Top Democrat-linked PR firm tapped by pro-Israel groups to control Gaza war narrative
By Kit Klarenberg | MintPress News | December 29, 2023
On December 6, it was announced with much fanfare that the 10/7 Project, a new “centralized communications operation to promote continued US bipartisan support for Israel; push for accurate, complete coverage of the Israel-Hamas war,” and achieve a “stronger” media “focus” on the victims of October 7’s Al-Aqsa Flood would be launched, by a quintet of the largest Israeli lobby groups on U.S. soil.
Who and what is funding the 10/7 Project isn’t at all clear. Publicity material spoke vaguely of an unnamed “coterie of philanthropists” and the organization’s interest in sourcing “more philanthropic support” moving forward. Future formal financial disclosures may make for fascinating reading, but its founders offer some clues.
The five comprise the American Jewish Committee (AJC), the Jewish Federations of North America (JFNA), the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), and the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations. This is quite the rogue’s gallery of Zionist entities, several of which have deplorable track records of actively whitewashing, if not outright facilitating, Israeli apartheid propaganda activities that have become turbocharged since October 7.
As such, the 10/7 Project’s professed mission of countering “disinformation” about October 7 and “Israel’s response” to the events can only be considered highly disquieting, especially given its target audience is “key media and government influencers.” In reality, of course, the organization is just the latest salvo in the Zionist state’s long-running information war against Palestinians and the Western world. This pitched battle has recently become ever more treacherous, specifically due to Tel Aviv’s genocidal “response” to Operation Al-Aqsa Flood.
One could be forgiven for thinking the 10/7 Project had already floundered in its objectives. After an initial ripple of mainstream interest, primarily from Israeli outlets and Zionist news platforms, the organization has seemingly vanished without a trace from the media landscape – or at least, its name has. As we shall see, though, it’s evident that in the manner of an iceberg, the 10/7 Project’s public footprint represents but the visible tip of something far larger and considerably more destructive.
‘STRANGLEHOLD ON CONGRESS’
While the 10/7 Project may not be directly making headlines daily, its parent organizations certainly are. The ADL has since October 7 published a steady stream of reports, lapped up by the media largely without question, testifying to an explosion of “anti-Semitic incidents” across the Western world in the wake of Operation Al-Aqsa Flood.
Shocking stuff, one might think. Yet, as an investigation by MintPress News Senior Staff Writer Alan MacLeod revealed, the ADL is producing such staggering figures by categorizing anti-Israel and pro-Palestine rallies and corresponding chants at both as individual “anti-Semitic incidents.” Despite the exposure of its embarrassing, Enron-style accounting, the League continues to pump out the same bogus “research” at regular intervals. On December 12, it claimed “anti-Semitism” in the US was now up 337% in the wake of October 7, “an all-time record.”
It is far from the first time ADL definitions of anti-Semitism have failed to pass muster. For example, in December 2022, The Grayzone’s Alex Rubinstein revealed that the League did not categorize Ukraine’s openly Neo-Nazi paramilitary Azov Battalion to be the “far right group it once was.” This, despite the fact that Azov’s mission to “lead the white races of the world in a final crusade… against Semite-led Untermenschen,” as articulated by founder Andriy Biletsky, remains unchanged.
Meanwhile, the infamous AIPAC – accurately described by U.S. political scientist John Mearsheimer as “a de facto agent for a foreign government, [with] a stranglehold on Congress” – has made clear its significantly intensified mission to rid Washington DC of any elected official possessed of even vaguely anti-war, pro-Palestinian views, by declaring war on lawmakers such as Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar.
When AIPAC moves against, or in favor, of particular politicians, they mean business – and depressingly, the organization usually wins. Annually, the organization publishes a report on its “policy and political achievements” that year. Its 2022 installment boasts, among other things, of bagging $3.3 billion “for security assistance to Israel, with no added conditions” and having gifted $17.5 million – the most of any U.S. PAC – to “pro-Israel candidates,” 98% of whom won their elections, in the process defeating 13 anti-Israel challengers.
CONFLICTS OF INTEREST
The official website of the 10/7 Project is spartan in the extreme. Visitors are offered a “contact us” form, a link to subscribe to its regular newsletter, and a “what we do” section listing purported activities. This includes informing the public “with credible, real-time information about events in Israel and Gaza,” highlighting “excellent reporting,” calling out “biased coverage,” holding “biased media accountable,” and offering “expert spokespeople for press and broadcast outlets.”
Unmentioned anywhere is that the 10/7 Project is represented by a trio of notorious PR and political consultancies – CKR Solutions, OnMessage Public Strategies, and SKDK. Together, they move in the shadows to advance the organization’s interests and messaging publicly and on Capitol Hill. SKDK’s contribution will inevitably be the most insidious and impactful.
Since its founding in 2004, the company has careened from damaging scandal to damaging scandal yet consistently secures major, big-ticket clients. The reason for this is clear. SKDK was founded by and employs a retinue of high-ranking, well-connected Democratic operatives. Among them is Anita Dunn, Barack Obama’s White House Communications Director, credited as the “mastermind” of Joe Biden’s 2020 election win and widely regarded as a key member of the President’s “inner circle.”
Joe Biden speaks with SKDK’s Anita Dunn ahead of his State of the Union address in February 2023. Adam Schultz | White House
Ever since Obama’s 2008 election win, SKDK has been plausibly accused of selling privileged access to the White House to clients despite failing to register as a lobbying firm. This means major corporations have a direct means of encouraging – and bribing – the Oval Office to offer tax breaks, shred regulations, dump legislation, smash unions, and generally harm the U.S. public interest with total impunity and in absolute secrecy.
SKDK’s expansive Rolodex also helps politicians get out of serious trouble. In 2018-2019, Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan paid the company $200,000 for “crisis communications” assistance after one of his campaign workers sued him for harming her professionally when she complained of sexual harassment by one of his top aides. Meanwhile, in August 2021, it was revealed a senior SKDK staffer personally intervened to suppress negative media coverage of sexual harassment allegations against New York Governor Andrew Cuomo.
Even more perversely, it’s since been revealed that at the same time, SKDK was advising Madigan on how to navigate his public controversy, the company was also helping his former campaign worker bring a lawsuit against the aide who’d sexually harassed her. A more perfect demonstration of the DC blob’s incestuous nature and SKDK’s total lack of ethical and professional scruples one would be hard-pressed to find. And both are highly competitive categories.
SKDK played a pivotal role in Biden’s 2020 presidential bid, decisively reversing his fortunes after abysmal performances in various caucuses. While the mainstream media primarily praised the miraculous work of the company and Dunn – his de facto campaign director – there has also been fierce controversy surrounding its electioneering activities. For example, SKDK fired off daily “Misinformation Briefings” to major tech and social media firms, including Google, Meta and Twitter, requesting that specific content be suppressed or removed.
In most cases, the recipients complied, meaning SKDK exerted extraordinary influence over what voters did and did not know and could and could not see during the controversial 2020 Presidential election. Which surely at least partially accounts for Biden’s victory. To make matters even worse, the company was simultaneously. reaping a $35 million windfall from the government of California by running the state’s supposedly bipartisan “get-out-the-vote” campaign. The contract, originally to be financed by local taxpayers, was mysteriously awarded to SKDK on a “no-bid” basis.
‘DICTATE TERMS’
Clearly, the 10/7 Project was intended to be a very public affair. In an early promotional interview, executive director Josh Isay – perhaps unsurprisingly, until August 2022 SKDK’s longtime CEO – boasted about the “widespread enthusiasm” with which the organization’s “efforts to set the record straight and combat misinformation spouted by Hamas terrorists and their anti-Israel allies” had so far been received:
We look forward to continuing to do the critically important work of providing policymakers and the American public with reliable information about Israel and Hamas, and uplifting the stories of the innocent victims of the October 7th massacre.”
Yet, there is no obvious sign of those ambitions bearing fruit to date. A partial explanation for this failure may lie in the 10/7 Project’s wish to transform the “innocent victims” of Operation Al-Aqsa Flood into human interest stories and atrocity propaganda while elevating the organization’s eponymous date to the position of 9/11 in the American public’s mind.
In the weeks since the 10/7 Project’s inception, it has become ever-increasingly clear the Zionist narrative of what unfolded when Hamas breached Gaza’s armored concentration camp walls – unquestioningly regurgitated over and again for weeks after that by the Western media – is completely and grotesquely fraudulent.
For example, on December 15, it was reported based on social security data that Tel Aviv’s claim that 1,200 civilians died in the initial assault was greatly exaggerated. In reality, just 695 lost their lives. The previous figure was itself a revision from an initial civilian casualty “estimate” of 1,400.
Every civilian death in a warzone is an extremely grave crime. It is surely for this reason that Tel Aviv on December 12 desperately argued “it would not be morally sound” to investigate “friendly fire” incidents in “kibbutzim and southern Israeli communities” during Operation Al Aqsa Flood – civilians killed by Israeli Occupation Forces. Nonetheless, the numbers involved are avowedly “immense.”
Among the “stories of the innocent victims of the October 7th massacre” selected by the 10/7 Project for public “uplifting” in service of whitewashing and justifying the Gaza genocide will have been a great many individuals slaughtered in cold blood by indiscriminate, excessively violent IDF actions. This is all but inevitable. Urgently casting those victims into obscurity while ensuring the entire issue of Zionist “friendly fire” is not examined is now of paramount importance.
More significantly, though, the exposure – and occasional admission – of Tel Aviv’s brazen lies has fundamentally shifted mainstream narratives and sympathies away from Israel and towards the Palestinians. Audiences of every extraction globally can witness the monstrous reality of the genocide in Gaza and learn of Zionist abuse of the Palestinians even before the colonial entity’s founding in 1948 with their own eyes and ears.
Israeli deceit has been so relentless and so readily exposed that even typically subservient Western news networks and their featured pundits are treating official claims with enormous skepticism. Similarly, Zionist violence is so constantly unremitting and wantonly sadistic that graphic reports of carpet bombs maiming and slaughtering every generation of Palestinians are now commonplace.
Meanwhile, developments such as the revelation that IDF soldiers killed three shirtless Israelis waving a white flag, speaking Hebrew and seeking their assistance have traveled widely, in turn highlighting prior examples of identical “peacetime” atrocities inflicted upon Palestinians. By contrast, there has to date been no “misinformation spouted by Hamas terrorists and their anti-Israel allies” to combat at all.
A LOSING BATTLE
As a result, the 10/7 Project and its founders are placed in the invidious position of having to publicly defend the indefensible – namely, a modern-day genocide unfolding on television screens and front page headlines the world over. In such circumstances, overt and unashamed advocacy work is best conducted behind the scenes. Yet, it is precisely in this context that the 10/7 Project may be most dangerous and potent due to its open-door Oval Office access.
Tireless solidarity efforts by European activists, protesters, citizen journalists, and civil society organizations have produced significant results. Paris went from mulling legislation criminalizing anti-Zionism in November to now leading global pressure for a ceasefire. Multiple governments and opposition leaders are likewise changing their tune. Senior British officials openly warn Netanyahu to drastically rein in his unquenchable bloodlust if he wishes to retain any international support.
Stateside, however, while the crusading work of grassroots pro-Palestine voices and groups has been redoubtable, the Biden administration’s commitment to facilitating, encouraging, and exacerbating the Gaza genocide, however it can, remains undimmed. While the President has demanded Netanyahu’s slaughter be wrapped up by the new year, there is no indication material, financial, and diplomatic support upon which the new Nakba depends is being curtailed. On December 18, during an official visit to Tel Aviv, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin issued a bloodcurdling oath:
This is Israel’s operation, and I’m not here to dictate timelines or terms. Our support [for] Israel’s right to defend itself is ironclad, as you’ve heard me say a number of times, and that’s not going to change.”
One way greater pressure could be brought to bear against the Biden administration might be for citizens to demand their elected representatives in Washington to disclose what dealings they may have had with the 10/7 Project or its representatives since its launch.
To ascertain whether and how White House policy and public pronouncements are being directly informed, if not explicitly dictated, by the wishes and wills of a shadowy and unaccountable lobbying coalition with indeterminate but no doubt intimate political and financial connections to the perpetrators of a 21st century Holocaust.
Kit Klarenberg is an investigative journalist and MintPress News contributor exploring the role of intelligence services in shaping politics and perceptions. His work has previously appeared in The Cradle, Declassified UK, and Grayzone. Follow him on Twitter @KitKlarenberg.
Arizona GOP Chair Resigns After Kari Lake Threatens “More Damaging” Recording
By Tyler Durden | Zero Hedge | January 24, 2024
One day after the Daily Mail published a leaked recording of Arizona GOP Chairman Jeff DeWit trying to bribe Trump ally Kari Lake to stay out of politics for two years, DeWit resigned.
“This morning, I was determined to fight for my position,” he said in a statement reported by Just the News. “However, a few hours ago, I received an ultimatum from Lake’s team: resign today or face the release of a new, more damaging recording. I am truly unsure of its contents, but considering our numerous past open conversations as friends, I have decided not to take the risk. I am resigning as Lake requested, in the hope that she will honor her commitment to cease her attacks, allowing me to return to the business sector—a field I find much more logical and prefer over politics.”
Arizona Senate candidate Kari Lake called on the state’s GOP chair Jeff DeWit to resign after a recording emerged of him trying to bribe Lake to stay out of politics for two years.
In the recording, first reported by the Daily Mail, DeWit, 51, can be heard asking lake to name her price not to run.
“There are very powerful people who want to keep you out,” he can be heard telling her in a conversation recorded last March.
He then, after asking her not to mention the conversation to anyone, makes his first offer:
“So the ask I got today from back east was: “Is there any companies out there or something that could just put her on the payroll to keep her out?”
Lake is taken aback.
“This is about defeating Trump and I think that’s a bad, bad thing for our country,” she replied.
DeWit later framed it in a different way.
“Just say, is there a number at which –
“I can be bought?” Lake interjected. “That’s what it’s about?”
“You can take a pause for a couple of years. You can go right back to what you’re doing,” DeWit replied.
Lake repeatedly shuts him down, and says she wouldn’t pull out for a billion dollars.
“This is not about money, it’s about our country,” she says (one her own recording, we’re guessing).
Listen (via Collin Rugg).
Following the report, Lake called on DeWit to resign.
“He’s gotta resign. We can’t have somebody who is corrupt and compromised running the Republican Party,” she told an NBC reporter during Trump’s New Hampshire primary victory party.
Abolish the FBI
By Jacob G. Hornberger | FFF | January 23, 2024
Among the worst mistakes America has ever made is to bring into existence the Federal Bureau of Investigation — the FBI.
A national police force is an essential part of any tyrannical regime. Just look at any tyrannical foreign regime, either right wing and left wing, over the past 100 years. I will guarantee you that you will find a national police force. It serves as a useful adjunct to a big military-intelligence establishment to keep people in line.
Of course, we are all familiar with such things as COINTELPRO and the FBI’s murder of innocent people at Waco and Ruby Ridge. We are also familiar with the FBI’s fierce opposition to Martin Luther King and the civll-rights movement as well as the virtual certainty that the FBI orchestrated King’s murder. We are also familiar with former FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover’s longtime penchant for keeping secret files on people’s personal lives with the aim of blackmailing them into supporting whatever the FBI wants. We are also familiar with the FBI’s ardent support of the Vietnam War, the Cold War, and the anti-communist crusade. We are also familiar with the FBI’s active role in America’s political system.
Less familiar is the FBI’s ubiquitous practice of inducing people to commit crimes in order to justify its continued existence and its continued receipt of taxpayer-funded largess. That practice involves entrapping people into committing crimes and then proudly patting itself on the back for “keeping America safe” by supposedly busting dangerous criminals.
An example of this sordid practice is detailed in a January 19, 2024, article in the New York Times that involved four men whose lives were partially destroyed by the FBI as part of its attempt to make itself look good by creating and encouraging a crime supposedly committed by those four men.
The four men — James Cromitie, Laguerre Payen, David Williams and Onta Williams — were from Newburgh, New York, and became known as the “Newburgh Four.” Given the FBI’s history of viewing Martin Luther King and the civil-rights movement as communist agents, it’s not surprising that the FBI targeted four Black men for its entrapment scheme. The fact that they were poor also figured into the FBI’s plot, given that the FBI used the lure of big amounts of taxpayer money to induce the men to commit a crime.
The scheme was part of the FBI’s post-9/11 plot to invent criminal conspiracies to commit terrorist attacks. That’s what the FBI did with the Newburgh Four. The FBI used the services of an informant named Shahed Hussain. The FBI had Hussain infiltrate various mosques and identify poor people who could be induced to engage in acts of terrorism. That would enable the FBI to exclaim, “We’ve busted terrorists! We’re keeping you safe! Give us more taxpayer money!”
Hussain promised the Newburgh Four $250,000 if they would agree to participate in a terrorist plot. After several months of refusing the offer, the four black men, at least one of whom was unemployed and broke, agreed to participate in bomb plots at various synagogues.
The men were busted and given 25-year jail sentences. They had served 14 years in jail until a heroic federal judge recently ordered their release. As reported in the New York Times article, the judge, Colleen McMahon, called the case “notorious.” She pointed out that “nothing about the crimes of conviction” had been of the “defendants’ own making.” She pointed out that the FBI’s agent in the crime, Shahed Hussain, was a “small time grifter and petty drug dealer.”
Judge McMahon correctly pointed out that the “real lead conspirator was the United States.” She added, “The F.B.I. invented the conspiracy; identified the targets; manufactured the ordnance.” The New York Times pointed out that McMahon added that the FBI “federalized” the charges — ensuring long prison terms — by driving several of the men into Connecticut to view the “bombs.”
After 14 years in jail on FBI-manufactured crimes, the Newburgh Four are free. But the best way to ensure that the FBI doesn’t destroy other people’s lives is to abolish it. Its dismantling would go a long way toward restoring freedom and justice in America. Anyway, criminal justice belongs at the state and local level, not the federal level.
From stones to missiles, Palestinian resistance’s phenomenal military rise
By Ivan Kesic | Press TV | January 24, 2024
The Al-Aqsa Storm Operation has irreversibly redefined the battlefield dynamics, especially with the Palestinian resistance stunning the military pundits in the West with its preparedness and the ability to inflict heavy and irreparable blows on the occupying regime.
The past fifteen weeks have been marked by the Palestinian resistance against the Israeli genocidal aggression on the Gaza Strip, with the armed wing of the Palestinian resistance group Hamas surprising all and sundry with its massive weapons arsenal, all of them locally manufactured.
Toward the end of 2023, the Martyr Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas, published a video, showing its missile arsenal that is able to reach every nook and corner of the occupied territories.
Even today, more than three months after the regime launched its aggression followed by extensive operations by the resistance groups against the occupation forces, this arsenal remains intact.
Military experts in the West acknowledge that the Israeli regime, with all its advanced and sophisticated weapons systems imported from the United States and Europe, has been unable to match up to the armed wings of the Palestinian resistance groups and their fighters.
Despite the Israeli regime dropping 67,000 tons of bombs on Gaza since October 7, the resistance continues to grow and inflict heavy blows on the structure of the Zionist occupation.
The story of the Palestinian missile program is a story of decades of sacrifice, ingenuity, dedicated work and successful management, and above all, the defiant spirit of resistance.
This long and difficult path of resistance against the apartheid regime began with Palestinian stone-throwing at Israeli armored vehicles during two intifadas, and ended with the capability to launch 5,000 rockets in one day and a rocket arsenal sufficient for months of warfare.
The missile capabilities and scope of operations displayed by the Hamas and other Palestinian groups surprised all international observers, even the Israeli intelligence services.
What is particularly intriguing are the conditions in which the operation was carried out.
Pertinently, the Gaza Strip was under Israeli occupation from 1967 to 2005, and ever since has been under a fierce land, sea and air blockade that prevents the import of not only weapons but also materials for their production, as well as basic goods.
The Israeli regime tried everything to weaken the resistance and retain the military technological advantage so that it could easily eliminate the groups that have been fighting for the liberation of Palestine.
An example that illustrates this disparity is the Gaza Massacre of 15 years ago when hundreds of Palestinian civilians were killed by Israeli bombs, hundreds of Israeli civilians, the so-called “war tourists”, gathered on the nearby hills and cheered triumphantly.
However, times have changed since that gruesome bloodthirsty cheering by the Zionist settlers that was followed by the iconic photo of a Palestinian boy throwing a rock at an Israeli tank.
The Palestinian resistance initially relied on rudimentary weapons, smuggled or domestically produced, intended for close combat and countering invading forces on their own soil.
After years of usage of assault rifles and explosives, a simple Qassam rocket appeared in 2001, with a range of a handful of kilometers and low destructive power, which for the first time made possible a retaliatory strike against the Israeli occupation.
Over time, the efficiency of the Qassam models increased and the first Israeli military bases and occupied cities came within range in the 2010s, which caused the phenomenon of “war tourists” on the borders of Gaza to fall into oblivion suddenly.
The Israeli regime made an effort to stop the effectiveness of these rocket attacks by developing a warning system. It invested a staggering amount of money in the development of Iron Dome, a military system that turned out to be a miserable failure on October 7.
It also boasted about assassinating the Hamas rocket engineers responsible for the Qassam development, thinking it might cripple the Palestinian “brain trust” or deter new generations from engaging in development, which proved to be a blowback assessment.
Today, the Palestinian resistance has rockets with a range of hundreds of kilometers and warheads with a payload of hundreds of kilograms, capable of reaching any point in the occupied Palestinian territories.
Due to their size, it is not possible to smuggle these rockets from abroad into the Gaza Strip, especially not in such huge quantities, which proves that they are the result of local production.
Industrial production, in conditions of scarcity of necessary materials and exposure to Israeli airstrikes, is an impressive feat in itself. Production facilities are scattered underground and well hidden, which requires exceptional logistical skills.
The same applies to the supply of materials, which mainly comes from recycling raw materials such as old water pipes, anchors of destroyed buildings, streetlight poles and so on.
In an astonishing feat from 2020, Hamas naval commandos managed to salvage large 170-kilogram naval shells from a British warship that sunk offshore more than 100 years ago during the First World War and made them reusable for new missiles.
The rocket engines and guidance systems are the product of cooperation and military knowledge imparted by experts in the region, especially Iran.
The missiles revealed in the new video include the Maqadma and Jabari rocket family, both with a range of 90 km and 50 kg warheads, put into service in the early 2010s.
Development in the middle of the same decade witnessed the creation of the Attar rocket family with a range of 90 km and 50 kg warhead, as well as of the Rantisi rocket family with a range of 170 km and 100 kg warhead.
Finally, at the end of 2010s, the Ayyash rocket family was put into service, with a range of 250 km and a payload of 250 kg, the most powerful rocket in the Palestinian arsenal, used for strikes on Safed and Eilat during the Al-Aqsa Flood operation.
At the same time, the Sijjil rocket family with a range of 55 km and 50 kg warhead was also introduced, followed by the Shamala rocket family with a range of 80 km and 150 kg warhead.
Except for the Sijjil rocket series, which is named after a Quranic verse, all others are named after Palestinian martyrs, namely Ibrahim al-Maqadma, Ahmed al-Jabari, Raed al-Attar, Abdel Aziz al-Rantisi, Mohammed Abu Shamala and Yahya Ayyash.
For three decades, the Israeli regime thought that these assassinations would break the spirit of resistance and their technological development, which backfired in a way it could not have imagined.
The martyrs and the missiles named after them are today giving sleepless nights to the regime leaders.
Senate Looks to Fund Middle East Military Activity as CENTCOM Is ‘Running Out of Funds’
By Kyle Anzalone | The Libertarian Institute | January 24, 2024
The Senate is planning to add money to upcoming legislation to fund President Joe Biden’s military buildup in the Middle East and war in Yemen. Senator Susan Collins says the legation should be a priority as US Central Command is quickly depleting its funds. Senator Jack Reed believes Congress will need to pass multiple rounds of funding to allow Biden to wage war across the Middle East.
Following the Hamas attack on southern Israel, Biden ordered thousands of troops and multiple aircraft carrier strike groups into the region. Politico reports the Department of Defense informed Congress the deployment of additional troops and warships to the Middle East over the past four months has cost $1.6 billion. The Pentagon estimates the cost will be $2.2 billion over the course of the year.
The cost estimates do not include the price of the interceptors and munitions used in fighting the Houthis. Congress has not authorized Biden’s war in Yemen or the military surge in the Middle East. A growing number of American lawmakers, including within Biden’s party, have voiced opposition to the White House waging a war in Yemen without Congressional authorization.
A Pentagon official said at some point, the holes in the Department of Defense budget will have to be filled by Congress. An official told Politico, “It will be, I think, a hole that we would want to be filled. It is a bill that will be due and we will have to pay for it within a limited amount of resources.”
The Senate is now preparing to fund the conflicts in the Middle East, but there are no plans to authorize the war. Politico reports Congress is considering several options for authorizing the war spending. The outlet explains, “Lawmakers are aware of the unplanned cost and are weighing how to pay for it. Options include adding it to the annual spending bill, adding it to the $111 billion emergency supplemental for Ukraine and Israel, or funding it through a stand-alone supplemental for war costs.”
The White House has been pushing Congress to pass a $111 billion bill that provides funding for the wars in Ukraine and Israel, the military buildup in the Asia-Pacific, and border security. The legislation has been delayed for several months over debate on immigration policy.
Sen. Collins, a Republican member of the Senate Appropriations Committee, is urging the body to take action. “[US Central Command] needs [the funding] sooner. They’re fast running out of funds,” she said.
Senator Jack Reed believes Congress will have to pass multiple rounds of funding to fight wars in the Middle East. He said, “I sense, given the unexpected cost, that there will have to be a separate supplemental. These aren’t routine costs. They’re because of our reaction to the Houthi disruption, to Iranian malign behavior, etc. And I think that’s probably where we would go for it.”
Senators Dan Sullivan, Mitch McConnell, and Mark Kelley have all called for adding money to the supplemental war legislation to replace the interceptors and munitions used to fight the Houthis in Yemen.
UAE enlists Al-Qaeda, US mercenaries to operate in Yemen: Report
The Cradle | January 24, 2024
A BBC investigation released on 22 January reveals that the UAE hired Al-Qaeda militants to fight for the Southern Transitional Council (STC), the Emirati-backed government in Yemen.
A whistleblower cited in the investigation provided the BBC with “a document with 11 names of former Al-Qaeda members now working in the STC,” among them former high-ranking operatives of the extremist group.
Nasser al-Shiba, a former high-ranking Al-Qaeda member, is now the commander of the of the STC’s armed units, several sources told the BBC.
These militants were hired to carry out political assassinations across Yemen at the behest of Abu Dhabi, according to the investigation.
The BBC also points to a shadowy group of US mercenaries, known as Spear Operations Group, hired by the UAE to carry out assassinations.
Isaac Gilmore, a former US navy seal who later became Spear’s chief operating officer, is “one of several Americans who say they were hired to carry out assassinations in Yemen by the UAE.”
“He refused to talk about anyone who was on the ‘kill list’ provided to Spear by the UAE — other than the target of their first mission: Ansaf Mayo, a Yemeni MP who is the leader of Islah in the southern port city of Aden.”
Saudi and UAE-backed mercenary groups have run rampant across Yemen since the start of the war in the country nine years ago. Aside from assassinations, these mercenaries have also been implicated in a number of crimes, including the looting and illegal trading of Yemeni cultural heritage.
Several ancient sites and museums have been looted and stripped of valuable artifacts by UAE-backed mercenary groups in Yemen. There are also accounts of underage girls being raped by militants of such groups.
This is not the first time that UAE-backed armed groups in Yemen have been accused of working or coordinating with Al-Qaeda and ISIS.
According to documents obtained by Yemen’s Al-Masirah media outlet in February last year, Takfiri militants affiliated with the UAE-backed mercenary group, the Giants Brigade, looted large amounts of oil from the reserves in the energy-rich province of Shabwah, south of the country.
“We have all the evidence of the UAE’s relationship with Al-Qaeda and ISIS in Yemen,” Saleh al-Jabwani, Saleh al-Jabwani, a minister in the former Saudi-backed government of Abd Rabbuh Mansour Hadi, said in 2019.
The BBC investigation comes one month after UAE-backed mercenaries came under the spotlight once again, following reports that the US was working to recruit members of these mercenary groups to “distract” Ansarallah from its military operations against Israel.
“The United States is moving to activate factions loyal to the UAE in Yemen to distract Sanaa from continuing to carry out more air and sea attacks against the Israeli entity,” the Lebanese newspaper Al-Akhbar reported on 8 December.
According to Hebrew media, the UAE-backed STC has approached Israel and offered to help protect Israeli shipping in the Red Sea from attacks by Yemen’s Ansarallah resistance movement and the armed forces of the government in Sanaa.
Since November, Yemen’s Armed Forces and Ansarallah have seized one Israeli-linked vessel and have targeted over a dozen other ships, either owned by Israelis or Israeli firms or en route to Israeli ports. The Red Sea blockade by Yemen is in solidarity with the Palestinian resistance, which Sanaa has vowed to continue until the war and siege in Gaza ends.
Yemeni armed forces have also launched drones and missiles towards Israel’s southern port city of Eilat.
These attacks are garnering significant amounts of popular support for Ansarallah in Yemen.
According to Yemeni officials and analysts who spoke with Responsible Statecraft on 24 January, elements of the Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated Islah Party – which has, for the most part, been opposed to Ansarallah throughout the Yemen war – have been providing them with material support and have praised their pro-Palestine operations.
Iraqi resistance joins Yemen in imposing naval blockade against Israel
The Cradle | January 24, 2024
The Secretary-General of the Sayyid al-Shuhada Brigades, Abu Ala al-Walaei, announced during the early hours of 24 January the start of phase two of the Islamic Resistance in Iraq’s (IRI) pro-Palestine operations, including enforcing a naval blockade on Israel in the Mediterranean Sea.
“At a time when the criminal US occupation is again blatantly targeting our security forces … we urge the Mujahideen of the Islamic Resistance in Iraq to begin the second phase of their operations, which includes enforcing a blockade on Zionist maritime navigation in the Mediterranean Sea and putting the entity’s ports out of service,” Walaei said via social media.
The leader of the Sayyid al-Shuhada Brigades, a faction within the larger Popular Mobilization Units (PMU), stressed that these operations will continue until “the unjust siege on Gaza is lifted and the horrific Zionist massacres against its people are stopped.”
Hours earlier, US warplanes conducted a new round of airstrikes targeting alleged locations of the PMU-affiliated Kataib Hezbollah in Al-Qaim on the Iraqi-Syrian border and in Jurf al-Nasr south of Baghdad.
At least one death was reported following the attack in Al-Qaim.
The spokesman for Kataib Hezbollah, Jaafar al-Husseini, said in response to the attack: “The resistance will continue to destroy enemy strongholds in support of our people in Gaza until the brutal US-backed killing machine stops and the entire siege is lifted.”
Iraq’s National Security Advisor Qassim Al-Araji criticized the US for once again “violating Iraqi sovereignty” by targeting the PMU.
“Attacking the headquarters of the [PMU] in Al-Qaim and Jurf al-Nasr is an assault and a flagrant violation of Iraqi sovereignty and does not help [quell tensions],” the official said, stressing that, “Instead of bombing and targeting the headquarters of an Iraqi national institution, the US side should move to stop the aggression against Gaza.”
The Iraqi government has previously demanded that the US army respect the country’s sovereignty and security, as Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani stresses that the PMU is an “integral part” of the country’s armed forces.
As part of the Resistance Axis’ operations in support of the Palestinian people, the IRI – an umbrella group of armed factions that includes members of the PMU – has conducted about 150 attacks on US bases in Iraq and Syria over the past several months.
The most recent attack took place on Tuesday morning, with a rocket salvo hitting the US-occupied Conoco oil field in northeast Syria for the second time in three days.
China-led multipolarity has accelerated the decline of the American era, the war in Gaza may end it altogether.
By Mohamad Hasan Sweidan | The Cradle | January 24, 2024
What is unfolding today in West Asia — the Gaza war and its regional expansion — cannot be viewed separately from the international transformations that have grown in momentum over the past few years. Today, the transition to multipolarity is the underlying factor shaping the decisions and policies of most countries, particularly those of the great powers.
The timing of Israel’s devastating military assault on Gaza coincides with heightened US attention on its great power competition for Washington, this conflict has much wider geopolitical significance beyond West Asia. In this context, the US has assumed, and will continue to play, a pivotal role in Gaza and its environs, unlike its powerful peers in China and Russia.
According to statistics published by the China Society for Human Rights Studies, the US initiated 201 of the 248 armed conflicts that took place since the end of World War II, often engaging in these wars via US-led alliances and/or proxies.
For decades, Washington has led these conflicts by very ably forming, then leading, and directing broad alliances to achieve its political and military objectives. But that ability notably shifted in December 2023, signaling a sharp decline in this capability.
In response to Yemen’s Ansarallah-aligned armed forces’ Red Sea blockade of Israeli-linked vessels, the US Department of Defense announced the formation of “Operation Guardian of Prosperity … to uphold the foundational principle of freedom of navigation” in those waters, initially consisting of a coalition of ten countries, most of them insignificant partners.
Protecting Israel or maintaining maritime dominance?
The coalition proved shaky from the get-go, with only the US and Britain actively involved in military strikes on Yemen. The reluctance of key European countries France, Spain, and Italy to join the naval alliance indicated a growing skepticism among the US’s traditional partners — both western and West Asian — about Washington’s commitment and capability to defend its allies in any impactful way.
Interestingly, more than eight further countries reportedly joined the coalition, but demanded anonymity, given the potential political fallout from associating with Washington and Tel Aviv.
Crucially, the Pentagon’s stated purpose of securing navigation in the Red Sea does not align with the actual threat presented, revealing ulterior motives behind US actions. The Yemenis have repeatedly confirmed that they only intend to inhibit the passage of Israeli-owned or destined vessels — and that all other ships are free to pass.
In short, the US/UK-led coalition is acting as a naval arm for Israeli military forces, seeking specifically to ensure unimpeded access for ships heading to Israeli ports via the Bab al-Mandab Strait. That’s not a position many other states will get behind if they want to maintain freedom of transport for their own shipping vessels.
Ultimately, the American show of force in these waterways seeks to consolidate US naval dominance, which war-torn Yemen, West Asia’s poorest country, has contested.
As outlined in the National Security Strategy for 2022:
The US “will not allow foreign or regional powers to jeopardize freedom of navigation through the Middle East’s (West Asia) waterways, including the Strait of Hormuz and the Bab al Mandab, nor tolerate efforts by any country to dominate another — or the region — through military buildups, incursions, or threats.”
According to media reports following massive US airstrikes against Iraqi targets on 23 January, Iraqi resistance factions will now also follow Yemen’s suit by implementing a blockade of Israeli ports in the Mediterranean Sea.
Current events are spiraling out of Washington’s control as onlookers increasingly question the utility and competence of US naval leadership in the world’s important waterways. Equally, there is recognition that other formidable forces and states have emerged, challenging US control over key global straits. In the words of British politician and writer Walter Raleigh, “Who rules the seas rules the world.” Under Sanaa’s watch, the US no longer can claim rule over the Red Sea or even its adjacent waterways.
Great power competition amid the Gaza war
The current scenario in West Asia, particularly post-Al-Aqsa Flood and the Gaza war that followed, coincides with a shift in Washington’s focus toward competition with China and its proxy war against Russia in Ukraine. As outlined in the US intelligence community’s annual threat assessment last year, this transition has already affected strategic goals, leading to a sharp decline in western support, especially from the US, for Ukraine. The Biden administration faced challenges in securing Congressional approval for a new aid package for Kiev, which directly competed for dollars against Tel Aviv’s military campaign in Gaza.
Despite assurances from western leaders during visits to Ukraine in October, their statements came without tangible material support, leaving President Volodymyr Zelensky in the proverbial dust. Quite unexpectedly, China has emerged as a potential peacemaker in this European conflict, with Kiev openly requesting Beijing’s involvement in mediation talks, and the US itself open to Chinese mediation to mitigate the escalation in West Asia.
The Chinese are well aware that there are no simple, face-saving exits for the US from the Gaza war it has championed and that the conflict’s metamorphosis into a regional one mires the US deeper into West Asia — and away from the Asia-Pacific.
Although China seeks to increase its presence in West Asia, it is very careful not to bog itself down in the region’s many issues. But Washington’s request that Beijing use its influence to sway Iran from conflict escalation makes clear that the US is no longer “the biggest power” in the region.
Why Israel opposes multipolarity
Following Operation Al-Aqsa Flood, US financial and military support for Israel has reached a critical stage, presenting two options for Washington. The first involves imposing some control on Israeli actions, given that the war’s timing has been unfavorable to US strategic interests, particularly in a critical election year. The second option, favored by the Washington elite, is to continue its unwavering support to Tel Aviv, even at the risk of damage to its global image.
Sustained global outrage over the Gaza war, coupled with the landmark genocide case filed against Israel at the International Court of Justice (ICJ), shows that Washington’s ability to cover for Israel is diminishing rapidly. Again, this reflects the global shift in the balance of power toward multipolarity, which is marked by the widespread decline of American influence.
But the US support for the Gaza genocide has had dramatic domestic repercussions, too. Polls show a major shift in the attitudes of young Americans, especially university youth, who will make up the ranks of America’s future leaders.
A Harvard-Harris poll published on 17 January reveals that 46 percent of respondents aged 18-24 believe that Hamas’ actions on 7 October can be justified because of the injustice to which the Palestinians are subjected. The same poll shows that 43 percent of the same group support Hamas in this war, and that 57 percent believe that Israel is carrying out massacres in Gaza. The most staggering poll result of all, though, has to be the one in December (conducted by the same pollsters) in which 51 percent of young Americans believe a final solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is for Israel to end and be given to Hamas and the Palestinians.
While Israel remains a direct US interest in West Asia, Washington’s commitment to Tel Aviv’s security has already become a growing burden and increasingly difficult to justify. As the region’s Axis of Resistance expands its battle with Israel on new, multiple frontlines, the US will need to reallocate ever-expanding resources and focus on matching its international rivals in further-flung geographies.
Ukraine was a test run compared to this Gaza war and the immense, direct toll it is taking on US alliances, domestic politics, and the American image globally. For Israel, this presents an existential crisis beyond measure, as Washington is forced to compete with other great powers, none of whom are ideologically driven to support Zionism as part of their foreign policies.
Lavrov debunks US claim on Ukraine talks
RT | January 23, 2024
Moscow has never closed the door to dialogue to end the Ukraine conflict, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Tuesday, reiterating that the country’s key goal remains stopping NATO’s unchecked expansion towards its borders.
In a rare interview with CBS News in New York, where he arrived to take part in UN meetings on Ukraine and the Middle East, Lavrov rejected a recent claim by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who alleged that Moscow has shown no “willingness… to engage, to negotiate in good faith” to end the conflict with Kiev.
“It’s not true,” Lavrov stressed, adding that Russia has always been ready to discuss “any serious proposal” that addresses the situation on the ground and the root causes of hostilities. Moscow is also willing to reach a solution “which would guarantee legitimate national interests of Russia and the Ukrainian people,” the diplomat stated.
Lavrov reiterated that Russia is prepared to listen to anyone interested in establishing “justice” in relations between Moscow and Kiev. He insisted, however, that this would require the West to stop its policy of “using Ukraine as an instrument of war against Russia.”
Lavrov recalled that Russia has long voiced concerns about NATO expansion. “The goal is very simple… we’ve been warning publicly since 2008… that NATO’s expansion against all promises [to Russia and the Soviet Union]… was going too far,” he said.
At a 2008 summit in Bucharest, NATO leaders declared that Ukraine would eventually become part of the alliance, sparking a backlash from Russia, which has traditionally viewed the US-led military bloc’s expansion towards its borders as an existential threat.
In December 2021, weeks before the start of the Ukraine conflict, Moscow submitted a draft of security guarantees to the US and NATO, demanding that the West ban Kiev’s accession to the bloc and retreat to its borders as of 1997. The overture, however, was rebuffed.
Officials from Moscow and Kiev said the two sides were close to reaching a peace deal early in the Ukraine conflict, with a key Russian demand being that the neighboring country recommit to neutral status and abandon its NATO ambitions. According to numerous reports, the process was derailed by then-UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who convinced Ukraine to continue fighting.
DC Think Tank: House Could Kill Ukraine Aid Bill
By Ekaterina Blinova – Sputnik – 23.01.2024
House Republicans could block a hefty Ukraine aid package even if a bipartisan border security and immigration deal is passed, suggests the latest report by the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft.
Republican and Democratic senators have engaged in a series of negotiations regarding President Joe Biden’s proposed $100 billion package for Ukraine. Senate leaders, Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), have expressed optimism about the bipartisan Ukraine aid-border security agreement’s prospects.
Last year, the multi-billion package for Ukraine, as well as aid for Israel and the island of Taiwan, became stuck in the US Congress after the GOP deemed the border security issue to be an absolute priority.
According to Blaise Malley, a reporter for Responsible Statecraft and a former associate editor at The National Interest, it is uncertain whether the House of Representatives would align with the upper chamber’s position, despite the bipartisan agreement on border issues being on the horizon.
Malley referred to House Speaker Mike Johnson’s firm stance with regard to the implementation of sweeping migration reforms and his concerns about Ukraine aid oversight and Kiev’s strategy.
“We need the questions answered about the strategy, about the endgame and about the accountability for the precious treasure of the American people,” Johnson told journalists after a January 17 meeting with President Biden and other congressional leaders at the White House. The House speaker also stressed that the border issue should still come first. Rep. Johnson has a record of consistently voting against Ukraine aid in the past.
A GOP conference on Ukraine aid is due to be held on January 24 following the request by a group of Senate Republicans, led by Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), Malley noted, adding that support for further bankrolling Ukraine is beginning to steadily wither among House Republicans.
What’s more, some GOP lawmakers even threatened to introduce a “motion to vacate” against the incumbent House speaker, if he allows another package of Ukraine aid to pass.
“Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene tells me ‘I would introduce the motion to vacate myself’ if Speaker Johnson passes funding to Ukraine,” Axios congressional reporter Andrew Solender tweeted on January 17.
Last October, the so-called Freedom Caucus forced then-Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy to step down after Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida forced the vote on the “motion to vacate.”
According to Malley, Speaker Johnson is unlikely to go against the Freedom Caucus for many reasons, one of which is that it may upend his relations with leading Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump.
But that is not all: the multi-billion aid bill, which also includes at least $10 billion for Israel, has come under scrutiny from some Democratic congressmen who are seeking to obligate Tel Aviv to observe human rights in its war against Gaza. Since the conflict started, 25,105 Palestinians have been killed in the region, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry.
The RS reporter pointed out that 18 Senators on January 19 announced their support for an amendment to the national security supplemental that would require “that the weapons received by any country under this bill are used in accordance with US law, international humanitarian law and the law of armed conflict.”
“The path to passing this legislation is filled with roadblocks and question marks,” Malley wrote. “Biden has implored Congress to approve his proposal as soon as possible, but even as incremental progress is made, final passage still appears to be a ways away.”
Featured Video
Nima R. Alkhorshid: US military bombs multiple targets on Iran’s Qeshm Island
or go to
Aletho News Archives – Video-Images
From the Archives
British Intel Tried to Make N Irish Gang ‘Shoot Up’ School, Documentary Claims
Sputnik – 23.02.2019
A new documentary, based on an interview with a self-confessed member of the Glennane Gang, gives some insights into allegations that British military intelligence was behind a shocking murder plot to cause the situation in Northern Ireland to “spiral out of control”.
In a documentary, Unquiet Graves: The Story of the Glennane Gang, John Weir, a former officer from the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC), alleges that British intelligence tried to persuade paramilitary group Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) to attack a Catholic primary school at Belleeks in County Armagh.
Weir claimed that the UVF was urged to kill children and teachers in retaliation for the 1976 Kingsmill massacre, in which gunmen stopped a minibus carrying twelve workmen and shot them; only one person survived despite having been shot 18 times.
“The plan that was decided on was to shoot up a school in Belleeks”, he said, adding that the British intelligence plot was to make the situation in Northern Ireland “spiral out of control”. … continue
Blog Roll
Aletho News- Nima R. Alkhorshid: U.S. Military Bombs Multiple Targets on Iran’s Qeshm Island
- Iran-Linked Ships Spotted Hovering over Subsea Cables: Report
- New attack on Iran could devastate ‘Israel’, IOF general warns
- Nuclear deterrence: The US-Israeli military aggression against Iran made the unthinkable legitimate
- U.S. Midterms – a Referendum on Israel and Zionist Power
- Twice as many Canadian Jews serve in Israeli military as Canada’s armed forces: Report
- Thousands of Syrian troops set to join Saudi war on Yemen
- Jared Kushner’s Diplomacy for Hire
- Russia backs Tehran’s conditions in talks with US, Iran’s envoy says
- Irish ‘fake news’ expert exposed as fake
- If Americans Knew
- An error has occurred; the feed is probably down. Try again later.
- No Tricks Zone
- 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!
- New Study: 50 Years Of The Most Aggressive ‘Net Zero’ Policies Can Only Affect The Global Climate By 0.03°C
