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US Senators Seek New Anti-Iran Sanctions Over Use of Commercial Aircraft

Sputnik – 17.02.2017

US senators introduced a legislation to impose sanctions on Iran’s aircraft sector for the use of commercial aircraft to “support terrorism,” Senator Marco Rubio said in a press release on Friday.

The bill would require President Donald Trump’s administration to regularly report to Congress if Iran uses civilian aircraft for the purposes of transporting illicit cargo, such as weapons, troops, electronics or rocket or missile components.

“[Lawmakers] introduced the Iran Terror-Free Skies Act, legislation that would counter Iran’s use of commercial aircraft in support of international terrorism and state sponsors of terrorism,” the release stated. “The legislation would also require the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control to impose new sanctions against these designated Iranian commercial airlines.”

Additionally, the administration would have to report the use of commercial aircraft to support Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, armed forces, Syrian President Bashar Assad’s government or any foreign terrorist organizations.

The US Treasury Department would have to impose new sanctions against Iranian commercial airliners if Trump determines they have engaged in illicit military activities after the Iran nuclear deal was implemented on January 16, 2016.

US officials of the new administration have labeled Iran as the biggest sponsor of terrorism in the world despite lacking evidence proving the claim.

February 17, 2017 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Wars for Israel | , , , , | Leave a comment

The Empire Strikes Back

By Brad Benson | OffGuardian | February 17, 2017

On the surface, the resignation of General Michael Flynn is being sold as a cut-and-dried case of the General getting ahead of his skis by calling the Russian Ambassador to discuss the lifting of sanctions. This was ostensibly then complicated by the General not being honest about his discussions, when queried about it by Vice President Mike Pence. However, as is always the case in these types of affairs, the real story will go untold and General Flynn’s “resignation” will have ramifications far beyond these first headlines.

In reality, the General’s early fall is a signal that the Deep State is not about to permit rapprochement with Russia. This is because any moves to defuse the New Cold War could threaten to undercut Obama’s $1 Trillion, 30 year nuclear arms rearmament program, which has been quietly moving forward for several years.

Flynn, the former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), which is the military’s counterpart to the CIA, was originally fired by Obama for an intelligence assessment, which disputed information that Obama was being fed by the CIA. In retrospect, this report was rather prescient, since it noted that an infant ISIS was a much bigger threat than Obama was being told, while further advising that it was a mistake for the CIA to be supplying them with arms in their ill-fated effort to bring down Assad in Syria.

This put Flynn in direct conflict with then CIA Director, John Brennan, then Director of National Intelligence, John Clapper, and a whole cadre of Neo-Con Interventionists inside Hillary Clinton’s State Department. Flynn’s timing was also bad, since the War Hawks had only recently overthrown Gaddafi and, in the ecstasy of their “success”, no one, especially Obama, wanted to be told that rain clouds were already gathering over their parade.

When General Flynn reemerged as an advisor to Trump during the campaign, there was no immediate concern within the Deep State, since Trump was not seen as a serious factor. However, as Trump began to talk about rapprochement with Putin’s Russia on the campaign trail, Flynn was identified as one of the driving forces behind this idea and, as a result, the Clinton Campaign opened up a new front to denigrate him as a racist nut-case. This may very well have been true, but it does not, as a consequence, make him wrong in regard to his recognition of the necessity to defuse the New Cold War with Russia.

Flynn’s early departure is a big victory for the Deep State Thugs who are heavily invested in the New Cold War. It is most certainly also a signal to Trump that he can be removed, since MSM talking heads are already spinning stories about the fired DOJ Acting Attorney General, Sally Yates, having previously warned the White House that tapped phone calls, between Flynn and the Russian Ambassador, might make the General subject to “blackmail” by the Russians.

Indeed, not-so-subtle threats of impeachment are already being floated, with nuances of the famous question, “What did the President know and when did he know it?” One Neo-Con Flim-flam man has already gone so far as to refer to the “Russian Stench” and demanded to know what is behind this “Russian connection”, which, if anyone gave it any real thought, was essentially a move toward peace.

However, this was apparently just the warm up act for the big guns, since the next up was Thomas Friedman, the influential NY Times op-ed writer, who helped the Bush and Obama Administrations to lie us into several wars. Adopting a stern demeanor, while staring directly into the camera, Friedman demands no less than a full investigation into Trump’s associations with these pesky Russkies, who “undermined our election”, ominously concluding that this was an “event as significant as Pearl Harbor”.

Meanwhile, early rumblings from Moscow are noting that this could be bad news for future relations with the US and could ultimately lead to a deterioration of relations. This is a nice way of saying that they know that our Deep State is undermining the move toward rapprochement, while also sending a subtle message to Trump that they hope he’s not falling for it. Sadly, it may already be too late.

This is the first move to set up Trump for impeachment, with Mike Pence, a Neo-Con, sitting in the catbird seat. Those that celebrate the demise of Flynn and hope for the early fall of Trump should be careful in regard to their wishes. The ultimate result intended in all of this is that there will be no rapprochement with Russia and that the New Cold War might eventually develop into a hot one.

The Empire has struck back. Whether one likes Trump or not, no one should be distracted by the “Russian Connection” Sideshow. This is about the future of a major rearmament program and the Deep State has subtly enlisted the support of the Trump haters on the left to create the conditions for Trump’s early removal.

With many Neo-Cons on the right also poised to feed on the carcass of a guy they couldn’t stop in the primaries, the American People better wake up. This is not a question of left or right. It may very well be a question of survival.

February 17, 2017 Posted by | Deception, Militarism | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Kremlin Refutes Claims Russian Media Were Recommended to Write Less About Trump

Sputnik – 17.02.2017

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that claims that Russian state media outlets were allegedly advised to decrease coverage related to US President Donald Trump are “fake news.”

Earlier, Bloomberg claimed citing sources that Russian state media outlets have allegedly received an order from the Kremlin to “cut way back on their fawning coverage of President Donald Trump, reflecting a growing concern among senior Russian officials that the new U.S. administration will be less friendly than first thought.”

“This is utter nonsence. Due to the fact that both [Russian] channels and other media outlets are absolutely free to determine their editorial policy, and such statements, this claim is yet another example of fake news,” Peskov said answering a question whether or not there any instructions from the presidential administration concerning state TV channels’ change of coverage of information about Donald Trump and the US.

When asked to clarify why a few days ago Russian television channels have started to decrease coverage of Trump’s actions as the new US president, the Kremlin spokesman said that “sincerely speaking, we do not follow the proportions of coverage related to events.”

“Moreover, all sources of information, whether it be television channels — both public and private cable networks and foreign ones — and the Internet, radio, newspapers etc., everything is absolutely available [in Russia], so in this case… there’s an extensive range of options.”

February 17, 2017 Posted by | Deception, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , | Leave a comment

The Deep State Targets Trump

By Pat Buchanan • Unz Review • February 17, 2017

When Gen. Michael Flynn was forced to resign as national security adviser, Bill Kristol purred his satisfaction, “If it comes to it, prefer the deep state to the Trump state.”

To Kristol, the permanent regime, not the elected president and his government, is the real defender and rightful repository of our liberties.

Yet it was this regime, the deep state, that carried out what Eli Lake of Bloomberg calls “The Political Assassination of Michael Flynn.”

And what were Flynn’s offenses?

In December, when Barack Obama expelled 35 Russian diplomats, Flynn spoke to the Russian ambassador. He apparently counseled the envoy not to overreact, saying a new team would be in place in a few weeks and would review U.S.-Russian relations.

“That’s neither illegal nor improper,” writes Lake.

Vladimir Putin swiftly declared that there would be no reciprocal expulsions and U.S. diplomats and their families would be welcome at the Kremlin’s Christmas and New Year’s parties.

Diplomatic crisis averted. “Great move … (by V. Putin),” tweeted Trump, “I always knew he was very smart.”

But apparently, this did not sit well with the deep state.

For when Vice President Pence told a TV show that Flynn told him that sanctions did not come up in conversation with the Russian ambassador, a transcript of Flynn’s call was produced from recordings by intelligence agencies, and its contents leaked to The Washington Post.

After seeing the transcript, the White House concluded that Flynn had misled Pence, mutual trust was gone, and Flynn must go.

Like a good soldier, Flynn took the bullet.

The real crime here, however, is not that the incoming national security adviser spoke with a Russian diplomat seeking guidance on the future president’s thinking. The real crime is the criminal conspiracy inside the deep state to transcribe the private conversation of a U.S. citizen and leak it to press collaborators to destroy a political career.

“This is what police states do,” writes Lake.

But the deep state is after larger game than General Flynn. It is out to bring down President Trump and abort any move to effect the sort of rapprochement with Russia that Ronald Reagan achieved.

For the deep state is deeply committed to Cold War II.

Hence, suddenly, we read reports of a Russian spy ship off the Connecticut, Delaware and Virginia coasts, of Russian jets buzzing a U.S. warship in the Black Sea, and Russian violations of Reagan’s INF treaty outlawing intermediate-range missiles in Europe.

Purpose: Stampede the White House into abandoning any idea of a detente with Russia. And it appears to be working. At a White House briefing Tuesday, Sean Spicer said, “President Trump has made it very clear that he expects the Russian government to … return Crimea.”

Is the White House serious?

Putin could no more survive returning Crimea to Ukraine than Bibi Netanyahu could survive giving East Jerusalem back to Jordan.

How does the deep state go about its work? We have seen a classic example with Flynn. The intelligence and investigative arms of the regime dig up dirt, and then move it to their Fourth Estate collaborators, who enjoy First Amendment immunity to get it out.

For violating their oaths and breaking the law, bureaucratic saboteurs are hailed as “whistleblowers” while the journalists who receive the fruits of their felonies put in for Pulitzers.

Now if Russians hacked into the DNC and John Podesta’s computer during the campaign, and, more seriously, if Trump aides colluded in any such scheme, it should be investigated.

But we should not stop there. Those in the FBI, Justice Department and intelligence agencies who were complicit in a conspiracy to leak the contents of Flynn’s private conversations in order to bring down the national security adviser should be exposed and prosecuted.

An independent counsel should be appointed by the attorney general and a grand jury impaneled to investigate what Trump himself rightly calls “criminal” misconduct in the security agencies.

As for interfering in elections, how clean are our hands?

Our own CIA has a storied history of interfering in elections. In the late ’40s, we shoveled cash into France and Italy after World War II to defeat the Communists who had been part of the wartime resistance to the Nazis and Fascists.

And we succeeded. But we continued these practices after the Cold War ended. In this century, our National Endowment for Democracy, which dates to the Reagan era, has backed “color revolutions” and “regime change” in nations across what Russia regards as her “near abroad.”

NED’s continued existence appears a contradiction of Trump’s inaugural declaration: “We do not seek to impose our way of life on anyone.”

The president and GOP should get out front here. Let Congress investigate Russia meddling in our election. And let a special prosecutor run down, root out, expose and indict those in the investigative and intel agencies who used their custody of America’s secrets, in collusion with press collaborators, to take down Trump appointees who are on their enemies lists.

Then put NED down.

Copyright 2017 Creators.com.

February 17, 2017 Posted by | Deception, Timeless or most popular | , , | Leave a comment

‘Deep State’ Has Trump on the Menu

By Alastair Crooke | Consortium News | February 17, 2017

Beware ego, well two egos actually. Jared Kushner, President Trump’s son-in-law who seems to believe that he can solve the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and who is trying to persuade his father-in-law that “a foreign policy coup” can be his.

Behind the scenes, stand the dubious former British Prime Minister Tony Blair (lobbying via media baron Rupert Murdoch’s former wife Wendy Deng, who reportedly reconciled Kushner and Ivanka Trump after their 2008 split) and the equally dubious gambling magnate Sheldon Adelson, plus the Israeli Ambassador, Ron Dermer (who is a Bibi Netanyahu confidant, reportedly).

Trump would not be the first U.S. President to be glamour-struck by the prospect of being the one to solve the Palestinian conflict, if he should take the bait. He would be one of many. Yet it has proved to be a prize for none of these former Presidents, but rather has proved itself to be a poisoned chalice, time after time.

For Trump however, it would not be the standard hemlock imbibed by his predecessors, but more a case of welcoming into his Administration a Trojan Horse. It is, as journalist Robert Parry rightly asserts, a Trojan Horse carrying the neocons right back into the heart of foreign policy.  It would result in “President Trump’s foreign policy sliding toward neoconservative orthodoxy on the Middle East …”.

What is “the bait” this time? Something very simple. Instead of Israel making peace with the Palestinians, leading to peace with the surrounding world, it would be the other way round: Israel would befriend the Arab world, which would then agree on some “solution” with Israel and impose it on the Palestinians.

This plan has been given a catchy sound-bite by Netanyahu: “Outside” (i.e. the Arab world), “in” (imposition on Palestinians), instead of “inside out.” The selling point is that the Palestinians are now so weak and divided, it is claimed, they have not the strength to object.

Leaving aside the fact that if the Israeli government had actually wanted a negotiated solution – the premise on which the 1993 Oslo Accords was founded (that it was in both parties’ interests to agree on a compromise) – there have been any number of occasions over the last quarter century, when Israel could have had one. History shows that Israel has always preferred continuing the (so-called) Peace Process to actually concluding peace. This understanding of the situation is common ground for both American and European officials, who have been part of “the process” over the years, (of which I was one).

The Wrong Starting Point

But for Trump, it is not the probability of failure in this venture that makes the Israeli initiative potentially so damaging, but rather that to launch his foreign policy from this platform may well prove lethal to his wider aims. Where you start matters. It matters a lot. It dictates the subsequent alignment of alliances.

Initially (and perhaps it still is so), Trump’s start point was détente with Russia. In terms of his aim to transform America’s foreign policy, that made sense. And one can understand why President Trump might be treading somewhat slowly on Russia, in the wake of the Deep State coup against Trump’s National Security Advisor Michael Flynn and the continuing attrition aimed against the President, but simply, were he to pursue his son-in-law’s plan, Trump will be handing over his foreign policy to the neocons.

Why? Because if Trump wants the Arab world (and Saudi Arabia in particular), to help Israel impose a settlement on the Palestinians, Trump will have to embrace Israel’s false narrative that Iran is the chief sponsor of terror in the Middle East. And, Trump equally will have to pay court to the equally false Israeli narrative of the threat of the Iranian “nuclear bomb.” He already has, at his meeting with Prime Minister Netanyahu. It has never been Iran’s non-existent “bomb” that has concerned Israeli security officials: It has been Iran’s conventional military power and even more so, its soft, revolutionary power.

It is precisely this back-to-front neocon world view that has so corrupted American foreign policy: America, for decades now, has aligned itself with Saudi Arabia and Gulf States who finance, arm and support terrorist movements (such as Al Qaeda), while labeling Iran, which actually fights and defeats these “jihadists,” as the chief sponsor of terror in the Middle East. One really cannot get it more back-to-front. This is now more widely understood by the American public, yet the neocons never pull back; they never desist in trying to tie America to the Saudi Arabia-Israeli axis and to promote phobia towards Iran.

Will President Trump see the danger?  His vaunted “war” on radical Islam will be laughed off the stage in the Middle East – as was Obama’s – if he is seen to have aligned himself this way: with Israel, Saudi Arabia and Qatar. It will be viewed in the Middle East as another round of America “at war” with terrorism, and tucked up “in bed” with it, too.

Russian Doubts

And in Moscow, eyebrows too, will be raised at such a strategic alignment: Will Trump be any more serious than Obama in defeating radical jihadists, policy-makers in Russia may be asking? It will be yet another question mark to put beside the bigger question mark arising from President Trump’s acceptance of General Flynn’s resignation.

Journalist Pepe Escobar notes that “even before Flynn’s fall, Russian analysts had been avidly discussing whether President Trump is the new Victor Yanukovich – [the Ukrainian President] who failed to stop a color revolution on his doorstep.”

This has become a key question. Flynn’s conversation with the Russian Ambassador over an open telephone line (which he will have known to be routinely monitored by the security services), broke no rules: He spoke, as any diplomat about to assume office might. There was nothing improper in his conduct.

A British Shadow Foreign Secretary would be constantly in touch with foreign Ambassadors. It is expected, and required of him or her. If there were any breaking of rules, it would seem to have occurred elsewhere: in the intelligence services perhaps, or in the Department of Justice. The rules are that you do not intentionally tap your own officials (or about to be officials), and should this occur inadvertently, their identity and their contribution to the conversation should be minimized, i.e., redacted under privacy rules. Never should it leak.

And if there is a puzzle to this episode, it lies not so much in Flynn’s conduct, but in the response by the President. So, Vice President Mike Pence was miffed that General Flynn had been economical with his account of events to him. Why not call them both in: tell Flynn to apologize and Pence to accept the apology? End it there. Why give a scalp to Deep State opponents?

A puzzle it remains. Eli Lake on Bloomberg View draws out the wider implications: “…unanswered questions. It’s possible that Flynn has more ties to Russia that he had kept from the public and his colleagues. It’s also possible that a group of national security bureaucrats and former Obama officials are selectively leaking highly sensitive law enforcement information to undermine the elected government.

“Flynn was a fat target for the national security state. He has cultivated a reputation as a reformer and a fierce critic of the intelligence community leaders he once served with when he was the director the Defense Intelligence Agency under President Barack Obama. Flynn was working to reform the intelligence-industrial complex, something that threatened the bureaucratic prerogatives of his rivals.

“He was also a fat target for Democrats. Remember Flynn’s breakout national moment last summer was when he joined the crowd at the Republican National Convention from the dais calling for Hillary Clinton to be jailed.

“In normal times, the idea that U.S. officials entrusted with our most sensitive secrets would selectively disclose them to undermine the White House would alarm those worried about creeping authoritarianism. Imagine if intercepts of a call between Obama’s incoming national security adviser and Iran’s foreign minister leaked to the press before the nuclear negotiations began? The howls of indignation would be deafening.

“In the end, it was Trump’s decision to cut Flynn loose. In doing this he caved in to his political and bureaucratic opposition. [Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Devin] Nunes told me Monday night, that this will not end well. ‘First it’s Flynn, next it will be Kellyanne Conway, then it will be Steve Bannon, then it will be Reince Priebus,’ he said. Put another way, Flynn is only the appetizer. Trump is the entrée.”

Neutering Trump

So this is the question: Has the Deep State already neutered Trump’s foreign policy? It is too early to tell, but there are straws in the wind suggesting that Trump’s policy might be sliding towards neocon orthodoxy on Russia (as well as on Palestine), as Moon of Alabama web site observed:

“[On Feb. 14] the White House spokesperson said: President Trump has made it very clear that he expects the Russian government to deescalate violence in the Ukraine and return Crimea.

“[On Feb. 15] Trump tweeted: Donald J. Trump Verified account @realDonaldTrump

Crimea was TAKEN by Russia during the Obama Administration. Was Obama too soft on Russia?

4:42 AM – 15 Feb 2017

“That is a position Trump had not previously taken. ‘Return Crimea’ is a no-no to any current and future Russian government. If Trump insists on this, the prospective détente is already dead.”

Flynn’s sacrifice does not allow a final judgment to be made. On the bigger chessboard, Trump has decided that “a pawn” can be sacrificed. The General had certain qualities (the ruthlessness perhaps necessary to wield an axe to the intelligence agencies), but also he had displayed a lack of political “nous” and basic understanding in Flynn’s book, The Field of Fight, (that unwisely he had co-authored with neocon Michael Leeden). Trump chose not to risk a more important piece to defend a pawn (especially as one more important “piece” (Bannon) reportedly was calling for this pawn to be sacrificed).

The question, finally, is about Trump’s character: Has he the “steel” to “drain the swamp”? Can he recruit tough-minded allies within the Deep State, ready to conduct a vicious internal war and to purge it thoroughly? Can he eliminate the sleeper cells from within his own administration? Tweets will not be enough. He will have to act soon.

Or else, will he “slide” (towards the neocons), and take the Netanyahu bait. And fall into the embrace of the neocon alignment with the Saudi-Israeli axis – and, having absorbed the basic hook of Iranophobia, go on to try to split President Putin from Iran (and China), in true neocon style?

This portends a vicious internal war within the U.S. – for even were the Deep State “color revolution” to succeed, it would not represent the end of the war, but perhaps the loss of a major battle within the wider war.

Alastair Crooke is a former British diplomat who was a senior figure in British intelligence and in European Union diplomacy. He is the founder and director of the Conflicts Forum.

February 17, 2017 Posted by | Deception, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular | , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Draining the swamp won’t be easy for Trump

By M K Bhadrakumar | Indian Punchline | February 17, 2017

After reading my Asia Times column yesterday, World community sizes up a diminished Trump, a well-meaning warm-hearted friend, an American from New York, wrote to me to explain gently that what we are witnessing in the United States is a mere “tantrum” by a clutch of spooks whose jobs are under threat and their hangers-on in the intelligence services, along with the liberal press having a “parallel tantrum” who cannot believe that they lost the election to Donald Trump. I was in two minds after reading the mail. Should I have called it a “civil war”, after all?

That is, until this morning when I read the transcript of the extraordinary 75-minute press conference in the White House late Thursday night. The press conference was originally called by Trump to announce his new pick for Labour Secretary, but in no time degenerated into a verbal brawl between the President of the United States of America and the White House press corps with former NSA Michael Flynn and Russia ties at the epicenter. It was all so surreal, to say the least.

Not even in the darkest hour of the Vietnam War or in the shameful hours of the Watergate cover-up or the sly escapades of Bill Clinton in the Oval Office would the White House have witnessed anything like this. Perhaps, this becomes an unprecedented event in American political history – the US president openly trading insults with the journalists who cover his presidency in real time.

The good thing for us who are non-Americans, in this extraordinary free-for-all with tooth and claw is that we learn so much about the American political system, how it works, what dissimulation and falsehood it spreads abroad while staking claim to the hogwash of “values”.

Trump tore into the so-called “Deep State” in America and the unscrupulous media, which is serving as its stand-in. He denounced loudly and repeatedly the “illegal leaks” by sources within the military-intelligence apparatus within the establishment to defame his presidency. Funnily, when Trump denounced the media as the mouthpieces of the intelligence agencies – even nailing the flag carriers such as New York Times and Wall Street Journal – there was no dissenting voice, no protest. In fact, the journalists seemed to accept it as a statement of fact. They didn’t show the spunk to refute the accusation even for purposes of record. So much for the Fourth Estate in America and the freedom of the press!

In the process, Trump also blurted out certain remarks on issues of war and peace, which make highly combustible stuff and will make many world chancelleries sit up and worry. They are indeed extremely worrisome.

Referring to a Russian warship apparently on a surveillance mission off the US west coast – something which the US and NATO routinely and incessantly do to Russia – Trump says, “The greatest thing I could do is shoot that ship that’s 30 miles off shore right out of the water. Everyone in this country’s going to say ‘oh, it’s so great’… If I was just brutal on Russia right now, just brutal, people would say, you would say, ‘Oh, isn’t that wonderful’.”

Then, Trump went on to explain the implications: “We’re a very powerful nuclear country and so are they. I have been briefed. And I can tell you one thing about a briefing that we’re allowed to say because anybody that ever read the most basic book can say it, a nuclear holocaust would be like no other.”

One shudders at the very thought of it – that a potential nuclear war between the US Russia has been the stuff of a briefing taken by Trump.

Like puss oozing out of a tumor that is fast becoming terminal, the US political system is throwing into the open the cumulative eddies of decades of its interventionist policies – with the military-industrial complex and the intelligence agencies that fattened up on the countless wars and horrific destruction in foreign lands refusing to give up their privileges and make way for an upstart president who walked in from nowhere who, they think, has no business to be running the White House, and on top of it, has the impudence to say that he intends to “drain the swamp”. (A columnist wrote a couple of days ago, Yes, Trump can drain the swamp but he must do THIS first or get eaten by the alligators.)

Look at the extent to which the military-industrial complex and the intelligence establishment in Washington goes to thwart any attempt by Trump to improve US-Russia relations. It’s a sickening scenario that without wars and bloodshed America cannot have a future — that the prospect of detente, peace and co-existence becomes so abhorrent a proposition for the Deep State as to stage an insurrection against the elected head of state.

No, this is more than about swamps. What we see here is nothing else than metastatic cancer. The cancer cells in America’s body polity have broken away to enter the bloodstream and the lymph system. Doctors call it “stage 4” cancer.

The full transcript of Trump’s press conference is here.

February 17, 2017 Posted by | Deception, Militarism, Timeless or most popular | , , , | Leave a comment

White House denies AP report of plan for 100,000 troops to round up immigrants

RT | February 17, 2017

The Trump administration is considering mobilizing as many as 100,000 National Guard troops to round up illegal immigrants, according to a draft memo obtained by AP. The White House said the agency’s report is “false,” however.

What the AP called “unprecedented militarization of immigration enforcement” would affect locations as far north as Portland, Oregon and as far east as New Orleans, Louisiana, according to the 11-page document, purportedly written by Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly.

The proposal would include four states bordering on Mexico – Arizona, California, New Mexico and Texas – as well as the seven neighboring states of Arkansas, Colorado, Louisiana, Nevada, Oklahoma, Oregon and Utah. Governors in the eleven states would have a choice whether to have their guard troops participate in the round-up, according to AP.

The White House responded to the news with only one word: “False,” according to Reuters.

“This is not true,” White House spokesman Sean Spicer tweeted about the AP report, adding that Homeland Security confirmed it as “100 percent false.”

According to AP, the draft memo was dated January 25 – the day President Donald Trump issued an executive order  “enhancing public safety in the interior of the United States” – and has been circulating among Homeland Security staff for the past two weeks. It is reportedly addressed to the acting chiefs of the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection.

The draft memo says the mobilized National Guard troops would be activated under a revived state-federal partnership program and authorized “to perform the functions of an immigration officer in relation to the investigation, apprehension and detention of aliens in the United States.”

February 17, 2017 Posted by | Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | | Leave a comment

Is Trump Killing Israel With Kindness?

By Gearóid Ó Colmáin | February 17, 2017

We wrote a few months ago that the only good thing one could say about Trump was that he was unpredictable. Just a month in the Oval Office, President Trump is living up to his reputation. His meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on the 16th of February was not particularly well received in Israel. In contrast to President Obama, Trump’s body language and rhetoric strongly suggested he, and not Netanyahu, was in charge.

Trump was questioned about recent accusations that he was a ‘holocaust denier’. The American president imperiously ignored the question. Then, he dropped a bomb: The president indicated that he would be happy with a one-state solution in Palestine. I have argued for years that the creation of one democratic state encompassing Palestinians and Jews is the only option for long-term peace and stability. Zionists, however, do not even want any talk of that possibility; they understand that a one state solution will ultimately bring an end to Jewish supremacy – both in Israel and throughout the world.

The demographic statistics in Palestine show that the Arab population is growing rapidly. A one-state scenario would enable the millions of Palestinian refugees to return to their lands, thus swelling the Arab population. Moreover, power-sharing in the Knesset (or whatever a future assembly would be called) would change the domestic and foreign policy of the formerly ‘Jewish State’ entirely. The Israeli liberal press is worried about Trump. Yet Trump is arguably the most pro-Israeli President in history; his daughter ‘converted’ to Judaism and his son-in-law Jared Kushner has been financing Jewish settlements in Palestine. But the danger of the Trump regime for the Jewish supremacists is Steve Bannon, Trump’s Chief Strategist.

Steve Bannon has been accused of anti-semitism in the past for criticising the lack of American patriotism among international financiers who happen to be Jewish. But Bannon’s reactionary Breitbart News is staunchly Zionist. There is no contradiction between being Zionist and ‘anti-semitic’. In 1933, National Socialist Germany signed the Haavara Accord with international Zionists, whereby Germany would facilitate Jewish emigration to Palestine. After the Second World War, the USSR showed captured German films to soviet cinema goers. Some of the films such as Harlan’s Jud Süß were banned due to their Zionist content.

Steve Bannon calls himself a “Leninist” who wants to ” destroy the state”. Trump’s shadowy éminence grise, Bannon is believed to be the brains of the Trump administration. He certainly seems to understand dialectical materialism. But how could this dialectical conundrum play out?

During his election campaign, Donald Trump threatened to ban Muslims from entering the United States. His comments provoked international outrage. Benjamin Netanyahu was among the leaders who publicly denounced Trump’s xenophobic statements. We all know that far-right Zionist Netanyahu doesn’t care a farthing about Muslims. So, why would he make such a statement? We might say that, Netanyahu was attempting to present himself as a friend of the Arabs and all Muslims. But there is another aspect to the policy of borders: it is a policy which threatens the New World Order. Open borders and mass immigration are a key agenda of globalisation. We have shown that globalisation is being driven by liberal leftism. The most powerful institutions of the ‘Youth Industry’, ‘Colour Revolutions’, and ‘world-without-borders’ ideology are overwhelmingly Jewish-led. The same can be said for much of the liberal leftist ‘alternative’ media.

A state without borders

Israel has no official borders because they are constantly in expansion. Israel and its agents in the international media and academia unceasingly promote multiculturalism, immigration and open borders for all states – except Israel.

The Trump regime could render Israel’s espionage and intelligence penetration of the United States problematic. Dozens of Israelis were arrested after the 9/11 attacks on suspicion of terrorism. Some had been caught with explosives. They were all released due to the intervention of Homeland Security chief Micheal Chertoff, an Israeli-American. When Israeli Mossad agents were spotted celebrating the 9/11 terrorist attacks, they were described as ‘Middle Eastern-looking’.

Mohammed Atta, the chief terrorist suspect in the 9/11 attacks was, according to French intelligence, a Mossad agent. The Israelis have always used Islamist patsies and dupes for false flag attacks against civilian populations. Israeli security companies such as ICTS have repeatedly allowed terrorists to enter the United States and other countries. Is it possible that Netanyahu understood the significance of Trump’s xenophobic border policies? Impossible to tell.

But it is important to consider the fact that the real source of Jewish power in the world is the liberal ‘left’ media. Trump is currently at war with that establishment. Takfiri terrorism is and always has been a tool of Zionism. From the King David Hotel bombing of 1946, the Lavon Affair of 1954, to 9/11,  the ‘war on terrorism’ has been about the recruitment, training and funding of Jihadi forces to be used as false-flag terror patsies and to fight proxy wars on behalf of Zionism.

The Takfiri and Wahhabi ideology is promoted by Israel’s ugly sister Saudi Arabia. If global Islam is taken over by Wahhabism – including in Gaza – Israel begins to look good, while genuine Muslims suffer. If Trump were to genuinely fight Takfiri terrorism in the Middle East, allying with President Assad, Israel’s ‘New Middle East’ project would fail. By putting a US embassy in Jerusalem, Trump is saying that a one-state option is back on the table. An Assad victory in Syria and a one-state solution, involving a burgeoning Palestinian population, would be the beginning of the end for Zionist world domination.

Left liberalism’s ‘Fisk-al deficit’

One only has to read what left liberal disinformation agents are actually saying to see the significance of all this. Take Robert Fisk’s latest piece: ‘ Why Israel is in for a rough ride under Trump’. Fisk believes that Trump and Bannon’s anti-Iran rhetoric is a threat to Israel. But he ignores the fact that it has been Israel, far more than the United States, who has been calling for war on Iran. Fisk is trying to imply that Israel wants peace with Iran. That is clearly not the case. Israel’s ‘left liberals’ and Mr Fisk have been backing the war against Syria to the hilt. As the Jewish-owned Brooking’s Institution makes clear in their 2009 Analysis Paper: ‘Which Path to Persia’, the destruction of Syria is the first stage of the war against Iran. Robert Fisk is right to be worried about Israel; his entire career of lies and disinformation about the Middle East may be undermined by Bannon’s methodological madness – at least at the level of discourse.

In many respects, Adam Curtis is correct to point out that Steve Bannon seems to be playing a  similar role to Vladislav Surkov in Russia. Surkov, an advisor to President Vladimir Putin, developed the ideology of sovereign democracy, which Curtis claims led to a bewildering social state of “destabilised perception.”

Bannon and Surkov are the grand strategists of a new abstract art of disinformation designed to defend the interests of the national bourgeoisie against degenerate cosmopolitan elites and the working class. However, it is only by seeing this contradiction and taking control of its fallout that working class interests can be advanced. The White nationalist and violent ‘leftist’ hoodie-utionaries ultimately serve the same class interests. Workers should not be influenced by the reactionary ideology of either.

They are, in many respects, two sides of a Surkovian psyops ruthlessly conceived to maintain class domination.

Time to play Chess

In the Nineteenth century  British imperial policy in Ireland consisted of co-opting the Irish to British power by granting them privileges and protection. The policy became known as ‘Killing home-rule with kindness’. The United States cannot afford to wage another catastrophic war of destruction against an emerging regional power like Iran.

Israel’s ‘rough ride’ under Trump will be a good thing if the Islamic Republic of Iran is sufficiently creative in its negotiations with Washington. Iran will need to tighten its alliance with Russia and China and correct serious foreign policy errors such as support for Zionist/Wahhabi agendas in South East Asia.

Iran should look towards strengthening its relationship with countries such as Hungary. Relations at present between Hungary and the Islamic republic of Iran are good. A Hungarian delegation recently visited Tehran and said that they hoped to make Budapest into Iran’s portal in Europe. Strengthening its diplomatic ties with nationalist countries in Europe and Russia, as well as constructive engagement with the Trump administration could contribute to the weakening of Zionism, the phoney war on terrorism and the Talmudic New World Order. Such policies will not bring the contradictions of capitalism to an end, but rather accelerate them. For those contradictions are systemic to the capitalist mode of production itself. But there is the possibility of a realignment of forces away from total war and destruction towards constructive change.

February 17, 2017 Posted by | Economics, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Pyongyang’s Missile Launch Aims to Enhance Korean Security – Envoy to Russia

Sputnik – 16.02.2017

MOSCOW – Pyongyang’s latest ballistic missile launch aims to enhance security on the Korean Peninsula, North Korean Ambassador to Russia Kim Hyun Joong said Thursday.

On Sunday, North Korea carried out a successful test of its Pukguksong-2 intermediate-range ballistic missile. The Pukguksong-2 can carry a nuclear payload, and has an estimated operational range of up to 2,000 km (1,200 miles).

“The successful test launch… is a measure aimed at enhancing the country’s sovereignty, as well as the peace and security of the Korean Peninsula, in connection with the growing nuclear threat from the US,” Kim said.

Speaking at an event organized to commemorate the 75th birth date of the late leader Kim Jong Il, the North Korean diplomat said Pyongyang intended to “further strengthen our defense capacity, strengthen the nuclear forces as long as the US nuclear threat and blackmail continues.”

February 16, 2017 Posted by | Aletho News | , | Leave a comment

Iran: US, Israeli leaders’ new claims ‘worthless’

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Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Bahram Qassemi
Press TV – February 16, 2017

Iran says Israel’s atomic weapons arsenal represents the biggest threat to world peace, dismissing new allegations by Israeli and US leaders against Iran’s nuclear program as “hollow” and “worthless”.

The reaction on Thursday came a day after US President Donald Trump called Iran’s nuclear program a threat to Israel during a news conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House.

“The statements did not contain any new point except being a repetition of hollow and worthless allegations against Iran’s peaceful nuclear program,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Bahram Qassemi said.

Terming the nuclear deal with Iran as “the worst” agreement ever, Trump pledged to impose new sanctions on Iran to prevent the country from what he called developing a nuclear weapon.

Qassemi said, “Such claims are repeated while the International Atomic Energy Agency, in its reports, has time and again confirmed Iran’s nuclear program as peaceful – a fact which has been verified many times by different countries.”

“The bitter truth is that these remarks and inadmissible allegations are repeated by a regime which is not committed to any international law and convention and has hundreds of warheads in its atomic arsenal,” he said.

Israel, Qassemi said, “is viewed as the biggest threat to peace and security in the Middle East and the world and its ponderous file of endless atrocities and inhuman actions against the oppressed Palestinian people and other neighbors is recorded in numerous UN reports.”

In their joint news conference, Netanyahu applauded Trump for his harsh stand on Iran which was slapped with new sanctions by the new US administration in violation of the nuclear accord, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).

On Tuesday, IAEA Director General Yukiya Amano confirmed that Iran was implementing the nuclear agreement under which Tehran has undertaken to scale back its nuclear program in return for lifting of the sanctions.

Qassemi said, “Nuclear weapons are haram (forbidden) from the religious standpoint, corresponding with the fatwa of the Eminent Leader of the Islamic Revolution (Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei) and have no place in Iran’s military doctrine.”

The Islamic Republic, he said, will seriously continue to pursue those components of its peaceful nuclear program which are validated by the United Nations Security Council within the framework of the JCPOA.

Under Resolution 2231, the Security Council has endorsed the nuclear deal, which went into effect in January 2016.

On his campaign trail, Trump threatened to annul the deal, which he has lambasted as “the worst accord ever negotiated” and “one of the dumbest” ones he has come cross.

Washington has taken a tougher line on Iran since Trump took office on January 20. Last month, the US said it had put Tehran “on notice” after the Islamic Republic tested a ballistic missile which is not prohibited by the nuclear deal.

February 16, 2017 Posted by | Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , , , , | Leave a comment

‘Democrats & neocon warmongers formed unholy alliance against Trump’

RT | February 16, 2017

One should be quite skeptical about the “leaks” coming from “unnamed officials,” former FBI agent Coleen Rowley has warned since its common practice to spread misinformation through “journalists, who are cozy with the CIA and other top officials.”

The media’s reaction to the so-called “leaks” on alleged connections between Trump’s team and Russia shows that we live in a “very surreal moment,” since the same people who have been calling for prosecutions and even executions of the well-known whistleblowers are now praising as heroes those “unnamed officials” who leak information of questionable authenticity, Coleen Rowley told RT.

“It’s surreal to have called for the death and prosecutions of Manning, and Snowden and Julian Assange and many other whistleblowers. And you had many people piling on, calling them traitors and they were actually very good whistleblowers. And now, when you have other leaks the same people who thought they were traitors are saying they are heroes for giving out this information,” Rowley said.

It is essential to be able to distinguish between a real whistleblower and leaker, since the former are motivated by a desire to do society a service, uncovering wrongdoings of the government, while the latter pursue their own agenda and might even plant completely fabricated information.

“The motivation of the person disclosing the information greatly matters. It’s actually what distinguishes a whistleblower from a leaker and even from someone like Scooter Libby who was planting false information. And these things all got blurred together,” Rowley told RT.

Leaks are powerful tools in information warfare, which is waged to fuel real wars across the globe by a part of the US establishment in cooperation with the powerful military, industrial and surveillance complex, which simply needs to sell their products. The useful misinformation is routinely being spread through “journalists, who are cozy with the CIA and other top officials,” Rowley believes.

“The most pernicious aspect is that this is now information warfare, which is now geared towards… launching more wars. It’s exactly where we were back when Scooter Libby went to the New York Times and planted the false information about the [Saddam Hussein’s] uranium tubes,” Rowley said.

“I think that is the worst aspect of what is going on, and I think it’s accomplished in a lot of different ways. We need to reduce secrecy, but we need to be able to weigh and analyze the real truthful evidence that’s out there. Right now we have leaks, but we still haven’t seen any documents. The public still doesn’t know the full truth of this.”

The situation is quite alarming, since military industry hawks, craving wars have formed an “unholy alliance” with the Democrats, who want revenge for Hillary Clinton’s loss in the presidential elections, Rowley said. Such an alliance harms both international security and the power structure in the US.

“We’re living in this moment when we have a polarized government in Washington DC, extremely polarized. The media has taken sides with the Democrats and actually some of the neo-con warmongers. It’s really an unholy alliance,” Rowley said.

“It’s debatable as to who’s actually in power right now. We’re supposed to have three equal and separate branches, but I think it’s a good question as to whether the executive, as you know would be Trump’s administration, or the legislative along with the deep-state, which includes the media. I don’t know who’s actually in power.”

February 16, 2017 Posted by | Deception, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Militarism, Timeless or most popular | , | Leave a comment

Venezuela Sanctions CNN in Fight Against ‘Imperialist’ News

teleSUR | February 15, 2017

Venezuela’s National Telecommunications Commission, CONATEL, announced plans Wednesday to begin sanctioning procedures against CNN en Español for its “direct aggression against the Venezuelan people and state.”

The announcement was made in response to a CNN en Español report released last week suggesting that the Bolivarian government “may have given passports to people with ties to terrorism.” More specifically, the report alleges that Venezuelan Vice President Tareck El Aissami is linked to 173 people from the Middle East, including some connected to the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah.

“As part of its traditional interventionist and imperialist policy, this U.S. agency abrogates extraterritorial powers that blatantly violate basic principles of international law,” CONATEL wrote in a statement.

“It (CNN en Español) has the ignoble and Machiavellian purpose of undermining the image of the National Executive Branch and, therefore, institutionality, governance, and stability of the country, as well as the Bolivarian Revolution, a socio-political project contrary to its interests of domination.”

CONATEL’s statement, which points out that CNN en Español’s allegations are based on unsubstantiated evidence, urges journalists around the world to launch an independent investigation of the report.

The statement also questions the validity of government “whistleblower” Misael Lopez’s claims that the government was “scheming” to sell passports and visas for thousands of dollars. Most of CNN en Español’s report is based on alleged testimony by Lopez, a former secretary of the Venezuelan embassy in Iraq who has strong connections with Venezuela’s U.S.-backed opposition.

Lopez is a close friend and business partner of Ana Argotti, a lawyer who defends violent right-wing activists facing charges for the opposition’s “La Salida” campaign. This was the campaign that left 43 people dead and over 800 injured from street blockades known as “guarimbas.”

“Lopez is an agent infiltrated by the Venezuelan opposition based in the United States,” Venezuelan Foreign Minister Delcy Rodriguez confirmed Wednesday, AVN reports.

The Bolivarian Revolution’s battle against fake news has intensified within the last few days.

On Monday, the U.S. placed El Aissami on a sanctions list reserved for “drug kingpins,” without offering any evidence or issuing any criminal charges. The U.S. government based their decision on CNN en Español’s report as well as other unsubstantiated claims parroted by mainstream media outlets.

Last week, the Miami Herald published a story claiming that Venezuelans are killing and eating flamingos amidst food shortages, citing unsubstantiated claims made by a biology student.

February 16, 2017 Posted by | Deception, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , , | Leave a comment

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