Press TV – May 19, 2023
A New York State assembly member has introduced a legislation to stop charities from sending millions of dollars to Israel to stop its settlement expansion activities across the occupied Palestinian territories which are being advanced in flagrant violation of the international law.
The legislation, dubbed “Not on our dime!: Ending New York Funding of Israeli Settler Violence Act,” was introduced by state assembly member Zohran Mamdani, the third Muslim in the New York State assembly, earlier this week.
It would give the state attorney general authority to sue and dissolve not-for-profit organizations that are found to be using their tax-deductible donations to support organizations funding illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank.
The legislation would also give Palestinians harmed by settler organizations funded by New York-based charities the right to seek damages in American courts.
“Charities registered in New York State currently send more than $60 million dollars a year in tax-deductible donations to aid and abet Israeli settlements. This is done on our dime as New Yorkers,” Mamdani said, the Middle East Eye reported on Thursday.
He added, “This legislation puts an end to that and makes explicit that subsidizing violence and activities outlawed by the Geneva Convention is not, and should not be considered, charitable giving. It’s past time for New York to catch up to international law.”
Mamdani noted that while this issue is important to him as a Muslim, as his faith informs his fight to ensure justice for all people, this is not a bill motivated by religion.
“It is a bill motivated by a desire that New York State stop subsidizing human rights violations through the conferring of charitable status to organizations such as these,” he said.
“Too often, we see an exception drawn when it comes to Palestine – whether it be in our policies or the application of them. This makes it clear that our belief in human rights is universal, without exception,” he added.
The legislation has already received some backlash. Mamdani highlighted that his office has received a call saying all Muslims should die and all Muslim lovers should be killed as well.
“This is the reality when you dare speak up about Palestine and Palestinians,” he said.
Additionally, 66 lawmakers signed an open letter condemning the legislation, saying it “attacks” Jewish organizations.
Emboldened by former US president Donald Trump’s all-out support, Israel has stepped up its illegal settlement construction activities in defiance of United Nations Security Council Resolution 2334, which pronounced settlements in the West Bank and East al-Quds “a flagrant violation under international law.”
More than 600,000 Israelis live in over 230 settlements built since the 1967 Israeli occupation of the West Bank and East al-Quds.
All Israeli settlements are illegal under international law. The UN Security Council has condemned Israel’s settlement activities in the occupied territories in several resolutions.
Palestinians want the West Bank as part of a future independent state with East al-Quds as its capital.
The last round of Israeli-Palestinian talks collapsed in 2014. Among the major sticking points in those negotiations was Israel’s continued illegal settlement expansion.
Many Palestinians believe the Israeli plans to annex one-third of the already occupied West Bank, including parts of the strategic Jordan Valley, is only a formality and that a de facto Israeli occupation of their land has been underway for many years.
Tested on Palestinians
MEMO | May 18, 2023Israel and the Netherlands signed a five-year arms’ deal worth $305 million, Israel’s Defence Ministry announced yesterday.
Israel’s Elbit Systems, a company which sells weapons to the Israeli military used in attacks on Palestinians, will supply 20 PULS artillery systems, including ammunition as well as training and support services.
The deal was signed by the International Defence Cooperation Directorate at Israel’s Ministry of Defence (SIBAT) General Yair Kulas in the Netherlands with his Dutch counterpart, Commander of the Royal Netherlands Army General Martin Wijnen.
“It is an honour for me to lead the first government-to-government defence contract with the Netherlands for the PULS long-range precise rocket artillery system,” said Kulas. “This significant event symbolises the strategic relationship between our countries and constitutes an opportunity to strengthen our partnership based on mutual values and morals.”
According to the Times of Israel, there have been previous Israeli arms and defence equipment sales to the Dutch nation, but those were considered to be private deals by various companies and not government-to-government contracts.
Moreover, the arms deal is one of the largest agreements signed between Israel and a European country in recent years.
Bezhalel Machlis, president and CEO of Elbit, added in a statement: “The acquisition of Elbit Systems’ PULS solution will enhance the Royal Netherlands Army’s ability to provide effective indirect fire support. It will also provide interoperability with NATO customers that have acquired these systems.”
American Politicians flock to Israel while dismembering the US Constitution in deference to Jewish power
BY PHILIP GIRALDI • UNZ REVIEW • MAY 16, 2023
It would seem that American politicians and media think that the entire world should rightly conform to the marching orders emanating from Washington, even though that pretense has become a bit shopworn after more than twenty years of pointless wars initiated and sustained by a series of clueless presidents and Congress. Increasingly, the international community is looking for a way out of the tight embrace offered by the White House, a growing sense that a multipolar world would be much better than “rule of law” dictated by any self-proclaimed superpower.
Recently there have been indications that rather than Washington being the center of the universe that title should rightly belong to Jerusalem as an extremist-led Israel has demonstrated its power over the self-anointed idiots who fancy themselves to be the “leaders” of the United States of America. Why do I think that? I truly believe that there have been several interactions lately involving US politicians and the Israelis that illustrate just how ignorant and self-absorbed America’s governing class actually is. The most egregious example of the “wag the dog” syndrome whereby Israel says “jump” and the fawning American government representatives beg to ask “How high?” comes from none other than the newly appointed Speaker of the House of Representatives Kevin McCarthy, who spoke before the Israeli Knesset on May 1st. McCarthy made it a point to flatter his Israeli hosts by emphasizing that traveling to Israel was his first foreign trip as speaker, underlining the value of the relationship, and observing that he was also only the second speaker invited to make the trip to the Jewish state to address the Knesset.
McCarthy was accompanied by the usual cast of congressional toadies who flock to Israel during every recess. The group was bipartisan and included the loathsome Steny Hoyer of Maryland who has made and even led the groveling entourage more than twenty times. The ambition-driven McCarthy, who has never been accused of having a great deal of brain power, delivered a predictable speech that produced the pro forma standing ovations from the audience, but I would call attention to one part of it in particular where he said the following: “This is the foundation of our special relationship: We are the only two countries in history that were conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that we are all equal. Our values are your values. Our heritage is your heritage. Our dreams are your dreams. America is grateful for our friendship with Israel. We are a better nation because of it. And we must never shy away from defending it… As long as I am speaker, America will continue to support fully funding for security assistance in Israel.”
Nearly every line in this part of the McCarthy speech is basically either an out-and-out lie or a twisting of reality to such an extent that it is incomprehensible. Palestine, by the way, was not mentioned by McCarthy, but how Israel can claim to be “conceived in liberty” with the “proposition that we are all equal” when it has been engaged in genocide and expulsion as well as government endorsed violence directed against its Christian and Muslim subject population? And if American and Israeli values are identical, can we expect in the US different laws based on religion. And our common “heritage?” Israeli Jews claim to be “chosen,” don’t they? And finally, how on earth does McCarthy claim that the United States is a better nation because of its ties to Israel? It is ridiculous and insulting, but it leads to the punchline that McCarthy is making an unconstitutional pledge to defend Israel, no matter what Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his band of criminals do, presumably to include attacking Iran. McCarthy should be impeached. Or even better he should magically become a Palestinian and spend a couple of months under the Israeli occupation. He might change his tune.
McCarthy continued his exaltation of Israel campaign after his return to Washington. On May 9th, he blocked an effort by Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib to host a gathering at the Capitol Visitor Center that would have included least nine groups for an event entitled “Nakba 75 and the Palestinian People.” “Nakba” in the title of Tlaib’s canceled event is the Arabic word for “catastrophe,” which would have meant the speakers would be describing the founding of the state of Israel as a “catastrophe” for the Arab inhabitants of historic Palestine, which it was with hundreds of thousands left homeless, many winding up in refugee camps. McCarthy announced in a message that he was shutting down the event, tweeting that “This event in the US Capitol is canceled. Instead, I will host a bipartisan discussion to honor the 75th anniversary of the US-Israel relationship.” McCarthy’s announcement was in response to a letter from Anti-Defamation League (ADL) CEO Jonathan Greenblatt to him which said ADL had concerns that some of the organizers of the “Nakba” event “have a record of rhetoric that demonizes and delegitimizes Israel, as well as dangerous stereotypes about Israel’s supporters.” Apparently free speech relating to a historic event is not even allowed to congressmen in today’s Zionist-occupied America.
If more evidence of the slime that is at the heart of the American political class is needed, I would cite another event which took place in Jerusalem on April 27th as both shameful and a disgrace. And “no” I am not referring to the Israeli police and army shooting dead more Palestinian teenagers on and around that date before stealing their family homes and destroying their livelihoods. I am referring to Florida’s governor and presidential aspirant Ron DeSantis’s groveling performance in bowing to Jewish power and money during his own trip to Israel. His abhorrent crawling before his masters culminated in his signing a new state law that will inter alia exploit the “hate” mechanism to criminalize nearly all criticism or even skepticism regarding Israeli apartheid, of the co-called holocaust narrative, or of the behavior of Jewish groups and individuals.
At the signing, DeSantis boasted how “We are doing what we can do in Florida to enhance the ability to hold people accountable when that really crosses the line into threatening conduct. We are fighting back.” He also made clear that the legislation was as much about Israel as about Judaism, arguing that rejecting “Israel’s right to exist is antisemitism” and adding that the non-violent Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement is “DOA” in his state. He also bizarrely described “Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons” as an “existential threat to the state of Israel and to the United States of America.”
Perhaps DeSantis should have checked with the CIA and even Mossad before commenting on Iran as both have confirmed that the Iranians do not currently have a nuclear weapons program. Unsurprisingly DeSantis claims that “Florida is the most Israel-friendly state in the country and as long as I’m Governor, we will continue to stand with the Jewish community.” In that he is no doubt correct. Twenty-six other states have penalized anyone seeking to either boycott Israel or promote doing so, sometimes to include denial of government jobs or benefits, but there is no doubt that Florida is currently number one in its deference to the Jewish state and its claimed interests.
The bill (HB 269/SB 994), which passed unanimously in both chambers of the Florida legislature, attempts to criminalize what it perceives as anti-Semitism. Even though its language avoids identifying Jews as the protected class, the clear intent of the document is to do just that. It accomplishes that by transforming what would have once been seen as trivial incidents into hate crimes, which are felonies. It includes “to litter a yard with a flier, harass people, disrupt schools or religious services, deface graves and certain buildings, or project images on someone else’s property” as possible actions rendered felonious based on racial or ethnic prejudice, making them hate crimes. It might mean, for example, that if someone laughs at another person’s clothes and if the attire is considered “ethnic or religious” that person can be arrested and charged with a third-degree felony as a hate crime. Or if a student in a college history class disputes the standard largely fabricated narrative relating to the founding of Israel, a Jewish student can feign distress and demand that the offender be arrested.
One of the bill’s co-sponsor’s State Representative Randy Fine, who was present at the signing in Jerusalem, explained how “There is no First Amendment right to conduct. If you graffiti a building, it is a crime now, but if your motivation is hate, it will be a third-degree felony and you will spend five years in prison. If you want to litter, it’s a crime right now, but if you litter and your motivation is a hate crime, it will be a third-degree felony and you will spend 5 years in jail.” After the bill passed the Senate, Fine tweeted that the bill was “the strongest antisemitism bill in the United States” adding “To Florida’s Nazi thugs, I have news: attack Jews on their property and you’re going to prison. Never again means never again.” Another co-sponsor Mike Caruso warned “If we do nothing, we are going to have 1933’s Nazi Germany all over again.”
DeSantis, who is seeking Jewish money and media support for his run at the presidency, turned in something of a repeat performance of his inaugural trip to Israel back in 2019. At that time, he boasted, like Kevin McCarthy, that his first foreign trip was to good friend and perpetual ally Israel. He took his entire gubernatorial cabinet with him to celebrate his election and theatrically signed an earlier bill (HB 741) in Jerusalem that sought to “criminalize ordinary political speech” by making religion as a “protected class” similar to “racism” to be included in “hate crime” legislation. The new designation specifically included attempts to “demonize Israel.”
The Florida bill also included the controversial International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of anti-Semitism, similar to that which is favored by the office of the US Department of State’s Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism, maintaining that “anti-Semitism” is “a certain perception of Jewish people, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jewish people, rhetorical and physical manifestations of anti-Semitism directed toward a person, his or her property, or toward Jewish community institutions or religious facilities.” Under the bill, the BDS movement was defined as a terrorist “hate” group no different than the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) or the Islamic State in Syria (ISIS), which at that time prompted some civil libertarians to question if criticism of the behavior of the Jewish state could be deliberately mischaracterized as being an “anti-Semitic hate crime” that should or might be construed as criticism of the Jewish people and their religion.
HB 741 amended Florida’s “hate crime” statute to include such “antisemitic” acts as:
DeSantis has long nurtured political ambitions and, recognizing the power and wealth of those who are passionate about Israel, he harbors a particular “sensitivity” to Jewish and Israel issues as a means to help him move onwards and upwards. When he was a congressman, survivors from the Israeli attack on the USS Liberty that killed 34 American seamen who lived in his district in Florida report that they sought to meet with him to discuss the possibility of opening a new inquiry into the incident. Even though DeSantis is a former Navy officer, he refused to meet with them.
The power of international Jewry has been most observable in the largely successful attempts to silence criticism of Israel by making such activity describable as motivated by anti-Semitism. Former Israeli government minister Shulamit Aloni has even described the practice of labeling all critics as anti-Semites as “It’s a trick. We always use it… the suffering of the Jewish people” is routinely used to “justify everything we do to the Palestinians.” A number of European countries have also criminalized what is described as “holocaust denial” and in Germany and France have imprisoned those who violate the laws, even when that denial only consists of questioning some of the facts that are employed in the standard accepted narrative of the event. The most recent country to climb onto the “hate speech” express is Ireland, where new legislation is being considered by the country’s parliament. Interestingly, the debate over what one is allowed to say without criminally offending someone else has largely focused on transexuals and gender identity, but it has also been observed that the law would impact on supporters of the Palestinian cause who would perforce criticize Israel, the Jewish state. That might easily be construed as anti-Semitism and lead to heavy fines or even prison time. Interestingly, the bill even criminalizes the mere possession of material considered to be “hateful.”
In any event, the domestic war dedicated to stamping out what is referred to as anti-Semitism continues and grows in the United States, even when it is trivial, largely imaginary, or even fabricated by hate groups like the ADL headed by the hideous Jonathan Greenblatt. And if free speech and honest inquiry have to be sacrificed along the way, so be it. On May 10th the Biden Administration used its United Nations Security Council veto to block a report on Israel’s war crimes in targeting civilians while bombing Gaza, which has killed 25 Palestinians, mostly women and children. Unsurprisingly, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan responded to the development by declaring their unwavering support for “Israel’s right to defend itself.”
Clearly, for the vast majority of politicians in Washington and even at the states level, allegiance and subservience to Israel and its interests are more important than protecting constitutional rights or managing a sane and responsible foreign policy. One wonders whether Ron DeSantis, if elected president in 2024, just might hold his inauguration in Jerusalem, just as he did when he became governor. It would actually be something of a relief – at last the ultimate acknowledgement of who is really in charge back here in America.
Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is inform@cnionline.org.
By Drago Bosnic | May 12, 2023
There are very few things that have been as unifying for America’s political establishment as the belligerent thalassocracy’s propensity to impose sanctions. Republicans and Democrats will almost always be at each other’s throats for virtually any issue, but when it comes to sanctions, particularly against the Syrian people, their unity is unquestionable. For well over a decade, the unfortunate Middle Eastern country has been at the forefront of Washington DC’s regime change efforts, with the United States using everything from sanctions and financing various “moderate democratic opposition forces” (i.e. head-chopping terrorists) to direct attacks on Syria and its armed forces.
Unfortunately, the Arab League actively took part in this comprehensive attack on a fellow Arab country and it took years of active Russian and Chinese diplomatic efforts to have the organization reengage with Damascus. In the last couple of months, there have been several major breakthroughs in this regard, culminating with announcements that Syria will be readmitted into the organization. President Bashar al-Assad even visited several prominent Arab countries, some of which previously played an extremely active role in attempts to oust him. The likes of the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia went from “Assad must go!” to “We’re happy to see Assad stay” in mere months.
And while Damascus must tread carefully when reengaging countries that actively took part in a comprehensive aggression against it, this opportunity is something that should not be missed. As previously mentioned, it was only thanks to the sustained diplomatic efforts of the multipolar world that this inter-Arabic conflict came to an end, inflicting a devastating blow to US plans for Syria’s destruction. However, the warhawks in Washington DC are far from giving up. Top GOP and DNC members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee are pushing for a bipartisan initiative to sanction anyone taking part in Syria’s full diplomatic reinstatement. Since May 8, they made several announcements about this.
The bipartisan group is now urging President Joe Biden and his deeply troubled administration to impose “crippling sanctions” on any state or entity engaged in attempts of normalizing relations with Syria. Expectedly, the initiative is led by one of the most prominent neocon warmongers, Texas Republican Michael McCaul.
“Readmitting Assad to the Arab League is a grave strategic mistake that will embolden Assad, Russia, and Iran to continue butchering civilians and destabilizing the Middle East,” McCaul and Gregory Meeks (NY DNC Rep.) said in a statement, further adding: “The United States must fully enforce the Caesar Act and other sanctions to freeze normalization efforts with this war criminal.”
The aforementioned Caesar Act, hypocritically designated as the so-called Syria Civilian Protection Act of 2019, is a US legislation that sanctions the Syrian government, including President Bashar al-Assad himself, for bogus “war crimes”. It was signed into law in December 2019 and came into force on June 17, 2020. The illegal exterritorial legislation targets virtually the entire Syrian industrial capacity, including its ability to build and maintain infrastructure, as well as energy production. It also targets individuals and businesses accused of allegedly “funding or assisting the President of Syria”. This also includes entities from other countries, including Russian and Iranian companies taking part in the reconstruction efforts in Syria.
Essentially, the Caesar Act adds insult to injury in terms of well-over-a-decade-long unprovoked US aggression on Syria by imposing economic sanctions that are specifically designed to prevent the rebuilding of the devastated country, further prolonging the suffering of the Syrian people. Worse yet, all this is done under the endlessly hypocritical pretext of “protecting” the same people whose lives it has been destroying for more than ten years. The US political establishment decided to keep enforcing the illegal sanctions even after the disastrous earthquake that killed thousands and left tens of thousands homeless in the already ravaged country. It has also prevented or at least significantly complicated international relief efforts.
However, it seems the Caesar Act will soon be used against US “partners” that have been nearly 100% compliant up until recently. This includes Saudi Arabia and Jordan, both of which still have extremely close relations with the Pentagon. On May 9, Damascus and Riyadh formally announced the restoration of their official diplomatic relations. The move is directly tied to Syria’s readmission to the Arab League.
“The State Department denounces Syria’s readmission to the Arab League. We do not believe that Syria merits this decision by the Arab League at this time,” State Department spokesman Vedant Patel said on May 8, adding: “We continue to believe that we will not normalize our relations with the Assad regime, and we don’t support our allies and partners doing so either.”
As previously mentioned, sanctions are not the only way in which the US is conducting its well-over-a-decade-long and truly unprovoked aggression on Syria. The Pentagon has approximately 1000 soldiers illegally occupying nearly all of eastern Syria, as well as an occupation force in the area around their base of Al-Tanf. The forces deployed in the east are openly stealing Syrian oil, while those in Al-Tanf are training and equipping several US-backed terrorist groups whose sole purpose is to continue destabilizing the country. If Syria normalizes relations with virtually the entire Middle East, this could severely undermine US efforts to keep its war on Syria going on indefinitely. This is yet another proof that war, death and destruction are the primary “export commodities” of the world’s terrorist No. 1.
Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst.
The Cradle | May 11, 2023
US officials blocked an effort led by China at the UN Security Council (UNSC) on 10 May to condemn Israel’s latest onslaught on the besieged Gaza Strip, according to senior Israeli officials that spoke with the Times of Israel.
Washington’s interference reportedly came at the request of Tel Aviv, who feared the motion at Tuesday’s emergency meeting “would draw an equivalence” between the Israeli army and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) resistance group.
Over the decades, the US has consistently stepped in to protect Israel from facing the consequences of rampant human rights abuses, the military occupation of Palestinian land, and the imposition of an apartheid system targeting Palestinians.
The only exception to this rule came earlier this year, when Washington allowed a statement to pass at the UNSC blasting Israel’s expansion of illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank. Nonetheless, the US went on to block a binding resolution against Israel.
Former US President Harry Truman was the first world leader to recognize Israel when it was created in 1948 following the ‘Nakba,’ or catastrophe, during which at least 700,000 Palestinians were violently evicted from their lands by Jewish settlers.
Israel is also the largest cumulative recipient of US foreign aid in the post-World War II era and enjoys unequivocal political and diplomatic cover from both the Democratic and Republican parties as well as from US corporate media.
However, US influence in the region has started to wane in recent months, pushing Israel further into isolation.
Last month, Beijing offered to help facilitate peace talks between Israel and Palestine as part of a larger effort to mediate historic conflicts in West Asia.
In December, Chinese President Xi Jinping expressed support for an end to the Israeli occupation of Palestine and voiced frustration over the “historical injustice” suffered by Palestinians.
He also called for granting Palestine “full membership in the United Nations” and said Beijing “supports the two-state solution and the establishment of a Palestinian state on the 1967 borders, with East Jerusalem as its capital.”
The Asian giant has slammed recent comments by a Jewish supremacist government minister, who in March said, “there is no such thing as a Palestinian people.”
“The Israeli senior official is wrong and irresponsible to deny Palestinian people’s existence and to display an ‘Israel map’ including Jordan and Palestinian places occupied by Israel at an event in Paris,” said Wang Wenbin, a spokesman for China’s Foreign Ministry.
BY WILL JONES | THE DAILY SCEPTIC | MAY 10, 2023
Ex-Tory MP Andrew Bridgen, who was expelled from the party for criticising the Covid vaccines, has announced he’s joining Laurence Fox’s Reclaim Party, making him its first member of Parliament. At a press conference today Bridgen said he would be standing at his North West Leicestershire constituency at the next General Election. He also confirmed he would be suing Matt Hancock MP for defamation over an allegation of antisemitism.
At the press conference this morning Bridgen confirmed he has decided not to appeal his expulsion and blasted the Conservative Party. He said:
Even if I were to be given a fair hearing, which I doubt, I would not wish to rejoin the party after the treatment received by myself and my family over the past few years.
I feel now that the party no longer represents the people of this great country. If I am to represent my constituents and countrymen it must be from outside the party which I have served dutifully for many decades.
I will be standing again in North West Leicestershire at the next election. Not as a Conservative, but as a Member of the Reclaim Party. More than anything, the Reclaim Party stands for freedom of speech.
I will cross the floor today, Wednesday May 10th, and sit on the opposition benches as the first Member of Parliament for the Reclaim Party. I say first because I have no doubt I will not be the last. This is just the beginning.
If the Conservative Party wishes to contest my seat it can do so at the next General Election.
I have more confidence that I will win my seat than the vast majority of sitting Conservative MPs, so I welcome the challenge should the Prime Minister and Parliamentary Party wish to take it.
Bridgen was accused of antisemitism for agreeing in a tweet with an anonymous heart doctor he quoted that the Covid vaccine rollout was “the biggest crime against humanity since the Holocaust”.
He has denied the allegation – which we at the Daily Sceptic agree is spurious and an example of a weaponised antisemitism allegation to achieve political ends. This morning Bridgen confirmed that he will be suing ex-Health Secretary Matt Hancock for defamation after the Conservative MP tweeted in January that he was spouting “antisemitic, anti-vax, anti-scientific conspiracy theories”.
In a YouTube video Bridgen said he has submitted a “defamation claim to the Royal Court of Justice against Matthew Hancock MP”. The basis of the claim is that Hancock’s accusation of antisemitism is “a false slur to deliberately try and shut down valid concerns raised by me on behalf of constituents and thousands of others around the world about the safety and efficacy of the experimental COVID-19 injections”.
Matt Hancock in the dock: that’s a court case to look forward to.
You can donate to Andrew Bridgen’s legal fund here.
By Michael Lesher | Brownstone Institute | May 9, 2023
Suppose I tell you in advance that the essay you are reading is meant to startle you. And suppose I suggest, by way of demonstration, that two people as loosely connected as the leader of the “COVID Crisis Group” and Joe Biden’s “Special Envoy To Monitor and Combat Antisemitism” – both of whom have recently offered recommendations for improving political life in the United States – are in fact determined to unravel American freedoms.
Would you be surprised?
Well, if so, that is exactly the startling fact I am trying to bring to your attention. True, you may not have heard that the 34 COVID-19 “experts” headed by one Philip Zelikow (last seen justifying the concealment of information about the 9/11 attacks) and anti-Semitism “ambassador” Deborah Lipstadt – perhaps best known for slandering scads of Jewish survivors of the Nazis as “soft-core” Holocaust deniers because they objected to the massacre of 1,462 of Gaza’s civilians nine years ago – are both out to dismantle the Bill of Rights. But if you haven’t, it isn’t because they’ve been coy about their objectives.
Take the Zelikow panel. Its new book on “the lessons learned from COVID-19” openly conflates the federal government’s management of a respiratory virus with “wartime” – thus rationalizing the executive branch’s preemption of democratic government. Not only that, Zelikow and his band of “experts” explicitly call for the consolidation of power in the hands of an unelected “health security enterprise” that would control, among other things, a “systematic biomedical surveillance network.” And in case you can’t guess who is likely to benefit from the snooping, the panel goes on to praise the coercive experimental drug program that gave us the COVID-19 “vaccines” – “a bargain at $30 billion,” according to the editors of the Washington Post – signaling at one stroke the experts’ contempt for the Nuremberg Code and their subservience to Big Pharma.
As for Lipstadt, she has launched her attack on the First Amendment by redefining “anti-Semitism” so as to include an extraordinary range of political speech. Her first step in that transformation is the familiar trick of confusing criticism of the Israeli government with anti-Jewish bigotry. But her second step is newer and, arguably, even more disturbing: she tars all denigration of Jews with the hot-button label “conspiracy theory.”
Let’s be clear: however noble the pretext of opposing Jew-hatred, it should be obvious that once you characterize anti-Semitism as a “conspiracy theory” you have made a case for censorship. As Lipstadt herself explained to Jane Eisner of Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism (in an interview printed in the latest AARP Magazine but not available online): “[I]t’s a conspiracy theory that Jews control the media, the banks, the election process, etc. If you believe that there is a group controlling these things, then essentially you’re saying that you don’t believe in democracy.”
And there’s the trouble. After all, an overt attack on democracy isn’t a viewpoint; it isn’t even an expression of run-of-the-mill bigotry. It’s a threat to the state. And it follows, if you accept Lipstadt’s formulation, that anyone the government can label an “anti-Semite” may now be punished in the same way the Biden administration is already punishing people who protested the presidential election results of November 2020. Note, too, the selective parameters of the offense: blaming Donald Trump’s election on the Russians is presumably “legitimate” speech; but accusing a “group” of controlling “the election process” can land you in jail – that is, when the “group” is not an official enemy but a favored minority, and when that “process” has reached results endorsed by those in power.
So the Zelikow panel and Ambassador Lipstadt can’t be accused of hiding their illiberal goals. Like the Democratic lynch mob that denounced Matt Taibbi and Michael Shellenberger on the floor of Congress last March for revealing the extent of government censorship of Twitter, these propagandists quite openly assert that surveillance is good for us, while free speech is entirely too dangerous to be entrusted to mere citizens.
“Ordinary folks and national security agencies responsible for our security,” Congressman Colin Allred lectured Taibbi, “are trying their best to find a way to make sure that our online discourse doesn’t get people hurt, or see our democracy undermined.” It’s pretty breathtaking to watch an African-American liberal solemnly declare that the CIA and the FBI are the true guardians of democracy – not to mention his defense of the security state’s behind-the-scenes censorship of political speech. But what’s even more ominous is that not a single prominent Democratic politician nor a single pundit in mainstream liberal media has repudiated anything the congressman said.
Is it any wonder, then, that no one in mainstream media has mentioned the totalitarian tendencies implicit in the COVID Crisis Group’s recommendations for “pandemic” regulation via dismantling democracy, or in Ambassador Lipstadt’s appeals to the public to “discredit” anti-Semitism by recasting it as a criminal conspiracy?
Of course it isn’t. And that is my point. That is my motive in writing in tandem about these two apparently disparate subjects, connected only by the facts that both of them involve recent public declarations and that both of them represent attacks on fundamental liberties.
Because the truth is that condemning freedom is now so entirely respectable that it’s happening practically everywhere – under every possible pretext, almost any day, from just about any left-liberal institution that claims to care about the public good. Close your eyes, and you can hardly tell whether what you’re hearing is coming from a Democratic Party stalwart or from an old-line Soviet apologist explaining why Andrei Sakharov or Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn or Yuri Orlov is really, notwithstanding the accuracy of what he’s been saying, a threat to the state who deserves to be muzzled or jailed.
And the media’s silence about it all is as ominous as the Orwellian nattering of the freedom-haters themselves.
Take another look at the Zelikow panel’s assessment of the US government’s performance during the “COVID crisis.” Writing about what the “experts” praise or blame in their report, the Washington Post never once mentions the crippling of the US working-class economy due to arbitrary confinements and business shutdowns, the educational damage done to a whole generation of children through needless school closures, the reckless suspension of representative democracy in four-fifths of our states, the medically unjustifiable trauma caused by “mask mandates,” or the undermining of the national healthcare system through an obsessive focus on one respiratory virus while more serious issues were sidelined for over a year. As far as the Post is concerned, the real outrages of the COVID coup never happened at all.
Even when the experts and the editors do manage to notice something sinister, they go out of their way to miss the point. The Zelikow panel specifically notes the “four pandemic planning exercises” staged by the US government barely a year before the announcement of the COVID-19 outbreak. And it offers a few technical criticisms of the proceedings.
But neither the panel nor the Post editors’ congratulatory summary of its conclusions addresses the fact that the exercises – which omitted any suggestion for using repurposed drugs as early treatment for a novel virus, as in all previous influenza-like outbreaks – made a point of discussing the importance of thought-policing social media. That prescription for censorship became a grim reality after March 2020. But you’d never know it from reading the Zelikow panel’s assessment of the government’s mistakes in addressing the “pandemic.”
And Lipstadt? She claims to be a passionate defender of free speech. But that didn’t stop her from smearing Senator Ron Johnson as a “white nationalist sympathizer” because of his politically incorrect comments about Black Lives Matter. And when that issue made it to the op-ed page of the New York Times, it was only to further demonize Johnson; Lipstadt’s slander got a pass.
Why do I worry so much about this? Well, first of all because an attack on freedom is an attack on all of us.
But I think there is a special reason for alarm. It’s not just that our ruling elites believe that we, the people, need to be stripped of our right to free expression. I’m afraid that the freedom-haters clustered around our figurehead President are not even aware just how thin the ice is onto which they’re propelling us. Their position (taking the most charitable possible view of it) runs something like this: if the public isn’t exposed to views of which the censors disapprove, hoi polloi will meekly accept whatever policies are imposed on them (for their own good, of course).
But the censors are wrong. The fabric of American political life has been strained to such tautness that a single acute crisis might rupture it altogether. And if that happens, people who have been deprived of reasonable dissent will not shrink from violent opposition; on the contrary, they will embrace it. When the monolithic narrative that is all they have been taught lies in ruins, they will replace it not with a rational, informed alternative – for they will know of none – but with whatever satisfies the rage of a population that realizes, too late, that it has been hoodwinked.
Woe to the freedom-haters when the lion they think they have tamed turns its fury on the liberal society that soothsayers like Zelikow and Lipstadt still imagine they are defending!
MEMO | May 9, 2023
The Israeli occupation authorities jailed former Jerusalem Minister Khaled Abu Arafa for four months on Monday under an administrative detention order. The order was imposed a week after he was kidnapped by Israeli occupation forces from his temporary residence in the occupied West Bank city of Ramallah.
Abu Arafa and three other Jerusalemites were stripped of their Israeli identity documents when they won seats in the 2006 Palestinian parliamentary election. They were all jailed under administration detention orders which were renewed regularly with neither charge nor trial until they were released in May 2010. They were then expelled from Jerusalem after staging a protest in the office of the International Red Cross in the city that lasted until September 2011, and were forbidden from returning to the occupied city.
Since then, they have been living in temporary homes in the occupied West Bank. This has not stopped the occupation authorities from harassing and now detaining them under new administrative detention orders.
The Cradle | May 9, 2023
On 8 May, US President Joe Biden signed a new one-year extension for the “national emergency” declared concerning Syria, just one day after the Arab League approved Damascus’ reentry to the bloc despite Washington’s objections.
Initially signed in 2004 by former president George W. Bush, Executive Order 13338 classified Syria, a nation nearly 10,000km away from Washington, as an “unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security, foreign policy, and economy of the United States.”
“The United States will consider changes in policies and actions of the Government of Syria in determining whether to continue or terminate this national emergency in the future,” Biden’s letter concludes.
On Sunday, White House officials confirmed that crushing US sanctions on Syria would continue to be enforced despite an ongoing push by the Arab world to normalize ties with the war-torn country.
“We do not believe that Syria merits readmission to the Arab League at this time, and it’s a point that we’ve made clear with all of our partners,” US State Department spokesperson Vedant Patel said on 7 May.
Since 2011, Syria has been the setting of a brutal war sponsored by several members of NATO and regional nations like Qatar and Saudi Arabia. This includes the ongoing occupation of large swathes of its territory by the US and Turkiye and the plundering of its natural resources and humanitarian aid by anti-government militias.
While the CIA was tasked with arming and training extremist groups in Syria since late 2012, US troops officially entered the fray once Damascus asked for Russia’s help to push back against ISIS in 2015.
Seeing the gains the Syrian and Russian armies made against ISIS and other armed groups, the US partnered with the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) to create the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), effectively starting a race for control of Syria’s resource-rich Deir Ezzor and Hasakah governorates.
Around 900 US troops are still present in Syria. Their deployment is illegal under international law, as the government in Damascus did not approve it.
Moreover, former US presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump deployed the troops without congressional approval, abusing the Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) passed in 2001 in the wake of the 11 September attacks.
In early summer 1992 I caught the documentary film Manufacturing Consent when it opened in San Francisco’s Castro Theater. That film changed my life. It showcased Noam Chomsky, an accomplished linguistics professor, and his analysis of corporate media propaganda. Manufacturing Consent convinced me that the American academy could tolerate, and indeed celebrate, serious social criticism. If Chomsky, a radical opponent of America’s most powerful institutions, could not only survive but thrive in academia, speaking truth to power and building a huge audience along the way, why couldn’t others do the same?
Before that screening, I had been a profoundly alienated bohemian haunting the margins of academia, so disgusted by all of America’s institutions that I could scarcely have imagined working for them. (Learning the facts about the JFK assassination at age 16 can do that to a person.) But Chomsky’s example inspired me. It made me want to join him and the other academic critics of US empire, convince our colleagues of the truth of our arguments using logic and evidence, and help the USA return to its anti-imperial roots and then some.
So it was largely thanks to Chomsky that I entered a Ph.D. program in 1995. But by then I had noticed two glaring anomalies in his political thought. The first, and most important, was that his analysis of the JFK assassination seemed insane. Chomsky argued that the assassination was obviously a conspiracy, and not the work of a lone nut as the official story has it—but that it didn’t matter who killed JFK, because the assassination didn’t change any policies! Since he felt it was so utterly unimportant that the president was murdered by conspirators powerful enough to force their ludicrous cover story on the world, Chomsky evinced no interest whatsoever in identifying the perpetrators, and discouraged his followers from further interest in the topic.
“Take for example all this frenzy about the JFK assassination. I mean I don’t know who assassinated him and I don’t care, but what difference does it make?” – Noam Chomsky
The other anomaly involved the question of Palestine. Though Chomsky has verbally sympathized with Palestinian suffering, and admitted the justice of the Palestinian cause, he has vociferously obstructed the two most promising strategic efforts that could help Palestine defeat Zionism: The boycott-divestment-sanctions (BDS) movement, and the campaign to expose Zionist control over US Mideast policy.
Alison Weir once asked Chomsky why he opposed BDS and why he had falsely claimed that it was bad for Palestinians (who almost unanimously support it). “The reason is very simple. It’s so utterly hypocritical that it’s basically a gift to the hardliners. They can say, ‘Look, you’re calling for a boycott of Israel, but you’re not calling for a boycott of the United States which has a much worse record…’”
Would Israeli hardliners ever actually say such a thing? And would it matter even if they did? Of course not. Here again, Chomsky is spouting sheer nonsense, prefaced by the obligatory disclaimer “it’s very simple.” When someone as seemingly intelligent as Chomsky says such things, there are really only two possible interpretations: Either he is suffering from some bizarre mental dysfunction, or he is lying and gaslighting us.
Chomsky’s occasional habit of emitting streams of discombobulated blather repeatedly surfaces when he is asked about Israel’s control of US Mideast policy. As James Petras writes, “Noam Chomsky has long been one of the great obfuscators of AIPAC and the existence of Zionist power over US Middle East policy.” The nonsensical gnome ludicrously argues that US policymakers’ enslavement to Israel actually serves US national and imperial interests. For him, Israel is basically a powerless appendage of US empire. Chomsky’s implicit subtext is that anyone who notices Israel’s death grip on US foreign policy, including Walt and Mearsheimer, Alan Hart, James Petras, J. William Fulbright, James Abourezk, Paul Findley, and indeed every honest and informed analyst who has considered the question, must be “anti-Semitic.”
My issues with Chomsky’s repeated bouts of apparent insanity came to a head after 9/11. In November 2001, Chomsky published a “surprise” bestseller. Entitled 9/11 and republished ten years later as 9/11: Was There an Alternative?, the book basically repeats Chomsky’s vacuous diatribes about the JFK coup d’état—“it doesn’t matter who did it, do NOT look behind the curtain”—and applies them to 9/11.
“If if it were true [9/11 conspiracy theories], which is extremely unlikely, what difference does it make? I mean, it doesn’t have any significance.” –Noam Chomsky, interview with David Barsamian
While I was participating in the rise of the 9/11 truth movement from 2004 onwards, I noticed that Chomsky was growing ever-more-strident in attacking truth-seekers and insisting that it didn’t matter who did 9/11. In 2008 I invited him on my radio show, which led to an exchange of emails culminating in his last-minute refusal to appear. I was flabbergasted by Chomsky’s seemingly insane statements and positions. When he finally started lying outright, I concluded that he must be acting in bad faith. I published the private emails in their entirety because I thought the world needed to know the truth about the evident gross immorality (or, charitably, insanity) of America’s most celebrated (fake) dissident.
Then in 2016 I gave a talk at the Left Forum on “Why Chomsky Is Wrong About 9/11.” Though my criticisms of Chomsky were quite restrained in tone, given his appalling betrayals, I was banned from the Left Forum the following year. Apparently going to the Left Forum to criticize Chomsky is like going to the Vatican to criticize the Pope.
Read the full text of “Why Chomsky Is Wrong About 9/11”
Over the years, it dawned on me that if Chomsky were deliberately leading people astray, there would have to be some sort of method in his apparent madness. Why would he herd the critical thinkers and idealists of the left away from the truth about the JFK assassination, 9/11, Zionist control of US policy, and the best strategy for saving Palestine? Whose interests would be served by those four acts of deception?
The question, of course, answers itself. As Michael Collins Piper, Laurent Guyénot, Ron Unz, Alan Hart, and so many others have suggested, the leading suspect in both the JFK and 9/11 coups is the state of Israel and its “American” acolytes. Chomsky has been consistently, systematically gaslighting his followers on the four issues most crucial to the preservation and expansion of Zionist power. As Jeffrey Blankfort writes:
“At the end of the day, it is evident that Chomsky’s affection for Israel, his sojourn on a kibbutz, his Jewish identity, and his early experiences with anti-Semitism to which he occasionally refers have colored his approach to every aspect of Israel’s conflict with the Palestinians and explain his defense of Israel. That is his right, of course, but not to pretend at the same that he is an advocate for justice in Palestine.”
Since our ill-starred 2008 email exchange I have leaned towards acknowledging the likelihood that Chomsky is a lying, gaslighting Zionist scumbag. But I wasn’t sure until a few days ago, when the news broke that Chomsky had repeatedly hobnobbed with then-convicted-sex-criminal Jeffrey Epstein, including meeting Epstein together with pervert and 9/11 suspect Ehud Barak, apparently even flying on Jeffrey Epstein’s Lolita Express. Characteristically, Chomsky dissembled: “If there was a flight (with Epstein), which I doubt…” If Chomsky hadn’t flown with Epstein, of course, he would just say so. His mealymouthed evasions of the truth, whether of JFK, 9/11, Israeli occupation of America, or his relations with Epstein and Barak, have a vacuously passive-aggressive tone that is inimitably Chomsky-esque, but jarringly incommensurate with his reputation as one of the world’s greatest linguists.
Chomsky’s response to journalists’ questions about his relationship with Epstein began: “First response is that it is none of your business. Or anyone’s.” That is, of course, exactly what many people would say when questioned about their sexual activities with consenting adults. So why is Chomsky proffering a stock “don’t ask me about my sex life” response when questioned about his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein and his stable of underage prostitutes?
Methinks the gnome doth protest too much.
More troubling than whether Chomsky (statutorily) raped young girls is the question of why he was meeting with Israel’s top blackmailer of American leaders, Jeffrey Epstein, alongside the likely mastermind of 9/11, Ehud Barak. Barak resigned as Prime Minister of Israel in May of 2001 and disappeared from public view, presumably spending June through early September working on plans to demolish the World Trade Center, attack the Pentagon, and blame the carnage on Israel’s enemies. Barak’s work on the lead-up to 9/11 recalls Ben Gurion’s resignation as Israeli Prime Minister and disappearance from public view in June, 1963, after which he went underground and presumably orchestrated the assassination of John F. Kennedy in November. The moral: When Israeli PMs resign in the spring, get ready for something big come fall.
Ehud Barak was conveniently pre-placed in BBC’s London studios so he could go live an hour after 9/11, where he recited what would become the official story:
Barak’s coercion was aimed at the masses, who were traumatized by the horrific images they had just seen on TV and open to hypnotic suggestion—which Barak obligingly provided, implanting the pre-scripted official version deep in their subconscious minds. Chomsky, by contrast, was deployed a few months later against leftists and intellectuals, who were understandably suspicious and predisposed to mistrust the Bush Administration and its rush to war against Israel’s enemies. (That Chomsky’s coverup-propaganda broadside 9/11 shot up the bestseller lists in November 2001 was hardly surprising, given the realities of power in America’s media, book publishing and distribution industries.)
Many languages have one or more proverbs that roughly translate as “A man is known by the company he keeps.” By simultaneously meeting Epstein and Barak, Noam Chomsky has unmasked himself as a top-level Zionist sheepdog tasked with keeping the dumb American goyim cattle blind, ignorant, and cooped up in their pens, bleating out the platitudes they are taught by their Zionist betters. To say that the scandal will tarnish Chomsky’s legacy is inaccurate, because there is no legacy to tarnish. Chomsky is a charlatan and a fraud. He stands revealed as an agent of the world’s most genocidal and most systematically terrorist state—a state that has attacked the United States of America repeatedly since 1954, assassinating its best leaders, murdering its sailors and civilians, looting its nuclear arsenal and its treasury, and generally assuming much of the responsibility for its impending destruction.
So what did Chomsky talk about with Israel’s top blackmailer Epstein and 9/11 perp Barak? Did the conversation sound like Netanyahu’s talk with his cronies at Fink’s Bar in Jerusalem in 1990?
At the head of the table was Netanyahu. The group at the table had just stolen 5 American KG 84 cryptographic devices with the help of Canadians serving with the UNTSO on the Golan Heights, giving this Israeli-led cabal real-time access to all US State Department, Naval and NATO communications. This is a transcribed quote taken from an audio recording of Netanyahu at that meeting:
“If we get caught they will just replace us with persons of the same cloth. So it does not matter what you do, America is a golden calf and we will suck it dry, chop it up, and sell it off piece by piece until there is nothing left but the world’s biggest welfare state that we will create and control. Why? Because it is the will of God, and America is big enough to take the hit so we can do it again and again and again. This is what we do to countries that we hate. We destroy them very slowly and make them suffer for refusing to be our slaves.”
Chomsky’s contempt for Americans, and for the intelligence of his American audience, is every bit as palpable as Netanyahu’s. And Epstein’s. And Barak’s.
Maybe it’s time for him to make aliyah… and thank Yahweh that Israel won’t sign extradition treaties.
or go to
Aletho News Archives – Video-Images
By Christina England – 30 Q&As – Book Review & Summary
Lies are Unbekoming | September 4, 2026
… Gardasil received FDA fast-track approval in 2006, Cervarix followed in 2009, and Gardasil 9 was approved in December 2014 with more than double the aluminium adjuvant content of the original. The commercial context is specific. Merck was about to lose patent protection on Zocor and faced $18 billion in Vioxx injury claims from a cardiovascular drug the company had marketed while suppressing its own data showing a five-times increase in heart attacks. Analysts projected the global HPV vaccine market at $4 billion by 2011, contingent on government-funded national programs for teenage girls. The 1986 National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act had already granted manufacturers complete liability immunity. By 2013, Japan had withdrawn its HPV vaccine recommendation after cataloguing severe adverse reactions in hundreds of girls. No Western government followed. The establishment position across the UK, US, Australia, and most of Europe held, and still holds, that the vaccines are safe and effective, that reported injuries are coincidental, and that cervical cancer prevention justifies the program. The book was published into this position, not against a vacuum.
Shattered Dreams sits alongside Mary Holland’s The HPV Vaccine On Trial and Viera Scheibner’s foundational vaccination work as part of the documented record on what has been done to a generation of teenage girls under the banner of cancer prevention. The full summary unpacks three specific findings: that Merck used the aluminium adjuvant itself as the “placebo” control in 92.5% of trial subjects, making it structurally impossible to detect excess reactions from the adjuvant; that Dr. Sin Hang Lee found HPV DNA fragments bound to aluminium in every one of sixteen Gardasil samples tested, and in the blood and spleen of a New Zealand girl six months after her third dose; and that in every country with high vaccination coverage, including Australia, the UK, Norway, and Sweden, cervical cancer rates have stopped declining and started rising specifically in the vaccinated cohort. Martínez-Lavín’s 2017 calculation puts the number needed to seriously harm with Gardasil 9 at 140, and the number needed to vaccinate to prevent one case at 1,757. Thirteen young women are seriously harmed for every one who benefits. The vaccine was approved on the basis of trials that could not detect what the trials were supposed to detect, and it is still being given to twelve-year-olds today. … Read full review
Aletho News If Americans Knew No Tricks Zone
