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John Bolton: “Our Goal Should Be Regime Change In Iran”

By Hunter Wallace | Occidental Dissent | January 1, 2018

If you wondered what happened to John Bolton, the neocon throwback who advocated the disastrous Iraq War, he is back to educate normies on how tell deal with Iran.

Follow the money to President Donald Trump:

“Indeed, the influence of these key donors—Sheldon Adelson, Bernard Marcus, and Paul Singer—over U.S. foreign policy, particularly with regards to Iran, doesn’t stop at the White House, where combined they contributed over $40 million to various pro-Trump political groups and causes.

Those three donors also contributed $65 million at the congressional level. That represents nearly half of the individual contributions made to the Senate Leadership Fund (CLF) and Congressional Leadership Fund (CLF), Super PACs dedicated to maintaining Republican majorities in the House and Senate. Those contributions provide a considerable incentive for Hill Republicans to stake out a hawkish position on the JCPOA. …”

The GOP has a lot of shekels riding on this!

Bibi Netanyahu wants you to know it has nothing to do with Israel even though it came the day after the announcement of the Trump administration and Israel’s joint plan to counter Iran.

It is all just one big (((coincidence))).


January 2, 2018 Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Timeless or most popular, Video, Wars for Israel | , , , , | Leave a comment

Facebook ‘Routinely’ Blocking Accounts at US, Israel’s Requests – Giraldi

Sputnik – January 2, 2018

Facebook and other Silicon Valley firms choose to comply with the requests of Washington and Tel Aviv to delete undesired accounts because they fear US and Israeli influential political elites, Philip Giraldi, a former CIA officer, has told Sputnik, adding that the practice, which he described as “illegal,” has become routine.

Glenn Greenwald’s article is completely accurate, Philip Giraldi, a former counter-terrorism specialist and military intelligence officer at the CIA, told Sputnik, commenting on the Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist’s recent op-ed which shed light on Facebook’s controversial practice of blocking accounts of individuals at the request of the US and Israeli governments.

“The blocking of accounts of people who are on lists maintained by the US government has become routine,” Giraldi said. “It is also illegal as the account holders have broken no laws and are in compliance with the rules set up by the sites themselves.”

Greenwald raised the alarm over the supposed state censorship exercised by the social networking service against Palestinian activists and Russian officials.

Citing Al Jazeera and The New York Times, the investigative journalist emphasized the alleged mutual consent reached by the Israeli government and Facebook which resulted in the closure of numerous accounts and pages of Palestinian individuals and media outlets deemed as “inciting violence.”

“That means that Israeli officials have virtually unfettered control over a key communications forum of Palestinians,” Greenwald concluded, suggesting that at the same time “calls by Israelis for the killing of Palestinians are commonplace on Facebook, and largely remain undisturbed.”

According to the journalist, Facebook’s decision to close the account of Ramzan Kadyrov, the leader of the Chechen Republic, Russia, is similarly “disturbing and dangerous.” Greenwald highlighted that while the social media service claims that “Mr. Kadyrov’s [Facebook and Instagram] accounts were deactivated because he had just been added to a United States sanctions list and that the company was legally obligated to act,” Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro remains active on both platforms despite the fact he is on the same sanctions list.

“Does anyone trust the Trump administration — or any other government — to compel social media platforms to delete and block anyone it wants to be silenced?” Greenwald asked rhetorically.

The CIA veteran says that there is nothing new in what the investigative journalist is describing: “Those of us in the activist community have long been observing how some articles have been blocked or made to disappear.”

“Israel and Jewish groups in the United States have led discussions with Facebook, Google and other sites to restrict what they choose to describe as hate speech. They have been successful, obtaining the agreement of those companies to set up standards that will in effect limit any criticisms of Israel and permit criticism of the Palestinians and other Arabs,” Giraldi explained.

He noted that “the companies can, in fact, do what they want as they are private entities. However, “if the public begins to understand that they are cooperating with governments to censor their product it will hurt their bottom lines as advertisers will go elsewhere,” he pointed out.

Commenting on what is behind the Silicon Valley giant’s apparent pliability to Washington and Tel Aviv, the ex-CIA officer opined that “the companies for the most part go along with Israel and the US government because they are fearful that the US government will intervene to regulate the system.”

“In the case of Israel, they fear lawsuits from Israel’s many and powerful friends in the United States,” Giraldi suggested.

Regardless of Donald Trump’s assuming office, the United States government has been doing much of the same since the time of the Obama administration, the former intelligence official underscored.

January 2, 2018 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , , | Leave a comment

President Trump’s Jerusalem Decision: the End of Hegemony?

By James Petras • Unz Review • January 1, 2018

Introduction

The Trump regime proclaimed that the vote in the General Assembly of the United Nations regarding the recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel was a strategic US decision.

Both President Trump and his bombastic UN Ambassador Nikki Haley threatened that all decisions and agreements regarding alliances, loans, aid and diplomatic relations were at stake.

Moreover, the Trump regime clearly defined the style and substance of US imperial dictates: All UN member nations (large and small) must grovel in the most abject manner to his orders. Ambassador Haley demanded that each nation on earth accept Trump’s and the racist-Zionist Netanyahu’s declaration that the ancient city of Jerusalem is the eternal, undivided and ethnically managed capital of the Jews. Trump’s message was loud and clear – he was the great ‘decider’ and the UN votes would identify America’s true friends and enemies. “We are making a list… and there will be consequences…”

Clearly Trump’s boast of US power and Haley’s assumption that her terrifying threats would ensure that Washington had a majority vote in the ‘gifting’ of Jerusalem to Zio-fascism. They believed that US dominance and global hegemony was absolute and unassailable. The vote proved something else, something very new was happening.

The US suffered an overwhelming and humiliating defeat, one that kept Ambassador Haley’s dexterous fingers busy ‘taking notes’: 128 nations demanded that the Trump regime withdraw its declaration that Jerusalem was Israel’s undivided capital for Jews. Only 9 micro-nations (some mere postage stamps and a few death-squad banana-stans) voted with the Trump-Haley decision, 35 mendicant-states put their heads down and abstained while 21 timorous ambassadors chose to hide their shamelessness in the toilet stalls rather than show up for this important vote.

Political Context

First and foremost it is important to discuss the steps leading up to the US suffering such a crushing debacle. In other words, who was responsible for leading the Trump Administration by the nose down the blind alley of submission to the dictates of Zio-fascism.

The leader and driving force behind the UN disaster was Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu whose quest to seize Jerusalem and convert it into the ‘eternal’ capital of the Jews was his top priority. For decades the entire world has rejected Israel’s seizure of Jerusalem and its conversion into an ethnically cleansed capital for the ‘Jewish’ state. The UN and international jurists denounced Israel’s colonial conquest and ethnic cleansing of Palestine.

Netanyahu took charge with the election of Donald Trump as President. Operation Jerusalem was his first order to Puppet Donald. A number of Israel-First multi-billionaires, who financed Trump’s electoral campaign, demanded an immediate pay-off from their puppet: The Administration’s unconditional support for Netanyahu’s agenda. Despite protests from the rest of the world, especially the US closest European allies, Trump plunged the nation right into the Zionist soup: a Jewish Jerusalem; the systematic eviction of all Arabs, Christian, Muslim and secular, and the eventual annexation of all of Palestine; as well as an increasing military confrontation with Iran.

Real estate speculator, Jared Kushner, Trump’s pampered son-in- law, and a complete Netanyahu flunky, became the senior advisor for the Middle East. Kushner pressured Trump’s National Security Advisor General Michael Flynn to intervene with Russia on behalf of Israel’s take-over of Jerusalem. Flynn was subsequently prosecuted for discussing global US Russian relations and the ‘good soldier’ is falling on his sword on behalf of the Zionists. Not surprising, the Congressional Democrats, the FBI and the Special Prosecutor found it easier to prosecute Flynn for his discussion regarding de-escalating the tense US-Russian relations provoked by the Obama administration than his discussions with the Kremlin in support of Israel’s seizure of Jerusalem!

Netanyahu’s operational weapons in manipulating US policy involved Jared Kushner, the billionaire Israel-First donors, the AIPAC and UN Ambassador Nikki Haley. Tel Aviv succeeded in securing Trump’s commitment to the Israeli agenda, despite opposition from the entire UN National Security Council and the overwhelming majority of the General Assembly. In the style of a typical authoritarian, US President Trump grovels at the feet of his ‘superior’, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, while tearing at the throats of his ‘inferiors’, the 193 member nations of the UN General Assembly.

Netanyahu’s vitriolic bar room threats against the entire membership of the UN prior to the vote ensured the repudiation of all Security Council representatives with the exception of his South Carolina puppet, Ambassador Nikki Haley. Trump and Haley backed the blustering Netanyahu by issuing gangland threats to all UN representatives who dare to oppose Washington’s dictates.

In this way, Prime Minister Netanyahu secured the greatest diplomatic and political success of his career – the total submission of the US to his agenda, at the risk of a major humiliation in the UN. This, in effect, formalized Israeli hegemony over Washington, for the world to see.

In contrast to Netanyahu’s beaming success, the US suffered a historic diplomatic defeat: Fourteen times as many nations voted against the demands of the US President over– Netanyahu’s grab of Jerusalem.

What makes the defeat even more striking is the fact that all major allies and most of the biggest aid recipients openly defied the US threats. Eight of the ten biggest US aid recipients voted against Trump–Netanyahu–Haley. This bizarre troika is now left with an enemy list circling the entire globe, and a few timorous allies in the South Pacific and among the death squads of Guatemala.

Trump’s total and puerile embrace of the raving Netanyahu has exposed and widened fissures in US global hegemony.

Apart from ‘capturing’ Netanyahu’s vote, the other pro Trump nations included a handful of insignificant Pacific islands (Marshall Islands, Palau, Micronesia), Togo, a corrupt African mini-state and two banana-sized ‘death squad democracies’, Honduras and Guatemala. The latter two regimes hold power via stolen elections backed by narco-thugs in the pay (dubbed ‘foreign aid’) of the US.

All of the leading Asian and Western European countries voted against Trump. They openly rejected the crude blackmail of the US-Israel duet. Subservient regimes in Eastern Europe, corrupt regimes in Latin America and some horrifically impoverished nations in Africa and Asia chose to abstain or excuse themselves to the bathrooms of Times Square. Narco-neo-liberal regimes in Mexico, Colombia, Paraguay, Panama and the Dominican Republic abstained. Even rightwing Eastern European regimes, which usually give unquestioned support to all US demands, like Romania, Bosnia, Poland and Latvia defied Nikki Haley’s ‘name taking’ by abstaining. The ‘no-shows’ (hiding in the toilets) included US puppets like Georgia, Samoa, St Kitts and Tonga.

An openly humiliated UN Ambassador Haley was left with the task of thanking the abstainers and ‘no-shows’ for their courage and preparing a few bags of goodies (matzos, Mogan David wine and discounts to the brothels of Tel Aviv) for the torturers of Honduras and half-drowned ‘leaders’ of Palau in gratitude for such loyalty.

Conclusion

Clearly Trump’s championing of a racist, colonialist, ethnic cleansing state like Israel is viewed as a strategic diplomatic disaster. The Manhattan egomaniac has tied the US fortunes to the whims of a pariah state led by a complete lunatic.

Trump’s decision to demonstrate total loyalty to his Zionist billionaire campaign ‘donor-owners’ and his Israel-First son-in-law in his first major foreign policy decision failed to impress any of the influential nations of the world – East or West. Indeed, it showed how fractured and dangerously dysfunctional the US Administration had become.

Most important, Trump’s proclamation of a unipolar world based on his notion of the US’s economic power has collapsed. Israel, despite Haley’s bluster and list-taking, has no legitimacy. It’s continued Mossad assassinations of leading Palestinians and others and the increasing IDF slaughter of the spontaneous Palestinian civilian resistance has failed to improve its international standing – except among Guatemalan torturers.

However, it is not clear that the US has lost its big power influence regarding other regional conflicts. The subsequent UN Security Council vote in favor of Washington’s demands for added sanctions against North Korea demonstrated Trump’s power to intimidate the oligarchs and leaders of China and Russia.

In other words, limits on US power still depend on the issues, the allies, the diplomatic appeals, the adversaries and the distribution of benefits and costs.

In the case of Jerusalem, Real Estate Mogul Trump’s bizarre decision to hand an entire city over to the Zionists alienated all Muslims and Christians the world over, as well as the secular Western liberal nations and emerging powers, like Russia and China. The US tied its prestige to the whims of a paranoid nation arrogantly flaunting its racist superiority complex, backed by groups of immensely wealthy overseas dual citizens.

Diplomatically, Israel’s vituperative responses to any legal criticism from world bodies undermines its chances of coalition building.

Finally, Washington’s support for Israel’s perpetual and overt violation of international law and its bombing of humanitarian missions makes Israel a very costly ally.

January 1, 2018 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Israeli army arrests Palestinian parliamentarian Nasser Abdel Gawad

MEMO | January 1, 2018

The Israeli army arrested a Palestinian parliamentarian in the West Bank city of Salfit this morning, according to a report by Anadolu Agency.

According to eyewitnesses, the Israeli forces raided Nasser Abdel Gawad’s residence and arrested him.

Palestinian MP Fathi al-Qaraawi of the Hamas-affiliated Change and Reform bloc said continuous arrests of deputies of the Palestinian Legislative Council who are entitled to parliamentary immunity is a flagrant violation of international law.

“Israel rejected the results of the Palestinian parliamentary elections in 2006 and arrested all Hamas deputies (in the West Bank including Jerusalem) and continues to punish the Palestinian people for this by arresting the group’s deputies,” al-Qaraawi said.

The Change and Reform bloc won the 2006 Palestinian elections with an overwhelming majority.

Al-Qaraawi added the arrest is an attempt to block opposition to US President Donald Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.

The latest arrest raises the number of jailed Palestinian parliamentarians to 11.

January 1, 2018 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture | , , , , | Leave a comment

US vice president’s visit to Israel postponed again

Press TV – January 1, 2018

A planned visit to Israel by US Vice President Mike Pence has been indefinitely postponed, according to Israeli officials.

The trip which had been expected to take place in mid January is not on the Israeli foreign ministry’s schedule, according to The Times of Israel.

“The visit is not included in our provision of scheduled visits of high-level dignitaries in January,” ministry spokesman Emmanuel Nahshon said.

No new date has yet been set for the vice president’s visit.

Pence originally postponed a planned mid-December trip to Israel so he could preside over the Senate vote on the Republican tax plan.

But the delay also followed region-wide protests over President Donald Trump’s decision to recognize Jerusalem al-Quds as the “capital” of Israel.

At the time, Palestinian authorities canceled a planned meeting with the US vice president to protest Trump’s declaration.

A White House official said back then that Pence would visit the occupied territories in mid-January instead.

The entire Jerusalem al-Quds is currently under Israel’s control, while the regime also claims the city’s eastern part, which hosts the third holiest Muslim site.

The city has been designated as “occupied” under international law since the 1967 Arab War. It remains at the core of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, with Palestinians hoping that the eastern part of the city would eventually serve as the capital of their future state.

Palestinians have repeatedly warned Trump against recognizing al-Quds as Israel’s capital, saying it would deliver a death blow to any prospects of the resolution of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and fuel extremism in the region.

Pence’s original schedule also included a stop in Egypt. The head of Egypt’s Coptic Church, Pope Tawadros II, also called off a planned meeting with Pence.

January 1, 2018 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation | , , , , | Leave a comment

Washington Post Ad Calls Singer Lorde a Bigot Over Cancelled Israeli Show

Sputnik – 01.01.2018

A backlash against New Zealand singer Lorde continues in the wake of her decision to call off her concert in Israel amid pressure from her fans following Trump’s Jerusalem move.

A full-page advertisement calling Lorde a bigot and accusing New Zealand of harboring a bias against Israel appeared on the fifth page of the Washington Post’s December 31 edition.

The ad features Lorde’s photo over the picture of men running through ruins with babies and Israeli flags streaming in the wind. The headline says “Lorde and New Zealand ignore Syria to attack Israel.”

It slams the 21-year-old singer’s decision to cancel a concert in Tel Aviv following a wellspring of Muslim fans urging her not to go there, noting that she had joined the global boycott of Israel but “will perform in Russia, despite Putin’s support for Assad’s genocide in Syria.”

The advertisement adds that Lorde’s move shows how a “growing prejudice against the Jewish State” in New Zealand is “trickling down to its youth.”

As for New Zealand, the ad points out the country’s support for the UN resolution urging the US to revoke its decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, while citing New Zealand’s co-sponsorship of a UN resolution condemning illegally-built Israeli settlements in Palestinian territories. The resolution, which was approved by every member of the UN Security Council except the US (which abstained), was endorsed by both Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch.

“Let’s boycott the boycotters and tell Lorde and her fellow bigots that Jew-hatred has no place in the twenty-first century,” the ad reads.

Commenting on the advertisement in the Post, the New Zealand Jewish Council said that the council is “committed to dialogue and tolerance and distances itself from the inflammatory and aggressive material that stoops to the level of BDS [Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement] rather than rising above it.”

“We are disappointed with Lorde’s decision to cancel her show after pressure from the discriminatory BDS movement and invite Lorde to continue learning about the region,” the council’s statement reads.

Lorde called off her June concert in Tel Aviv, giving in to the mounting pressure from activists of the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement (BDS), which aims “to end international support for Israel’s oppression of Palestinians and pressure Israel to comply with international law,” according to its official website.

She was also influenced by an open letter written by her fans from New Zealand, which stated that the show in Tel Aviv would demonstrate support for Israel’s occupation of Palestine.

“I’ve received an overwhelming number of messages & letters and have had a lot of discussions with people holding many views, and I think the right decision at this time is to cancel the show,” Lorde said, as quoted by Naranjah, the Israeli promoters of her show.

The decision was made after what the New Zealand pop star deemed as her “learning all the time” and “considering all options” available to her.

January 1, 2018 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation, Solidarity and Activism, War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

Syrian Army Thwarts Israeli Plan to Control Mutual Border

Sputnik – 30.12.2017

On Saturday buses arrived in the villages of Mugr al-Mir and Mazaria Beit Jinn in the so-called ‘Hernon Pocket’ to transport the fighters of al-Nusra Front to Idlib and Daraa governorates. The pocket extended into government-held territory southwest of Damascus from the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. According to a Syrian Arab Army (SAA) military strategic analyst, Brig. Gen. Heitham Hassun, the move will help liberate the southwestern part of Syria from terrorists.

“This will allow [the SAA] to free the entire southwestern region of Damascus from terrorists,” Brig. Gen. Hassun told Sputnik Arabic. “It is especially important to take under the SAA’s control [the territories] north of the province of Quneitra, which the Israelis had planned to manage with the assistance of the militants. Now, by retaking Mugr al-Mir and Mazaria Beit Jinn, the army will be able to conduct an operation to liberate all the terrorist-controlled areas adjacent to the occupied Golan Heights.”

The local government managed to strike a deal with the al-Nusra jihadists through intermediaries on joining the program of reconciliation and establish a ceasefire regime in the area. The victories of the SAA, which allowed the government forces to gain control over the dominant terrain, contributed to the success of the talks.

According to the military analyst, residents of local villages are making every effort to facilitate the advancement of the Syrian government forces. For instance, they provide information to the SAA about the location and the numerical force of jihadists.

Brig. Gen. Hassun said that, for its part, Israel is providing the extremists with intelligence concerning Syrian government troops. Additionally, the Israelis continue to supply weapons to terrorist groups and provide fire support if necessary, the military analyst underscored. It appears that Syria’s southern neighbor is unwilling to give up its plans for this part of Syria, the brigadier general suggested.

The Golan Heights remain an apple of discord for Damascus and Tel Aviv, prompting tit-for-tat strikes in border areas. Israel’s occupation of the western two-thirds of the Golan Heights (known in Syria as Quneitra governorate) prevents the states from signing a peace treaty. The annexation of the disputed area started during the Six-Day War in 1967 and has been repeatedly condemned by the UN in 1981 and 2008.

The eastern Golan Heights, which remained in Syrian hands following the Six-Day War and 1973 Yom Kippur War, became the target of the al-Qaeda-affiliated al-Nusra Front, as well as Daesh terrorists and other Syrian opposition forces, during the ongoing war.

Meanwhile, according to Sputnik’s source, on Friday the Syrian government forces expelled terrorists from the Abu Dali settlement in the north-east of Hama province.

Located on the border between Hama and Idlib, the settlement was used by the terrorists to disrupt the supplies from one city to another.

The SAA continues to crack down on terrorists following Russia’s partial withdrawal from Syria after a two-year-long aerial campaign. The decision to pull out was announced on December 11 by Russian President Putin, who specified, however, that the bases in Tartus and Hmeymim, as well as the center for Syrian reconciliation, would continue to operate.

On December 26, Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu signaled that Russia has started to form a permanent group in Syria’s Tartus and Hmeymim. The Russian military contingent is armed with advanced weaponry systems including the cutting edge S-400 system, while S-300 surface-to-air missile systems, as well as the Bastion coastal missile systems with cruise missiles.

December 31, 2017 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation, War Crimes | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Bulgaria appeases US, Israel on bus probe

By Kaveh L Afrasiabi | Asia Times | February 7, 2013

CAMBRIDGE, Massachusetts – The Bulgarian government on Tuesday made a mockery of its political independence by publicly implicating Lebanon’s Hezbollah in last year’s attack on an Israeli bus in the resort city of Burgas, despite the fact that its “official investigation is still going on”, Sofia has yet to make an official announcement and there is an absence of trustworthy evidence to back the claim.

Under pressure for months by Washington and Tel Aviv to name Hezbollah as the culprit for the attack that killed five Israelis and a Bulgarian bus driver, as well as the terrorist carrying the bomb, Sofia has appeased Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who within half hour of the bombing last July publicly pointed the finger at Hezbollah and Iran.

Unsurprisingly, Netanyahu was extremely gratified by the news from Sofia and wasted no time in calling on Europeans to put Hezbollah on their list of terrorist organizations, a significant move that would likely exacerbate the present civil rights of Muslims in Europe, particularly those who are involved in charitable fund raising for Hezbollah’s plethora of social welfare services in Lebanon.

The US government likewise conveniently interpreted as “conclusive” the preliminary finding in the Burgas investigation that the “military formation of Hezbollah might be involved” in that attack, to paraphrase carefully chosen words from Bulgarian Interior Minister Tsvetan Tsvetanov.

According to a Bulgarian expert, Professor Vladimir Chukov, Tsvetanov made a “hybrid statement” that “like Britain” makes the distinction between Hezbollah as a group and its “military wing”. “This is a hybrid situation that goes on to suggest that there is little chance that Bulgaria will name Hezbollah and Iran as culprits,” Professor Chukov has told the Bulgarian media.

Tell that to the mainstream media that wasted no time in its avalanche of reports that Bulgaria has implicated Hezbollah in the Burgas bombing. Case in point, in the various reports in the Wall Street Journal, London’s Guardian, BBC, etc, there is virtually no mention of the fact that there is no official position of the Bulgarian government as of yet, and that the investigation is still on-going. According to Professor Chukov, the interior ministry’s news leak was meant simply as “a test”. Yet by all indications this is a poor and politically motivated move by an official of the Bulgarian government.

Opposition’s stern warning

“It is obvious that Bulgaria’s government has chosen a political approach and is only repeating the interpretation alleged by Israel on the very next day following the attack, when the investigation had not even started,” said Sergey Stanishev, the head of Bulgarian Socialist Party, who is also the Chair of Party of European Socialists. “The investigation is currently under way and there is no way one can be talking about decisive evidence regarding the direct perpetrators, much less regarding the organization that is behind this tragic event … This is absolutely unjustified in view of national security and the risks that are taken with respect to people in Bulgaria.”

There is no dearth of suspicion in Bulgaria and beyond that the government official’s statement that the bombing “was most likely” the work of Hezbollah militants and that there are “obvious links” to Hezbollah is based less on hard facts and more on external political pressure. According to Minister Tsvetanov, two individuals – one Canadian and the other Australian – who have lived in Lebanon since 2006 and 2010 respectively, have been linked to the attack and “there is data showing” their “obvious links to Lebanon.”

Tsvetanov’s statements are backed by Rob Wainwright, the director of Europol, claiming that there is “reasonable assumption” based on “forensic evidence, intelligence sources and patterns in past attacks” that “point to Hezbollah’s involvement.” Not so according to Stanishev, who has labeled as “poor evidence” the data cited by officials to point accusatory fingers at Hezbollah. In fact, there is a great deal of contrary evidence to suggest the attack was a carefully orchestrated Israeli “false flag” operation aimed at smearing Hezbollah and Iran and pressuring the European Union to brand Hezbollah as a terrorist organization.

False flag evidence ignored

The distinct possibility of an Israeli ‘false flag’ operation can be garnered by a careful and methodical examination of the public information, including the photographs, amateur videos and instant reports on the bus attack that occurred at exactly 5:30 pm last July 18, on the anniversary of the 1994 bombing in Argentina that Israel insists was the work of Iran and Hezbollah. That was perfect timing for Israel’s propaganda machine.

As stated in this author’s investigative article written immediately after the bus attack, there are at least 10 valid reasons to question the official story that a busload of Israeli tourists was the target of a terrorist bombing. [1] Lest we forget, the autopsy results in Sofia have shown that the dead terrorist was “white and had light eyes” and initially was identified as a member of al-Qaeda, much to the chagrin of Israelis who have shown zero interest in any suspect other than Hezbollah-Iran. [2]

To reiterate the gist of this author’s own probe of this matter, a good deal of evidence exists that suggest the targeted bus was empty and the only passengers hurt were inside the adjacent bus and received light injuries.

This author has carefully examined dozens upon dozens of photographs of the Israeli tourists in question, who no doubt would have received much worse facial and other bodily injuries if they were inside the targeted bus. After all, the severed head of the bomber had been discovered some 60 meters away from the bus and an instant video shows the bus in full flames, ie, impossible for the majority of 42 purported passengers, especially the elderly females seen on stretchers en route to the hospital in various photos, to escape with little or no bodily harm, thus warranting the following 10 questions:

1. Why the amateur video of the bus taken within seconds of the explosion doesn’t show anyone jumping down the bus?
2. Why so many passengers survived with only light hand and foot injuries in an explosion involving (according to the Bulgarian officials) three kilograms of TNT in front of the bus?
3. Why did the Israeli group known as Zakar appear immediately on the site and collected the bodies of the dead, per several images, when this should have been done by Bulgarians? Why was this group at the airport at that time? And where were the Bulgarian security officials during the whole time monopolized by the Zakar individuals (in yellow uniforms)? Indeed, the fact that the Bulgarians allowed the Zakar all over the crime scene and move the dead victims (who were then frisked quickly to Israel) speaks volumes about the travesty of police investigation in Bulgaria.
4. Why did the bomb kill the Israelis sitting in the back of the bus (per reports in the Israeli media) while simultaneously killing the bus driver in the front and leaving the vast majority of bus passengers only lightly harmed?
5. Why have some bus witnesses told the media that they tried to get out through the front door but found it locked and managed to get out through a “hole on the side” when both the videos and reports indicate an instant fire following the explosion engulfing the bus?
6. Why is there no report of any injuries to the bus driver in the next bus, which sustained major damage especially on the driver’s side? Could the bus driver killed be the one in the second bus?
7. Why was there no extra security precaution even though according to the Israeli media prior to the landing of Israeli passengers the tour company had received a call that they would be “greeted with two bombs”?
8. Why was the trunk of the targeted bus empty and no sign of any luggage (per numerous images that also show the inside of the bus and the absence of any section for luggage contrary to the claim of one of the Israeli passengers who is quoted widely)?
9. Why did the passport and license of purported terrorist remain intact despite the raging fire in the bus?
10. Why did Israel rush all the passengers back to Israel early next morning instead of allowing the Bulgarian investigators to interview them? After all, Israel made no similar attempt to protect the lives of thousands of other Israeli tourists vacationing in Burgas, bottom line since it had no real worries about any terrorist attack against them after having pulled off its spectacular ‘false flag’ that must surely be a source of current pride among its Mossad intelligence officials.

Mossad agents must be patting themselves on the shoulder now for a job well-done, but then again their script perhaps was too neatly executed, given Netanyahu’s instant finger toward Hezbollah and Iran, or the widespread use of a replica bus on full flame, which on closer examination shows to be different from the actual targeted bus.

The Israelis have now mastered the art of political manipulation and their latest victory in Bulgaria simply educates us about why they are ahead of the game and keep winning the battle for world public opinion.

Notes:
1. Ten questions on Bulgaria bus attack, Critical Studies, July 31, 2012.

2. See Afrasiabi, Al-Qaeda emerges as Bulgaria bomb suspect, Asia Times Online, July 25, 2012.

Kaveh L Afrasiabi, PhD, is the author of After Khomeini: New Directions in Iran’s Foreign Policy (Westview Press) .

December 30, 2017 Posted by | Deception, False Flag Terrorism, Timeless or most popular | , , , | Leave a comment

US, Israel in ‘covert’ deal to counter Iran after it defeats their extremist groups

Sputnik – December 30, 2017

A US National Security Council (NSC) source has confirmed to Sputnik that Tel Aviv and Washington have worked out a plan to counter “malign Iranian activities.” Speaking to Radio Sputnik, Mohammad Marandi, a political analyst and professor at the University of Tehran, explained why the US and Israel are so hostile towards Iran.

Sputnik: What is your take on the so-called Iranian threat that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and US President Donald Trump are looking to confront now? What could they be truly trying to achieve by demonizing Iran?

Mohammad Marandi: They have always been demonizing Iran; they have always [harbored] hostility towards the country. When the Israeli regime occupied Lebanon and the Iranians supported the national liberation movement which ultimately led to the creation of Hezbollah, that led to the ultimate defeat of the regime and its withdrawal from the country. And Iran took support for Palestinian people and Iran’s opposition from the beginning of the revolution to apartheid, whether in apartheid South Africa or in Palestine. That was also an enormous reason to show antagonism towards Iran.

I think more recently, though, Israeli support for extremist groups in Syria, this was carried out alongside countries like Saudi Arabia. Even now we see that al-Qaeda, the al-Nusra Front, is still [located alongside] the Syrian-Israeli border and the Israeli regime continues to treat their wounded militants. And on that part of the joint border we still have ISIS (Daesh) and as we all know the Israelis have never attacked the ISIS (Daesh) coalition alongside its border.

So, the Israelis have been trying to weaken Syria and I think that over the last couple of years with the help of Hezbollah, Russia, Iran and others the gradual defeat of the extremist groups both in Syria and Iraq have led to a situation where the Israelis feel weakened. But I don’t think that any meetings between the United States and Israel will come up with anything new because they have been cooperating all along alongside with Saudi Arabia for many years now.

Sputnik: The plan also aims to target Iran’s activities across the Middle East. So, if implemented, what consequences could it entail for the region in local conflicts?       

Mohammad Marandi: Yes, this is again, I think, a very important point because it’s contrary to what we see in the Western media, which is usually either silence or a very misleading representation. US allies in the region, alongside the United States, supported ISIS [Daesh]. Even though, I still speak to some Americans [and they express] outrage. If you look at the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) documents of 2012 that were partially released by Judicial Watch, they speak about US allies in the region supporting extremist groups in Syria and [they] have had the upper hand according to that document, from almost the very beginning of the fighting. And these groups were focused on the border between Syria and Iraq.

We know that later on, those groups were named ISIS, or they called themselves even after that Islamic State. And the United States, according to General [Michael] Flynn [former DIA director and former national security adviser to President Trump] who was the head of that organization [DIA] — later in an interview with Al Jazeera he admitted — that the United States took a willful decision to support its allies in the region. And there is a host of other evidence as well, such as WikiLeaks documents and emails which stated that Saudi Arabia and others supported ISIS in 2014. So then, of course, we have the admission of former US Secretary of State [John] Kerry who had a secret meeting with Syrian opposition activists admitted that the United States allowed ISIS to advance on Damascus in order to put pressure on President Assad.

So, the United States is deeply involved in allowing ISIS to rise; they were deeply involved in, of course, al-Qaeda, the al-Nusra Front, […] And, of course, Israel, as I’ve pointed out, has been involved in supporting al-Qaeda and has been silent regarding the presence of ISIS on its border. So, Iran has helped the Syrian government to defeat extremist groups. Of course, the Russians, Hezbollah, all of these countries, all of these groups together [won] this victory over extremism and if Syria had fallen, without any doubt Iraq would had fallen.

Iraq was on the verge of falling despite the fact that ISIS had a large number of troops fighting the Syrian government. If they had defeated the Syrian government, they would have sent a lot more troops into Iraq and it would have fallen. And of course Lebanon would have faced a very new and dangerous situation with these extremists. So Iran’s support for the Iraqi government and the Syrian government helped defeat these extremist groups and this is a major point of contention between Iran, Israel and Saudi Arabia and, of course, the United States. […]

 

December 30, 2017 Posted by | Timeless or most popular, War Crimes, Wars for Israel | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Israeli police close probe into January killing of Palestinian teacher

Palestinian women in Umm al-Hiran mourn death of Abu al-Qian in January
Ma’an – December 30, 2017

The Israeli Police Investigations Division (PID) has decided to close its probe into the January police killing of Palestinian math teacher Yaqoub Abu al-Qian, and to not hold any officers responsible for his death, Adalah – The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, said in a statement on Thursday.

Abu al-Qian, a 50-year-old math teacher from the Bedouin village of Umm al-Hiran in southern Israel’s Negev desert, was shot dead by Israeli police in January while he was driving at night, causing him to spin out of control and crash into Israeli officers, killing one policeman.

Abu al-Qian was driving through the village as dozens of Israeli forces were preparing for a large-scale home demolition in Umm al-Hiran. Israeli forces at the time claimed he was attempted to carry out a vehicular attack, though witness testimonies and video footage of the incident proved contradictory to police accusations.

Israeli police footage appeared to show police officers shooting at al-Qian as he was driving at a very slow pace, and only several seconds after the gunfire does his car appear to speed up, eventfully plowing through police officers.

The killing of Abu al-Qian sparked widespread outrage amongst Palestinian civilians and politicians, who claimed he was “extrajudicially executed.

After demands from his family and the community for police to conduct a probe into his killing, Adalah filed a request demanding the PID open an investigation into the death of Abu al-Qian.

“The closure of this investigation means the PID continues to grant legitimacy to deadly police violence against Arab citizens of Israel,” Adalah said in it’s statement.

“Though it was clear from day one that officers opened fire on a civilian without justification and in contravention of the police’s own open-fire regulations, it appears as if the PID is again whitewashing the most serious incidents. Just as the PID failed to hold any officers responsible for the October 2000 killings and the subsequent police killings of more than 50 Palestinian Arab citizens of Israel, this latest decision is further indication of the systemic failure of the PID.”

“The Israeli police and public security minister continue to propagate the same lie they initially promoted the day of the killing, according to which the incident was an intentional vehicular ramming attack against Israeli police officers. This lie was repeatedly refuted by multiple sources and video documentation of the incident,” Adalah added.

Abu al-Qian’s hometown of Umm al-Hiran is one of 35 Bedouin villages considered “unrecognized” by the Israeli state, and more than half of the approximately 160,000 Negev Bedouins reside in unrecognized villages.

The unrecognized Bedouin villages were established in the Negev soon after the 1948 Arab-Israeli war following the creation of the state of Israel.

Now more than 60 years later, the villages have yet to be recognized by Israel and live under constant threats of demolition and forcible removal.

December 30, 2017 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture | , , , , | Leave a comment

Israeli Psychosis on Full Display

By Gilad Atzmon | December 29, 2017

In his attack on BDS activist Justine Sachs, Ynet writer Asaf Wohl performs every tribal morbidity. Sachs is apparently a Jewish pro-Palestinian woman who helped convince New Zealand singer Lorde to cancel her performance in Israel.  Wohl accuses her of inciting ‘violence,’ ‘auto-anti-Semitsm,’ ‘siding with terrorists,’ effectively everything except child molesting.

Among my sins I am critical of some aspects of cultural BDS, but to interpret BDS as a violent act is rather over the top. If anything, BDS was designed to dilute Palestinian militant resistance. Furthermore, boycotting is a very Jewish practice, known as excommunication or herem in Hebrew. You would expect Wohl, an ardent Zionist, to be slightly more familiar with his own culture.

If you ever wonder what is the meaning of Judeo-centrism, Wohl provides the full scope. The Israeli settler really believes that he is the centre of this universe. “The difference between you and me, Justine, is that I’m an Israeli Jew and you’re a Jew. That’s it. You have no nationality. You live in a negligible, insignificant sheepfold stuck somewhere at the end of the universe (New Zealand).” For Wohl, Israel is the world’s capital and Israeliness is the ultimate embodiment of human as well as of Jewish existence.

Sachs is accused of “auto-anti-Semitism” which in Wohl’s words is a “drive towards human self-destruction.” And I wonder whether Wohl really thinks that Sachs persuading a singer not to perform in Tel Aviv points at self destructive or even suicidal inclinations?

Wohl writes that he feels “no need to take the side of a culture which hasn’t brought anything to the world apart from terror. The confidence I am given by the Israeli nationality allows me to pick the democratic, free side.” For Wohl, so it seems, Arabs and Muslims contributed nothing to the world but ‘terror’ yet Israel pretty much invented democracy and the Western ethos in general. Someone should remind this Israeli caricature that democracy is from Athens while state terror against the indigenous people of the land is actually Israel’s official policy.

Wohl seems to believe that the Jewish state is an exponent of Western values. Seemingly, Wohl doesn’t grasp that loving your neighbours is at the core of the Western civilisation’s ethos. Look how Wohl refers to his Palestinian neighbours. They are “the side which hijacks planes, the side which hangs gay people on electric poles, the side which rips out girls’ throats in honor killings, the side which has failed to establish any state or society which isn’t totalitarian, chauvinist, primitive and/or murderous.” Not a lot of Western compassion on Wohl’s part. And you may be left wondering: which side is Wohl on? The side of ardent Zionist Harvey Weinstein? Or maybe the side of people who plundered other people’s land and dropped white phosphorus on schools in Gaza? Wohl clearly sides with the people who made that strip of land into the biggest open air prison known to man. It is easy to grasp why Justine Sachs and a few other Diaspora Jews side with the Palestinians and oppose Israel. It is far more depressing to admit that the  majority of them probably side with Wohl.

December 29, 2017 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Solidarity and Activism | , , | Leave a comment

Clean Break II: Iran Hawks Decide to Burn It All Down

By Derek Davison and Jim Lobe | LobeLog | December 27, 2017

The 20th century was rife with partitions, many of them involving European powers carving up colonial possessions in Africa and the Middle East with what often appears to have been little or no concern for local realities. Perhaps the most famous of these free-hand attempts at state creation is the Sykes-Picot Line, whose legacy is very much still with us (and not for the better). But Sykes-Picot is far from the only example of European colonial borders that are still causing problems decades after they were drawn.

But who cares about all of that? It doesn’t seem to be an issue for at least some of America’s anti-Iran hawks. In response to Iran’s rising profile in the Middle East, fueled mostly by a war those neocons ardently championed and the striking ineptitude of the hawks’ new favorite Persian Gulf monarchy, the intellectual heirs to the men who drew those ill-fated borders are proposing, long after it might have done any good, to re-draw them.

Writing for Fox News on December 25, Michael Makovsky—who is no fringe figure, being CEO of the neoconservative Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA)—suggests just such a strategy for countering Iranian influence in the Middle East:

Maintaining Syria, Iraq, Lebanon and Yemen in their existing forms is unnatural and serves Iran’s interests. There is nothing sacred about these countries’ borders, which seem to have been drawn by a drunk and blindfolded mapmaker. Indeed, in totally disregarding these borders, ISIS and Iran both have already demonstrated the anachronism and irrelevance of the borders.

Syria, Iraq, Lebanon and Yemen are not nation-states as Americans understand them, but rather post-World War I artificial constructs, mostly created out of the ashes of the Ottoman Empire in a colossally failed experiment by western leaders.

With their deep ethno-sectarian fissures, these four countries have either been held together by a strong authoritarian hand or suffered sectarian carnage.

It is astonishing to read neoconservatives, who have done little else since the 1970s but lobby for exerting American hegemony in the Middle East, decry the results of the exertion of European hegemony in the Middle East. It reads like an artificial intelligence that just briefly verges on full self-awareness before pivoting and falling back to safer ground. It’s particularly rich for Makovsky, whose JINSA predecessors promoted the ouster of two of those “strong authoritarian hands” in former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein and former Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh, to bemoan one result of their ouster.

But let’s focus on the proposal Makovsky makes: redrawing borders in the Middle East, creating what he calls “loose confederations or new countries with more borders that more naturally conform along sectarian lines,” in order to counter Iran. The proposal strongly resembles recommendations found in “A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm,” a 1996 publication of the Jerusalem-based Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies that was prepared in collaboration with several other neoconservative think tanks—including JINSA.

“A Clean Break,” the conclusion of a task force that included such Likudnik geniuses as Richard Perle, Douglas Feith, and David Wurmser, argued in part that Israel should work with friendly governments in Turkey and Jordan to contain regional threats, particularly coming from Syria. It concluded, among other things, that Israeli leaders should pursue “removing Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq-an important objective in its own right-as a means of foiling Syria’s regional ambitions.” “Syria” in this context serves as a stand-in for “Iran.” Long-term, the report envisioned the formation of a “natural axis” of Israel, Turkey, Jordan, and a “Hashemite” Iraq serving as “the prelude to a redrawing of the map of the Middle East, which could threaten Syria’s territorial integrity.”

Even a cursory glance at the state of the Middle East since the end of the Iraq War shows that ousting Saddam Hussein achieved the opposite of the report’s stated goals. The idea of a Hashemite restoration in Shia-majority Iraq was ridiculously far-fetched, and Iraq’s democratically-elected government has–justifiably–greatly improved the Baghdad-Tehran relationship. Makovsky, who wants to reverse this trend, argues that the United States should “declare our support and strong military aid for an eventual Iraqi Kurdish state, once its warring factions unify and improve governance. We could support a federation for the rest of Iraq.”

In Makovsky’s imagination, the new Kurd-less Iraqi federation would presumably wish Erbil well and send it on its way. In reality, another serious Kurdish move toward independence would probably lead to a civil war, as it nearly did in October over the status of Kirkuk. Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi’s first foreign trip after his dramatic capture of Kirkuk was… to Iran. If the United States were to come out in full support of an independent Kurdistan, it would almost certainly push the rest of Iraq more firmly into Iran’s orbit. Speaking of Kirkuk, does Makovsky imagine that independent Kurdistan would be given the city and its surrounding oil fields? If yes, then that only increases the chances of a war with Baghdad. If no, then there are serious questions about whether that hypothetical Kurdish state would be economically viable.

For Syria, Makovsky says that “we could seek a more ethnically coherent loose confederation or separate states that might balance each other – the Iranian-dominated Alawites along the coast, the Kurds in the northeast, and the Sunni Arabs in the heartland.” He might want to check a recent map of Syria, because while “heartland” is obviously a subjective term, by almost any definition Syria’s “heartland” now belongs to President Basher al-Assad and his Russian and Iranian allies. This includes the country’s five largest (pre-war) cities: Aleppo, Damascus, Homs, Latakia, and Hama. How does Makovsky propose any of that territory be taken from Assad so as to be turned over to “Sunni Arabs,” even in a confederate sense? If the answer is “war,” then his Fox News thinkpiece is burying the lede to say the least.

Makovsky then recommends that the U.S. strengthen relations with Shia-majority Azerbaijan, in order to “demonstrate we are not anti-Shia Muslim.” Yes, that should do the trick. Of course, that’s not the only reason:

An added potential benefit of this approach could be a fomenting of tensions within Iran, which has sizable Kurdish and Azeri populations, thereby weakening the radical regime in Tehran.

You might even say that it could threaten Iran’s territorial integrity. Make a Clean Break, if you will.

The dangers of the United States trying to redraw Middle Eastern borders—Makovsky graciously allows that America “cannot dictate the outcomes” but should instead “influence” them—should be obvious. For one thing, there’s the immediate likelihood that attempting to draw new borders would intensify regional instability. For another, there’s little reason to expect that the United States would get the new borders any more “right” than Britain and France did a century ago, particularly not when the process is being managed by the same people who brought us the invasion of Iraq. For still another, the most recent example of such Western “influenced” partitioning isn’t exactly a positive one.

But we can’t leave Makovsky’s piece without mentioning its most jaw-dropping paragraph (emphasis ours):

Artificial states have been divided or loosened before with some success, such as the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia, which are all post-WWI formations. Bosnia and Herzegovina have also managed as a confederation.

Czechoslovakia divided peacefully of its own accord. The Soviet Union more or less did likewise, though that dissolution hasn’t been quite so peaceful in recent years. As for Yugoslavia—well, maybe Dr. Makovsky’s definition of “success” is a bit different from most other people’s. To be fair, though, if the breakup of Yugoslavia is his template for the future of the Middle East, this piece makes a lot more sense.

But if Makovsky believes in federalizing existing Middle Eastern states along “ethno-sectarian” lines, why not start with Israel and the Occupied Territories, a notion that would seem logical to any 21st century mapmaker? After all, occupation of one people by another via a “strong authoritarian hand”—in this case the IDF—would seem to be a prescription for a “colossally failed experiment,” no? Perhaps Makovsky’s experience as a former West Bank settler may make it difficult for him to see the relevance.

December 29, 2017 Posted by | Illegal Occupation, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes, Wars for Israel | , , , , | Leave a comment

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