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Selling Your Soul, And Your Country

U.S. Senator Robert Menendez of the State of New Jersey, has been charged with bribery offenses. September 27th 2023, New York.
By Dan McKnight | The Libertarian Institute | October 16, 2023

What is treason?

The U.S. Constitution defines “Treason against the United States” as “only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort.”

“Enemies” is a high bar, and ought to be—the penalty for treason is death, after all.

But there is a level below explicit treason, a betrayal of public trust and revelation of disreputable character in the service of a foreign government.

Examples of this go all the way back to the founding of our country. Edmund Randolph of Virginia was the first U.S. Attorney General, and George Washington’s second Secretary of State.

This was during the height of the French Revolution and the subsequent terror, when international relations were fraught for our newly independent country and our first administration needed to walk a fine line between the European empires.

But Randolph leaked the private conversations of Washington’s cabinet meetings to the French government, told them that the U.S. was a hostile power, and expressed contempt for his own country’s leadership.

When his communications were intercepted, and Washington confronted him in front of the entire cabinet, Edmund Randolph resigned on the spot and slinked away.

More than two hundred years later, snakes like him continue to fill our highest offices.

Senator Bob Menendez has represented New Jersey since 2006, and for a decade has been the senior Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

In Washington DC he’s been one of the most powerful and influential members of the War Party. He’s used his position to ensure our government takes a hard line across the board against Venezuela, Cuba, Iran, and Russia, with no potential for detente or rapprochement.

Bob Menendez is also thoroughly corrupt.

Federal prosecutors have indicted Senator Menendez and brought forward hard evidence that he has accepted hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes from New Jersey businessmen acting in tandem with the government of Egypt.

Menendez passed on information about U.S. embassy staffing in Cairo to the Egyptian government, and ghostwrote a letter for Egyptian lobbyists “to convince other U.S. senators to release a hold on $300 million in aid to Egypt.”

Egypt is ruled by a military dictator, the self-styled “Field Marshal” Abdul Fattah el-Sisi, and has one of the worst human rights records in the region. Egypt has also been the recipient of many billions of dollars in American largesse in the form of foreign aid and weapon sales.

Investigators found $480,000 in cash in Menendez’s New Hersey home and more than $100,000 in gold bars. After returning from a trip to Egypt in October 2021, Menendez’s Google search history contained the query, “how much is one kilo of gold worth.”

Apparently enough to buy a U.S. senator with all the bells and whistles.

Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida quipped, “We are devaluing American money so rapidly that in America today, you can’t even bribe Democrat senators with cash alone. You need to bring gold bars to get the job done, just so the bribes hold value.”

Edmund Randolph breached public trust with no evidence of monetary gain. When confronted, he resigned without another word.

On the other hand, Bob Menendez has refused all demands that he resign, and he plans to continue to collect a paycheck drawn from U.S. taxpayers until the expiration of his term in January 2025 (assuming he loses reelection). He turned his back on his country for no better reason than dreams of money and power.

We have marked him for what he is.

October 16, 2023 Posted by | Corruption, Deception | | Leave a comment

Russia warns US over space facilities used to help Ukraine

RT | October 16, 2023

Western space satellites being used to aid Ukrainian forces could become legitimate targets for Russian strikes, the Foreign Ministry in Moscow warned on Monday.

Speaking to reporters, the ministry’s director for nonproliferation and arms control, Vladimir Ermakov, claimed that the US and its allies are helping Ukraine in ways which go “beyond the harmless use of space technologies.”

“Obviously, the United States and its allies are not fully aware that such activities actually constitute indirect participation in armed conflicts,” Ermakov stated. He cautioned that Western “quasi-civilian infrastructure” in space could “quite logically become the targets of a retaliatory strike.”

Funding for commercial satellite imagery services was included in a $1.2 billion US military assistance package for Ukraine approved in May. Images obtained from commercial satellites were believed to have been used by Kiev to launch missile attacks on the Russian city of Sevastopol in Crimea last month.

Ermakov argued that the West had exposed space activities and socio-economic processes on Earth to “unjustified risks,” and stressed the need to preserve space for research and peaceful purposes.

To that end, the diplomat announced that Russia had submitted draft resolutions on space technologies and promoting peace to the UN General Assembly’s First Committee, which deals with disarmament issues.

“We call for a refusal to use civilian space infrastructure for undeclared purposes, including for interference in the internal affairs of sovereign states and participation in armed conflicts,” Ermakov said.

Meanwhile, Kiev is reportedly looking for an alternative to Elon Musk’s Starlink, which has provided communications services to the Ukrainian armed forces throughout the conflict with Russia. The billionaire recently revealed that he had effectively thwarted a Ukrainian drone attack on Crimea last year by refusing to allow Kiev’s forces use Starlink to guide drones.

One Ukrainian commander told the El Pais newspaper last month that the US and Ukraine had several satellite communication projects “underway,” but stressed that the details were “state secrets.”

October 16, 2023 Posted by | Militarism | , , | Leave a comment

FBI director warns of Hamas copycat threat

RT | October 15, 2023

Americans face a heightened threat from “lone wolf” terrorists inspired to replicate aspects of Hamas’ recent assault on Israel on US soil, FBI Director Christopher Wray told an audience of law enforcement officers at the International Association of Chiefs of Police Annual Conference in San Diego on Saturday.

Claiming there was “no question we’re seeing an increase in reported threats,” Wray warned his law enforcement colleagues, “We’ve got to be on the lookout, especially for lone actors who may take inspiration from recent events to commit violence of their own” – a reference to Hamas’ attack on Israel last Saturday.

“History has been witness to antisemitic and other forms of violent extremism for too long,” the FBI director continued, vowing to “continue confronting those threats.”

The responsibility for that confrontation was also on conference attendees, Wray added, urging them to “stay vigilant” and notify the FBI and other authorities if they saw any “signs that someone may be mobilizing towards violence.”

The FBI chief did not give any specific examples of domestic threats, copycat or otherwise, that had emerged since Hamas’ surprise attack on Israel. Instead, he made a generalized reference to “foreign terrorist organizations, or those inspired by them, or domestic violent extremists motivated by their own racial animus” as a vaguely equivalent menace likely to target individuals because of their (presumably Jewish) faith.

Wray’s FBI was caught earlier this year targeting Christian groups in a sprawling probe that presented traditionalist Catholics as potential domestic terrorists with “antisemitic, anti-immigrant, anti-LGBTQ and white supremacist ideology.”

Saturday’s speech was one of the few public references Wray had made since the Capitol riot of January 6, 2021, to an extremist threat with possible origins outside the US. The FBI director has insisted for years that the primary menace imperiling Americans is “white supremacy.” The concept has become increasingly nebulous under the presidential administration of Joe Biden, expanding to include not only the so-called “radical Catholics” but also parents who speak out at school board meetings, many of whom were investigated by the FBI’s Counterterrorism Division for speaking out against Covid-19 policies, LGBTQ material inserted into their children’s curricula, and other controversial issues following a directive from the Department of Justice deeming them a threat to school officials.

The FBI and Department of Homeland Security have highlighted “claims of government overreach” as a motivating factor for these “domestic violent extremists.”

October 15, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , | Leave a comment

A strategic nightmare sneaks into Washington’s political agenda

Global Times | October 14, 2023

A simultaneous war with China and Russia is a strategic nightmare that sober American strategists such as Henry Kissinger have been warning the US to avoid at all costs, and it is also a topic that some US media outlets have become more and more fond of talking about in recent years. At least from the publicly available information, Washington has never previously addressed it as a formal political agenda, supposedly aware of its seriousness and the terrible risks it carries. But the publication of a report by a congressionally appointed bipartisan panel titled America’s Strategic Posture crossed this “red line” on October 12.

The central point of the 145-page report is that the US must expand its military power, particularly its “nuclear weapons modernization program,” in order to prepare for possible simultaneous wars with China and Russia. Notably, the report diverges completely from the current US national security strategy of winning one conflict while deterring another, and from the Biden administration’s current nuclear policy. It is not a fantasy among the American public, but a serious strategic assessment and recommendation in the service of policymaking.

The 12-member panel that wrote the report was hand-picked by the US Congress from major think tanks and retired defense, security officials and former lawmakers. This report makes us feel that a “strategic nightmare” is sneaking into the US political agenda, but has not drawn due concern and vigilance in Washington, and to a large extent, the American elite group represented by the panel is actively working to make this nightmare come true.

A look at the specific recommendations of this report will send shivers down the spine of those who retain any basic rationality. The report recommends that the US deploy more warheads, and produce more bombers, cruise missiles, ballistic missile submarines, non-strategic nuclear weapons and so on. It also calls on the US to deploy warheads on land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) and to consider adding road-mobile ICBMs to its arsenal, establishing a third shipyard that can build nuclear-powered ships, etc.

What depths of insanity is the US sinking to? The US’ military spending accounts for nearly 40 percent of the world’s total defense expenditures, and it has been growing dramatically for several years, with military spending in 2023 reaching $813.3 billion, more than the GDP of most countries, but even that is not enough for these politicians. Such a report full of geopolitical fanaticism and war imagery, whether or not it actually ends up as a “guide” for Washington’s decision-making, is dangerous and needs to be resisted and opposed by all peace-loving countries.

According to some American media, the report ignores the consequences of a nuclear arms race. In fact, the report doesn’t seem to consider this at all and doesn’t suggest any measures other than nuclear expansion to address this issue. In other words, it is a reckless approach. Both China and Russia are nuclear powers, and everyone knows that provoking a confrontation between nuclear powers is a crazy idea. Even promoting a nuclear arms race under the banner of “deterrence” is a disastrous step backward in history. Washington’s political elites, who lived through the Cold War, cannot be unaware of this. However, the fact that such an absurd and off-key report is being presented in all seriousness by the US Congress is both surreal and unsurprising. It is in line with the distorted political atmosphere in Washington today.

The motives behind this exaggeration of threats and creating a warlike atmosphere are highly suspicious. The recent outbreak of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict caused a sharp increase in US defense industry stocks, while American defense industry companies have also been the biggest beneficiaries of the long-standing Russia-Ukraine conflict. The military-industrial complex, like a geopolitical monstrosity, parasitically clings to American society, manipulating its every move, pushing Washington step by step to introduce and even prepare for ideas that were once considered “impossible.” The prosperity of the American military-industrial complex is built upon blood and corpses, and carries a primal guilt. Serving the interests of the American military-industrial complex is unethical.

The reality is that such rhetoric is becoming increasingly politically acceptable in today’s Washington. The idea of “preparing for possible simultaneous wars with Russia and China,” once a fringe fantasy, has gradually made its way into Washington’s agenda, which is deeply unsettling. If Washington were to adopt even a small portion of the recommendations in this report, the harm and threats it could pose to world peace would be immeasurable and would ultimately backfire on the US itself. There is an old Chinese saying: “Those who play with fire will perish by it.” This is something that is worth Washington’s careful consideration.

October 15, 2023 Posted by | Militarism | , , | Leave a comment

DNA & SV40 In The #Pfizer Shot

October 15, 2023 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular, Video | , | Leave a comment

‘Wonder weapon’ myth is military-industrial complex PR scheme to profit from death

By Bradley Blankenship | Global Times | September 11, 2023

As the Russia-Ukraine war drags on, the Western public has been told that this or that wonder weapon system will turn the tide of the conflict. This has included Javelins, HIMARS, Leopards, Storm Shadow, Bradleys, F-16s, and now depleted uranium munitions, none of which has fundamentally changed the tide of the conflict.

After the slow progress of Kiev’s counteroffensive this summer, it is immediately apparent that high-tech equipment is not ruling the day but logistics and supply chains. It is not about who has the shiniest toys but who has the most troops, tanks and artillery and can deploy them quickly. On that front, Russia clearly dwarfs Ukraine, which is a much smaller country. Due to the fact that the West is evidently not going to join in this conflict directly, and there is growing resentment from the Western public against military aid to Kiev, people are wondering if the two sides will reach a peaceful settlement.

We are constantly told, however, that the latter possibility is somehow wrong or immoral because it will fundamentally grant Russia a victory. Well, morals aside, the reality clearly shows that Moscow is achieving its military objectives. Winning on the battlefield naturally translates to a more favorable negotiating position, and believing otherwise is to live in a realm of make-believe.

Some people idealistically (or opportunistically) believe that the West should support Ukraine’s futile fight against a far superior military power, even though that support will not challenge the eventual outcome and will lead to more death and destruction. Others believe death and destruction are undesirable outcomes; thus, Western leaders should pivot to a negotiations-first approach. The former view dominates the news media while the latter has gained a huge following on social media.

What’s also interesting about the difference between these two views and how they’ve fielded an audience is also about who’s backing them. People who hold the latter view are constantly accused – without evidence – of being funded by the Russian government or, as some US intelligence reports suggest, unwitting assets. Meanwhile, a recent analysis by the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft found that think tanks funded by defense [?] industry contractors are cited 85 percent of the time in Ukraine-related content – and media outlets rarely cite these conflicts of interest.

So, which of these viewpoints is compromised? I believe it’s safe to say the latter. And that’s important because we need to understand the dynamic here: The media is quite literally operating as a paid advertiser for defense contractors. Not only do some outlets consistently peddle that some particular line of products will turn the tide of battle (they will not), but they also cite compromised experts that push a line conducive to selling more defense products. Rinse and repeat.

This is what is so sinister about modern conflict. When you look at the decades that the West was entrenched in Afghanistan, the current Ukraine quagmire or a potential situation in Taiwan island, it’s not about any serious geopolitical strategy or values. It’s just about making a handful of companies richer. Worse still is that this is public, taxpayer money going to this cabal – and, to be sure, primarily working-class funds when taken in conjunction with the historic Reagan, Bush and Trump tax cuts, which cut taxes for the wealthy.

It would be extraordinarily naive to believe that defense contractors and the people they fund have incentives that supersede the profit motive. Instead, these companies profit from death and human suffering, and they’re enabled by information laundering operations known as think tanks, which are cited without any scrutiny from journalists who are either lazy or also compromised.

The author is a Prague-based American journalist, columnist and political commentator. opinion@globaltimes.com.cn

October 14, 2023 Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Militarism | , | Leave a comment

MSNBC Muslim anchors sidelined despite being Israeli apologists

By Mohammad Hashim | Press TV | October 14, 2023

In an interesting revelation, it has been reported on Saturday that three high-profile Muslim anchors of the American news television channel MSNBC, owned by NBC Universal, have been sidelined.

The Semafor report said Mehdi Hasan, Ayman Mohyeldin and Ali Velshi have been “quietly taken out of the anchor’s chair” amid the Israeli regime’s no-holds-barred bombing of the besieged Gaza Strip.

The network reportedly did not air the Thursday night episode of The Mehdi Hasan Show on its streaming platform Peacock and also reversed its plan to replace Joy Reid with Mohyeldin this week for the channel’s 7 p.m. show.

The report, citing “two network sources with knowledge of the plans”, said Velshi will also be replaced by Alicia Menendez this weekend. Menendez hosts American Coices on Saturdays and Sundays.

Hasan is a British-American television journalist of Indian descent who has anchored the popular The Mehdi Hasan Show on Peacock since October 2020 and on MSNBC since February 2021.

Mohyeldin is an Egypt-born, New York-based journalist for NBC News and MSNBC who currently hosts the weekly prime-time show ‘Ayman’ on MSNBC.

Velshi is a US-based Canadian journalist, who has been reporting for NBC News since October 2016 and also serves as a news host for MSNBC channel.

NBC has termed the schedule changes as “coincidental,” refuting claims that the high-profile Muslim broadcasters are being snubbed amid the Israeli hostilities against Palestinians.

However, the Semafor report stressed that staff members at MSNBC have been “concerned by the moves”, feeling all three hosts have “some of the deepest knowledge of the conflict.”

It said the move to sideline the three anchors comes as the MSNBC network, which is aligned closely with the Democratic Party, has “swung into intense solidarity” with the Israeli regime.

“That shift has come with heated internal and external objections to anything that breaks with that solidarity, and has come with social media criticism of Hasan, Mohyeldin, and Velshi,” the report stated.

Following the Hamas operation, US politicians, including President Joe Biden, quickly jumped in defense of the occupying regime and peddled blatant lies about children beheaded and women raped.

Interestingly, the three MSNBC journalists, including Hasan, have been vocal against the operation launched by the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas on the occupied territories last week.

Hasan, who has a massive social media following and is known for his argumentative style of on-air debating, took to his X handle on October 8, a day after the Hamas operation, lecturing his 1.3 million followers on “morality” of the Israel-Palestinian conflict.

“This conflict for me has always been about morality. Morally, you cannot justify the killing of Palestinian civilians, even if you say it’s fighting terrorism. But morally, you also cannot justify the killing of Israeli civilians, even if you say you’re fighting occupation,” he wrote.

It was a conscious and concerted attempt on the part of the British-American journalist to play both sides, to advocate the case of Palestinians, and also to be apologetic for the Israeli occupation.

He somehow tried to question the legitimacy of the Palestinian resistance group to launch the Al-Aqsa Storm operation even if they were occupied, subjugated, humiliated and mercilessly killed every day.

Hasan also fell for the hoax that hundreds of people were “massacred” at a music festival.

“Israel says 260 dead at music festival attacked by Hamas. I cannot imagine how horrific a massacre this must have been. 260 people gunned down. To put that in context, that’s the equivalent of more than five Pulse nightclub shootings. Heartbreaking,” he wrote on X.

It was part of the bigger misinformation campaign against the Palestinian resistance movement, which took the music festival participants as prisoners and treated them in a dignified manner as seen in videos circulating widely online.

To put his case as a neutral journalist who cares for Israelis, the MSNBC anchor reacted strangely to a photo of a demonstration by pro-Palestine activists outside the Israeli regime’s consulate in New York.

“These people are an embarrassment and their cheering is reprehensible,” Hasan wrote.

Mohyeldin, much like his MSNBC colleague, has been very consciously trying to appease his employers by being soft on the Israeli apartheid regime and amplifying voices against the resistance.

On October 8, a day after the Hamas operation, he shared a series of posts on X that were circulated to vilify the Gaza-based resistance group and to portray Israeli soldiers and settlers as victims.

He even shared an article that claimed Iran helped in plotting the attack on the Israeli regime.

Velsh, like the other two, has also used his social media platforms, including X, to make a case for himself as someone who despises the Palestinian resistance movement.

On October 10, he shared an article about Hamas, calling it an “important read to understand what you need to know about the group behind the deadly terror attack in Israel.”

He clearly sees the Hamas operation as a “terror attack”, not a legitimate military action against the occupying regime. He also conveniently dismissed the fact that the attack targeted occupiers.

On Saturday, he posted on X that he was leaving the occupied territories, adding to speculation that he has been sidelined from his job despite extra effort to take the hypocritical position on the conflict.

All three of them – Hasan, Mohyeldin and Velshi – despite trying to present themselves as “good boys” have received a bad report card from their bosses. That’s how much Americans value free speech.

Mohammad Hashim is a political and media analyst with a focus on West Asia.

October 14, 2023 Posted by | Full Spectrum Dominance, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , , | Leave a comment

Flashback: Babies on Bayonets

Corbett • 10/14/2023

Podcast: Play in new window | Download | Embed

In this clip from The WWI Conspiracy (Part Two) we examine the propaganda surrounding the “Rape of Belgium” at the start of WWI and the actions of the baby bayonetting evil Hun savages…

TRANSCRIPT

Once again, just as they did in Britain, the cabal was going to have to leverage its control of the press and key governmental positions to begin to shape public perception and instill pro-war sentiment. And once again, the full resources of these motivated co-conspirators were brought to bear on the task.

One of the first shells in this barrage of propaganda to penetrate the American consciousness was the “Rape of Belgium,” a catalogue of scarcely believable atrocities allegedly committed by the German forces in their invasion and occupation of Belgium at the start of the war. In a manner that was to become the norm in 20th century propaganda, the stories had a kernel of truth; there is no doubt that there were atrocities committed and civilians murdered by German forces in Belgium. But the propaganda that was spun from those kernels of truth was so over-the-top in its attempts to portray the Germans as inhuman brutes that it serves as a perfect example of war propaganda.

RICHARD GROVE: The American population at that time had a lot of German people in it. Thirty to fifty percent of the population had relations back to Germany, so there had to be this very clever propaganda campaign. It’s known today as “babies on bayonets.” So if you have no interest in World War I but you think it’s interesting to study propaganda so you don’t get fooled again, then type it into your favorite search engine: “babies on bayonets, World War I.” You’ll see hundreds of different posters where the Germans are bayonetting babies and it brings about emotions and it doesn’t give you the details of anything. And emotions drive wars, not facts. Facts are left out and deleted all the time in order to create wars, so I think that putting facts back in might help prevent wars. But I do know that they like to drive people on emotion. The “babies on bayonets” getting America into World War I, that’s a key part of it.

GERRY DOCHERTY: Children who had their arms chopped off. Nuns that were raped. Shocking things, genuinely shocking things. The Canadian officer who was nailed at St. Andrew’s cross on a church door and left there to bleed to death. These were the great myths peddled in order to defame and bring down the whole image of any justification for German action and try and influence America into war.

Gerry Docherty, co-author of Hidden History: The Secret Origins of the First World War.

DOCHERTY: That’s not to say that there weren’t atrocities on both sides. War is an atrocious event, and there are always victims. Absolutely. And I offer no justification for it. But the lies, the unnecessary abuse of propaganda.

Even when in Britain they decided that they would put together the definitive volume of evidence to present it to the world, the person they asked to do this just so happened to have been former British ambassador to the United States, a man called Bryce, who was very well-liked in the States. And his evidence was published and put forward and there were screeds of stories after stories. But then later it was discovered that in fact the people who took the evidence hadn’t been allowed to speak to any of the Belgians directly but in fact what they were doing is they were listening to a middleman or agents who had supposedly taken these stories.

And when one of the official committee said “Hold on, can I speak to someone directly?” “No.” “No?” He resigned. He wouldn’t allow his name to be put forward with the [official report]. And that’s the extent to which this is false history. It’s not even acceptable to call it fake news. It’s just disgusting.

The campaign had its intended effect. Horrified by the stories emerging from Belgium—stories picked up and amplified by the members of the Round Table in the British press, including the influential Times and the lurid Daily Mail, run by Milner ally Lord Northcliffe—American public opinion began to shift away from viewing the war as a European squabble about an assassinated archduke and toward viewing the war as a struggle against the evil Germans and their “sins against civilization.”

The culmination of this propaganda campaign was the release of the “Report of the Committee on Alleged German Outrages,” better known as “The Bryce Report,” compiled for “His Britannic Majesty’s Government” and presided over by Viscount James Bryce, who, not coincidentally, was the former British Ambassador to America and a personal friend of Woodrow Wilson. The report was a sham, based on 1,200 depositions collected by examiners who “had no authority to administer an oath.” The committee, which was not allowed to speak to a single witness itself, was tasked merely with sifting through this material and deciding what should be included in the final report. Unsurprisingly, the very real atrocities that the Germans had committed in Belgium—the burning of Louvain, Andenne and Dinant, for example—were overshadowed by the sensationalist (and completely unverifiable) stories of babies on bayonets and other acts of villainy.

The report itself, concluding that the Germans had systematically and premeditatedly broken the “rules and usages of war” was published on May 12, 1915, just five days after the sinking of The Lusitania.

October 14, 2023 Posted by | Deception, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | | Leave a comment

Biden Move to Send Warships to Gaza Coast More Dangerous Than We Thought

By Martin Jay | Strategic Culture Foundation | October 13, 2023

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is banking all he has on a single bet: that the U.S. will go the full nine yards in his madcap idea of a regional war between Israel and Iran’s proxies in the region.

For Netanyahu, this was always the plan from the very beginning. But it will take a series of stepping stones to get to this objective. First off is that he has to convince the Biden administration to join the IDF in its war within the Gaza Strip. And even that’s not going to be easy.

He would ideally like Washington directly involved in the conflict with Hamas because he hopes to expand the war to Lebanon and Iran, a former senior security policy analyst at the U.S. Department of Defense, Michael Maloof, told Russia Today recently. Maloof is certainly right but the move by Biden to send an armada of battle ships to the eastern Mediterranean coast is a dangerous move on so many levels. It’s easy to see that Biden wants to show support to Israel and to also show a physical presence in the region for Hezbollah, to make Nasrallah thinks twice about taking advantage of the IDF’s work being cut out in Gaza to launch a surprise attack. The problem with this mindset is that Hezbollah is not easily threatened by such moves and more than likely will be forced to think in a bigger and bolder way about carrying out such an attack with the U.S. ships ready to pound southern Lebanon, than if they were not there. This is definitely an own goal.

But secondly, the temptation by Netanyahu to arrange a false flag attack on the Americans is too great if and when he sees the conflict not going his way.

The other concern to consider is the Americans themselves making a tactical error. Miscalculation in this situation is fever-pitched and the Americans have a history of doing this in the region. One such error would plunge the entire region into the war with Iran which Netanyahu has dreamed of all his life. And there would be no easy “off ramp” for the Americans.

On Monday October 9th, the U.S. ordered the aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford and five guided missile destroyers to the Eastern Mediterranean. According to Maloof, this “meets Netanyahu’s wildest dreams.”

“He wanted the U.S. involved in this conflict,” the former Pentagon official told RT.

Netanyahu “wants to open up the war with Lebanon, by attacking Hezbollah” in pursuit of his ultimate objective, “to bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities,” Maloof added. For that to happen, “he has to have a Gulf of Tonkin moment, if you will.”

Some will remember U.S. President Lyndon Johnson kickstarting the Vietnam war with a neat little piece of fake news by sending ships to the Gulf of Tonkin in 1964. An alleged North Vietnamese attack on two U.S. destroyers was then used as a pretext for direct involvement. In those days all the LBJ government had to do was to simply announce that these ships had been attacked by North Vietnam forces. That’s all it took to justify the Vietnam war starting, a war, like so many U.S. interventions that not only Americans lost but one which redefined U.S. foreign policy for decades to come.

The U.S. has also pledged to help Israel with deliveries of weapons and ammunition, with the Pentagon insisting it has enough to do so and continue supplying Ukraine. Maloof is skeptical of that assertion, however.

And so, all the ingredients are there for the caldron to boil over. If Netanyahu is satisfied that the assault on Gaza is going to plan – a military strategy based on starving the enemy first before sending in second-rate IDF infantry (the worst secret in the Middle East is how poor Israeli infantry is on the battlefield) – then he may decide not to turn to the Americans for the big plan. But if the going gets tougher, he may well open up direct talks with Biden and his advisers about the level of support he could hope to get in a bigger, wider war. It is unlikely Biden will support him though, as the last thing he needs leading up to a re-election bid is a world war in the Middle East and American body bags. And so the natural progression is that Netanyahu’s people will conclude that the only way to draw America in is if it was no choice. The only real way to guarantee this is if those U.S. battleships are supposedly attacked by Hezbollah’s missiles in southern Lebanon.

Getting the Lebanese Shia group to do this might be harder that Netanyahu might reckon. Hezbollah understands only too well the ruse and is careful not to be pulled into a provocation. And there is always the possibility that Hamas itself fires a missile at one of them and this is conveniently seen as an attack from Lebanon. It actually won’t matter where it comes from. The Americans will fake all the forensic audio visuals later on and hand it out to journalists happy to file a good story just as they are lying to U.S. journalists about having enough ammunition to supply any such war, when the whole world and his dog knows that stocks are running very low.

October 14, 2023 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, False Flag Terrorism | , , , , , | Leave a comment

US diplomats told to avoid calls for Gaza ‘ceasefire’

RT | October 14, 2023

The US State Department has advised diplomats to avoid calling for “de-escalation” or a “ceasefire” in Gaza amid continued fighting between Israel and Palestinian militants, multiple media outlets have reported. US officials have voiced loud support for the Jewish state’s right to “self-defense” in the wake of a deadly Hamas raid last week.

In an email addressed to a small group of officials on Friday, the State Department said US press materials should steer clear of phrases such as “restoring calm,” “end to violence/bloodshed,” or “de-escalation/ceasefire,” unnamed administration officials told NBC News and other outlets.

The Huffington Post, which obtained a copy of the email, called the missive a “stunning signal” and an indication of the White House’s “reluctance to push for Israeli restraint.” The email was sent amid a new round of airstrikes on Gaza in response to a Hamas-led terrorist attack last Saturday.

Asked about the directive, an unnamed State Department official told HuffPo that they would not comment on internal communications.

Despite the discussions behind the scenes, at a press event in Qatar later on Friday, Secretary of State Antony Blinken told reporters that Washington had stressed to Israel the “importance of taking every possible precaution to avoid harming civilians” in Gaza. He added, “We recognize that many Palestinian families in Gaza are suffering through no fault of their own and that Palestinian civilians have lost their lives.”

President Joe Biden described last weekend’s Hamas attack as “pure evil” and insisted that Israel has the right to respond. However, in recent remarks, he claimed that Washington and its allies “uphold the laws of war,” and reportedly asked his Israeli counterpart, Benjamin Netanyahu, to minimize civilian casualties in Gaza during private discussions, according to NBC.

US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin relayed a similar message to IDF officials during meetings in Israel on Friday, the outlet added, noting that he urged them to “observe international rules of warfare.”

Since last Saturday, at least 1,300 Israelis and nearly 1,900 Palestinians have been killed in hostilities, with thousands more injured on both sides, according to local officials. IDF bombing raids have continued into Saturday morning, leveling whole apartment blocks in some strikes, while Israeli ground troops have begun their initial thrust into Gaza.

The Israeli government has ordered more than 1 million residents in northern Gaza to evacuate the area for their own safety, though the United Nations and other rights groups have slammed the directive, saying it would be impossible to accomplish without a massive humanitarian toll. Asked about the policy on Friday, White House spokesman John Kirby declined to endorse or condemn it, merely calling it “a tall order.”

October 14, 2023 Posted by | Deception, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

Weaponizing Salt Water: An American Tradition

Deprivation and Destruction in the Spirit of ‘73

BY N. JOSEPH POTTS • UNZ REVIEW • OCTOBER 12, 2023

It all ends up in salt water. The tea in 1773 Boston’s harbor, the Russian natural gas in 2022’s Baltic Sea. Of course, the tea would have drifted away and eventually sunk, while the gas bubbled to the surface and from there dissipated into the atmosphere, but either way, nobody got to buy, much less drink, the East India Company’s tea, and nobody in Europe got to buy or burn Russia’s gas, which was the American perpetrators’ purpose—in a word, deprivation.

Both times, and many of the times in between, the Americans either flew a false flag (“Mohawk Indians” in Boston) or were totally concealed underwater (the Baltic), emerging first to let Russia to take the rap for destroying its own pipeline, then to foment a rumor about a gang of incredibly intrepid Ukrainians on a sailing yacht. The East India Company was going to distribute (sell) the duty-free or -privileged tea to thirsty Bostoners, while Russia’s Gazprom proposed to sell natural gas cheaply to cold, energy-hungry Germans. The fact that 1773’s gangsters (Benjamin Franklin deplored their act) destroyed the actual goods while the US Navy’s unseen marauders destroyed the means of delivery does not change the character of the deeds, nor does the fact that the victims in Boston included the perpetrators’ own countrymen and the victims in Germany were foreign allies conquered by the USA over 70 years ago.

In both cases, the American perpetrators stood ready to “make good” their victims’ losses—at higher prices, to be sure, and certainly in 2022’s case in insufficient quantity. That is, the 1773 hooligans were professional smugglers of tea and other goods subject to duties levied by the British government on imports, and the infusion of “government tea” wrecked the market for their illicit goods, inspiring the famous raid in the first place—pretty much a turf war, viewed in its essence. That disruption would surely have petered out as the shipment of tea was exhausted, but the patriots were never a patient lot, as oppressed populaces sometimes are not (and other times such as the present apparently, are). The 2022 caper, on the other hand, promised to have far-more-nearly permanent effects on its hapless European victims, despite the rapid diversion of gas supplies from America via tankers loaded with liquified natural gas (LNG) in quantities far too small to make up for the destroyed pipelines’ capacity, never mind the higher costs that have to be borne by the sacrificial lambs of America’s brutal, covert foreign policy.

And speaking of prices, the draining of America’s supplies of natural gas to fill the tankers bound for Germany, however inadequate to make up for what the Russians would have delivered if only they were allowed to, cannot but drive up the prices paid for what is left by … Americans, the benighted dupes of their very own clandestine, vicious government. If they only knew these undeniable, practically obvious facts, it surely would warm the cockles of their ever-patriotic hearts as we head into the second of many, many winters made colder and more-costly by the greatest destruction of energy infrastructure so far this century. And they think the tea-bearing British of the Eighteenth Century were tyrannical brutes!

Depriving other countries of critical imports of energy as well as other resources has long been a staple of the American playbook of aggression and an immediate cause of war, including the one pitting Japan against the US and the British Empire that began in 1941. In this instance, the US at least operated in the open, teaming up with the UK, China and the Netherlands to deprive Japan of 80 percent of its petroleum consumption in the nefarious ABCD (American, British, Chinese, and Dutch) Pact. Since the Japanese attack on the US Fleet at anchor in Hawaii in 1941, Americans in particular have remained little aware that Japan attacked the colonial holdings of both Britain and Holland in Malaya and the East Indies at the very same moment, although the date in those places at the same instant was December 8, 1941 instead of the infamous December 7 date of Pearl Harbor. The role of the Pact in triggering Japanese military actions would seem obvious in the light of this fact.

Perhaps the most-wanton American act of spiteful destruction took place on the Pacific island of Espiritu Santo in the aftermath of World War II and, as in the Nord Stream case, made a European ally (France) its victim. Its scale dwarfed that of the Boston Tea Party, but still had nothing approaching the impact of destroying the Nord Stream Pipeline, which already after the mild winter of 2022-2023 is credited with having led to 68,000 excess deaths in Europe.

In 1947, the US Navy was preparing to pull out of its huge base on Espiritu Santo, which at that time was brimming over with supplies and equipment costing untold millions of (big, 1947) dollars staged for the invasion of Japan two years earlier that had never transpired. Having decided not to ship all this matériel back to the US, the Americans invited France (the colonial overlord of the island) to pay 6 cents on the dollar of its cost in order to inherit the massive trove. Noting that the US was indeed “stuck” with a great deal of material that it would be difficult and uneconomical to move, the French cannily chose to decline this seemingly generous offer.

The French had correctly figured that the US would be abandoning the haul in any case, so why pay anything at all for it? But the French had forgotten about the American tradition that began in Boston Harbor in 1773 involving the deliberate destruction of goods by immersion in salt water, plenty of which happened to surround Espiritu Santo. True to their tradition, the spurned Americans built a long jetty out from the island to nearby deep water, and drove, dragged and rolled hundreds of trucks, tractors and even tanks out to the end of the jetty along with thousands of cases of Coca Cola (1947’s equivalent of tea), bale upon bale of brand-new clothing and countless other treasures, and deep-sixed it all, creating an underwater junkyard that draws SCUBA-diving tourists to the island to this day, to a destination since named “Million-Dollar Point.” For good measure, the ungenerous Americans even blew up the jetty after they had completed their exercise in wanton destruction. At least, uniquely in this case, the Americans actually owned what they destroyed. And they performed their misdeed very much in the public eye, for all to see.

Doing this sort of thing after a major war might be dismissed as merely a materialistic tantrum little worse than that of the piqued child who gathers up his marbles and runs off home.

But doing this sort of thing before a major war could incline the thoughtful observer to see cause and effect.

This is much more serious than marbles. America could greatly improve the lot of humanity by desisting from such behavior. If it isn’t already too late.

October 13, 2023 Posted by | Timeless or most popular | | Leave a comment

Netanyahu and Biden lie to justify their crimes against the Palestinians

By Motasem A Dalloul | MEMO | October 13, 2023

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu described the Palestinian fighters from the besieged Gaza Strip who entered the occupation state at the weekend as “savages” who “celebrate the murder of women, children and the elderly.” He made his claim when trying to justify the ongoing campaign of Israeli air strikes that have so far killed 900 Palestinians, including 260 children and 230 women, and wounded more than 4,500 others.

Netanyahu used the same words to mobilise international support for his massive ground offensive planned for the coastal enclave. “We are on the third day of the operation,” he said in a televised speech on Monday. “We are in an operation for our home, a war to ensure our existence, a war that we will win.” He told viewers that the war was “imposed upon us by a despicable enemy.”

He went on to liken the Palestinian Islamic Resistance Movement, Hamas, to Daesh/ISIS: “The atrocities carried out by Hamas have not been seen since the atrocities of ISIS. Children bound and executed with the rest of their families, young girls and boys shot in the back, executed… We have always known what Hamas is. Now the whole world knows. Hamas is ISIS. We will defeat [Hamas] precisely as the enlightened world defeated ISIS.”

US President Joe Biden joined in this hate-fest on Tuesday: “There are moments in his life… when the pure, unadulterated evil is unleashed on this world… This was an act of sheer evil. More than 1,000 civilians slaughtered… babies being killed, entire families slain… and young women raped, assaulted, paraded as trophies.”

He also likened Hamas to ISIS. “This is terrorism, which sadly for the Jewish people, it’s not new. This attack has brought to the surface painful memories. The scars led by a millennium of anti-Semitism and genocide.” And where was this anti-Semitism most prevalent, Mr President? Yes, in Europe and the US.

Biden then reverted to the familiar script: “We must be crystal clear: We stand with Israel. We stand with Israel, and we will make sure it has what it needs to take care of its citizens to defend itself and respond to this attack. There’s no justification for terrorism.”

According to Biden, Hamas does not stand for the Palestinian people’s right to dignity and self-determination. “Its stated purpose is the annihilation of the State of Israel and the murder of Jewish people. It uses Palestinian civilians as human shields and offers nothing but terror and bloodshed with no regard to who pays the price.”

Both Netanyahu and Biden lied.

Both ignored the fact that resistance against a military occupation is legitimate under international law. In this case, the Palestinians are struggling against the longest occupation in history and, some would argue, the worst. They are not “terrorists” by doing so. Both of them insisted that all of the Israelis killed by the resistance were civilians, when hundreds were serving soldiers, men and women. Both claimed that Israelis were beheaded, including women and children, but no evidence has been produced for this allegation. Both claimed that women were raped, although Muslims in an Islamic movement are unlikely to do such a thing.

Israelis who did not challenge the Palestinian fighters were not “slaughtered”. One woman told Israeli TV i24 that the Palestinian fighters told her not to worry when she told them that she had children. While the fighters were in her house, she said that the children were playing on their mobile phones. She also noted that the fighters did not eat bananas from her counter before asking for and getting permission from her.

“I’m getting a lot of questions about the reports of ‘Hamas beheaded babies’ that were published after the media tour in the village [settlement of Kfar Azza],” wrote Israeli journalist Oren Ziv on X. “During the tour [there] we didn’t see any evidence of this, and the army spokesperson or commanders also didn’t mention any such incidents.”

The claim that Hamas is the same as Daesh/ISIS is ludicrous. Hamas is a resistance movement that has never operated outside historic Palestine. It participated in democratic elections in 2006, the last time that the US and Israel-backed Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas (whose own mandate expired in 2009) allowed them to be held. Moreover, it won the elections and formed the government of the Palestinian Authority, a result which neither Abbas nor the US and Israel accepted, despite international monitors describing the polls as “free and fair”. What’s more, there are claims that ISIS was a black ops creation of the US in order to sow mayhem and cruelty in the Middle East and discredit Islam and Islamic resistance against US hegemony in Muslim countries.

Nevertheless, Netanyahu used the same ISIS claim in 2014 to justify the apartheid state of Israel’s ethnic cleansing and genocide of the Palestinian people. “Hamas is ISIS and ISIS is Hamas. They act in the same way. They are branches of the same poisonous tree. They are two extremist Islamic terrorist movements that abduct and murder innocents, that execute their own people, that shrink at nothing including the wilful murder of children.”

Such deceptions are par for the course for both Netanyahu and Biden; it’s in the job description. Likewise, for other Western governments and their compliant media outlets. Anyone who opposes their twisted narrative is discredited as “anti-Semitic”, a terrorist sympathiser or worse. Look at what happened to Britain’s Jeremy Corbyn, hounded out of office by the pro-Israel lobby. The West is governed by double standards and hypocrisy, and the Hamas operation at the weekend has exposed that. Victim-blaming is what they excel at in order to allow Israel to act with impunity. They expect the Palestinians to just roll over and accept being oppressed and killed by Israel. We won’t play their evil game by their rules.

October 13, 2023 Posted by | Deception, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Video | , , , , | Leave a comment

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