Pyongyang seeks direct dialogue with Washington, Moscow ready to help – Lavrov
RT | December 7, 2017
North Korea wants to engage directly with the US to assure its security, Russia’s foreign minister has revealed. Sergey Lavrov said he has briefed US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson on the developments and that Moscow is ready to “facilitate such talks.”
“We know that, above all, North Korea wants to talk to the US about its own security assurances,” he said in Vienna following his meeting with Tillerson. “Russia is ready to take part in facilitating such talks.” Lavrov and Tillerson spoke on the sidelines of an Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) meeting.
Lavrov reiterated that all parties involved in the Korean crisis should “break the vicious cycle of confrontation, reckless schemes and sanctions” and engage in meaningful dialogue instead. He also pointed to American military exercises near the Korean Peninsula and Washington’s aggressive rhetoric, which he said only leads to a further escalation of tensions. This is “unacceptable,” Lavrov made clear.
Earlier Thursday, the head of Russia’s Senate’s Foreign Affairs Committee, Konsantin Kosachev, met with North Korea’s Ambassador to Moscow to discuss the situation on the peninsula. Following his exchange with Kim Young Jae, Kosachev said Pyongyang has absolutely no interest in ratcheting tensions, not to mention starting a full-blown military conflict. But, Kim added, Pyongyang “does not fear war” either.
Kosachev said a viable way to resolve the crisis is an all-in dialogue between relevant parties and joint efforts aimed at lowering tensions. “We are absolutely not interested in the escalation of tensions, in any military action,” Kosachev told the Interfax news agency following the meeting. Russia “will do everything it can to prevent this escalation,” he added.
Both Lavrov and Kosachev once again referred to the so-called “double freeze” initiative put forward by Russia and China soon after tensions heightened in early September. The plan envisages the US and its allies stop all major military exercises in the region in exchange for Pyongyang suspending its nuclear and ballistic missile program. The initiative, however, has been spurned by Washington, with the US envoy to the UN, Nikki Haley, denouncing it as “insulting.”
On Wednesday, the North Korean foreign ministry said US military drills near the Korean Peninsula as well as Washington’s belligerent rhetoric make an outbreak of war in the region inevitable. “The remaining question now is, when will the war break out,” the ministry’s spokesperson told the North Korean state news agency KCNA Wednesday.
On Monday, the US launched massive air drills together with South Korea. The five-day exercises, scheduled to last until December 8, involve a total of 12,000 personnel and over 230 military aircraft. Pointedly, the maneuvers particularly simulate attacks on Pyongyang’s nuclear and missile installations while claiming it to be “defensive.”
In late November, North Korea conducted yet another missile test, claiming it had successfully launched a new type of intercontinental ballistic missile capable of striking the US mainland.
John Lennon Was Right: The Government Is Run by Maniacs for Maniacal Means
By John W. Whitehead | Rutherford Institute | December 07, 2017
Not much has changed in the 37 years since John Lennon was gunned down by an assassin’s bullet.
All of the many complaints we have about government today—surveillance, corruption, harassment, political persecution, spying, overcriminalization, etc.—were used against Lennon, who never refrained from speaking truth to power and calling for social justice, peace and a populist revolution.
Little wonder, then, that the U.S. government saw Lennon as enemy number one.
A prime example of the lengths to which the U.S. government will go to persecute those who dare to challenge its authority, Lennon was the subject of a four-year campaign of surveillance and harassment by the U.S. government (spearheaded by FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover), in an attempt by President Richard Nixon to have him “neutralized” and deported. As Adam Cohen of the New York Times points out, “The F.B.I.’s surveillance of Lennon is a reminder of how easily domestic spying can become unmoored from any legitimate law enforcement purpose.”
Years after Lennon’s assassination, it would be revealed that the FBI had collected 281 pages of surveillance files on him. As the New York Times notes, “Critics of today’s domestic surveillance object largely on privacy grounds. They have focused far less on how easily government surveillance can become an instrument for the people in power to try to hold on to power. ‘The U.S. vs. John Lennon’ … is the story not only of one man being harassed, but of a democracy being undermined.”
Such government-directed harassment was nothing new.
The FBI has had a long history of persecuting, prosecuting and generally harassing activists, politicians, and cultural figures, including Martin Luther King Jr.
In Lennon’s case, the ex-Beatle saw that his music could mobilize the public and help to bring about change. Yet while Lennon believed in the power of the people, he also understood the danger of a power-hungry government. “The trouble with government as it is, is that it doesn’t represent the people,” observed Lennon. “It controls them.”
By March 1971, when his “Power to the People” single was released, it was clear that Lennon was ready to participate in political activism against the U. S. government, the “monster” that was financing the war in Vietnam.
The release of Lennon’s Sometime in New York City album, which contained a radical anti-government message in virtually every song, only fanned the flames of the government’s war on Lennon.
In 1972, Nixon had the ex-Beatle served with deportation orders “in an effort to silence him as a voice of the peace movement.” Despite the fact that Lennon was not plotting to bring down the Nixon Administration, as the government feared, the government persisted in its efforts to have him deported. Equally determined to resist, Lennon dug in and fought back. Finally, in 1976, Lennon won the battle to stay in the country. By 1980, the old radical was back and ready to cause trouble.
Unfortunately, Lennon’s time as a troublemaker was short-lived.
Mark David Chapman was waiting in the shadows on Dec. 8, 1980, just as Lennon was returning to his New York apartment building. As Lennon stepped outside the car to greet the fans congregating outside, Chapman dropped into a two-handed combat stance, emptied his .38-caliber pistol and pumped four hollow-point bullets into Lennon’s back and left arm.
John Lennon was pronounced dead on arrival at the hospital.
Much like Martin Luther King Jr., John F. Kennedy, Malcolm X, Robert Kennedy and others who have died attempting to challenge the powers-that-be, Lennon had finally been “neutralized.”
Yet Lennon’s legacy lives on in his words, his music and his efforts to speak truth to power.
Even so, his work to change the world for the better is far from done.
As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, peace remains out of reach. Activists and whistleblowers continue to be prosecuted for challenging the government’s authority. Militarism is on the rise, all the while the governmental war machine continues to wreak havoc on innocent lives. And those who do dare to speak up are labeled dissidents, troublemakers, terrorists, lunatics, or mentally ill and tagged for surveillance, censorship or, worse, involuntary detention.
As Lennon shared in a 1968 interview:
I think all our society is run by insane people for insane objectives… I think we’re being run by maniacs for maniacal means. If anybody can put on paper what our government and the American government and the Russian… Chinese… what they are actually trying to do, and what they think they’re doing, I’d be very pleased to know what they think they’re doing. I think they’re all insane. But I’m liable to be put away as insane for expressing that. That’s what’s insane about it.”
So what’s the answer?
Lennon had a multitude of suggestions.
“If everyone demanded peace instead of another television set, then there’d be peace.”
“Produce your own dream. If you want to save Peru, go save Peru. It’s quite possible to do anything, but not to put it on the leaders….You have to do it yourself.”
“Peace is not something you wish for; It’s something you make, Something you do, Something you are, And something you give away.”
“War is over, if you want it.”
In other words, fighting the evil of the American police state can only come about by way of conscious thoughts that are put into action.
Do you want an end to war? Then stop supporting the government’s military campaigns. Do you want government violence against the citizenry to end? Then demand that your local police de-militarize. Do you want a restoration of your freedoms? You’ll have to get the government to recognize that “we the people” are the masters in this relationship and government employees are our public servants.
The choice is ours.
The power (if we want it), as Lennon recognized, is in our hands.
“The people have the power, all we have to do is awaken that power in the people,” concluded Lennon. “The people are unaware. They’re not educated to realize that they have power. The system is so geared that everyone believes the government will fix everything. We are the government.”
For the moment, the choice is still ours: slavery or freedom, war or peace, death or life.
The point at which we have no choice is the point at which the monsters—the maniacs, the powers-that-be, the Deep State—win.
As Lennon warned, “You either get tired fighting for peace, or you die.”
Tayseer Khaled Calls for Boycott of US Goods
IMEMC News & Agencies | December 7, 2017
Amid controversy over the US decision to move their embassy to Jerusalem, PLO Executive Committee member, Tayseer Khaled, published a press release calling for an international campaign in the Arab, Islamic and Friendly States to boycott US goods.
The press release stated the following, according to the PNN :
“Tayseer Khaled , the PLO Executive Committee member, Head of the Palestinian Expatriate Affairs Department called on the Political Organizations, Trade Unions, Youth and Women Organizations and other Civil Society Organizations in Arab, Islamic and friendly countries to launch an international campaign to boycott American goods in support for Jerusalem, a response to the American insulting against our people, and for every unwise political step taken by the American Administration aimed to change the Legal and political Status of East Jerusalem, as an integral part of the occupied Palestinian Territories in June 1967, whether through moving the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem or recognize Jerusalem as the capital of the Israeli Occupation State.”
Khaled added that US President Trump’s administration acts viciously with the Arab and Islamic countries, and it neither gives attention to the Arab public opinion, nor to international law and the legitimacy resolutions related to the Palestinian – Israeli conflict.
Moreover, he said, it neglects the UN Security Council resolutions on Jerusalem, of which begins with resolution 215, issued on May 2nd, 1968, that denounces the Israeli Military Parade in Jerusalem, through resolution no. 476, issued on June 30th, 1980, which nullifies the Israeli measures to change the features of Jerusalem, then resolution no. 478 of Aug. 29th, 1980, which calls for non-recognition of the Israeli law on Jerusalem and the withdrawal of all the diplomatic missions from the city, as well as resolution no. 2334 on Dec. 23rd 2016, which affirms that the construction of settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories since June 4th, 1967, including East Jerusalem, is illegal, and demands it to ban all settlement activities. Furthermore, he stated that Israel doesn’t respect the advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice on the Apartheid Wall or its painful consequences on the occupied West Bank, the status quo in Jerusalem and its surroundings, and opposes the Israeli claims and annexation laws issued by the Knesset, and announced that East Jerusalem is, in fact, an occupied city, adding that Israel is obliged by international humanitarian law and international law, in general, to ensure free access to the holy sites under its control.
At the Palestinian level, Khaled called for uniting efforts to encounter any American step aimed at undermining the legal and political status of Jerusalem, and to stop dealing with the US administration as a qualified mediator to achieve a political settlement to the Palestinian – Israeli conflict. He insisted the US administration be informed that Palestinians are free of such obligations or understandings with, which propose discriminatory rules of conduct to the Palestinians that are restricting their right to go to the UN international bodies and agencies to apply for their membership, as is the case with the World Health Organization (WHO), the International Labor Organization (ILO), and the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and others, or to apply to the International Criminal Court (ICC) to investigate Israel’s violations of Palestinian human rights under occupation, and to investigate war crimes and settlement crimes, which Article (8) of the Rome Statute regards as a war crime.
(photo: hadfnews.ps)
An illegitimate capital for a state without legitimacy
By Ibrahim Hewitt | MEMO | December 7, 2017
It should come as no surprise that Donald Trump has declared that the US is recognising Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. For seasoned US-Israel watchers, it merely confirms what we have been saying for decades: Washington is no honest broker in negotiations to end the Palestine-Israel conflict. Quite the opposite, in fact; it has ensured that the odds have been stacked in Israel’s favour and turned a blind eye to its contempt for international law — which Trump clearly shares — even while its brutal military occupation has stolen ever more Palestinian land throughout the seven decades since 1948.
US recognition of Israel’s self-declared capital has no legal basis. The 1947 UN Partition Plan for Palestine, upon which Israel largely bases its international legitimacy, had three components: “Independent Arab and Jewish States and the Special International Regime for the City of Jerusalem”. Only one of these has come into being, primarily because Israel and its backers haven’t allowed the others to happen. What’s more, although the borders of the “Arab and Jewish States” were set out clearly by the UN, Israel took possession of more than its allocation, including West Jerusalem. It took the rest of the city in 1967 along with the remaining land designated for the “Arab State”, and went on to annex the Holy City; this has never been recognised by the rest of the world and, legally, Jerusalem remains “occupied territory”, as do the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
Hence, if we are to be accurate, whenever we discuss the Israeli occupation, this should refer to the West Bank, Gaza Strip and other land now accepted to be part of Israel which it has occupied since the 1949 Armistice. While paying lip-service to the UN Partition Plan for its own legitimacy, Israel continues to ignore the terms of the resolution in almost every respect. A glance at the “Disappearing Palestine” maps confirms this unpleasant fact on the ground.
Ignoring the UN is the norm for Israel; it has violated 28 UN Security Council Resolutions — which are supposed to be binding on UN member states — and ignored at least 40 non-binding General Assembly Resolutions. There is a strong case for throwing Israel out of the UN, given such a record and the fact that its membership in the first place was dependent on allowing Palestinian refugees to return to their homes. This has never been permitted by Israel, and the UN has been unable or unwilling to enforce the will of the international community.
In part, of course, this is because of the diplomatic protection given to Israel by the United States, which has used its veto in the Security Council to block resolutions critical of Israel at least 40 times since 1972. It also reflects the impotence of Europe in the face of whatever power the pro-Israel lobby has over its politicians. European guilt over the Holocaust, perhaps? Or something more mundane, such as electoral influence and donations? Or maybe a combination of the two.
Whatever it is, we can’t pin the blame entirely on Trump and the US; European complicity has also played a role in allowing Israel to act with impunity, as has the collaboration of the Palestinian Authority in what President Mahmoud Abbas has called its “sacred” security cooperation with the occupying state. Indeed, as is now becoming clear, it seems as if major Arab countries have been involved in their own, under the radar, collaboration with Israel by establishing now very open links with the Zionist state.
It is hard to know at the moment if Trump actually understands what impact his move on Jerusalem will have on the people in the region. None of us knows for certain, of course, but it doesn’t take a genius to work out that the prospects for a just peace are now even more remote. A peace of sorts could be imposed by brute force, no doubt, but it would never be based on justice; and it would never last.
Do the US President and his right-wing supporters care about this? Probably not. America’s Christian Zionists largely back him to the hilt, and they aren’t interested in peace; they see the establishment of the state of Israel and the “incoming of the exiles” (the Jews) as an essential prelude to the second coming of Jesus and “the rapture”; ultimately, in fact, the end of the world. The late Grace Halsell explained this thinking in her 1999 book “Forcing God’s Hand”. Israel exploits this through its lobby groups around the world to gain political, military and economic support.
What effect will Trump’s declaration have on the Palestinians for whom Jerusalem is home? Will Israel complete the ethnic cleansing of the city by forcing them out and bringing their complete ethnic cleansing a step closer? With the US watching its back, it is perfectly feasible that the far-right government of Benjamin Netanyahu will feel emboldened enough to do this.
Another option would be for the Jerusalemite Palestinians to be offered Israeli citizenship, but that would upset those who already see Israel’s 20 per cent non-Jewish citizens as a democratic threat to the “Jewish State”. The likelihood, therefore, is that Israeli Apartheid will simply be entrenched further and those Palestinians left in occupied Jerusalem will face yet more discrimination at the hands of an overtly racist government.
Pro-Israel lobbyists are forever bleating that the campaign for justice for and by the Palestinians seeks to “de-legitimise” the state, but they have yet to explain with any credibility the validity of its credentials; in truth, there is none. Israel’s latest poodle in Washington has now recognised an illegitimate capital for a state without legitimacy.
Moreover, Israel has become a rogue state par excellence; not only is its star rising— for now — but it has also been incredibly successful in convincing the major powers in the world that it is the innocent victim in all of this. However, it is no longer surrounded by hostile states; the “self-defence and security” excuse for its vile occupation and military offensives against Palestinian civilians is unravelling as Saudi Arabia and the UAE join Jordan and Egypt in tying their camels and putting their trust in Tel Aviv.
Israel is ticking the boxes on its wish list. The battle for Jerusalem appears to have been won. After incessant Jewish colonial-settler incursions into the Noble Sanctuary — which will be viewed in the future as its initial skirmishes — the battle for Al-Aqsa Mosque, the heart of the Palestinian and Muslim presence in the Holy Land, may well be about to start in earnest. Recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital is just the beginning. The next target will be to occupy and demolish Al-Aqsa and the Dome of the Rock Mosques and build a temple in their place. The blueprints for this are already prepared.
With the villain of the piece portrayed as the victim — poor little Israel — and those with international law and justice on their side demonised as wrongdoers, the days of the False Messiah may well be upon us. Anyone for Armageddon?
@ibrahimhewitt56
House passes bill about Taylor Force, ignores 34 other Americans who were killed by Israel
By Kathryn Shihadah | If Americans Knew | December 7, 2107
On Tuesday, the U.S. House of Representatives overwhelmingly approved the Taylor Force Act (text here), a bill that reduces funding to the Palestinian Authority. The bill next goes to the full Senate, where it is expected to pass.
The Taylor Force Act is named for U.S. army veteran Taylor Force, who was killed by a Palestinian in Tel Aviv in March, 2016 while Force was visiting Israel as part of a Vanderbilt University MBA program.
The bill targets the PA’s so-called “pay-to-slay” policy which Israel believes incentivizes terrorism, and would strip the PA of much of its US aid if local officials can not certify that they have stopped making these payments.
Nathan Diament, executive director for public policy of the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America, commented on the unanimous approval of the Taylor Force Act, calling it
a giant step toward ending the Palestinian Authority’s grotesque practice of ‘pay-for-slay.’ This system of encouraging and incentivizing terrorism has gone on for far too long, and the Taylor Force Act is a critical step toward ending this murderous scheme.
Diament’s statement is problematic.
First of all, the word “practice” implies that Palestinians are regularly killing Israelis and Americans. This is decidedly not the case.
In fact, since January of 2009, Palestinians have killed 168 Israelis, while Israelis have killed 18 times more Palestinians—a total of 3,143. In 2016, the year of Taylor Force’s untimely death, 16 Israelis died at the hands of Palestinians and 110 Palestinians—many posing no threat whatsoever—died at the hands of Israelis. If any group has a “grotesque practice” of killing, perhaps it is not the Palestinians.
Diament’s “pay-for-slay” phrase is also both inaccurate and offensive.
The family of Taylor Force’s killer did indeed receive a stipend after his death, as have the families of other terrorists. Such financial assistance is often crucial since Israeli forces demolish their family homes, even though the slayer’s children, wife, nieces and nephews (these homes are usually inhabited by extended families) had nothing to do with their violent action.
Most of the world has a practice of paying a “death gratuity” to the families of service members killed or injured in the line of duty. The US does; Israel does too. Both Israeli and U.S. forces have killed numerous civilians, yet families of fallen soldiers still receive funding.
The Palestinian Territories are forbidden from having armed forces: their resistance against the occupation is carried out by civilians. In the event of death, injury, or imprisonment, their families face the same financial struggles any service member’s family would face, and the Palestinian Authority provides for them.
Qadora Fares, who works with the system, explains, “This is a kind of social protection for the family. The children of the prisoners and martyrs and wounded have the right to go to schools, hospitals and get food.”
Moreover, the vast majority of recipients of payments in this program are made to families not of attackers, but of victims. Children injured by stray bullets while walking to school, young men detained while participating in a peaceful demonstration, husbands killed while sitting on their front porch – anyone killed, injured, or imprisoned as a result of Israel’s brutality.
“Straining out gnats, swallowing camels”
But the greatest problem with Diament’s statement—and many like it—is the hypocrisy behind it. It is absurd to suggest that the Palestinian Authority has a problem with violence and needs to be cut off financially from American aid, while Israel, which receives approximately one hundred times more aid ($3.1 billion/year vs. $363 million), is responsible for a significantly higher number of deaths (see above, and here, for example).
Israel and pro-Israel organizations say they care deeply about the death of American ex-serviceman Taylor Force at the hands of an outlaw Palestinian, but would rather not discuss the USS Liberty, in which 34 innocent American servicemen died and 174 were wounded by our “closest ally,” Israel.
Israel’s Arutz Sheva news organization reports “Jewish groups welcome Taylor Force Act,” noting that AIPAC (the American Israeli Public Affairs Council; the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America (OU), “the nation’s largest Orthodox Jewish umbrella organization;” and the American Jewish Congress all lauded the legislation. The ADL (Anti-Defamation League) also applauded the bill.
If Americans Knew contacted these organizations to ask whether they also supported USS Liberty survivors, but did not receive replies. The ADL opposed a billboard near New Haven, Connecticut billboard honoring Liberty veterans; a similar billboard honoring Liberty veterans in New Bedford was taken down when the company received complaints from Israel partisans. It would appear that only certain service members’ deaths matter to these organizations.
Hypocrisy is alive and well in the US Congress too.
Our lawmakers – the same ones who rallied behind the Taylor Force Act – were silent about other Americans who were killed and maimed in Israel and refused to investigate the USS Liberty incident. When a Palestinian is at fault, we punish; when Israel is guilty, there is no accountability. We look the other way.
Our Senators and Representatives know full well how much money they have approved to be sent to Israel – no strings attached – year after year. They know how much is spent on advanced weaponry for use on an essentially unarmed Palestinian population. Our Congressmen and Congresswomen should know that occupation is illegal, but resistance to occupation is a legal right according to the Fourth Geneva Convention. Consequently, Israel should cease and desist its occupation, rather than expecting the Palestinians to cease and desist from their resistance against the occupation.
Instead of bowing to AIPAC and punishing the Palestinians for the violent actions of a a rogue young man with no terrorist affiliation against a young American man, Congress should assess the actual damage in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories and stop footing the bill for the ongoing murder of Palestinians.
Kathryn Shihadah is a staff writer for If Americans Knew
Related Reading:
The Legitimacy of Compensation for Family Members for Palestinians Killed, Injured, and Imprisoned
Instead of Taylor Force Act, Congress should consider Rachel Corrie Act, Orwah Hammad Act
Trump Team Didn’t Just Collude with Israel, Kushner was Acting as Foreign Agent for Tel Aviv
By Patrick Henningsen | 21st Century Wire | December 7, 2107
Much was made this week in the American media about Michael Flynn’s recent guilty plea to making false statements to the FBI, as part of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s never-ending “Russia probe.”
Although court documents show Flynn has acknowledged to previously giving false statements in reference to reaching out to Russia’s ambassador to the US, Sergey Kislyak – the mere act of reaching out to foreign officials is neither illegal, nor is it a violation of ethics. This is normal practice for members of any incoming US administration. Even if Flynn had promised to the Russian Ambassador, as claimed this week by Resistance leader Rep. Elijah E. Cummings of Maryland, that a Trump government would “rip-up sanctions,” such a promise by Flynn would not be unlawful. Anyone can make a promise, we should point out here that neither Flynn, nor Donald Trump would be in any position to make good on such a promise without the blessing of the US Congress and Senate. Just look at what happened when Trump took office. Were any sanctions lifted?
That said, after 18 months of fabricating fake news about Russian hacking, Russian meddling and Russian collusion, it’s not surprising that the New York Times would get the Flynn story wrong too, and on an even bigger scale than many of their past made-up stories about Trump scandals. Here we have yet another hand-wringing Resistance writer, Harry Litman, claiming that Flynn’s testimony will go in down history next to Watergate and Iran-Contra:
“The repercussions of the plea will be months in the making, but it’s not an exaggeration to say that the events to which Mr. Flynn has agreed to testify will take their place in the history books alongside the Watergate and Iran-contra scandals.”
He might be right, if only the media coverage and the federal hearing would focus on the correct country with whom the Trump team was colluding, which unfortunately was not Russia. Funny how partisan writer Litman did not even mention the word Israel once in his report. In fact, we can now better see why certain persons in Washington like Adam Schiff and John McCain, along with their corrupt media counterparts like CNN, the Washington Post and the New York Times have been incessantly pushing their fictional “Russia did it” narrative for the last 18 months – because Russiagate served as a convenient cover for Israelgate.
Mehdi Hassan from The Intercept writes:
“… Why aren’t more members of Congress or the media discussing the Trump transition team’s pretty brazen collusion with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to undermine both U.S. government policy and international law? Shouldn’t that be treated as a major scandal? Thanks to Mueller’s ongoing investigation, we now know that prior to President Donald Trump’s inauguration, members of his inner circle went to bat on behalf of Israel, and specifically on behalf of illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories, behind the scenes and in opposition to official U.S. foreign policy. That’s the kind of collusion with a foreign state that has gotten a lot of attention with respect to the Kremlin – but colluding with Israel seems to be of far less interest, strangely.”
Yes, you heard that right. This was at minimum collusion with Israel. But it goes much deeper than that. If this story is accurate, and we every reason to believe it is (especially by the large silence in the American media, usually a positive indication of media avoidance), this would indicate that the then President-elect’s close advisor and son-in-law, Jared Kushner, was clearly acting as a foreign agent – on behalf of the state of Israel.
Granted, this is a very serious charge – which comes with some serious consequences if Kushner would ever be indicted, but the facts clearly demonstrate beyond any reasonable doubt, that then President-elect’s son-in-law was using his proximity to the incoming Commander and Chief to execute a series of highly sensitive foreign policy maneuvers at the request of a foreign country.
The history of Israeli spying and outright meddling in US affairs is no secret to anyone willing to research it (unofficially a forbidden topic in US mainstream media), but this latest episode with Trump and Kushner is even more disturbing considering this week’s East Jerusalem announcement.
Beyond this, many will argue that the radical fundamentalist Zionist agenda which Kushner is aggressively pursuing on behalf of Tel Aviv is not in the interest of the wider Middle East, nor is it good for America’s European partners, and may even contribute to a further destablization of the region – as evidenced by recent violence which has erupted following Trump’s provocative move. That result is not necessarily in America’s interests, even if it is certainly in Israel’s interests.
Author Mehdi Hassan continues:
Here’s what we learned last week when Mueller’s team unveiled its plea deal with Trump’s former national security adviser, retired Gen. Michael Flynn. In December 2016, the United Nations Security Council was debating a draft resolution that condemned Israeli settlement expansion in the occupied territories as a “flagrant violation under international law” that was “dangerously imperiling the viability” of an independent Palestinian state.
The Obama administration had made it clear that the U.S. was planning to abstain on the resolution, while noting that “the settlements have no legal validity” and observing how “the settlement problem has gotten so much worse that it is now putting at risk the … two-state solution.” (Rhetorically, at least, U.S. opposition to Israeli settlements has been a long-standing and bipartisan position for decades: Ronald Reagan called for “a real settlement freeze” in 1982 while George H.W. Bush tried to curb Israeli settlement-building plans by briefly cutting off U.S. loan guarantees to the Jewish state in 1991.)
Everyone expected that the upcoming UN vote on illegal Israeli settlements was going to be a divisive issue, but with only weeks before Trump’s fast approaching inauguration, Israel had its trojan horse in position. Hassan goes on to explain Tel Aviv’s covert mechanism for manipulate the UN vote:
“On or about December 22, 2016, a very senior member of the Presidential Transition Team directed Flynn to contact officials from foreign governments, including Russia, to learn where each government stood on the resolution and to influence those governments to delay the vote or defeat the resolution,” reads the statement of offense against Flynn, who pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his conversations with the Russian ambassador to the U.S. “On or about December 22, 2016, Flynn contacted the Russian Ambassador about the pending vote. Flynn informed the Russian Ambassador about the incoming administration’s opposition to the resolution, and requested that Russia vote against or delay the resolution.”
So who was this very senior member of Trump’s team who sought to execute orders from the office of Israeli President Benjamin Netanyahu? Hassan explains:
Who was the “very senior member” of the transition team who “directed” Flynn to do all this? Multiple news outlets have confirmed that it was Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and main point man on the Middle East peace process. “Jared called Flynn and told him you need to get on the phone to every member of the Security Council and tell them to delay the vote,” a Trump transition official revealed to BuzzFeed News on Friday, adding that Kushner told Flynn “this was a top priority for the president.”
According to BuzzFeed : “After hanging up, Flynn told the entire room [at the Trump transition team HQ] that they’d have to start pushing to lobby against the U.N. vote, saying ‘the president wants this done ASAP.’” Flynn’s guilty plea, BuzzFeed continued, revealed “for the first time how Trump transition officials solicited Russia’s help to head off the UN vote and undermine the Obama administration’s policy on Middle East peace before ever setting foot in the White House.”
Even during the height of the Neocon era, with multiple Israeli loyalists in the cabinet (including some dual passport holders) shaping White House Middle East policy – ultimately into a ditch with Iraq, the level of manipulation wasn’t this overt. Trump’s decision to reverse successive US administrations’ new policy on East Jerusalem is inconceivable, if not for some other x-factor which even the PNAC-dominated George W. Bush could not manage.
The facts of the case against Kushner have not been contested, and in fact Kushner has even been gloating out on the speaking circuit, with his doting wife Ivanka proudly advertizing her husband’s ‘accomplishment’ on behalf Israel.
“None of this has been contested. In fact, on Sunday, Kushner made a rare public appearance at the Saban Forum in Washington, D.C., to discuss the Trump administration’s plans for the Middle East and was welcomed by the forum’s sponsor, the Israeli-American billionaire Haim Saban, who said he “personally wanted to thank” Kushner for “taking steps to try and get the United Nations Security Council to not go along with what ended up being an abstention by the U.S.” Kushner’s response? The first son-in-law smiled, nodded, and mouthed “thank you” to Saban.
Meanwhile, the Israelis have been pretty forthcoming about their own role in all of this, too. On Monday, Ron Dermer, Israel’s ambassador to the U.S. and a close friend and ally of Netanyahu, told Politico’s Susan Glasser that, in December 2016, “obviously we reached out to [the Trump transition team] in the hope that they would help us,” and “we were hopeful that they would speak” to other governments “in order to prevent this vote from happening.”
According to these reports, Kushner was using his position in the transition team to act on Israel’s behalf – outside of any governmental framework of accountability. If Flynn is guilty of anything, it would be going also with Kushner’s Israel First scheme ahead of the United Nations vote. What is odd though, is why the entire US mainstream media is not interested in this part of the story. Even the Never Trump “Resistance” seem to be afraid of taking this narrative on. I guess even the Resistance has its limits. Rather than go for a case where the evidence is sitting right there on a silver Salva, instead they will go for the Russian conspiracy theory. Alas, old habits die hard.
This series of events is all the more pertinent when considering this week’s announcement by President Trump that the US is to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, and with be moving its embassy from Tel Aviv to East Jerusalem. Many are already calling this “the kiss of death” to the Israel-Palestine peace process. In a predictable succession of events, the Jerusalem provocation was a fait accompli after Trump had announced in October that the US would be withdrawing from support for UNESCO, the UN body which is meant to help maintain the neutrality of Jerusalem as an internationally protected area. The Trump administration justified its resignation from the key UN agency on the ground that is “biased against Israel.” But the neutrality of Jerusalem is an essential policy for maintaining peace in a less than ideal situation with Palestine still under a brutal military occupation by an illegitimate and illegal (by international law and successive UN Resolutions) Israeli jackboot.
In addition to all this, this past summer the United States announced the establishment of a permanent military installation inside of Israel. What’s scary is how many people do not know this has happened.
So Trump’s éminence grise, the wunderkind, who some people have called the President In-Law, is really Israel’s man inside the White House.
What is Jared Kushner’s experience in international affairs and diplomacy that he has been charged with negotiating Middle East affairs for the United States of America? His only visible qualification is that he’s married to the President’s daughter. That’s really it.
Credit where credit’s due though. Aside from marrying into the dynasty, Kushner is also the former owner of a mediocre website, The New York Observer, and has also managed to parlay his family status to help finance a number of high-profile New York City property deals (no doubt with the help of his father-in-law),
Isn’t that what Kushner is doing now – using his inherited clout to help “close friend” Benjamin Netanyahu secure a highly illegal property deal in the Middle East, with the United States as the guarantor? It certainly looks that way. The question is, will anyone in the US do anything about it?
When this latest episode of hubris by the White House and Israel eventually unravels, the public and the media might then turn on Kushner and Trump, but by then the damage will have already been done.
Until then, Netanyahu can feel safe in the knowledge that Israel, not Washington, is currently in control of US foreign policy.
One final note to brave Never Trump Resistance: if any foreign state actor is blackmailing this President or the White House, it’s probably not Russia.
***
Author Patrick Henningsen is an American writer and global affairs analyst and founder of independent news and analysis site 21st Century Wire, and is host of the SUNDAY WIRE weekly radio show broadcast globally over the Alternate Current Radio Network (ACR). He has written for a number of international publications and has done extensive on-the-ground reporting of the conflict Syria, Iraq and the Middle East.
US Marine chopper reportedly drops object on Okinawa nursery during flyover
FILE PHOTO: Sikorsky CH-53 © Wikipedia
RT | December 7, 2017
The staff of a nursery school located 300 meters from a US base in Okinawa has found an object, which apparently fell on the roof from a US helicopter. Some 50 children were playing in the grounds at the time of the flyover.
The object was discovered on the roof of the Midorigaoka nursery in Ginowan City, which is located beside the US Marine Corps Futenma Air Station. The staff found it on Thursday at around 10:20am, just after a US military aircraft flew over the daycare facility, reports NHK.
Head of the nursery, Takehiro Kamiya, said staff went to check what had happened when they heard a loud sound from the roof. They found a cylindrical object that was 10cm long and 7cm in diameter. It had a warning sign that read: “Remove before flight” painted in English, according to footage shown by the TV channel.
The director said the nursery provides daycare for 61 children. Around 50 of them were playing in the garden outside at the time of the incident, while others were inside. Nobody was injured, but people working at Midorigaoka say the outcome could easily have been different.
“I’m appalled to think what would have happened if the falling point had shifted just a little bit,” said Take Nago, the 78-year-old chief caregiver at the facility, as cited by Kyodo news agency.
According to the Japanese Defense Ministry, a Sikorsky CH-53 Sea Stallion flew over Ginowan City at the time of the incident. The transport helicopters stationed at the Futenma Air Station have been a target for complaints by residents of the city, who have cited concerns about noise and risks associated with their flights. One of the most memorable incidents involving the aircraft happened in August 2004, when one of the Marine helicopters crashed into a building at Okinawa International University. Fortunately, it was largely vacant for summer break at the time. The crash was caused by poor maintenance of the helicopter, an investigation later found.
Another CH-53 crash-landed in northern Okinawa during a training exercise in October. The crash site was only a few hundred meters from the residential area of Higashi village. And last week, an F-35A Lightning II stationed at Okinawa’s Kadena Airbase dropped a panel during its flight, leaving a dent in its high-tech stealth coating.
North Korea Pushes US to Negotiating Table?
By Finian CUNNINGHAM | Strategic Culture Foundation | 07.12.2017
Just when the crisis in US-North Korean relations could not seem more bleak, this week sees a chance that the two sides could be moving quietly towards a diplomatic resolution. The arrival of senior United Nations diplomat Jeffrey Feltman in Pyongyang for four days of discussions with top officials was reported as a “very rare” event.
Feltman is the most senior American official in the United Nations secretariat, serving as the chief of political affairs under Secretary General Antonio Guterres. The last time such a senior UN official reportedly visited North Korea was six years ago. The delegation this week comes at the request of Pyongyang.
The US State Department said that Feltman was in North Korea on behalf of the United Nations, and that he was not conveying a message from Washington. Nevertheless, there are grounds to believe that the diplomat’s “wide-ranging” discussions with senior North Korean officials is an opening for tentative talks between Washington and Pyongyang to resolve the deepening crisis over the latter’s nuclear weapons program.
Before his UN appointment in 2012, Feltman (58) worked in the US State Department for nearly 30 years. His posts included sensitive Middle East areas: Israel, Palestine, Iraq, Lebanon and Bahrain. Officially, he may be on UN business this week in Pyongyang, but it seems plausible that this career US diplomat will, in addition, convey a significant political signal from Washington that formal talks are on.
Washington’s public position is that no talks with North Korea are on the agenda until Pyongyang halts its nuclear weapons program. However, US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said recently there was the possibility of “talks about talks” in the future. President Donald Trump while threatening “fire and fury” on North Korea has also at other times hinted that he is willing to engage in diplomacy with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.
For its part, North Korea has said it will never unilaterally give up its nuclear weapons program as a deterrent to what it calls US aggression.
Escalating rhetorical jibes between the two leaders over the past several months might suggest that there is minimal chance for diplomacy. Trump has disparaged Kim as “Rocket Man on a suicide mission”; while Kim has mocked the American president as “a stupid old dotard”.
Russia and China have urged all sides to engage in negotiations in order to calm roiling tensions, which have mounted over the past year from dozens of missile tests being conducted by North Korea, as well as from provocative military exercises carried out by the US and its South Korea and Japanese allies.
Last week, North Korea launched its biggest Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM) yet, a Hwasong-15, which various analysts said demonstrated the capability for a nuclear strike on any part of the US mainland, including the capital Washington DC. Pyongyang announced that the test launch proved that the country had completed its quest for acquiring nuclear weapons capable of hitting the US.
Then this week, US forces conducted their biggest-ever warplanes drill with South Korea, involving some 230 aircraft, including B1-B nuclear-capable bombers and reportedly for the first time stealth F-35 and F-22 fighter jets. The massive air-force mobilization came despite appeals from China and Russia for a suspension. There were also warnings from North Korea that the US bombing rehearsals were leading the Peninsula to the brink of nuclear war.
Trump’s top national security advisor General HR McMaster recently added to fears of a full-on conflict breaking out when he described the situation as a countdown to war. Trump has also on several occasions warned that he would “totally destroy” North Korea if the US or its allies were threatened. A threat which was again repeated last week by the US ambassador the UN Nikki Haley. Pyongyang has, in turn, said that such rhetoric amounts to a declaration of war by the US.
The re-listing on November 20 by Washington of North Korea as a “state sponsor of terrorism” is another incendiary factor in an already explosive geopolitical mix.
However, in spite of the imminent danger of all-out armed conflict, there are reasons to believe that both sides are willing to pull back.
Bellicose posturing by Trump and his aides cannot disguise the fact that Washington does not have a realistic military option in dealing with North Korea. Negotiation is the only viable option to resolve the long-running crisis, as China and Russia have both consistently urged.
Many American weapons experts, including Siegfried Hecker, the former head of Los Alamos Laboratory, reckon that North Korea has the capability of 30 to 60 nuclear weapons. An underground test in September points to the possession of a H-bomb with a 10-fold explosive power of the A-bombs dropped by the US on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
“There is little doubt that North Korea could mount a nuclear warhead on a missile that could reach South Korea or Japan,” according to Siegfried.
That capability alone – if not also the now very real possibility of hitting the US mainland – places millions of lives at risk, if Washington were to go to war with North Korea.
Over the past decade since North Korea’s first nuclear test explosion in 2006, the country’s military defenses have progressed at an astonishing rate, despite the ratcheting up of economic and diplomatic sanctions by Washington. Most of North Korea’s weapons development has occurred under the current leader Kim Jong-un who took over six years ago after the death of his father Kim Jong-il. Four of the country’s total six nuclear tests have taken place under the watch of the 30-something-year-old incumbent.
Having now achieved the stated goal of possessing a nuclear deterrent force capable of hitting the US, Pyongyang may feel it is finally in a position to talk with Washington on a mutual basis.
South Korean diplomat, Kim Hong-gul, who met the North Korean leader six years ago at his father’s funeral, said that the recent test of the ICBM purportedly capable of striking the US, could paradoxically be a harbinger of future talks between Pyongyang and Washington.
In an interview with Bloomberg this week, the South Korea diplomat said of the ICBM test launch: “It could be a flare signaling the start of the negotiations. On completion [of nuclear forces], Kim wouldn’t need to test missiles anymore, so he could suggest a conversation with the South and the US, possibly in his New Year speech, while refraining from further tests.”
It seems significant that the day after the latest ICBM test, on November 30, Pyongyang confirmed its invitation to the UN for high-level discussions. Within days, the UN reciprocated by sending Jeffrey Feltman, the seasoned former US State Department point man, to Pyongyang this week.
It is not known if Feltman will meet with Kim Jong-un during his four-day trip, but he is scheduled to hold talks with North Korea’s most senior diplomat, foreign minister Ri Yong-ho.
Notably, too, Feltman’s visit to Pyongyang follows a high-level delegation from Beijing to North Korea, the first such trip by Chinese diplomats after a two-year hiatus.
Bloomberg also reports: “Russian lawmaker Vitaly Pashin, who recently visited Pyongyang, said Monday that North Korean officials are ready for one-on-one or multiparty talks now that they’ve become a nuclear power capable of striking the US mainland.”
The standoff between the US and North Korea is much too grim, and the stakes are much too high, for any side to crow about one-upmanship.
But maybe – just maybe – the brinkmanship shown by North Korea to persist with its nuclear program in the face of US threats has paid off by forcing Washington to come to the negotiating table in order to resolve the standoff peacefully through a political settlement.
So much for Western depiction of the North Korean leader as a “madman”. His cold-blooded logic may spare the world from a nuclear war incited by the crazies in Washington.
Pentagon quadruples troop levels in Syria to ‘stabilize’ liberated areas
RT | December 7, 2017
The US military has increased the number of troops in Syria from 500 to 2,000, the Pentagon says, adding that the “conditions-based” military presence is justified by the need to “stabilize” liberated areas.
The Pentagon has officially announced that there are now 2,000 troops in Syria – a fourfold increase from the previous figures given. “The United States will continue necessary counterterrorism and stabilization effort,” Pentagon spokesman Colonel Robert Manning said.
“The United States will sustain a conditions-based military presence in Syria to combat the threat of insurgent-led insurgency, prevent the resurgence of ISIS and to stabilize liberated areas.”
Manning claimed that the Iraqi Army and Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) have liberated about 97 percent “of the people and land” previously controlled by Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS) in Iraq and Syria respectively. He said the campaign to defeat IS is now in a new phase in these countries.
Coalition forces are still needed in the two countries, Manning said, adding that they will now focus on “train, advise and assist” missions. “As the terrorist group continues to lose territory, important work remains to ensure its lasting defeat.”
The US military has repeatedly refused to acknowledge the number of troops and “military advisers” it has fighting alongside anti-government rebel forces. Under the Obama administration, the Pentagon routinely announced foreign troop deployments, but the Trump administration stopped disclosing such information regarding Operation Inherent Resolve. The policy was reversed in the spring of 2017 in order to maintain the “element of surprise” against Islamic State in both Syria and Iraq.
Damascus views the US military engagement in Syria as illegitimate, as there was no official request for intervention from the government. Early in November, Syrian leader Bashar Assad said his government will deal with any “illegal invader force.” He added that the war in Syria will continue until there is a full “recovery of security and stability to all Syrian lands.”
Washington insists its military presence in Syria is lawful and justified by UN mandate. In mid-November, US Defense Secretary James Mattis claimed the United Nations sanctioned the US presence in Syria.
“You know, the UN said that… basically we can go after ISIS. And we’re there to take them out,” Mattis said. Moscow responded by saying the UN cannot greenlight a foreign invasion of Syria, as it is contrary to international law.
Media reports indicate that the US is not planning to leave any time soon. According to the Washington Post, the US wants to keep troops in Syria long after Islamic State is defeated to help the Western-backed SDF establish “new local governance” structures in order to prevent complete victory by the Syrian government and its ally, Iran.
Read more:
IOC bans Russia: Cold War 2.0 politics ruins the Olympics
By Neil Clark | RT | December 6, 2017
The announcement by the International Olympic Committee that Russia would be banned from the PyeongChang Winter Olympics – but that Russian athletes, if proven ‘clean’ from doping would be able to compete under a neutral banner- has to be seen in its wider geopolitical context.
The decision comes amid a backdrop of unrelenting Russophobia fueled by Western elites who are furious Russia has thwarted their plans for regime change in Syria and is generally getting in the way of US hegemonic aspirations and the neocon/globalist agenda.
Revealingly, straight after the IOC decision was announced leading Russophobes, like US Senator John McCain, were renewing their calls for the 2018 football World Cup to be taken away from Russia, showing that this is about the reviving of Cold War politics and not drugs. It’s clear ‘The Endless War’ lobby in the West wants Russia isolated, humiliated and banned from everything. Sport is only one front in their obsessive campaign, attacks on the Russian media is another. In the current climate, it is virtually impossible Russia would get a fair hearing.
Question One: How would you feel if you were an athlete who had trained hard for four years for the Olympics only to be beaten by someone who it later transpired had cheated by using drugs?
Question Two: How would you feel if you were an athlete who had trained hard for four years for the Olympics only to be barred from competing for your country because someone else from your country had been held to have taken drugs?
I’m sure you’d agree that in both cases you would feel very aggrieved. It’s right and proper that drug cheats should be punished – from whatever country they come from – so long as the evidence is there. It’s also right and proper that the innocent don’t pay for the sins of the guilty.
The job of sporting authorities is to make sure that justice is done. That means banning athletes who are proved to have broken the rules, but not imposing blanket bans when evidence of a state-sponsored drug program is missing or inconclusive. And not allowing geopolitics to play any part in their deliberations.
Russia should be treated like any other country; we can surely all agree on that. Alas, that isn’t what appears to have happened.
Last year, there was a blanket ban on Russian Paralympians competing in Rio- imposed by the IPC, which has representatives from six NATO countries on its 14 member board – punishing athletes who had never done anything wrong.
Russian athletes have been banned (and stripped of their medals) without proof of their guilt being published by the IOC’s Oswald Commission – which was set up in July 2016 to investigate the second part of the McLaren report (more of which later). The IOC says it will publish the evidence of ‘violations’ in ‘due course’ – but if they have it – why not now.
How can it be right to ban people without publishing the evidence?
This witch-hunt against Russian athletes goes back to the McLaren report. How authoritative was that? Answer: not very. If you think that’s just ‘Russian propaganda,’ ITV Sports editor Steve Scott acknowledged in November that we are not in “beyond reasonable doubt territory” – in his article “Did the McLaren report into Russian doping overstep the mark.”
For the first part of the report – McLaren, a law professor from a country (Canada) which is a geopolitical adversary of Russia and whose anti-doping agency head, had along with his US counterpart, tried to lobby the IOC to ban ALL Russian athletes from the Rio Olympics last year admitted he “did not seek to interview persons living within the Russian Federation.”
This is a breach of a fundamental principle of natural justice – namely “audi alteram partem” (“listen to the other side”). That wasn’t all that was unsatisfactory about McLaren’s report. There was the lack of supporting evidence for its claims. The line was “we don’t know how they tampered with the urine samples, but we know the Russians did it.” And of course, the report was heavily based –as ITV news conceded last night- on the testimony of just one man- Grigory Rodchenkov- former head of Moscow’s anti-doping laboratory who defected to the US. But just how trustworthy a witness was he?
For the second part of his report McLaren did meet “some” Russian officials, but not all who have been accused.
Furthermore, as recently as November 27, WADA chief Craig Reedie said that while there were “hints” and “claims” of evidence of a systematic state-sponsored Russian doping scheme, 95 of the 96 cases of Russian athletes WADA is investigating have been suspended because “there was not sufficient evidence to pursue an anti-doping violation.”
Yet despite this, before the announcement in Lausanne yesterday, there were exhortations from Western media commentators for the IOC to “do the right thing, ” i.e., ban Russia – based on a report which had more holes in it than a giant slab of Swiss cheese.
Imagine if Thomas Bach, IOC President, had announced Russia would not be banned as conclusive evidence of a state-sponsored doping program had not been presented – which was indeed the case. Then much of the Russia-bashing Western media would have turned their guns on Bach and his committee accusing him, and them, of being “corrupt” and “in cahoots with Putin.”
Remember the attacks on the IOC when they didn’t impose a blanket ban on Russia at last year’s Rio Olympics? How much did that influence the IPC to make their decision?
As I noted here, all roads in the campaign to ban Russia, lead back to the US and Canada.
Far from providing ‘conclusive evidence’ the McLaren report was struggling to do the job of getting Russia banned.
In February, leaks from the hacktivist group ‘Fancy Bear’ revealed the IOC was not satisfied with the ‘proof’ in some parts of the report and asked 56 questions about 16 of the accused.
An earlier leak also revealed that Martial Saugy, the former director of the WADA’s accredited doping Laboratory of Lausanne accused the McLaren report of making “incorrect allegations.”
McLaren needed a major leg-up in 2017, and it was given one, by US Off-Broadway playwright called Bryan Fogel. Fogel’s documentary film Icarus, which featured interviews with Rodchenkov was released in August. In fact, it was Fogel and Rodchenkov taking the story to the New York Times in May 2016 which led to the McLaren report in the first place.
What started as a ‘Super Size Me’ experiment in doping ended up turning into – in the words of The Independent – “an explosive expose of Russia’s Olympic cover-up.”
“Icarus may be the best non-fiction film of the year,” declared the Financial Times. “A coup for a first-time documentarian,” enthused The Atlantic.
Icarus won prizes at film festivals in the US and UK, and it’s also been tipped to make the Oscars short-list, but not all were convinced that it had proven its case. “Netflix doping scandal doc is flawed but fascinating,” was the title of The Guardian’s review. “There’s an inescapable slipperiness to Rodchenkov’s character that makes his testimony slightly hard to swallow,” wrote Gwilym Mumford.
In an interview with the FT, Fogel, who we’re told “stumbled” into the Russian doping story, reveals that he believes Russia has a “cultural” problem with drugs.
“The mentality of an entire culture of people, of a country, is different,” he says. “You have to place yourself in that perspective . . . If you’re growing up in a world like Grigory (Rodchenkov) under communism, and everybody is doping, his mother injects him with steroids — nothing is wrong.”
Fogel’s film fits in very conveniently with the current wave of Russophobia.
Last night, some were asking on social media if without Icarus Russia would have been banned.
The aim of anti-Russian propagandists in the West is quite clearly to portray Russia as a ‘doping nation’ that never tells the truth. But, as that wise old saying goes, if you point one finger, you have three pointing back at you.
As I wrote here, it was only in 2003 when allegations were made by a top American official about widespread US doping:
Wade Exum, the US Olympic Committee’s former Director of Drug Control, handed over more than 30,000 pages of documents to Sports Illustrated magazine and the Orange County Register, which he said showed that over 100 American athletes had failed drug tests between 1988-2000, but had still been allowed to compete.
Carl Lewis, the US Olympian later admitted he had tested positive for banned substances before the 1988 Games in Seoul where he won Gold but claimed that ‘hundreds’ of fellow Americans had also escaped bans.
“There were hundreds of people getting off,” Lewis said. “Everyone was treated the same.”
But guess what? There was no McLaren style report and no blanket ban on US athletes. And no film made about the story like Icarus.
As for the charge that under ‘communism’ “everyone is doping” let’s think back to the 1954 World Cup final. Then the best football team in the world (and arguably the team of all time) the Magical Magyars from communist Hungary, were surprisingly beaten 3-2 in the final by West Germany after they had thrashed the Germans 8-3 in the Group stage. How did the so-called ‘Miracle of Bern’ happen? For years Hungarians believed they had been cheated. And so it proved. A 2013 report commissioned by the German Olympic Sports Federation, whose head incidentally is IOC Chair Thomas Bach, revealed not only that the German players had been injected with the methamphetamine Pervitin, but that West Germany had operated a 20-year state-sponsored doping program with the full knowledge of politicians and sports officials.
Will Hungary be awarded the 1954 World Cup and those who finished second behind the 100 American competitors who failed drug tests be promoted? If we’re changing the results of Sochi and stripping Russians of medals, shouldn’t we be doing it across the board?
You don’t have to be Russian, or Hungarian to feel angry about the double standards.
When it comes to doping and punishment for alleged doping some countries, namely the US and those closely allied to Washington, are most definitely more equal than others.
Follow Neil Clark on Twitter @NeilClark66
Propaganda, Confrontation and Profit
By Brian CLOUGHLEY | Strategic Culture Foundation | 06.12.2017
The waves, the artificial tides of anti-Russian propaganda continue to beat upon the ears and eyes of Western citizens, spurred by Washington politicians and bureaucrats whose motives vary from deviously duplicitous to blatantly commercial. It is no coincidence that there has been vastly increased expenditure on US weaponry by Eastern European countries.
Complementing the weapons’ build-up, which is so sustaining and lucrative for the US industrial-military complex, the naval, air and ground forces of the US-NATO military alliance continue operations ever closer to Russia’s borders.
Shares and dividends in US arms manufacturing companies have rocketed, in a most satisfactory spinoff from Washington’s policy of global confrontation, and the Congressional Research Service (CRS) records that “arms sales are recognized widely as an important instrument of state power. States have many incentives to export arms. These include enhancing the security of allies or partners; constraining the behaviour of adversaries; using the prospect of arms transfers as leverage on governments’ internal or external behaviour; and creating the economics of scale necessary to support a domestic arms industry.”
The CRS notes that arms deals “are often a key component in Congress’s approach to advancing US foreign policy objectives,” which is especially notable around the Baltic and throughout the Middle East, where US wars have created a bonanza for US weapons makers — and for the politicians whom the manufacturers reward so generously for their support. (Additionally, in 2017 arms manufacturers spent $93,937,493 on lobbying Congress.)
Some countries, however, do not wish to purchase US weaponry, and they are automatically categorised as being influenced by Russia, which is blamed for all that has gone wrong in America over the past couple of years. This classification is especially notable in the Central Asian Republics.
The US military’s Central Command (Centcom) states that its “area of responsibility spans more than 4 million square miles and is populated by more than 550 million people from 22 ethnic groups, speaking 18 languages… and confessing [sic] multiple religions which transect national borders. The demographics create opportunities for tension and rivalry.” Centcom is deeply engaged in the US wars in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan, and supports Saudi Arabia in its war on Yemen, and the extent of its influence in the Pentagon’s self-allotted geographical Area of Responsibility is intriguing, to say the least. Some of its priorities were revealed in March 2017 by the Commander of this enormous military realm, General Joseph Votel, in testimony to the Armed Services Committee of the House of Representatives in Washington.
General Votel’s description of US self-allocated “responsibilities” was astonishing in its imperialistic arrogance.
As Commander of Centcom, General Votel gave the Armed Services Committee a colourful tour of his territory, describing nations in terms ranging from condescendingly supportive to patently insolent, and he devoted much time to describing relations with countries abutting Russia, Iran and China, which nations, he declared, are trying “to limit US influence in the sub-region.” That “sub-region” includes many countries immediately on the borders of Russia, Iran and China, and averaging 7,000 miles (11,000 kilometres) from Washington.
CENTCOM countries (coloured)
First he dealt with Kazakhstan with which the US has its “most advanced military relationship in Central Asia” in furtherance of which Washington is “making notable progress… despite enduring Russian influence.” It is obviously unacceptable to the Pentagon that Russia wishes to maintain cordial relations with a country with which it has a border of 6,800 kilometres. Then General Votel went into fantasyland by claiming that “Kazakhstan remains the most significant regional contributor to Afghan stability…” which even the members of the Congressional Committee would have realised is spurious nonsense.
But more nonsense was to follow, with General Votel referring to Kyrgyzstan in patronising terms usually associated with a Viceroy or other colonial master of a region that Votel describes as “widely characterized by pervasive instability and conflict,” which he failed to note were caused by the US wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
He told the Committee that Kyrgyzstan “sees political pressure from its larger, more powerful neighbours, including Russia, hosting a small Russian airbase outside the capital, Bishkek. Despite ongoing challenges in our bilateral and security cooperation, we continue to seek opportunities to improve our mil-to-mil relationship.” He did not explain why Kyrgyzstan should be expected to embrace a military alliance with United States Central Command, but Viceroys don’t have to provide explanations.
Votel then moved to consider Tajikistan with which “our mil-to-mil relationship is deepening despite Moscow’s enduring ties and the presence of the military base near Tajikistan’s capital of Dushanbe, Russia’s largest military base outside of its borders.” Not only this, says Votel, but China (having a 400 Kilometre border with Tajikistan) has had the temerity to have “initiated a much stronger military cooperation partnership with Tajikistan, adding further complexity to Tajikistan’s multi-faceted approach to security cooperation.”
No: China hasn’t added any complexity to Tajikistan’s circumstances. What has complicated their relations is the fact that Afghanistan is in a state of chaos, following the US invasion of 2001, and drugs and terrorists cross the border (1,300 kilometres long) from Afghanistan into Tajikistan, which is trying to protect itself. During its sixteen years of war in Afghanistan there has been no attempt by the United States to secure that border.
None of these countries wants to be forced into a military pact with the United States, and Turkmenistan (border with Afghanistan 750 kilometres) has made it clear it doesn’t want to be aligned with anyone. But General Votel states that its “UN-recognized policy of ‘positive neutrality’ presents a challenge with respect to US engagement.” No matter what is desired by Turkmenistan, it seems, there must always be a way for the United States Central Command to establish military relations and, as General Votel told the Defence Committee, “we are encouraged somewhat by Turkmenistan’s expressed interest in increased mil-to-mil engagement with the US within the limits of their ‘positive neutrality’ policy.”
In the minds (to use the word loosely) of General Votel and his kind, it doesn’t matter if a country wants nothing whatever to do with the United States’ military machine, and wants very much to be left alone to get on with things without any interference. Adoption of such a policy by any nation presents a “challenge” and the United States, which in this region is overseen by General Votel’s Central Command, is determined to seek military “engagement” irrespective of what is desired by governments. Arms sales would swiftly follow.
Votel’s tour of his area of responsibility covered Afghanistan, about which his most absurd assertion was “I believe what Russia is attempting to do is they are attempting to be an influential party in this part of the world. I think it is fair to assume they may be providing some sort of support to [the Taliban] in terms of weapons or other things that may be there.”
There was not a shred of evidence provided, but the Committee accepted the pronouncement. Obviously if an allegation is made about Russia it doesn’t matter if it is false. It must be believed. But unfortunately for the imperial Votel and his deferential audience, a person with some sense of truth and balance came up two months later with a statement rubbishing Votel’s unfounded and provocative accusation. In May the Director of the US Defence Intelligence Agency told a Senate Committee that “We have seen indication that [Russia] offered some level of support [to the Taliban], but I have not seen real physical evidence of weapons or money being transferred.” The mainstream media gave no publicity to the truth, and continue to blame Russia for all the ills that befall the US Empire, at home and overseas.
The state of affairs was summed up admirably by Jacob Hornberger of the Future of Freedom Foundation on December 4 when he wrote that “Central to any national-security state is the need for official enemies, ones that are used to frighten and agitate the citizenry. If there are no official enemies, the American citizenry might begin asking some discomforting questions: What do we need a national-security state for? Why not abolish the CIA and dismantle the military-industrial complex and the NSA. Why can’t we have our limited-government, constitutional republic back?”
The Motto of the Pentagon’s Central Command is “Prepare, Pursue, Prevail.” and the Central Asian Republics would be well-advised to bear in mind these threats and think hard about the underlying motif of the US military-industrial complex which is “Propagandise, Provoke, Profit.”
Featured Video
Daniel Davis: Trump’s New Iran Land Blockade Is a Dangerous Fantasy
or go to
Aletho News Archives – Video-Images
New Book
The Vaccine Mafia: Pfizer’s Former Chief Toxicologist Proves How Toxic Substances Were Unlawfully Sold to Us as a Solution for COVID-19
By Helmut Sterz
Former Pfizer chief toxicologist Helmut Sterz presents a critical examination of the development, approval, and global rollout of mRNA COVID-19 vaccines—particularly those produced by Pfizer/BioNTech. The Vaccine Mafia details the failure of pharmaceutical companies, regulatory authorities, politicians, and international organizations to follow established scientific and ethical standards during the pandemic. Drawing on the author’s decades of experience in pharmaceutical toxicology, Sterz reveals the many ways the vaccines’ inadequate or omitted preclinical safety testing put the world’s population at risk.
Sterz demonstrates how “emergency” approvals allowed manufacturers to bypass long-standing international guidelines governing toxicity testing, especially with regard to reproductive and cancer risks. They also allowed governments and health authorities to ignore or conceal evidence of serious adverse effects that occurred, including myocarditis, reproductive harm, and other long-term health risks.
Blog Roll
Aletho News- US still trying to recycle failed hypersonic missile programs
- France’s ‘Cold War’: Paris blames Tehran for supermarket fridge hacks
- Psywar no more? 77th Brigade’s sudden death
- Ukraine Already Carved Up… Before Talks Begin? /Prof. Richard Sakwa
- The vindication of Marjorie Taylor Greene
- Nearly 80% of Britons consider Israel a threat to world peace and security: Survey
- Rhode Island Staffer Could Be Reinstated After Firing Over Ceasefire Post
- Will Republicans Learn Their Lesson from the ‘Disastrous’ Midterms?
- Wrong, Newswise, Irresponsible Climate Messaging, Not Climate Change Itself, Is Fueling Student Anxiety
- Zelensky’s Critics Vanish Into Ukrainian Secret Prisons – Source
- If Americans Knew
- An error has occurred; the feed is probably down. Try again later.
- No Tricks Zone
- German Authorities Start Initiative To Evaluate Public Register For Climate “Disinformation” Spreaders!
- Zonal Asymmetry of Temperature Change in the Antarctic Circumpolar Current
- New Study: The Net Fossil Fuel Contribution To Rising Atmospheric CO2 Has Been Zero For 500 Years
- Germany’s Green Energy Transition Becoming Increasingly Expensive…Another 6 Trillion Euros!
- Sudden Stratospheric Warming, Powerful El Niño Combination May Lead To Extreme Europe Cold, Energy Crisis!
- Two New Studies Find Thwaites Glacier Melt Cannot Be Driven By Human Activity Or A Warming Ocean
- E-Cars Reduce CO2 Emissions By Only 41% Compared To Internal Combustion Engine Vehicles
- Predictions Made By Renowned Climate Professor Over Past Decades Have Been Proven To Be Poor
- New Study Suggests Large Regions Of The Pacific Ocean Have Been Cooling For The Last 80 Years
- Germany’s Green Energy Debacle: High Energy Costs Force Kahla Porzellan to Close After 182 Years!
