hell,” Trump tweeted.
“As far as the ‘squandering’ is concerned, we don’t agree with that,” Peskov stated, noting that half of the bulky US military budget “would be enough to support all of Africa.”
The exchange happened a day after a pair of Tu-160s touched down at Venezuela’s Simon Bolivar International Airport on Monday. The bombers, nicknamed the ‘White Swans’ in the Russian military, had flown over 10,000 kilometers to reach the South American country. Their visit was part of “combined operational flights” with the Venezuelan Air Force, according to the Russian military.
That aside, it has recently emerged that Donald Trump has committed to a $750bn military budget, despite earlier labeling the $716bn previously allocated for defense ‘crazy’.
Above all, the mammoth US military budget has long been the largest in the world. According to the reputed Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), it dwarfs the defense expenditure of Russia, China, India, the UK, France, and Germany combined.
Trump commits to record $750bn defense budget days after saying $716bn was too much – reports
RT | December 10, 2018
Despite tweeting just last week that a $716bn defense budget was ‘crazy’, US President Donald Trump has reportedly reversed course and instead committed to the highest budget in history.
Trump’s unexpected decision to agree to Defense Secretary James Mattis’ request and propose an increased budget, relayed to several media outlets by anonymous officials, appears to stem from a meeting last Tuesday between Trump, Mattis and the chairmen of the House and Senate Armed Services committees.
It appears to have had an effect, considering that the day before the meeting, Trump tweeted that the previous year’s $716bn was “crazy” and a product of “a major and uncontrollable Arms Race” with China and Russia.
“It’s 750. Secretary Mattis secured that over lunch with the president,” an administration official told Politico, who first released the information, although an official announcement is yet to be made.
It’s unclear what exactly changed Trump’s mind. He had been floating a 5% reduction in defense spending, from the originally proposed (and already record-breaking) $733bn to $700bn – but defense officials had told him on Friday that anything less was “a risk”, and could have “disastrous consequences”.
“The Department is committed to ensuring our military remains the most lethal force in the world. We are working with OMB (Office of Management and Budget) to determine the department’s topline number,” a Defense Department spokesman told CNN.
The historically unprecedented numbers further inflate the US’ already world-largest defense budget. Washington is spending as much as the next 7 countries combined, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI). Last year, defense was one of the few increases in a budget which saw cuts to the EPA, Health and Human Services and education departments, to name just a few.
Injustice – The Story of the Holy Land Foundation Five
By Vacy Vlazna | OffGuardian | December 9, 2018
Survive prison I must, for when I come out I would hold no grudges, or hate, or resentment. My belief system tells me that whatever comes upon me is a matter already decreed by Allah. He knows better.”
Shukri Abu-Baker, HLF5
Injustice: The Story of the Holy Land Foundation Five is about a grave and cruel injustice wielded by both the the USA and Israel, and paradoxically the book’s foundations are friendship, human dignity, and trust bound together by the integrity of the author, Miko Peled.
Peled’s credentials, as an Israeli dissident, as uncle of Smadar (13), a victim of a Palestinian suicide bomber and as son of an Israeli General gives compelling credibility to the findings of his comprehensive investigation.
INJUSTICE
A decade of innocence caged. It is now 10 years since a Machiavellian travesty of US justice sentenced, between 15 – 65 years, the innocent Shukri Abu Baker, Ghassan Elashi, Mohammed El-Mezain, Mufid Abdulqader, and Abdulrahman Odeh, who were senior staff of The Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development (HLF) devoted to “Helping the poor, the orphans, and the widows … one of the pillars of Islamic teachings.”
The HLF was charged with “providing material support for terrorism.” Peled details how the HLF was run with meticulous transparency and with strict adherence to US aid guidelines thus demonstrating that HLF had “no connection to Hamas or any other political or military organizations,”
At the 2007 trial, the prosecution failed to get any convictions.
Undaunted the US government and the FBI mounted a retrial,
The prosecution’s theory was that, by supporting needy Palestinians, HLF had “freed up” Hamas’ own assets to fund terrorist attacks, and that if Palestinians knew that HLF would provide support for their families if assistance became necessary, they would be more likely to become suicide bombers.”
Peled spells out how the spurious charges were backed by questionable documents supplied by Israel, false translations, by cherrypicking ‘documents and phrases until the picture they painted was completely distorted,’ the withholding of ‘secret evidence’ to the defense, unexplained disappearance of crucial records, overt judicial bias towards the prosecution, exploitation of irrelevant and prejudicial testimonies, implausible Israeli ‘experts’, false charges of illegal tax filings, the FBI attempts to recruit collaborators, ‘The FBI even offered me US citizenship and immunity if I testified that HLF was linked to Hamas., ’ and the successful bribing of a key witness for the prosecution by waiving criminal charges of fraud and providing US residency.
Furthermore, the fraudulent manipulations of US justice are mirrored in the injustice that Israel metes out to Palestinians every day. Peled pierces the looking glass to the truth and reality,
I believe that the Palestinian struggle to free all of historic Palestine from the settler-colonialism that is the State of Israel is a just struggle, and I support it wholeheartedly. I accept that the State of Israel in its present form has no legitimacy, and in this I find Hamas’ goal to liberate Palestine completely justified.” Peled
The miscarriage of justice is outrageous. However, when one considers the false evidence the US government made to the UN in the case Iraq’s possession weapons of mass destruction that led to the deaths of half a million-plus innocent Iraqis, one understands that for the government, the collateral damage of 5 innocent Palestinian men sacrificed to further the fake war on terrorism is small potatoes.
FRIENDSHIP & HUMAN DIGNITY
The friendships Peled cultivates with Shukri, Ghassan, Mohammed, Mufid and Abdulrahman are the tour de force that instils intimacy, immediacy and urgency to the injustice they suffer,
I saw how important it is that others come to see them and to understand the background and the context of this story. Only then could anyone understand the travesty and indeed the tragedy that took place here.” ibid.
We accompany Peled on his many visits to the families and to the prisons and thus we empathise with the heartbreaking burden of absence and mutual deprivations suffered by the prisoners and their families; the denial of touch, a kiss, of a father to attend weddings, the burial of a beloved child Sanabel and death of parents, family meals, births of grandchildren.
Peled’s personal accompanying along the journey of injustice generates his moving demonstration of the authenticity of the HLF5’s moral dignity and the raison d’être of their humanitarian work that is grounded in Islam.
Crucially, by sharing respect for Islam embodied in these remarkable men, Peled challenges the the post 9/11 manufactured Islamophobia;
For me, Islam will always be associated with beauty, goodness, and charity. Sadly, the contempt and fear toward Islam, which are a major part of the Jewish-Israeli narrative, has seeped into America and become part of the accepted narrative in the United States as well. Living in the United States, I always felt deprived of the warmth that Islam and the Arab world offer. But when I began working on this book, I met Islam all over again, and in the most unlikely places.”ibid.
Peled repeatedly makes clear the HLF 5 are honourable men. They are not political activists who say ‘No’ to authority, they are activists for Allah-God who say ‘Yes’ and ‘Yes’ and ‘Yes’ to love, to compassion, to loyalty and to selfless care of the poorest of the poor.
“As Ghassan said to me, “What my friends and I did at the Holy Land Foundation was to help Palestinians who are suffering. They are victims because they find themselves living under a brutal, racist regime that practices apartheid. To be persecuted for such noble work is exactly what the prophets had faced at their time. And being reminded of this is how I get through it.” Indeed, their faith has made them un-enslaveable.”
Their plight is not unlike arresting Mother Teresa for bringing attention to and acting on Third World poverty mainly exacerbated by Western colonial and capitalist exploitation.
The answers to why the US government attacked a soft target humanitarian NGO that did not fund Hamas, become apparent. Firstly destroying NGO’s is a tool of ethnic-cleansing making Palestinian life even more unbearable so that they will leave Palestine.
Similarly Mohammed el-Halabi, the World Vision manager accused of diverting cash to Hamas and though an official Australian investigation found no such diversion, he remains incarcerated by Israel since his 2016 unwarranted arrest. Then there is the escalation of the humanitarian crisis inflicted on Gaza, Jerusalem and the West Bank by the recent US withdrawal of funding to UNRWA.
Secondly, their mere existence acts as a perpetual accusation against and evidence of Israeli state terrorism.
Hamas, Peled explains emerged from necessity met by the humane ideals of the Muslim Brotherhood that built,
… an infrastructure of social services, medical clinics, and schools, mostly in the impoverished Gaza Strip. These facilities were sorely needed, due to Israel’s grave failure to live up to its responsibilities as the Occupying Power.
But widespread support for Hamas was not only a result of Israeli ineptitude. Hamas leaders came to embody the honesty, altruism, and dedication that are the hallmarks of Islam.”
Peled’s statement of respect simultaneously discredits the US terrorist designation system, that at Israel’s request, named Hamas as a terrorist organisation.
TRUST
This book is about the sanctity of and also the destruction of trust.
Peled’s thoroughness is trustworthy because it is reinforced by his walking the talk with visits, interviews and research.
For years, the HLF5 deservedly won the trust of the thousands upon thousands of their HLF donors and recipients.
Their trust in their faith that informs their every heartbeat with resilience deserves admiration,
La yukalifu Allah nafsan, ila was’aha – God would not burden a soul with a burden that is beyond its capacity. And so believers accept the burden and carry it with devotion.”
Significantly, Peled reveals that we can’t trust the American Justice System because if it can come for five fine men then we must heed Niemöller’s warning that no-one is safe. Unless we stand together.
By the end of the book, I knew action is imperative. In the spirit of J’Accuse I wrote and will continue to write to the US Attorney General demanding the immediate and unconditional release of the innocent Shukri Abu Baker, Ghassan Elashi, Mohammed El-Mezain, Mufid Abdulqader, and Abdulrahman Odeh.
Miko Peled, Injustice: The Story of the Holy Land Foundation Five is published by Just World Books. Al Jazeera’s two part documentary follows the lawless political trail of the US-Zionist conspiracy to deliberately turn 5 decent innocent family men into political prisoners.
Dr. Vacy Vlazna is Coordinator of Justice for Palestine Matters and editor of a volume of Palestinian poetry, I remember my name. She was Human Rights Advisor to the GAM team in the second round of the Acheh peace talks, Helsinki, February 2005 then withdrew on principle. Vacy was convenor of Australia East Timor Association and coordinator of the East Timor Justice Lobby as well as serving in East Timor with UNAMET and UNTAET from 1999-2001.
Israel propaganda trips target ‘Pacific Progressive Leaders’ – no one will say who’s going
The Israel lobby is working to woo people like Andrea Beth Damsky, second from right. Damsky, active in numerous progressive causes, is a member of the La Mesa, California Environmental Sustainability Commission and on the California Democratic Party Executive Board. She was taken on an all-expenses-paid trip to Israel.
By Alison Weir | If Americans Knew | December 8, 2018
An Israel lobby organization is taking “Pacific Northwest Progressive Leaders” to Israel today on an all expense-paid propaganda trip to Israel. Another group just returned on December 2nd from a similar trip, officially billed as an “Educational Seminar in Israel for Southern Pacific Progressive Leaders.” No one will divulge the rosters.
The sponsoring organization is the American Israel Education Foundation (AIEF), a tax-exempt organization that serves as an arm of the powerful Israel lobbying organization AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee).
Roll Call reports that the AIPAC and AIEF “share leaders, employees and money.” They also share the same address and phone number.
AIPAC used to sponsor such tours itself until it became illegal for lobbying organizations to organize these. A “charitable” arm, AIEF, was then formed to continue the practice. While such trips are now “legal,” they appear to violate the spirit of the law.
Craig Holman of the watchdog group Public Citizen told Roll Call: “The purpose of the 2007 travel restrictions was to remove these types of sponsored trips. Most of these trips tend to be nothing but an extension of lobbying. “ Unfortunately, Holman explains, “When it came to negotiating the travel rules regarding privately funding trips, a huge gaping loophole was written in to exempt nonprofits. … I call it the ‘AIPAC loophole.’”
Israel advocacy organizations have exploited this loophole intensively.
Tailored trips
AIEF is an $85 million operation that takes thousands of American officials and opinion makers on all expense paid trips. It pays for their international flights, hotel accommodations, tourist excursions, meals, drinks, etc. Roll Call estimates the cost of a trip for one Congressional representative to be $10,000.
And AIEF is just one of the many pro-Israel organizations that do this; some others are the American Jewish Committee’s Project Interchange, Passages Israel, (backed by hedge fund billionaire Paul Singer), the Jewish Public Affairs Committee of Northern California (JPAC), and the American-Israel Friendship League, which has been operating since 1971 and largely targets young people. Last year it gave a special award to potential presidential candidate Michael Bloomberg. A fundraising video featured former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, New York Times columnist Bret Stephens, Elie Wiesel, and others (see below).
A fundraising gala for the American-Israel Friendship League
These and other groups organize tours for every sector of American society, tailoring the trips carefully for each group. There are trips for military veterans, business leaders of all races and ethnicities, educators, athletes, students, etc, and every level of political office.
They treat each chosen group to an exotic, extravagant tour replete with visits to historic sites, exciting night life, beaches, religious sites, official offices, academics; whatever will appeal to the group members. There are meetings with congenial, impressive Israeli hosts of the political and social category that will best fit the visiting delegation, and the meetings even include a few hand-picked “Palestinian representatives” and Druze Israelis who play their role in the skillfully crafted tours.
And through it all those with political, professional, and/or economic ambitions will pick up something more: this is a group that has the money and power to further their careers. The particularly astute trip members will also pick up the converse: this is not a group to alienate.
Such trips are oddly public and secretive at the same time.
On the one hand, there are numerous videos extolling the sponsoring groups’ power and the trips’ effectiveness; diverse, wide-eyed Americans are seen being shown around Israel, and then, on cue, these American visitors describe how much they’ve learned and how wonderful Israel is (see below).
At the same time, however, the trips are sometimes run with extraordinary secrecy. AIEF’S website contains only one paragraph and an email address to contact for information. When we wrote asking who was going on the upcoming delegation for progressive leaders, the response was: “We don’t publicize our trip rosters.” Phone calls were unreturned.
The progressive participants were also unforthcoming about the delegations’ composition; some refused to provide this information, others pled ignorance. None of the participants seem to have publicly announced their trips ahead of time, perhaps aware that many progressive voters today are aware of Israel’s record of brutality against Palestinians, as described by former Israeli soldiers, documented in videos, and reported by human rights organizations.
The California participants
So far we’ve only identified three of the participants on the current progressive trips.
Andrea Beth Damsky – a member of the La Mesa Environmental Sustainability Commission and member of the California Democratic Party executive board and credentials committee – went on the November 24-December 2, 2018 trip for “Southern Pacific Progressive Leaders.” Contra Costa County Supervisor John Gioia and Santa Clara Supervisor Joseph Simitian are going on the December 8-16 trip.
(Simitian also went on a lobby sponsored trip to Israel in 2005, when he was a Democratic state legislator. He is already in Israel, apparently having departed on Wednesday. It is unknown why Simitian left early and whether AIEF is paying for the extra days, or whether Simitian is paying his own way.)
John Gioia – backrow, glasses blue suit jacket & jeans. From his Facebook page
Santa Clara County Supervisor Joe Simitian with farmworkers – photo on his campaign page
While it seems implausible that public elected officials would go on a trip without knowing the names of any other participants, staff members at both offices say they “have no idea” who’s going on the delegation. Damsky would not reveal which public officials were on her trip.
While not everyone is taken in by tours organized by advocacy organizations, the probability is that many will be influenced by them, some significantly. That, of course, is why groups like IEAF shell out millions of dollars for them.
Damsky herself says: “I feel more educated on the issue than I did before.”
When asked if she would go on a trip organized by a group without a pro-Israel agenda, she said she would. However, she said she couldn’t afford to pay for such a trip herself and that the trip would have to be paid for by others.
And that’s the stumbling block.
Palestine solidarity groups don’t have anywhere near the astronomical budgets of the multi-billion dollar Israel lobby.
Therefore, it would seem, those with the most money will provide the free trips, and call the shots on this, as in so many other issues – unless Americans do four things:
Actions to take
(1) Prohibit public officials from going on trips paid for by others. Congress tried this before; now it’s time to close the loophole. If government officials are going to take trips, let them pay for them out of their own pockets. Until such legislation is forthcoming, there are additional steps that can be taken:
(2) Require transparency from our public officials. They should be required to announce these trips publicly and divulge the details. American tax-exempt corporations should be required to reveal the details of the free tours they provide, including the names of those going on them.
(3) Require fairness. Voters should demand that officials who have gone on such lobby funded junkets afterward meet with people beyond the Israel advocacy crowd, so that they can learn facts the pro-Israel tours may have left out.
For example, some of the reports that came out while the southern delegation was in Israel included the fact that Doctors Without Borders reported that more than1,000 Gazans shot by Israel are at risk of infection, which could lead to permanent disabilities or death; Israel’s Shin Bet admitted the use of torture, and a number of human rights groups have documented the “routine use of torture” by Israeli forces; a report found that Israeli settlers, with IDF complicity, have destroyed 800,000 Palestinian olive trees since 1967.
Such post-trip meetings could inform these progressive officials that Israel was founded – in the words of an Israeli historian – by ethnic cleansing, that its settlements are illegal under international law, and that a typical day for Palestinians looks like this. Officials could be shown a list of those killed and learn about the victims:
Given that the Israel trips last a week or longer, the post-trip meetings should take place over a similar time frame and be accorded equal attention.
It seems possible that Damsky, Simitian, and Gioia would be willing to take part in such meetings, especially if they are invited publicly. These are individuals with a record of caring about human rights and indigenous peoples, and who oppose discrimination and oppression; if so, they will not refuse to learn about the plight of Palestinians.
Damsky, who is Jewish, has already suggested that she would meet with other groups, and Supervisor Gioia has stated that he wishes to learn the full facts. In an email response to questions for this article, he wrote: “My goal in this trip is to hear from many individuals, ask hard questions and critically learn. My learning will not end when the trip is done. I intend to continue to read and speak with those who hold positions on the issue.” Their contact information is below.
Trip participants’ contact info:
Supervisor John Gioia: 510-231-8686 / John.Gioia@bos.cccounty.us
Supervisor Joe Simitian: 408-299-5050 / 650-289-9038 Twitter
Andrea Beth Damsky: 619-884-7918 / abdamsky@yahoo.com
Finally, there is a fourth action that Americans can do about these influence buying trips, and this one is probably the most important:
(4) Support politicians who do not give in to Israel lobby pressure.
Many politicians go on these tours because they feel they have no choice – and they may be right. If they fail to dance to the Israel tune, there is a large likelihood that their opponent will get the money, organization, and media support that is usually required to win an American election.
Until and unless Americans who desire fairness, peace, and justice in Israel-Palestine help on political campaigns and make their wishes known at the ballot box, politicians of all backgrounds will continue to go on these trips, Israel will continue to get American tax money and support, and the tragedy will continue.
Ultimately, it’s up to all of us.
Alison Weir is executive director of If Americans Knew, president of the Council for the National Interest, and author of Against Our Better Judgment: The Hidden History of How the U.S. Was Used to Create Israel.
US Deploys Carrier Strike Group to Middle East Amid Iran, Syria Tensions
Sputnik – December 8, 2018
A carrier strike group led by the Nimitz-class supercarrier USS John C. Stennis has arrived in the Middle East, ending an eight month period during which a US carrier wasn’t based in the region, the US Navy has reported.
Earlier, the Pentagon announced that the US and its allies in eastern Syria would train an additional 35,000 to 40,000 local militia to “provide stability” in the region following the defeat of Daesh (ISIS) terrorists.
The carrier group will be based with the 5th Fleet, which is responsible for US naval activity in the Arabian Sea and the Persian Gulf, and will be stationed in the region for at least two months.
According to the US government-funded news service Voice of America, the carrier strike group is being deployed to “help in the fight against the Islamic State terror group in Iraq and Syria and the war in Afghanistan.”
Furthermore, a US Defense Department official confirmed earlier reports that the US was beefing up its presence in the region as a “message” to Tehran, telling VOA that “just being there is a show of force to Iran.”
The carrier group’s presence is expected to have a similar effect to the US base in at-Tanf, southern Syria, the official added.
The US established an illegal garrison at at-Tanf in 2016, justifying the deployment as part of its war against Daesh. Damascus and its allies have repeatedly accused the US of using the base to retrain and reequip former Islamist militia to continue the war against the Syrian government. On Thursday, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Joseph Dunford said that the US would have to train 35,000 to 40,000 more “local forces” to “provide stability” in eastern Syria, where US-backed Syrian Kurdish forces took control following Daesh’s expulsion from the region.
Washington, which originally justified its presence in Syria by citing the war against terrorism, has altered its reasoning for remaining in the country following Daesh’s decline. In September, Trump national security adviser John Bolton said that the US military would stay in Syria until alleged Iranian-backed militias had also left the country.
Tensions between Washington and Tehran escalated in May, after the US unilaterally withdrew from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action nuclear deal and slapped Iran with a series of strict sanctions.
US Arm Sales Turning Middle East into ‘Tinderbox’: Zarif
Al-Manar | December 8, 2018
Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said on Saturday that the United States is selling arms into the Middle East which were beyond the region’s needs, turning it into a “tinderbox”.
“The level of arms sales by the Americans is unbelievable and much beyond regional needs and this points to the very dangerous policies followed by the Americans,” IRNA reported Zarif as saying on the sidelines of the 2nd Speakers’ Conference with participation of Iran, Afghanistan, Turkey, Pakistan, China and Russia in Tehran.
He added that the US policy has brought many modern destructive weapons to the region, which have given no help to establishment of regional peace and security.
Asked about US accusations against Iran regarding missiles, the foreign minister said that the American officials spare no effort to interrupt relations between Iran and Europe, “so they resort to baseless allegations these days.”
“They [American officials] try to distort the regional issues.”
“We’ve read in the American media that the US arms are in hands of Al Qaeda in Yemen and ISIL in Syria, and this is a danger threatening our region,” Zarif said.
The top Iranian diplomat stressed meanwhile, that the US has been isolated in the world.
The US “has entered [trade] war with China and even arrested a senior Huawei executive. This indicates US frustration rather than its power.”
Mainstream Media Assaults on Freedom of Speech. “The Truth” is No Longer “Important”
Alternative news sources have come under sustained attacks
By Shane Quinn – Global Research – December 7, 2018
The New York Times unveiled a new slogan early in 2017 titled, “The truth is more important now than ever.” It has acquired a seemingly noble motto but a perhaps contentious one if we examine the Times’ recent history. Two international law specialists, Howard Friel and Richard Falk, published a book after the 2003 Invasion of Iraq called The Record of the Paper, which has scarcely been reviewed.
Friel and Falk focused on the Times due to the newspaper’s importance. The authors point out that in 70 Times editorials on Iraq – from September 11, 2001 to March 20, 2003 – the words “international law” and “UN Charter” were never mentioned. The “truth” did not seem terribly “important” as the Times stood idly by in the destruction of Iraq.
Such was the barrage of propaganda directed at the American public that 69% believed Saddam Hussein was “personally involved” in the September 11 attacks. That is a significant achievement in manipulation. The poll results must have been news to the Iraqi dictator himself, a forgotten one-time American ally.
Why Hussein would take it upon himself to orchestrate a surprise attack on the United States, of all nations, is anyone’s guess. Perhaps if he had a death wish but as later events proved he was not the suicidal type.
The Times was not alone in its position of selling the Iraq war to the American people, as television networks from Fox News to CBS and CNN were overwhelmingly pro-war. Fox News, owned by Rupert Murdoch – who strongly backed the illegal conflict – placed a permanent US flag in the corner of the screen. Fox employees were compelled to describe the invasion as “Operation Iraqi Freedom”, with hundreds of thousands of Iraqis later being killed.
The pattern continues into other illegitimate interventions as the liberal Guardian newspaper championed the demolition of Libya in 2011, with editorials imploring, “The quicker Muammar Gaddafi falls, the better.” The Guardian encouraged NATO “to tip the military balance further against Gaddafi”, while later that year summarising that “it has turned out, so far, reasonably well” – by that point thousands had been killed.
In 2015 Ian Birrell, then deputy editor of the Independent, still assured his readers, “I would argue that Britain and France were right to step in [in Libya]. The failures came later on.” Apparently it was fine for two old imperial powers to “step in” to shatter a sovereign nation, then afterwards absolve the invaders of blame with “the failures” only coming “later on”.
Sceengrab from The Independent
It’s a rare thing indeed to hear a prominent commentator question the balance of Western mainstream coverage. The same voices can be heard piping up when alternative news sources take a different line not so palatable to their tastes.
Nick Cohen, writing in the Guardian, accused the network Russia Today (RT) of being a “propaganda channel” and that Russia was “prostituting journalism”. In the following sentence, Cohen describes the BBC and New York Times as being “reputable news organisations”.
Cohen firmly supported the Iraq war, writing at the time that “the Left betrays the Iraqi people by opposing war”, and “an American invasion offers the possibility of salvation”. He was deemed not to be “prostituting journalism” in backing this violation of international law, nor when later supporting other interventions in Libya and Syria.
The BBC’s reputation, which Cohen previously claimed to be “reputable”, was dealt a blow when it was revealed by Cardiff University that the network “displayed the most ‘pro-war’ agenda of any broadcaster” with its coverage on the Iraq invasion.
Steven Erlanger of the New York Times described RT as “an agent of Kremlin policy” used to “undermine Western democracies” and to “destabilise the West” – failing to back up the claims with any evidence. To gain perspective on these attacks, it may be worth pointing out a key excerpt from the First Amendment of the US Constitution: “Congress shall make no law… abridging [curtailing] the freedom of speech, or of the press.”
This law does not exist in Western democracies but attempts at limiting freedom of expression continue apace, while attacks on alternative media outlets by institutions of power grow. It has reached a point whereby the French president Emmanuel Macron, shortly after assuming office, publicly attacked legitimate news sources of “behaving like deceitful propaganda”.
Perhaps the hidden concern about RT, for example, is its continued increase in both popularity and scope – with the channel enjoying a total weekly viewership of 70 million people and rising. RT is available to viewers in Western heartlands such as Britain and the US, with eight million Americans watching the station each week. It represents quite an achievement that a channel with the word “Russia”, featured in its title, can attract viewers in their millions, despite the growing anti-Russian sentiment espoused by the powers-that-be.
It is revealing that elite figures like Hillary Clinton have lamented in the past, “We are in an information war and we are losing that war.” For the first time in history, populations have broad access to alternative news angles – points of view that they likely find of a more balanced nature. Gone is the unchallenged monopoly on the public mind.
Huawei CFO Detained in Canada to Face Fraud Charges in US
Sputnik – December 7, 2018
Canadian prosecutors said Friday that the US is seeking the extradition of Huawei Chief Financial Officer (CFO) Meng Wanzhou on suspicion of engaging in conspiracies to defraud multiple financial institutions and contravene US sanctions on Iran.
It isn’t clear how many charges she faces, but each one carries a maximum sentence of 30 years behind bars.
Meng, the Chinese telecommunication giant’s CFO and deputy board chair, was arrested in Vancouver on Saturday but the US Department of Justice did not announce the arrest until Wednesday. Canada’s Globe and Mail broke the story, based on law enforcement sources, that she had been arrested for violating US sanctions against Iran.
A gag order, or as it is called in Canada, a publication ban, was imposed on Meng’s case. Several media outlets have challenged the gag in court. That ban was eventually lifted by a judge in Vancouver, BBC reports.
The court is still considering whether it will grant Meng bail. The Canadian government prosecutor has told the judge Meng has substantial resources in China and is a flight risk.
The prosecutor alleged that Meng deceived American lawyers regarding the connection between the company SkyCom and Huawei. Using SkyCom as a secret proxy, Huawei sold products to Iran in breach of US sanctions between 2009 and 2014.
Huawei is the second-largest telecommunications equipment manufacturer in the world, Sputnik News reported.
The US has introduced a number of measures to curb the flow of technology from Huawei and another telecom manufacturer, ZTE Corp, believing that the Chinese government have could used the tech for surveillance in the past year. Huawei products have also been banned by the Pentagon from being sold on US military bases.
Hamas thanks UN member states for foiling US draft resolution
Palestine Information Center – December 7, 2018
GAZA – The Hamas Movement has expressed its appreciation to all the countries that opposed on Thursday the US-drafted resolution on the Palestinian resistance at the UN General Assembly and defended the justice of the Palestinian cause.
In a statement, Hamas stressed that the real terrorism that must be confronted and condemned by all countries is Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian land.
The Palestinian resistance movement called for condemning Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian land, its displacement of millions of Palestinians from their areas and homes, the massacres and crimes it had committed against them, its Judaization activities in Jerusalem, its construction of settlements, and its refusal to allow Palestinian refugees to return to their homes.
Hamas also urged the countries that voted for the US draft resolution at the General Assembly to reconsider their positions and correct what it described as “the historic and dangerous mistake against the oppressed Palestinian people.”
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New Book
The Garlic Book — 2026
Lies are Unbekoming | November 5, 2026
What The Garlic Book shows
The book is in four parts.
Part One, The Record, treats the history of garlic as evidence. From the clay garlic bulb placed in an Egyptian grave nearly six thousand years ago, through the Ebers Papyrus, through Hippocrates, Dioscorides, Pliny and Galen, the Arab physicians under Avicenna, the medieval herbals, Culpeper, and the plague years, to the last era in which Western physicians prescribed garlic as a matter of course, which ran from 1850 to 1945. It closes with the living traditions that never stopped using it, and with the folklore of charms, vampires and the evil eye.
Part Two, The Chemistry and the Evidence, sets out what is known about why a clove has no smell until it is cut, and why the order of crush, rest and heat changes the medicine. It then reads the clinical evidence against the historical record — bacteria, blood and vessels, cancer epidemiology, metals and fatigue — and names the trials that went against garlic as directly as the trials that went for it, including the 2007 Stanford trial funded by the US National Institutes of Health which found that raw garlic, garlic powder and aged garlic extract moved LDL cholesterol no more than placebo did. It then turns to onion, garlic’s closest relative, and reads the newer evidence published since 2015, before closing with the whole of the record through the terrain lens.
Part Three, Why Medicine Set It Aside, asks the question directly. One chapter contrasts the pharmaceutical model of isolating a single active compound with the folk model of combining whole plants, and reports what the garlic evidence says about which model works better. One chapter examines the economics of research on a plant that cannot be patented. One chapter — Fire Cider — tells the story of a folk preparation whose name was taken into a United States trademark by a Massachusetts company in 2012, and won back by three herbalists in 2014 who documented forty years of prior use through Rosemary Gladstar and her students into the older tradition.
Part Four, Garlic in Practice, is the working manual — the kitchen pharmacy, traditional uses by body system, a full chapter on safety and interactions, and a complaint-by-complaint practical guide. The book closes with The Trial That Was Never Run — a one-chapter reading of the whole evidential architecture.
At the back: two appendices (a traditional list of uses, and a preparation quick-reference), a full bibliography, and a live index.
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