Bulletin N° 848

 

 

 

“The Day Israel Attacked America – June 8, 1967”

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/51731.htm

(49min)

 


 

 

Subject :                                                     

The Excitement of the Hunt,

The Anxieties of the Hunted,

&

The Aims of Gunboat Diplomacy

 

 

D-Day 2019

Grenoble, France

 

 

Dear Colleagues and Friends of CEIMSA,

 

It is common belief in some circles that capitalists are emotional cripples, that they are a case of hyper-development of one instinct over all others, i.e. the predatory urge “to profit at all costs,” including any self-sacrifice necessary to further one’s primary goal, which is to accumulate capital. Such obsessions belong to the clinically insane, unless they own the clinic, in which case the rest of us are diagnosed as lacking qualities necessary to be counted as fully human. This is the only explanation I can think of, for example, to account for the fact that President Trump is not terrified by his own behavior.

 

Fascism (a.k.a. “capitalism with the gloves off”) is not to be confused with Liberalism; the former political ideology makes universal what the latter did to minorities and Third World natives. We can see that Fascist mobilization and regimentation has been a fascination since the early twentieth century, outshining socialist efforts to reorganize society along democratic lines. Using the instrumentality of Fear to produce compliance – to the point of self-destruction – is a tried and proven method in history to seize political control of key institutions and to dominate the bodies and minds of populations so that they willfully collaborate with their oppressors.

 

In this respect, the much celebrated book by Sir Christopher Clark, The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914 (2012), is a disappointment. He makes no attempt to show how Fascist formations in Europe arose from the same contradictions of industrial capitalist developments that produced WWI. Rosa Luxemburg, Karl Liebknecht, Vladimir Lenin, Angelica Balabanov were among many intellectuals who saw an animal of a different stripe emerging, before the letter, in the post-Paris Commune period of rapid industrialization. The political economy of the second industrial revolution ushered in a special kind of “democracy,” one based increasingly on social engineering, by which the ends were used relentlessly to justify the periodically repressive means of labor exploitation and imperial conquest. It was a schoolyard bully’s formula: “An offensive is the best defense; attack before you are attacked!” The signals were easily learned, and with such simplification, the remainder of mental activities became extraneous. They simply didn’t matter much, according to this elitist theory. Public Opinion - like the fog pressing against the window pane of a conference room - had no effect on the decisions being made inside the room.

 

Instead of expanding his study of August 1914 organically, to include the changing past and future social relationships in Europe one hundred years before (in The Age of Metternich which followed the devastations of the Napoleonic Wars) and forward for half-a-century (into the Great Depression years, the Second World War and the Cold War eras), this study of “how Europe went to war in 1914” presents a microscopic examination of selected scenes of key players in various locations between 1902 and 1914. Professor Clark seems to hold a genuine fondness for the men he encounters in high positions. Rather than judging the personal cost of those machinations necessary to acquire political power, he estimates that something must have gone terribly wrong, that these “normal” highly educated “political elites” had fallen asleep at the wheel; they were not paying attention to the road signs, nor to the fundamental contradictions in their lives and the lives of the people they sought to control.

 

In this 560-page tomb, the author provides an extensive litany of names of important and less important historic “agents” and offers analyses of the many catalysts which crystallized their thinking into common agreement or, more often, dispersed them into contrary views. The individual idiosyncrasies of diplomats are sometimes entertaining, such as the description of M. Paul Cambon, the French ambassador to London from 1898 to 1920.

 

   Underpinning Cambon’s exalted sense of self was the belief – shared by many of the senior ambassadors – that one did not merely represent France, one personified it. Though he was ambassador in London [for twenty-two years] . . . Cambon spoke not a word of English. During his meetings with [the British Foreign Secretary] Sir Edward Grey (who spoke no French), he insisted that every utterance be translated into French, including easily recognized words such as ‘yes’. He firmly believed – like many members of the French elite – that French was the only language capable of articulating rational thought and he objected to the foundation of French schools in Britain on the eccentric grounds that French people raised in Britain tended to end up mentally retarded.(p.193)


Then, there is the amusing description of the famous GermanophobeThéophile Delcassé, President Raymond Poincaré's appointee as French ambassador to St. Petersburg, who on his way east to his new assignment passed through Berlin, stopping to see the French ambassador to Germany, Jules Cambon. Meeting at the station, he refused to leave his train and touch German soil with the sole of his shoe.
(p.307)

 

But what is lacking in Professor Clark’s book is a nuanced critical account of the social forces that penetrated the European population in the pre-war years, which created the possibility for irredentist ideas to take control of the popular imagination, and for religious and nationalist feelings of superiority to govern the thinking of so many future casualties of war.

 

Studies of Political Power.

In previous CEIMSA bulletins, we have discussed various theories of “Power,” including John Kenneth Galbraith’s 1983 book by the same name. For more, please see the following bulletins:

 

Bulletin N° 602, “ON REVENGE, REMORSE, AND REPLAY --A CYCLICAL THEORY OF LIFE IN THE FAST LANE”;

Bulletin N° 627, “ON THE PRECONDITIONS FOR IMPERIALIST WARS AND NATIONALIST IDEOLOGIES, ACCORDING TO THE RADICAL ANALYSIS OF DR. WILHELM REICH”; 

Bulletin 665, “Political Power and Submission to the Beneficiaries of Imperialist Law and Order, with an interpretation by filmmaker Pier Paolo Pasolini”;

Bulletin N° 757, “THE METAPHYSICS OF MONEY & VIBRATIONS ON THE ‘SOUNDINGBOARD’”;

Bulletin N° 767, “THE POLITICS OF IDENTITY & POWER IN THE AGE OF LATE CAPITALISM: ONE PATHOLOGY AFTER ANOTHER”.

 

 

The Sleepwalkers’ Contribution to Our Understanding of War.

Professor Clark outlines his intentions in the introduction to this book :

 

   This book thus strives to understand the July Crisis of 1914 as a modern event, the most complex of modern times, perhaps of any time so far. It is concerned less with why the war happened than with how it came about. Questions of why and how are logically inseparable, but they lead us in different directions. The question of how invites us to look closely at the sequences  of interactions that produced certain outcomes. By contrast, the question of why invites us to go in search of remote and categorical causes: imperialism, nationalism, armaments, alliances, high finance, ideas of national honour, mechanics of mobilization. The why approach brings a certain analytical clarity, but it also has a distorting effect, because it creates the illusion of a steadily building causal pressure; the factors pile up on top of each other pushing down on the events; political actors become mere executors of forces long established and beyond their control.

 

   The story this book tells is, by contrast, saturated with agency. The key decision-makers – kings, emperors, foreign ministers, ambassadors, military commanders and a host of lesser officials – walked toward danger in watchful, calculated steps. The outbreak of war was the culmination of chains of decisions made by political actors with conscious objectives, who were capable of a degree of self-reflection, acknowledged a range of options and formed the best judgements [sic] they could on the basis of the best information they had to hand. [sic] Nationalism, armaments, alliances and finance were all part of the story, but they can be made to carry real explanatory weight only if they can be seen to have shaped the decisions that  - in combination – made war break out.(p.xxvii)

 

The Sleepwalkers is certainly an exhaustive study of a huge load of documents in a variety of languages, containing more than 1,600 footnotes. The author has organized his work into three parts: The first part is a 115-page description of the Serbia-Austria-Hungary antagonism beginning with the brutal murder of King Alexandar and Queen Draga in Belgrade in 1903. Part two shifts from a narrative to focuses analytically for almost 250 pages on four questions: How Europe in this pre-war period became polarized; how foreign policy was made by the government in the key countries; how the Balkans came to be the pivot point of this great crisis; and how the international system suddenly flipped from détente to cataclysmic war. The third part (nearly 200 pages) returns to a narrative form to discuss why the assassination in Sarajevo and the July Crisis, and to examine the interactions of “key decision-centers” in order to uncover the “calculations, misunderstandings and decisions that drove the crisis from one phase to the next.”(p.xxviii)

 

Professor Clark carries out his several promises made at the start of this book, but, in my opinion, he nevertheless falls into the trap of traditional compartmentalization of historical studies. We are looking at “diplomatic history,” “political history,” “psycho-history,” “national histories”, but what we don’t see in the gestalt, the entire social context of class struggle and the drive for financial gain that motivates the owners of capital around the world and compels them to enter into competition - sometimes at great cost, but always with the hope of great profits. What is missing here is the “rabbit’s view” of this vicious “hunt” - the only view which can fully comprehend the forces at play and possibly enlighten us as to the nature of the “predator's” practice of capitalism – which is known to eat its own – and to the political will of its “prey”, who are somehow impeded from organizing successful strategies for their own survival.

 

A Lost Opportunity.

Instead, we are reminded in this book that some historical agents are more worthy than others; the “hunters” count more than the “hunted”.

 

   It is a central argument of this book that the events of July 1914 make sense only when we illuminate the journeys travelled by the key decision-makers. To do this, we need to do more than simply revisit the sequence of international ‘crises’ that preceded the outbreak of the ware – we need to understand how those events were experienced and woven into narratives that structured perceptions and motivated behaviour. Why did the men whose decisions took Europe to war behave and see things as they did? How did the sense of fearfulness and foreboding that one finds in so many of the sources connect with the arrogance and swaggering we encounter – often in the very same individuals?(pp.xxviii-xxvix)

 

We are left at the end of this daunting experience of nearly 600 pages and hundreds upon hundreds of footnotes almost in a state of vertigo, not unlike leaving a faculty conference room after a discussion of tenure and promotions, pondering the frail condition of human nature - half asleep and half awake: How could such decisions have been made, costing the lives of tens of millions and profiting very few? More important are the questions that remain unanswered: what social values and what class interests had developed in Europe prior to the early twentieth century that produced these decisions? and against what social oppositions were they enacted and at what cost for the future? We must wait for another study – a study which formulats a different problematic; the answer to these questions are not within the scope of Professor Clark’s book, despite its impressive volume.

 

If the Executioners go unchallenged, the Victims are neglected.

Professor Clark concludes his study with a philosophical observation on human folly, a “tragedy, but not a “crime.”

 

   We need to distinguish between the objective factors acting on the decision-makers and the stories they told themselves and each other about what they thought they were doing and why they were doing it. All the key actors in our story filtered the world through narratives that were built from pieces of experience glued together with fears, projections and interests masquerading as maxims. In Austria, the story of a nation of youthful bandits and regicides endlessly provoking and goading a patient elderly neighbor got in the way of a cool-headed assessment of how to manage relations with Belgrade. In Serbia, fantasies of victimhood and oppression by a rapacious, all-powerful Habsburg Empire did the same in reverse. In Germany, a dark vision of future invasions and partitions bedeviled decision-making in the summer of 1914. And the Russian saga of repeated humiliations at the hands of the central powers had a similar impact, at once distorting the past and clarifying the present. Most important of all was the widely trafficked narrative of Austria-Hungary’s historically necessary decline, which, having gradually replaced an older set of assumptions about Austria’s role as a fulcrum of stability in Central and Eastern Europe, disinhibited Vienna’s enemies, undermining the notion that Austria-Hungary, like every other great power, possessed interests that it had the right robustly to defend.

 

. . .

   Where does this leave the question of culpability? By asserting that Germany and her allies were morally responsible for the outbreak of war, Article 231 of the Versailles Peace Treaty ensured that questions of culpability would remain at or near the centre of the debate over the war’s origins. The blame game has never lost its appeal. The most influential articulation of this tradition is the ‘Fischer thesis’ – shorthand for a bundle of arguments elaborated in the 1960s by Fritz Fischer, Immanuel Geiss and a score of younger German colleagues, who identified Germany as the power chiefly culpable in the outbreak of war. According to this view (leaving aside the many variations within the Fischer school), the Germans did not stumble or slither into war. They chose it – worse, they planned it in advance, in the hope of breaking out of their European isolation and launching a bid for world power. Recently studies of the resulting Fischer controversy have highlighted the links between this debate and the fraught process by which German intellectuals came to terms with the contaminating moral legacy of the Nazi era, and Fischer’s arguments have been subjected to criticism on many points. Nonetheless, a diluted version of the Fischer thesis still dominate in studies of Germany’s road to war.

 

. . .

   Do we really need to make the case against a single guilty state, or to rank the states according to their respective share in responsibility for the outbreak of war?  . . .  The problem with a blame-centered account is not that one may end up blaming the wrong party. It is rather that accounts structured around blame come with built-in assumptions. They tend, first, to presume that in conflictual interactions one protagonist must ultimately be right and the other wrong. Were the Serbs wrong to seek to unify Serbdom? Were the Austrians wrong to insist on the independence of Albania? Was one of these enterprises more wrong than the other? The question is meaningless. A further drawback of prosecutorial narratives is that they narrow the field of vision by focusing on the political temperament and initiatives of one particular state rather than on multilateral processes of interaction. Then there is the problem that the quest for blame predisposes the investigator to construe the actions of decision-makers as planned and driven by a coherent intention. You have to show that someone willed war as well as caused it. In its extreme form, this mode of procedure produces conspiratorial narratives in which a coterie of powerful individuals, like velvet-jacketed Bond villains, controls events from behind the scene in accordance with a malevolent plan. There is no denying the moral satisfaction delivered by such narratives, and it is not, of course, logically impossible that war came about in this manner in the summer of 1914, but the view expounded in this book is that such arguments are not supported by the evidence.

 

. . .

   The outbreak of war in 1914 is not an Agatha Christie drama at the end of which we will discover the culprit standing over a corpse in the conservatory with a smoking pistol. There is not smoking gun in this story; or, rather, there is one in the hands of every major character. Viewed in this light, the outbreak of the war was a tragedy, not a crime. . . .  The crisis that brought war in 1914 was the fruit of a shared political culture. But it was also multipolar and genuinely interactive – that is what makes it the most complex event of modern times and that is why the debate over the origins of the First World War continues, one century after Gavrilo Princip fired those two fatal shots on Franz Joseph Street.

 

   One thing is clear: none of the prizes for which the politicians of 1914 contended was worth the cataclysm that followed. Did the protagonists understand how high the stakes were?(pp.559-561)

 

In brief, Professor Clark's history book is on the wrong side of history, it is nothing less than an attempt to revise the judgements at Nuremburg, a reductio ad absurdum of war crimes in the guise of systems analaysis - an imaginary place where there exists no class struggle and no justice (nor even the threat of justice).
 

We conclude this discussion by offering CEIMSA readers the publication from our 2006 CEIMSA conference on a history of socialist pacifist movements at : http://ceimsa.org/colloques/ACTES-06.html ; and an excerpt from the classic anti-war novel by H.W. Wells, “The Shape of Things to Come (A Prophetic Vision of the Future) An historical fiction” (1933) at: http://ceimsa.org/colloques/pdfPac/HGWells.pdf .

 

 

The 19 + items below reflect a turning of the tide in public opinion. The Anglophone social media represents an energy and a diversity that persists like the air we breathe, for better and for worse. The obscene and myopic excitement of the hunter offers little hope for empathy. The hunted must seek their allies where they can, harboring no illusions about the condition of the world and the corruption of established capitalist power. Wars are continuous in the capitalist system, and always have been; what is new is that they are now talked about and viewed daily on social media. What we do with the new technology and the old cynical political system is increasingly in our hands. As usual, our consciousness must catch up with our experiences so we can make sense out of what is happening to us and finally take power over our own lives.

 

 

Sincerely,

Francis Feeley

---

Professor emeritus of American Studies

University Grenoble-Alpes

Director of Research

University of Paris-Nanterre

Center for the Advanced Study of American Institutions and Social Movements

The University of California-San Diego

http://www.ceimsa.org/  

 

 

 

a.

North American, European Public: Finally Wake Up, Damn It!

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/us-arms-egypt-yemen.JPG

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/51729.htm

by Andre Vltchek

 

Year after year, month after month, I see two sides of the world; two extremes which are getting more and more disconnected:

I see great cities like Homs in Syria, reduced to horrifying ruins. I see Kabul and Jalalabad in Afghanistan, fragmented by enormous concrete walls intended to protect NATO occupation armies and their local puppets. I see monstrous environmental devastation in places such as Indonesian Borneo, Peruvian gold mining towns, or the by now almost uninhabitable atoll island-nations of Oceania: Tuvalu, Kiribati or Marshall Islands.

I see slums, a lack of sanitation and clean drinking water, where the boots of Western empires have been smashing local cultures, enslaving people and looting natural resources.

I work on all the continents. I never stop, even when exhaustion tries to smash me against the wall, even when there are hardly any reserves left. I cannot stop; I have no right to stop, because I can finally see the pattern; the way this world operates, the way the West has been managing to usurp it, indoctrinate, and enslave most of the countries of the world. I combine my knowledge, and publish it as a ‘warning to the world’.

I write books about this ‘pattern’. My most complete, so far, being the 1,000 pages long Exposing Lies of The Empire”.

Then, I see the West itself.

I come to ‘speak’, to Canada and the United States, as well as Europe. Once in a while I am invited to address Australian audiences, too.

The West is so outrageously rich, compared to the ruined and plundered continents, that it often appears that it does not belong to the Planet Earth.

 

===========

 

b.

Climate Change Could End Human

Civilisation as We Know It by 2050, Analysis Finds

main article image

https://www.sciencealert.com/by-2050-climate-change-could-alter-human-civilisation-as-we-know-it

by Carly Cassella

 

A doomsday ending to climate change is not inevitable, but the situation is becoming ever more desperate. Without immediate and drastic action, reminiscent of efforts during World War II, a new analysis predicts that by 2050, climate change could become an "existential threat to human civilisation" that can never be undone.

The new report, co-written by a former executive in the fossil fuel industry, is a harrowing follow-up to the Breakthrough National Centre for Climate Restoration's 2018 paper, which found that climate models often underestimate the most extreme scenarios.

Endorsed by former Australian defence chief Admiral Chris Barrie, the message is simple: if we do not take climate action in the next 30 years, it is entirely plausible that our planet warms by 3°C and that human civilisation as we know it collapses.

Under this scenario, the authors explain, the world will be locked into a "hothouse Earth" scenario, where 35 percent of the global land area, and 55 percent of the global population, will be subject to more than 20 days a year of "lethal heat conditions, beyond the threshold of human survivability."

Ecosystems will collapse, including coral reefs, the Amazon rainforest and the Arctic. North America will suffer from devastating wildfires, heatwaves, and drought. The great rivers of Asia will be severely reduced as will water availability right across the world, affecting roughly 2 billion people.

Rainfall in Mexico and central America will fall by half and agriculture will be nonviable in the dry subtropics. Semi-permanent El Nino conditions will prevail, and deadly heat waves will persist in some areas for more than 100 days a year. More than a billion people will be displaced.

+

‘High likelihood of human civilisation

coming to end’ by 2050, report finds

https://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change-global-warming-end-human-civilisation-research-a8943531.html

by Harry Cockburn

 

Over-conservative climate scenarios mean we could face ‘world of outright chaos’, says analysis authored by former fossil fuel executive and backed by former head of Australia’s military

Human civilisation as we know it may have already entered its last decades, a worrying new report examining the likely future of our planet’s habitability warns.

The increasingly disastrous impacts of the climate crisis, coupled with inaction to tackle it are sending our planet down a bleak path towards an increasingly chaotic world which could overwhelm societies around the globe, the report’s authors contend.

The paper, produced by the Melbourne-based think tank the Breakthrough National Centre for Climate Restoration, is presented by the former chief of the Australian Defence Forces and retired Royal Australian Navy Admiral Chris Barrie.

In his introduction he says the report’s authors “have laid bare the unvarnished truth about the desperate situation humans, and our planet, are in, painting a disturbing picture of the real possibility that human life on earth may be on the way to extinction, in the most horrible way.”

The paper argues that “climate change now represents a near to mid-term existential threat to human civilisation,” and calls for a recalibration in how governments respond to estimated climate scenarios so they take worst case projections more seriously.

+

5 ways you can personally fight the climate crisis

https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/05/5-ways-you-can-personally-fight-the-climate-crisis-change-global-warming/

by Jaime Nack

 

As we watch the youth take to the streets over climate change, and read daily news reports on sea-level rise, glacier melt rates and the alarming amount of carbon in the atmosphere, many are left with a desire to act. Yet, the gravity of the climate crisis can seem overwhelming – especially for those who do not work in the environmental arena. Without a clear roadmap of simple steps to take, inertia sets in.

After working on climate action projects for nearly two decades with diverse communities around the globe, I’ve seen this inertia first-hand. The universal question seems to be: “The climate crisis is here, but what can I do?”

+

Is it true climate change will cause the end of civilisation by 2050?

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2205741-is-it-true-climate-change-will-cause-the-end-of-civilisation-by-2050/

 

===========

 

c.

Why Trump now wants talks with Iran

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/51719.htm

by Pepe Escobar


If Tehran blocks the Strait of Hormuz it could send the price of oil soaring and cause a global recession

Unlike Deep Purple’s legendary ‘Smoke on the Water’ – “We all came out to Montreux, on the Lake Geneva shoreline”, the 67th Bilderberg group meetings produced no fire and no smoke at the luxurious Fairmont Le Montreux Palace Hotel.

The 130 elite guests had a jolly good – and theoretically quiet – time at the self-billed “informal discussion forum concerning major issues”. As usual, at least two-thirds were European decision-makers, with the rest coming from North America.

The fact that a few major players in this Atlanticist Valhalla are closely associated with or directly interfering with the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) in Basel – the central bank of central banks – is of course just a minor detail.

The major issue discussed this year was “A Stable Strategic Order”, a lofty endeavor that can be interpreted either as the making of a New World Order or just a benign effort by selfless elites to guide mankind to enlightenment.

Other items of discussion were way more pragmatic – from “The Future of Capitalism”, to “Russia”, “China”, “Weaponizing Social Media”, “Brexit”, “What’s Next for Europe”, “Ethics of Artificial Intelligence” and last but not least, “Climate Change”.

Disciples of Antisthenes would argue that these items constitute precisely the nuts and bolts of the New World Order.

The chairman of Bilderberg’s steering committee, since 2012, is Henri de Castries, former CEO of AXA and the director of the Institut Montaigne, a top French think tank.

One of the key guests this year was Clement Beaune, the European and G20 counselor to French President Emmanuel Macron.

Bilderberg prides itself for enforcing the Chatham House Rule, according to which participants are free to use all the precious information they wish because those who attend these meetings are bound to not disclose the source of any sensitive information or what exactly was said.

That helps ensure Bilderberg’s legendary secrecy – the reason for myriad conspiracy theories. But that does not mean that the odd secret may not be revealed.

  ===========

 

c.

The Electronic Intifada

WHO sanitizes Israeli responsibility for Gaza killings

https://electronicintifada.net/sites/default/files/styles/original_800w/public/2019-06/190604-gaza-wounded.jpg?itok=_Jg29SAC&timestamp=1559680061

https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/maureen-clare-murphy/who-sanitizes-israeli-responsibility-gaza-killings

by Maureen Clare Murphy

 

There were nearly 7,000 gunshot wounds among Gaza’s population of two million in the duration of a year.

Many of those injured have extensive and in some cases irreversible damage to their bones, neurovascular structures and soft tissue.

Among them, hundreds face amputations if they cannot access specialized tertiary treatment for their catastrophic wounds.

Three health workers have been killed and more than 700 others injured.

Thousands of elective surgeries were postponed as a health system already in crisis took in wave after wave of emergency casualties.

Cases of gender-based violence seen by service providers doubled as families struggled to cope with additional economic pressures and trauma.

These disturbing facts come from the World Health Organization’s review of trauma data related to the Great March of Return protests in Gaza which began in March 2018.

Sanitized

The data provided by WHO make for harrowing reading. But the report sanitizes the fact that this body-breaking and traumatizing violence is by Israeli policy and design.

Any effective treatment must correctly diagnose the cause and not just the symptoms.

In the year following the launch of the Great March of Return, more than 28,000 Palestinians in Gaza were injured and 277 killed, including 52 children, most of them slain during unarmed, mass protests along Gaza’s eastern and northern perimeter.

Despite the civilian nature of the protests, as was affirmed by a panel of UN investigators, WHO says the deaths and injuries happened “as a result of clashes with Israeli security forces.”

That is a gross mischaracterization of Israel’s use of force against peaceful and unarmed protesters, officially sanctioned by shoot-to-kill or maim orders against civilians who pose no plausible threat, even when they are children.

The killing of some 60 Palestinians during protests on 14 May 2018 was a massacre.

That day, Israeli occupation forces shot almost one person per minute during protests east of Gaza City between 9:30 in the morning and 5:30 in the afternoon, according to the UN commission of inquiry.

Some protesters attempted to breach the boundary fence, or threw stones or spent gas grenades fired by Israel back in the soldiers’ direction. But these were not confrontations between two armed groups as the use of “clashes” by WHO would suggest.

Doctors who treated those wounded that day said, as summarized in the UN commission report, “the injuries resembled those that would typically be seen during a war.”

Hospital doctors told investigators that “one horrific injury after another” arrived to their facilities, the patients presenting massive open wounds to their lower limbs, their “skin and underlying tissue … blown out with the force of the bullet.”

In their report, the UN investigators state that during the months of protests, nearly 1,600 people “were wounded by bullet or bone shrapnel that resulted from ricochets, bullet fragmentation and shots going through one body into another – clearly illustrating the danger of firing high-velocity live ammunition into a crowd of demonstrators.”

The staggering number of casualties is not “a result of clashes with Israeli security forces,” it’s the illegal use of lethal force against unprotected persons by an occupying power that desires the full capitulation of the population under its control.

“Serious human rights violations were committed which may amount to crimes against humanity,” the UN investigators say.

12 years of siege

WHO’s report does note that the protests take place in the context of a 12-year siege on Gaza, yet doesn’t explicitly state that the blockade is imposed by Israel.

+

Kushner: Palestinians not yet capable of governing themselves

Kushner is one of the architects of the US's Middle East peace plan, which has become controversial even before its release [File: Kacper Pempel/Reuters]

Kushner is one of the architects of the US's Middle East peace plan, which has become controversial even before its release

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/06/kushner-palestinians-capable-governing-190603051426199.html

 

White House Senior Adviser Jared Kushner has said that the Palestinians deserve "self-determination," but stopped short of backing Palestinian statehood, expressing uncertainty over their ability to govern themselves.

Kushner, who is President Donald Trump's son-in-law, made the comments in a television interview with the Axios on HBO programmes, broadcast on Sunday.

Asked whether he believed the Palestinians were capable of governing themselves without Israeli interference, Kushner said: "That's one that we'll have to see. The hope is that they, over time, will become capable of governing".

The Palestinians, he said, "need to have a fair judicial system ... freedom of press, freedom of expression, tolerance for all religions" before the Palestinian areas can become "investable".

One of the architects of the United States's yet-to-be-released Middle East peace plan, Kushner said it would be a "high bar" when asked if the Palestinians could expect freedom from Israeli military and government interference.

The Palestinian leadership has boycotted the diplomatic effort that Trump has hailed as the "deal of the century". Although Kushner has been drafting the plan for two years under a veil of secrecy, it is seen by Palestinian and some Arab officials as tilting heavily in Israel's favour and denying the Palestinians a state of their own.

In Sunday's interview Kushner again avoided saying explicitly whether the plan would include a two-state solution, the bedrock of US policy for decades.

 

* * *

more on:

 

Palestine

 

'No real check on Israeli power' leaves Palestinians stateless

 

Life under occupation: Palestinians face land shortage

 

Iran's Khamenei: US Middle East peace plan a 'great betrayal'

 

The Gaza Gas Deal

 

+

THE ANGRY ARAB: Rituals of Arab Summitry

https://consortiumnews.com/2019/06/04/the-angry-arab-rituals-of-arab-summitry/

by As`ad AbuKhalil

As soon as the news emerged three weeks ago that two oil installations in Saudi Arabia were hit, and oil tankers were attacked in the United Arab Emirates, the Saudi regime resorted to its available diplomatic weapon: summoning Arab despots and the leaders of Islamic countries to Mecca.

Three summits (Gulf, Arab and Islamic) were held in tandem in an effort to demonstrate solidarity with the Saudi regime. It quickly registered on Arab social media, (which consistently falls outside the coverage of all western correspondents who lack knowledge of Arabic) that the Saudi regime expressed more concern for oil installations than for the lives of Palestinians who are shot at weekly by Israeli occupation forces.

Arab summits became formal intergovernmental affairs in 1964 during the days of Eyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser. Prior to 1964, Arab leaders met often, but rather informally (and often at the behest of their British patrons).  In 1964, Arab leaders gathered to deal with the Israeli decision to divert water from the Jordan River. They met and protested but eventually did nothing because Israel made it clear that any Arab interference with its theft of water would be dealt with by force.

Nasser dominated Arab summits until his death in 1970. He managed to impose his will because he had an advantage over all Arab leaders: he relied on the support of the Arab people — more than any Arab leader before or since.  Nasser led the “progressive camp” and he was at odds with the “reactionary camp”— a reference to the pro-U.S. Arab regimes led by Saudi Arabia.

But the “reactionary camp” had no support among the Arab masses and they resorted to religious demagoguery and utilization of the Muslim Brotherhood to do their ideological bidding (it was only after Sept. 11 and the emergence of the Qatari alliance with the Brotherhood that UAE and Saudi Arabia criminalized the Brotherhood and launched a relentless war on their organizations worldwide).

Even during the days of Nasser, Arab summits were notable for their rhetorical flourish and oratorical ostentation and not for their actions.  In 1964, the Arab regimes sponsored the creation of the Palestine Liberation Organization but not so much to help the Palestinians as to prevent the creation of a Palestinian revolutionary movement capable of dragging Arab governments into unwanted confrontations with Israel.

 

===========

 

d.

The Final Punishment of Julian Assange

https://uziiw38pmyg1ai60732c4011-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/dropzone/2019/03/E995E573-828A-4065-AFAC-36573FDC2C19.png

Drawing by Nathaniel St. Clair

https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/06/03/the-final-punishment-of-julian-assange/

by Robert Fisk

 

I’m getting a bit tired of the US Espionage Act. For that matter, I’ve been pretty weary of the Julian Assange and Chelsea Manning saga for a long time. No one wants to talk about their personalities because no one seems to like them very much – even those who have benefited journalistically from their revelations.

From the start, I’ve been worried about the effect of Wikileaks, not on the brutal western governments whose activities it has disclosed in shocking detail (especially in the Middle East) but on the practice of journalism. When we scribes were served up this Wikileaks pottage, we jumped in, paddled around and splashed the walls of reporting with our cries of horror. And we forgot that real investigative journalism was about the dogged pursuit of truth through one’s own sources rather than upsetting a bowl of secrets in front of readers, secrets which Assange and co – rather than us – had chosen to make public.

Why was it, I do recall asking myself almost 10 years ago, that we could read the indiscretions of so many Arabs or Americans but so few Israelis? Just who was mixing the soup we were supposed to eat? What had been left out of the gruel?

But the last few days have convinced me that there is something far more obvious about the incarceration of Assange and the re-jailing of Manning. And it has nothing to do with betrayal or treachery or any supposed catastrophic damage to our security.

In The Washington Post this week, we’ve had Marc Theissen, a former White House speechwriter who defended CIA torture as “lawful and morally just”, telling us that Assange “is not a journalist. He is a spy … He engaged in espionage against the United States. And he has no remorse for the harm he has caused.” So forget that Trump’s insanity has already turned torture and secret relations with America’s enemies into a pastime.

No, I don’t think this has anything to do with the use of the Espionage Act – however grave its implications for conventional journalists – or “reputable news organisations”, as Thiessen cloyingly calls us. Nor does it have much to do with the dangers these revelations posed to America’s locally hired agents in the Middle East. I remember well how often Iraqi interpreters for US forces told us how they had pleaded for visas for themselves and their families when they came under threat in Iraq – and how most were told to get lost. We Brits treated many of our own Iraqi translators with similar indifference.

So let’s forget – just for a moment – the slaughter of civilians, the lethal cruelty of US mercenaries (some involved in child-trafficking), the killing of Reuters staff by US forces in Baghdad, the army of innocents held in Guantanamo, the torture, the official lies, the fake casualty figures, the embassy lies, the American training of Egypt’s torturers and all the other crimes uncovered by the activities of Assange and Manning.

Let’s suppose that what they revealed was good rather than bad, that the diplomatic and military documents provided a shining example of a great and moral country and demonstrated those very noble and shining ideals which the land of the free has always espoused. Let’s pretend that US forces in Iraq repeatedly gave their lives to protect civilians, that they denounced their allies’ tortures, that they treated the inmates of Abu Ghraib (many of them completely innocent) not with sexual cruelty but with respect and kindness; that they broke the power of the mercenaries and sent them back to prison in the US in chains; that they owned up, however apologetically, to the cemeteries of men, women and children whom they sent to an early grave in the Iraq war.

Better still, let’s just think for a moment how we might have reacted to the revelation that the Americans had not killed these tens of thousands of people, had never tortured a soul, that the prisoners of Guantanamo – every man jack of them – were provably sadistic, cowardly, xenophobic, racist mass murderers, the evidence of their crimes against humanity proved before the fairest courts in the land. Let’s even fantasise for a moment that the US helicopter crew who cut down 12 civilians in a Baghdad street did not “waste” them with its guns. Let’s imagine that the voice on the helicopter radio cried: “Wait, I think these guys are civilians – and that gun might just be a television camera. Don’t shoot!”

+

After Assange’s Espionage Act Indictment, Police Move Against

More Journalists for Publishing Classified Material

https://consortiumnews.com/2019/06/05/after-assanges-espionage-act-indictment-police-move-against-more-journalists-for-publishing-classified-material/

by Joe Lauria

 

Less than two months after the arrest of journalist Julian Assange, and two weeks after his indictment under the Espionage Act, emboldened governments have sent the police after journalists who’ve challenged the state.  

 

From Sydney, Australia
Special to Consortium News

Following the arrest and Espionage Act indictment of Julian Assange a number of police actions against journalists for publishing classified information and other journalistic activity  has heightened fears among mainstream journalists  that they could be next.  

Police in Sydney, Australia on Wednesday raided the offices of the taxpayer-funded Australian Broadcasting Corporation, copying thousands of files related to a 2017 ABC broadcast that revealed allegations of war crimes by Australian special forces in Afghanistan.  

Three Australian Federal Police officers and three police technicians entered ABC’s Sydney headquarters with a search warrant that named two ABC investigative journalists and the network’s news director.  The police demanded to look through the journalists’ emails, ABC reported.

David Anderson, the ABC managing director, said it was “highly unusual for the national broadcaster to be raided in this way”.

“This is a serious development and raises legitimate concerns over freedom of the press and proper public scrutiny of national security and Defence matters,” he said. “The ABC stands by its journalists, will protect its sources and continue to report without fear or favour on national security and intelligence issues when there is a clear public interest.”  John Lyons, ABC’s executive editor and head of investigative journalism, tweeted:

 

https://consortiumnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/ABC-RAID-screenshot-twitter.com-2019.06.05-05-04-15-700x298.png

 

Lyons said the federal police were going through dozens of emails with the authority to delete or even change their content. Protagonist Winston Smith’s job in Orwell’s 1984 was to rewrite news archives.

“I recall writing ages ago about Australian legislation giving the Australian govt power to ‘add, alter or delete’ targeted material,” Australian psychologist and social critic Lissa Johnson told Consortium News. “The msm barely batted an eyelid at the time. Now that power is being wielded against the ABC.”

Gaven Morris, ABC’s news director, said: “Journalism is not a crime.”

“Our journalists do a really difficult job, I’m proud of what they do, they do it in the public’s interest,” he said. “I’d say to all the journalists at the ABC and all the journalists across Australia, don’t be afraid of the job you do.”

 

https://consortiumnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/2LYONSscreenshot-twitter.com-2019.06.05-07-01-02-700x194.png

 

Marcus Strom, president of Australia’s journalists’ union, the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance, called the raid  “disturbing.”

“It should chill the public as well as journalists,” he said.”These raids are all about intimidating journalists and intimidating whistle blowers so that mistakes made by the Government, including potential crimes, by the military, remain covered up, remain secret, and don’t fall in to the public domain.”

 

Political Editor’s Home Raided

On Tuesday morning in an unrelated case, Canberra police entered the home of the political editor of the Murdoch-owned Daily Telegraph.  “Journalist Annika Smethurst opened her front door to find seven AFP officers waiting for her. All because she dared to do her job and keep the nation informed on what its government was doing,” the Telegraph said in an editorial.

Ironically, the Smethhurst article in April 2018 that raised the ire of the government “revealed the departments of Defence and Home Affairs were considering new powers allowing Australians to be monitored for the first time,” The  Telegraph reported. “Her original article included images of top secret letters between Home Affairs Secretary Mike Pezzullo and Defence Secretary Greg Moriarty.”

 

French Journalists Arrested 

Assange was arrested in London on April 11. Police in Paris arrested two journalists who were covering Yellow Vest protests on April 20.  One of the journalists, Alexis Kraland, said he was taken into custody after refusing to be searched and to turn his camera over to police at Gare du Nord train station. The largest journalism union in France demanded an explanation from police.

 

https://consortiumnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/PARISscreenshot-www.euronews.com-2019.06.05-06-44-46-700x486.png

 

SF Police Raid Journalists’ Home

And on May 10 in San Francisco, police using sledgehammers to break down the door, raided the home of Bryan Carmody, a freelance journalist, to get him, while handcuffed, to reveal the source who leaked him a police report into the sudden death of the city’s elected public defender. Police took away computers, cameras, mobile phones and notes.

San Francisco Police Chief William Scott said initially that Carmody had “crossed a line” with his report.  After a public outcry and demands that Scott resign, the police chief issued an apology.

 Fears Justified

 +

‘He needs his story told’: Inmate releases pictures

of visibly skeletal Assange inside jail

https://www.rt.com/uk/461215-assange-pictures-belmarsh-prison/

 

A fellow inmate of Julian Assange has released photos showing the WikiLeaks co-founder having lost considerable weight while inside Belmarsh prison, claiming that he wants “people to know why exactly the USA wants him.”

The Gateway Pundit, an American far-right news outlet, claims to have obtained the images and testimony of an inmate who resides in Belmarsh maximum security prison. The prisoner, who reportedly wishes to remain anonymous, says he used a contraband phone to take pictures of Assange.

I want his case to be understood fully, in detail… I want people to know why exactly the USA wants him and what good he has done for the world.

+

Exclusive: First Video of Julian Assange in Belmarsh Prison

https://www.rt.com/news/461329-assange-video-belmarsh-prison/

+

"Matt Taibbi- Assange's Indictment is TERRIFYING!

Would Criminalise National Security Reporting"

https://youtu.be/1QcG8_yzeM0

 

===========

 

e.

News Analysis & Culture & Media

Chomsky and Herman’s Propaganda Model Foretells

a Weaponized Facebook

Noam Chomsky speaks while seated at a desk

In an online world of commodified speech, perceptions and opinion are easily weaponized.Brill / Ullstein bild via Getty Images

https://truthout.org/articles/chomsky-and-hermans-propaganda-model-foretells-a-weaponized-facebook/

by Daniel Broudy and Jeffery Klaehn

 

 

The personal is now public. Consider Facebook. As the global leader in platforming interpersonal interactions with public discourse across boundaries, Facebook enjoys a virtual monopoly in reflecting power.

Facebook’s massive global reach gives the platform immense influence to shape public perception, awareness and opinion. Notably, one of the platform’s creators, Chamath Palihapitiya, did admit that the team “knew something bad could happen,” having “created tools that are literally ripping apart the social fabric of how society works.” Still, public awareness of this subterfuge has changed nothing.

The relevance of mediated social reality to everyday life has, for much of the industrialized world, never been as pronounced. Information technology and social media exist within political-economic contexts wherein ideas and information are routinely commodified for marketplaces. In 2001, researcher and author Edwin Black meticulously laid out the case of how publicly traded companies can (literally and figuratively) make a killing out of acquiring and managing private information for use in particular markets.

+

Society Is In Decay–When the Worst Is First and the Best Is Last

The monetary imbalance is especially jarring when it comes to hawks who beat the drums of war. (Photo: Gillam/ Mayer Merkel & Ottmann lithograph, NY, 1883)

The monetary imbalance is especially jarring when it comes to hawks who beat the drums of war. (Photo: Gillam/ Mayer Merkel & Ottmann lithograph, NY, 1883)

https://www.commondreams.org/views/2019/05/30/society-decay-when-worst-first-and-best-last

by Ralph Nader

 

If you want to see where a country’s priorities lie, look at how it allocates its money

Plutocrats like to control the range of permissible public dialogue. Plutocrats also like to shape what society values. If you want to see where a country’s priorities lie, look at how it allocates its money. While teachers and nurses earn comparatively little for performing critical jobs, corporate bosses including those who pollute our planet and bankrupt defenseless families, make millions more. Wells Fargo executives are cases in point. The vastly overpaid CEO of General Electric left his teetering company in shambles. In 2019, Boeing’s CEO got a bonus (despite the Lion Air Flight 610 737 Max 8 crash in 2018). Just days before a second deadly 737 Max 8 crash in Ethiopia.

This disparity is on full display in my profession. Public interest lawyers and public defenders, who fight daily for a more just and lawful society, are paid modest salaries. On the other hand, the most well compensated lawyers are corporate lawyers who regularly aid and abet corporate crime, fraud, and abuse. Many corporate lawyers line their pockets by shielding the powerful violators from accountability under the rule of law.

Physicians who minister to the needy poor and go to the risky regions, where Ebola or other deadly infectious diseases are prevalent, are paid far less than cosmetic surgeons catering to human vanities. Does any rational observer believe that the best movies and books are also the most rewarded? Too often the opposite is true. Stunningly gripping documentaries earn less than 1 percent of what is garnered by the violent, pornographic, and crude movies at the top of the ratings each week.

+

The US Army Asked Twitter How Service Has Impacted People. The Answers Were Gut-Wrenching

https://www.globalresearch.ca/us-army-asked-twitter-how-service-has-impacted-people-answers-were-gut-wrenching/5678659

by Caitlin Johnstone

 

After posting a video of a young recruit talking to the camera about how service allows him to better himself “as a man and a warrior”, the US Army tweeted, “How has serving impacted you?”

As of this writing, the post has over 5,300 responses. Most of them are heartbreaking.

“My daughter was raped while in the army,” said one responder. “They took her to the hospital where an all male staff tried to convince her to give the guy a break because it would ruin his life. She persisted. Wouldn’t back down. Did a tour in Iraq. Now suffers from PTSD.”

“I’ve had the same nightmare almost every night for the past 15 years,” said another.

Tweet after tweet after tweet, people used the opportunity that the Army had inadvertently given them to describe how they or their loved one had been chewed up and spit out by a war machine that never cared about them. This article exists solely to document a few of the things that have been posted in that space, partly to help spread public awareness and partly in case the thread gets deleted in the interests of “national security”. Here’s a sampling in no particular order:

“Someone I loved joined right out of high school even though I begged him not to. Few months after his deployment ended, we reconnected. One night, he told me he loved me and then shot himself in the head. If you’re gonna prey on kids for imperialism, at least treat their PTSD.”

~

“After I came back from overseas I couldn’t go into large crowds without a few beers in me. I have nerve damage in my right ear that since I didn’t want to look weak after I came back I lied to the VA rep. My dad was exposed to agent orange which destroyed his lungs, heart, liver and pancreas and eventually killing him five years ago. He was 49, exposed at a post not Vietnam, and will never meet my daughter my nephew. I still drink to much and I crowds are ok most days but I have to grocery shop at night and can’t work days because there is to many ppl.”

~

“The dad of my best friend when I was in high school had served in the army. He struggled with untreated PTSD & severe depression for 30 years, never told his family. Christmas eve of 2010, he went to their shed to grab the presents & shot himself in the head. That was the first funeral I attended where I was actually told the cause of death & the reasons surrounding it. I went home from the service, did some asking around, & found that most of the funerals I’ve attended before have been caused by untreated health issues from serving.”

~

“My dad was drafted into war and was exposed to agent orange. I was born w multiple physical/neurological disabilities that are linked back to that chemical. And my dad became an alcoholic with ptsd and a side of bipolar disorder.”

~

“i met this guy named christian who served in iraq. he was cool, had his own place with a pole in the living room. always had lit parties. my best friend at the time started dating him so we spent a weekend at his crib. after a party, 6am, he took out his laptop. he started showing us some pics of his time in the army. pics with a bunch of dudes. smiling, laughing. it was cool. i was drunk and didn’t care. he started showing us pics of some little kids. after a while, his eyes went completely fucking dark. i was like man, dude’s high af. he very calmly explained to us that all of those kids were dead ‘but that’s what war was. dead kids and nothing to show for it but a military discount’. christian killed himself 2 months later.”

~

“I didn’t serve but my dad did. In Vietnam. It eventually killed him, slowly, over a couple of decades. When the doctors were trying to put in a pacemaker to maybe extend his life a couple of years, his organs were so fucked from the Agent Orange, they disintegrated to the touch. He died when I was ten. He never saw me graduate high school. He never saw me get my first job or buy my first car. He wasn’t there. But hey! Y’all finally paid out 30k after another vet took the VA to the Supreme Court, so. You know. It was cool for him.”

~

“Chronic pain with a 0% disability rating (despite medical discharge) so no benefits, and anger issues that I cope with by picking fistfights with strangers.”

~

“My parents both served in the US Army and what they got was PTSD for both of them along with anxiety issues. Whenever we go out in public and sit down somewhere my dad has to have his back up against the wall just to feel a measure of comfort that no one is going to sneak up on him and kill him and and walking up behind either of them without announcing that you’re there is most likely going to either get you punch in the face or choked out.”

~

“Many of my friends served. All are on heavy antidepressant/anxiety meds, can’t make it through 4th of July or NYE, and have all dealt with heavy substance abuse problems before and after discharge. And that’s on top of one crippled left hand, crushed vertebra, and GSWs.”

“Left my talented and young brother a broken and disabled man who barely leaves the house. Left my mother hypervigilant & terrified due to the amount of sexual assault & rape covered up and looked over by COs. Friend joined right out if HS, bullet left him paralyzed neck down.”

~

“My cousin went to war twice and came back with a drug addiction that killed him. My other cousin could never get paid on time and when he left they tried to withhold his pay.”

 

===========

 

f.

“Plutocracy V: Subterranean Fire”
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/51722.htm
(1h58min)

The May 2019 documentary from Metanoia Films

by Kim Petersen

 

“Plutocracy V: Subterranean Fire,” written and directed by Scott Noble, continues the run of quality documentaries by Metanoia Films.

The film provides the historical context that allows the viewer to understand why inequality reigns while social justice and peace lag today. The, at first blink, curious title stems from a quotation by the American labor leader August Spies, who was one of four anarchists hanged in 1887 after being found guilty in the bomb explosion that wounded and killed several policemen and civilians in what became known as the Haymarket affair.

Said Spies to the court:

But, if you think that by hanging us you can stamp out the labor movement—the movement from which the downtrodden millions, the millions who toil and live in want and misery, the wage slaves, expect salvation—if this is your opinion, then hang us!

Here you will tread upon a spark, but here, and there, and behind you, and in front of you, and everywhere, flames will blaze up.

It is a subterranean fire.

Subterranean Fire documents historically how the capitalist class have nefariously accumulated wealth and power for selfish purposes by depriving working people of dignity and rights.

Subterranean Fire details at the outset how strike actions and popular revolts were put down by corporations through their cronies, including police, private detectives, vigilantes, and even the National Guard. In the Homestead strike of 1892, after workers had defeated the Pinkerton agency’s private army, the National Guard was brought out.

According to data cited in the film, in 1929, 60 percent of the population lived well below the poverty line. Despite large increases in productivity, there was no trickle down of profits. Neither was there a social safety net.

Labor historian Peter Rachleff tells how organizations like the Red Cross and Salvation Army were enmeshed in the capitalist pattern, categorizing the poor into deserving and undeserving of assistance based on what their “interrogations” uncovered about one’s life style. The unemployed were often blamed for being without employment.

 

===========

g.

Israel's Role In 9/11

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/israel-911.JPG

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/51715.htm

by Philip Giraldi


FBI evidence supports prior knowledge or complicity

The tale of 9/11 will just not go away, largely because it is clear to anyone who reads the lengthy 9/11 Commission Report that many issues that should have been subject to inquiry were ignored for what would appear to be political reasons. The George W. Bush Administration quite obviously did not want to assume any blame for what had happened and that bias also extended to providing cover for U.S. “allies,” most particularly Saudi Arabia and Israel. Those who have sought the truth about 9/11 have been persistent in their attempts to find out information that was suppressed but they have been blocked repeatedly in spite of numerous FOIA requests.

Now, eighteen years after the event, there has been something like a breakthrough, penetrating the wall of silence erected by the government. FBI reports on the possible Israeli role in 9/11 were released on May 7th and they serve to support speculation by myself and other former intelligence officers that Israel, at a minimum, had detailed prior knowledge of what was to take place. More than that, Israeli intelligence officers working in the United States might well have enabled certain aspects of the conspiracy.

To recount some of what is already known and suspected, one should first examine the 2016 release of a heavily edited and redacted 28 pages long annex to the 9/11 Commission Report that explored the Saudi Arabian role in the terrorist attack . The section concluded that the Saudi government may have played a direct role in 9/11 by assisting two of the hijackers, including a dry run exercise intended to learn how to get into a plane’s cockpit. There was also considerable evidence suggesting that wealthy Saudis and even members of the Royal Family had been supporting and funding al-Qaeda.

But far exceeding the Saudi role is the involvement of the Israeli intelligence service Mossad, which was not subject to any serious inquiry or investigation by U.S. intelligence or police agencies. Israel, in spite of obvious involvement in 9/11, was not included in the 9/11 Commission Report despite the existence of an enormous Israeli intelligence operation freely working in the United States that was known to the FBI. Some of those Mossad officers were notably filmed celebrating as the Twin Towers were burning and collapsing.

In the year 2001 Israel was running a massive spying operation through a number of cover companies in New Jersey, Florida and also on the west coast that served as spying mechanisms for Mossad officers. The effort was supported by the Mossad Station in Washington D.C. and included a large number of volunteers, the so-called “art students” who traveled around the U.S. selling various products at malls and outdoor markets. The FBI was aware of the numerous Israeli students who were routinely overstaying their visas and some in the Bureau certainly believed that they were assisting their country’s intelligence service in some way, but it proved difficult to actually link the students to undercover operations, so they were regarded as a minor nuisance and were normally left to the tender mercies of the inspectors at the Bureau of Customs and Immigration.

American law enforcement was also painfully aware that the Israelis were running more sophisticated intelligence operations inside the United States, many of which were focused on Washington’s military capabilities and intentions. Some specialized intelligence units concentrated on obtaining military and dual use technology. It was also known that Israeli spies had penetrated the phone systems of the U.S. government, to include those at the White House.

In its annual classified counterespionage review, the FBI invariably places Israel at the top for “friendly” countries that spy on the U.S. In fact, the pre-9/11 Bureau did its best to stay on top of the problem, but it rarely received any political support from the Justice Department and White House if an espionage case involved Israelis. By one estimate, more than 100 such cases were not prosecuted for political reasons. Any Israeli caught in flagrante would most often be quietly deported and most Americans who were helping Israel were let off with a slap on the wrist.

But the hands-off attitude towards Israel shifted dramatically when, on September 11, 2001, a New Jersey housewife saw something from the window of her apartment building, which overlooked the World Trade Center. She watched as the buildings burned and crumbled but also noted something strange. Three young men were kneeling on the roof of a white transit van parked by the water’s edge, making a movie in which they featured themselves high fiving and laughing in front of the catastrophic scene unfolding behind them. The woman wrote down the license plate number of the van and called the police, who responded quickly and soon both the local force and the FBI began looking for the vehicle, which was subsequently seen by other witnesses in various locations along the New Jersey waterfront, its occupants “celebrating and filming.”

The license plate number revealed that the van belonged to a New Jersey registered company called Urban Moving Systems. At 4 p.m. the vehicle was spotted and pulled over. Five men between the ages of 22 and 27 years old emerged and were detained at gunpoint and handcuffed. They were all Israelis. One of them had $4,700 in cash hidden in his sock and another had two foreign passports. Bomb sniffing dogs reacted to the smell of explosives in the van, which had very little actual moving equipment inside.

According to the initial police report, the driver identified as Sivan Kurzberg, stated “We are Israeli. We are not your problem. Your problems are our problems. The Palestinians are the problem.” The four other passengers were Sivan’s brother Paul, Yaron Shmuel, Oded Ellner and Omer Marmari. The men were detained at the Bergen County jail in New Jersey before being transferred the FBI’s Foreign Counterintelligence Section, which handles allegations of spying.

After the arrest, the FBI obtained a warrant to search Urban Moving System’s Weehawken, N.J., offices. Papers and computers were seized. The company owner Dominick Suter, also an Israeli, answered FBI questions but when a follow-up interview was set up a few days later it was learned that he had fled the country for Israel, putting both his business and home up for sale. The office space and warehouse were abandoned. It was later learned that Suter has been associated with at least fourteen businesses in the United States, mostly in New Jersey and New York but also in Florida. Suter and his wife Omit Levinson Suter were the owners of 1 Stop Cleaner located in Wellington Florida and Dominick was also associated with Basia McDonnell, described as a Polish “holocaust survivor,” as a business partner in yet another business called Value Ad. Florida was a main focus for the Israeli intelligence operation in the U.S. that was directed against Arabs.

The five Israelis were among 140 Israelis arrested after 9/11, most of whom had military backgrounds, including some who were trained in “intelligence.” The five were held in Brooklyn, initially on charges relating to visa fraud. FBI interrogators questioned them for more than two months. Several were held in solitary confinement so they could not communicate with each other and two of them were given repeated polygraph exams, which they failed when claiming that they were nothing more than students working summer jobs. The two men that the FBI focused on most intensively were believed to be Mossad staff officers and the other three were volunteers helping with surveillance.

The Israelis were not exactly cooperative, but the FBI concluded from documents obtained at their office in Weehawken that they were targeting Arabs in New York and New Jersey, most particularly in the Paterson N.J. area, which has the second largest Muslim population in the U.S. They were particularly interested in local groups possibly linked to Hamas and Hezbollah as well as in charities that might be used for fund raising. The FBI also concluded that the Israelis had actually monitored the activities of at least two of the 9/11 hijackers.

To be sure, working on an intelligence operation does not necessarily imply participation in either the planning or execution of something like 9/11, but there are Israeli fingerprints all over the place, with cover companies and intelligence personnel often intersecting with locations frequented by the hijackers.

+

Leaked Snowden Docs Reveal Israel Relied on NSA Intel to Target Hezbollah

https://sputniknews.com/analysis/201906041075597790-leaked-snowden-docs-nsa-intel-target-hezbollah/

 

 

Newly released documents from the Snowden archives reveal that Israel greatly relied on intelligence from the US’ National Security Agency (NSA) in its 2006 war in Lebanon, a move which may be the tip of the iceberg when it comes to intelligence sharing between the US and other countries, Bill Binney, a former NSA technical director, told Sputnik.

"I'll be surprised if there wasn't a lot more going on," Binney, who became a legendary national security whistleblower, told Loud & Clear hosts John Kiriakou and Brian Becker.

"From my perspective, when I was there… We were developing certain software inside NSA, and that was to deal with the new digital environment. Starting in 1997, maybe 1996, someone at the NSA was covertly, under the table, sharing our software development with Unit 8200 [an Israeli Intelligence Corps Unit also known as the Israeli SIGINT National Unit or ISNU]; that is the Israeli equivalent of NSA. They were doing it under the table," Binney, a 36-year NSA veteran, told Sputnik.

​Binney, who was technical director of World Geopolitical & Military Analysis at the Signals Intelligence Automation Research Center (SARC) at the NSA's headquarters, resigned in 2001, after discovering that an intelligence-gathering program he helped build, dubbed ThinThread, was being used to spy on US citizens.

Six years since former NSA contractor Edward Snowden revealed the US government's questionable intelligence collection efforts, leaked documents from Snowden's cache reveal that the ISNU made repeated requests to the NSA for locational information on Hezbollah operatives to target for assassination.

One leaked document, written by an unidentified NSA official based in Tel Aviv, Israel, states, "ISNU's reliance on NSA was equally demanding and centered on requests for time-sensitive tasking, threat warning, including tactical ELINT [electronic intelligence] and receipt of geolocational information on Hizballah elements." The document was originally published in 2006 in the NSA's internal newsletter, SIDToday.

 

===========

 

h.

Trump officials approved Saudi nuclear permits after Khashoggi murder

Trump and the Saudi crown prince in March last year. Trump has ignored findings that Prince Mohammed almost certainly ordered Khashoggi’s killing.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jun/04/trump-saudi-arabia-nuclear-jamal-khashoggi-murder

by Julian Borger

 

Donald Trump and the Saudi crown prince in March last year. Trump has ignored findings that Prince Mohammed almost certainly ordered Khashoggi’s killing. Photograph: Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images

The Trump administration twice approved licenses for the export of nuclear technology to Saudi Arabia after the murder of the Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi, it emerged on Tuesday.

In response to repeated requests, the US Department of Energy informed the Senate on Tuesday that, of a total of seven permits for nuclear technical expertise transfers to Riyadh, one was approved on 18 October last year – 16 days after Khashoggi’s murder and dismemberment in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. The most recent approval was dated 18 February this year.

The Democratic senator Tim Kaine said: “I have serious questions about whether any decisions on nuclear transfers were made based on the Trump family’s financial ties rather than the interests of the American people.”

Trump and his secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, have ignored US intelligence findings that the Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, almost certainly ordered the killing of Khashoggi. Trump and Pompeo have continued to treat the crown prince as a close ally.

The administration refused to comply with a congressional demand that it reach a determination about the Saudi government’s responsibility for the murder of the Saudi dissident who had been a US resident before he was killed. It also bypassed Congress to approve “emergency” sales of arms to Saudi Arabia.

Senator Kaine said in a written statement: “Trump’s eagerness to give the Saudis anything they want, over bipartisan congressional objection, harms American national security interests and is one of many steps the administration is taking that is fueling a dangerous escalation of tension in the region.”

+

Saudi Arabia buying new missile technology from China: Report

Image result for china and  saudi arabia

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/06/saudi-buying-ballistic-missile-technology-china-report-190606054204929.html

+

China-Russia Partnership Threatens US Global Hegemony

Image result for russia-china partenership

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nHiKkSTqg9I&feature=youtu.be

with Larry Wilkerson

 

The U.S. expected China to integrate into global capitalism as a subordinate power, but recent deals with Russia show China is moving towards equality in economic and military power.

 

===========

 

i.

Dozens of French police FACE TRIAL for injuring Yellow Vest protestors angry at Macron

https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/1134670/macron-news-france-yellow-vest-protests-police-trail-injuries

by Romina McGuinness

 

MORE than 100 French riot police officers will face trial for seriously injuring anti-government yellow vest protesters, according to Paris public prosecutor Remy Heitz.

Earlier this year, the UN’s human rights chief accused police of using “excessive force” against demonstrators, whom she said were denouncing their “exclusion from economic rights”. In an interview with the French daily Le Parisien published on Friday, Mr Heitz said that 174 investigations linked to alleged brutality by security forces have been launched in Paris. “Police officers will be sent before a criminal court between now and the end of the year,” he continued, without giving an exact number. He said: “The cases are mainly those in which the injuries were the most serious, with permanent disabilities, for example, most of which date from the first demonstrations in November and December.”

+

Sorry, Emmanuel! Macron's desperate U-turn WON'T

end Yellow Vest chaos, warns think tank

https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/1121010/France-news-Emmanuel-Macron-reform-Yellow-Vest-protest-latest-news

by Joe Barnes

 

EMMANUEL Macron’s sweeping reforms will not end the violent ‘Yellow Vest’ protests across France, a leading think tank has claimed.

The French President’s premiership has been marred by the anti-establishment movement for the last six months. He announced a series of tax cuts worth around £4.3 billion in order to bring an end to the violent rebellion.  He also promised that workers’ bonuses will be untaxed up until £859, extra help for single parents and a pledge not to close any schools or hospitals until at least 2020.

But this has done nothing to end the opposition against Mr Macron’s leadership.

Pieter Cleppe, of the think-tank Open Europe, said: “It’s unlikely that Macron's measures will lead to an end to the Yellow Vests movement. One poll indicated that 61 percent of French do not think these measures constitute a big change in policy.”

But Mr Cleppe predicts that the Paris plan could result in infuriating those around Europe, who have been told to keep spending under control.

***

Related articles:

https://cdn.images.express.co.uk/img/dynamic/78/285x190/1119854_1.jpg

Yellow vest protesters STORM EU HEADQUARTERS in Strasbourg

 

https://cdn.images.express.co.uk/img/dynamic/78/285x190/1120951_1.jpg

EU CIVIL WAR: Emmanuel Macron’s finance measures spark COLLISION

 

===========

 

j.

Black Agenda Report

Letters from Our Readers

https://blackagendareport.com/letters-our-readers-30

+

This is  Hell:

On Class in Black politics

https://blackagendareport.com/class-black-politics

by Cedric Johnson

(audio)

 

===========

 

 

k.

George Galloway Fired From talkRADIO

After alleged 'Anti-Semitic' Tweet
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/51726.htm
Watch
(12min)


Former Labour MP and radio broadcaster has been fired from talkRADIO after being accused of anti-semitism in a tweet following the Liverpool v Tottenham Hotspur Champions League final. George Galloway and Lord Alan Sugar join GMB as they discuss the tweet in question.

+

More Police Raids As War On Journalism Escalates Worldwide

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/julian-montage.JPG

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/51724.htm

by Caitlin Johnstone

 

The Australian Federal Police have conducted two raids on journalists and seized documents in purportedly unrelated incidents in the span of just two days.

Yesterday the AFP raided the home of News Corp Australia journalist Annika Smethurst, seeking information related to her investigative report last year which exposed the fact that the Australian government has been discussing the possibility of giving itself unprecedented powers to spy on its own citizens. Today they raided the Sydney headquarters of the Australian Broadcasting Corp, seizing information related to a 2017 investigative report on possible war crimes committed by Australian forces in Afghanistan.

In a third, also ostensibly unrelated incident, another Australian reporter disclosed yesterday that the Department of Home Affairs has initiated an investigation of his reporting on a story about asylum seeker boats which could lead to an AFP criminal case, saying he’s being pressured to disclose his source.

AFP: I’m still staggered by the power of this warrant. It allows the AFP to “add, copy, delete or alter” material in the ABC’s computers. All Australians, please think about that: as of this moment, the AFP has the power to delete material in the ABC’s computers. Australia 2019.

— John Lyons (@TheLyonsDen) June 5, 2019

“Why has AFP suddenly decided to carry out these two raids after the election?” tweeted Australian Sky News political editor David Speers during the Sydney raid. “Did new evidence really just emerge in both the Annika Smethurst and ABC stories?!”

Why indeed?

“If these raids unconnected, as AFP reportedly said, it’s an extraordinary coincidence,” tweeted The Conversation chief political correspondent Michelle Grattan. “AFP needs to explain ASAP the timing so long after the stories. It can’t be that inefficient! Must be some explanation – which makes the ‘unconnected’ claim even more odd.”

+

The Murdering of Julian Assange

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/hands-off-assanage.JPG

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/51721.htm

by Peter Koenig

 

Julian Assange is being slowly murdered by “Her Majesty’s Prison Service” at Belmarsh prison in the south-east of London.

The prison is notorious for holding people who have never been charged with a crime indefinitely. It is also called the British version of Guantanamo, and, typically used to detain so-called terrorists, thus called by the British police and secret service and aped by the British MSM and establishment. Terrorists that become terrorists by continuous and repeated accusations, by media propaganda, but not necessarily by fact.

Remember, if a lie is repeated often enough it becomes the truth in the minds of the braindead listeners. Its indoctrination of the public to demonize somebody or a group of people, or a country, who could become dangerous for the empire’s vicious and criminal endeavors. That’s what they are doing with Julian Assange. Exactly the same principle is applied, though on a different scale, against President Putin and against Russia and China. And it seems to work in a brainwashed-to-the-core, western society, ran by their spineless European US-vassalic leadership.

Yes, what is happening to Julian Assange could happen to any journalist who reveals the inconvenient truth about the empire and its minions’ criminal machinations, any journalist – or non-journalist, whistleblower, for that matter – anyone who dares standing up to the AngloZionist atrocities may end up in Guantanamo or Belmarsh which is considered a Type A prison for adult men, meaning, a “serious” prison, where “dangerous” detainees are held for as long as Her Majesty’s Prison Service considers necessary, and prisoners treatments are held secret and include torture.

+

Swedish Court Injects Some Sense into the Assange Case

https://consortiumnews.com/2019/06/06/swedish-court-injects-some-sense-into-the-assange-case/

by Craig Murray

 

Eight years late, the request for a European Arrest Warrant for Assange was finally put to the appropriate authority.

+

Chelsea Manning’s Resistance Is Aimed At Abolishing The Grand Jury Once And For All

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/chelsey-grand-jury.JPG

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/51723.htm

by Kevin Gosztola

 

When Judge Anthony Trenga ordered Chelsea Manning back to jail for refusing to testify before the grand jury investigating WikiLeaks, he urged her to “reflect on the principles she says she’s embracing” as well as “whether those views are worth the price she’s paying for them.”

Trenga maintained there was “no dishonor” in cooperating with a grand jury because the United States Constitution codified the grand jury.

Manning took Trenga’s admonishment seriously and responded with a letter containing research she did with the help of her attorneys. It presented her position on the grand jury in a very clear and compelling manner.

In doing so, Manning further demonstrated her resistance is about much more than defying an investigation into a dissident media organization. It is about publicly discrediting the institution and all its corruption once and for all.

Manning, who is in jail at the William G. Truesdale Adult Detention Center in Alexandria, Virginia, was held in civil contempt of court on May 16.

The federal court not only sent her back to jail but also imposed a fine of $500 per day after 30 days and a fine of $1000 per day after 60 days if she continues her resistance.

If Manning “persists in her refusal” for the next 16 months, according to her legal team, she will face a total amount of fines that is over $440,000. Both jail and fines may violate her Eighth Amendment rights under the Constitution, especially since these sanctions are supposed to be coercive, not punitive.

In her letter [PDF], Manning contended the modern grand jury barely resemble the grand jury, which the framers enshrined in the Constitution. She acknowledges much of her opposition comes from their use against activists but also makes it clear she believes the institution generally undermines due process for all citizens.

 

===========

 

 

l.

The Pentagon’s Spoiling for Another War, Just Not With Iran

The Pentagon’s Spoiling for Another War, Just Not With Iran

The Pentagon, headquarters of the Department of Defense. (Master Sgt. Ken Hammond / U.S. Air Force / Wikimedia Commons)

https://www.truthdig.com/articles/the-pentagons-spoiling-for-another-war-just-not-with-iran/

by Michael T. Klare / TomDispatch

The recent White House decision to speed the deployment of an aircraft carrier battle group and other military assets to the Persian Gulf has led many in Washington and elsewhere to assume that the U.S. is gearing up for war with Iran. As in the lead-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, U.S. officials have cited suspect intelligence data to justify elaborate war preparations. On May 13th, acting Secretary of Defense Patrick Shanahan even presented top White House officials with plans to send as many as 120,000 troops to the Middle East for possible future combat with Iran and its proxies. Later reports indicated that the Pentagon might be making plans to send even more soldiers than that.

Hawks in the White House, led by National Security Advisor John Bolton, see a war aimed at eliminating Iran’s clerical leadership as a potentially big win for Washington. Many top officials in the U.S. military, however, see the matter quite differently — as potentially a giant step backward into exactly the kind of low-tech ground war they’ve been unsuccessfully enmeshed in across the Greater Middle East and northern Africa for years and would prefer to leave behind.

Make no mistake: if President Trump ordered the U.S. military to attack Iran, it would do so and, were that to happen, there can be little doubt about the ultimate negative outcome for Iran. Its moth-eaten military machine is simply no match for the American one. Almost 18 years after Washington’s war on terror was launched, however, there can be little doubt that any U.S. assault on Iran would also stir up yet more chaos across the region, displace more people, create more refugees, and leave behind more dead civilians, more ruined cities and infrastructure, and more angry souls ready to join the next terror group to pop up. It would surely lead to another quagmire set of ongoing conflicts for American soldiers. Think: Iraq and Afghanistan, exactly the type of no-win scenarios that many top Pentagon officials now seek to flee. But don’t chalk such feelings up only to a reluctance to get bogged down in yet one more war-on-terror quagmire. These days, the Pentagon is also increasingly obsessed with preparations for another type of war in another locale entirely: a high-intensity conflict with China, possibly in the South China Sea.

After years of slogging it out with guerrillas and jihadists across the Greater Middle East, the U.S. military is increasingly keen on preparing to combat “peer” competitors China and Russia, countries that pose what’s called a “multi-domain” challenge to the United States. This new outlook is only bolstered by a belief that America’s never-ending war on terror has severely depleted its military, something obvious to both Chinese and Russian leaders who have taken advantage of Washington’s extended preoccupation with counterterrorism to modernize their forces and equip them with advanced weaponry.

 

===========

m.

How US "good guys" wiped out an Afghan family

https://assets2.thebureauinvestigates.com/uploads/_headerMedium/Masihs-children-collage-landscape.jpg?mtime=20190530111320https://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/stories/2019-06-03/us-bomb-kills-afghan-family

 

It was 4am when Masih Ur-Rahman Mubarez’s wife Amina called, an unusually early time for their daily chat. When he picked up the phone, he could hear the panic in her voice.

Amina was calling from the Afghan province of Wardak, where she brought up their children while he worked over the border in Iran to support them. She told him that soldiers were raiding their village. Some of them were speaking English. Amina was told to turn off her phone but Masih asked her not to - how would he know they were ok?

The call ended with Masih saying he would call again when things had calmed. But at 9am, when he dialled his wife’s number, her phone was off. He tried again at 9.30am. Still off. Through the whole of that day and the next, he repeatedly called. But Amina’s phone remained off.

It took another day for him to the learn the truth. Relatives avoided his calls or gave vague replies to his questions, until finally his brother broke the news. “He tried to avoid telling me the whole story, but I insisted that he tell me the truth,” Masih recalled in a wavering voice. “He told me to have patience in God - no one is left.”

An airstrike on Masih’s house had killed his wife and all his seven children, alongside four young cousins. His youngest child was just four years old.

In the following weeks, as grief consumed Masih, so did an intense need for answers. Who had killed his family and why?

His journey to find out would last more than eight months, pit him against military and government officials, and see him face obfuscation and denials. It would lead him to work alongside the Bureau and journalists from The New York Times, putting together a puzzle piece by piece. Ultimately it would lead to one definitive conclusion - the US military had dropped the fatal bomb.

His story is one window into the struggles faced by families across Afghanistan every day. Airstrikes are raining down on the country, with US and Afghan operations now killing more civilians than the insurgency for the first time in a decade. But getting confirmation of who has carried out a fatal strike is often impossible. An apology, or any form of public accountability, is even harder to obtain.

The US denied repeatedly that it had bombed Masih’s house, or even that any airstrike in his area had taken place. But using satellite imagery, photos and open source content, we proved that denial false. Following our investigation, the military has now admitted that it did conduct a strike in that location, but it still denies it resulted in civilian deaths.

 

===========

 

n.

Is The U.S. State Department Funding Attacks On

Iranian Activists Abroad?

http://www.payvand.com/news/19/may/unholy-alliance-against-Iranian-activists-abroad.jpg

http://www.payvand.com/news/19/jun/1000.html

by Derek Davison

 

Considerable evidence emerged late this week connecting the U.S. State Department to a Twitter account that has engaged in online attacks against human rights organizations, Iranian-American activists, journalists, and others advocating against the escalation of tensions between the United States and Iran. The revelation is raising questions about whether the Trump administration is using federal funds to propagandize in favor of a potential Iran war.

 

===========

 

o.

Manufacturing War With Russia

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/51718.htm

by Chris Hedges

 

Despite the Robert Mueller report’s conclusion that Donald Trump and his campaign did not collude with Russia during the 2016 presidential race, the new Cold War with Moscow shows little sign of abating. It is used to justify the expansion of NATO to Russia’s borders, a move that has made billions in profits for U.S. arms manufacturers. It is used to demonize domestic critics and alternative media outlets as agents of a foreign power. It is used to paper over the Democratic Party’s betrayal of the working class and the party’s subservience to corporate power. It is used to discredit détente between the world’s two largest nuclear powers. It is used to justify both the curtailment of civil liberties in the United States and U.S. interventions overseas—including in countries such as Syria and Venezuela. This new Cold War predates the Trump presidential campaign. It was manufactured over a decade ago by a war industry and intelligence community that understood that, by fueling a conflict with Russia, they could consolidate their power and increase their profits. (Seventy percent of intelligence is carried out by private corporations such as Booz Allen Hamilton, which has been called the world’s most profitable spy operation.)

“This began long before Trump and ‘Russiagate,’ ” Stephen F. Cohen said when I interviewed him for my television show, “On Contact.” Cohen is professor emeritus of politics at Princeton University, where he was the director of the Russian studies program, and professor emeritus of Russian studies and history at New York University. “You have to ask yourself, why is it that Washington had no problem doing productive diplomacy with Soviet communist leaders. Remember Richard Nixon and Leonid Brezhnev? It was a love fest. They went hunting together [in the Soviet Union]. Yet along comes a post-Soviet leader, Vladimir Putin, who is not only not a communist but a professed anti-communist. Washington has been hating on him ever since 2003, 2004. It requires some explanation. Why do we like communist leaders in Russia better than we like Russia’s anti-communist leader? It’s a riddle.”

“If you’re trying to explain how the Washington establishment has dealt with Putin in a hateful and demonizing way, you have to go back to the 1990s before Putin,” said Cohen, whose new book is “War With Russia? From Putin & Ukraine to Trump & Russiagate.” The first post-Soviet leader is Boris Yeltsin. Clinton is president. And they have this fake, pseudo-partnership and friendship, whereas essentially the Clinton administration took advantage of the fact that Russia was in collapse. It almost lost its sovereignty. I lived there in the ’90s. Middle-class people lost their professions. Elderly people lost their pensions. I think it’s correct to say that industrial production fell more in the Russian 1990s than it did during our own Great Depression. It was the worst economic and social depression ever in peacetime. It was a catastrophe for Russia.”

In September 1993 Russians took to the streets to protest the collapse of the economy—the gross domestic product had fallen by 50% and the country was convulsed by hyperinflation—along with the rampant corruption that saw state enterprises sold for paltry fees to Russian oligarchs and foreign corporations in exchange for lavish kickbacks and bribes; food and fuel shortages; the nonpayment of wages and pensions; the lack of basic services, including medical services; falling life expectancy; the explosion of violent crime; and Yeltsin’s increasing authoritarianism and his unpopular war with Chechnya.

 

===========

 

p.

The State of the Economy

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/51730.htm

by Paul Craig Roberts

 

Dear Readers: We live in a Matrix of Lies in which our awareness is controlled by the explanations we are given.  The control exercised over our awareness is universal.  It applies to every aspect of our existence.  In the article below I show that not only is our understanding of the economy controlled by manipulation of our minds, but also the markets themselves are controlled by official intervention.

In brief, you can believe nothing that you are officially told.  If you desire truth, you must support the websites that are committed to truth. Donate and support Dr, Roberts Work

The story line is going out that the economic boom is weakening and the Federal Reserve has to get the printing press running again.  The Fed uses the money to purchase bonds, which drives up the prices of bonds and lowers the interest rate.  The theory is that the lower interest rate encourages consumer spending and business investment and that this increase in consumer and business spending results in more output and employment.

The Federal Reserve, European Central Bank, and Bank of England have been wedded to this policy for a decade, and the Japanese for longer, without stimulating business investment.  Rather than borrowing at low interest rates in order to invest more, corporations borrowed in order to buy back their stock.  In other words, some corporations after using all their profits to buy back their own stock went into debt in order to further reduce their market capitalization!

Far from stimulating business investment, the liquidity supplied by the Federal Reserve drove up stock and bond prices and spilled over into real estate.  The fact that corporations used their profits to buy back their shares rather than to invest in new capacity means that the corporations  did not experience a booming economy with good investment opportunities. It is a poor economy when the best investment for a company is to repurchase its own shares.

Consumers, devoid of real income growth, maintained their living standards by going deeper into debt.  This process was aided, for example, by stretching out car payments from three years to six and seven years, with the result that loan balances exceed the value of the vehicles.  Many households live on credit cards by paying the minimum amount, with the result that their indebtedness grows by the month. The Federal Reserve’s low interest rates are not reciprocated by the high credit card interest rate on outstanding balances.

Some European countries now have negative interest rates, which means that the bank does not pay you interest on your deposit, but charges you a fee for holding your money.  In other words, you are charged an interest rate for having money in a bank.  One reason for this is the belief of neoliberal economists that consumers would prefer to spend their money than to watch it gradually wither away and that the spending will drive the economy to higher growth.

 

+

 

From: "Save Net Neutrality" <info@demandprogress.org>
Sent: Thursday, June 6, 2019
Subject: UPDATE: Screwed by Verizon again

 

https://act.demandprogress.org/o.gif?akid=25580.2144949.OUUF8d

https://s3.amazonaws.com/demandprogress/images/demandprogress-logo-email.png

Dear Francis — On June 11, we're using the anniversary of the end of net neutrality to call out the Senate in a big way. We’re mobilizing to pass the Save the Internet Act, but we need your help. Will you donate today?


Dear Francis,

It's been nearly a year since the FCC's repeal of net neutrality went into effect, and the list of abuses by Big Cable is unbelievable:

  • Verizon slowed down a California fire department's data in the middle of the biggest wildfire in its history.1
  • CenturyLink blocked customers' internet access unless they viewed specific ads.2
  • Sprint interfered with Skype, possibly to push customers to its own service.3
  • Verizon, AT&T, and other big telecom companies slowed access to YouTube and Netflix.4

It can only get worse from here—unless we pass the Save the Internet Act and restore net neutrality protections. That's why we're helping launch a huge day of action on June 11, the anniversary of the end of net neutrality, to show just how the Big Telecom companies are holding our internet hostage.

Will you donate to help pass the Save the Internet Act?

Verizon, AT&T, Comcast, and the other Big Cable companies have made it extremely clear that they will not respect our rights online without strong net neutrality rules. That's why the House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed the Save the Internet Act.

Now Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is the #1 obstacle standing between the American people and net neutrality.

Net neutrality champion Rep. Anna Eshoo gave a speech Thursday urging the public to push the Senate to vote on the Save the Internet Act, saying that if it got to the floor, it would pass—which is why Sen. McConnell is blocking the vote.5

And Demand Progress is turning up the heat on Sen. McConnell in a big way. We're helping lead an effort with dozens of grassroots groups representing millions of people to call on the Senate to pass the Save the Internet Act. And we're planning a day of action on June 11, the one-year anniversary of the FCC's repeal going into effect, to gather the internet together to fight back against Big Telecom and Sen. McConnell.

We're mobilizing the net to overcome Mitch McConnell's effort to stop the Save the Internet Act. Will you donate to help get a vote on net neutrality in the Senate?

Thanks for standing with us.

Robert Cruickshank,
Demand Progress

DONATE

Sources:

1. Ars Technica, "Verizon throttled fire department’s 'unlimited' data during Calif. wildfire," August 21, 2018
2. Ars Technica, "CenturyLink blocked its customers’ Internet access in order to show an ad," December 17, 2018
3. Bloomberg, "Sprint Is Throttling Microsoft’s Skype Service, Study Finds," November 8, 2018
4. Bloomberg, "YouTube, Netflix Videos Found to Be Slowed by Wireless Carriers," September 4, 2018
5. The Daily Dot, "Congresswoman predicts Save the Internet Act will pass Senate," May 31, 2019

https://act.demandprogress.org/o.gif?akid=25580.2144949.OUUF8d

http://track.sp.actionkit.com/q/U5aIxxqrn7XZuatMcF8qKw~~/AAAAAQA~/RgRe2936PlcEd2F3ZEIKAB36WPlc5z8xmlIdZnJhbmNpcy5mZWVsZXlAdS1ncmVub2JsZTMuZnJYBAAAAIE~

 

===========

 

q.

From: "PM Press" <newsletter@pmpress.org>
To: "FRANCIS FEELEY" <francis.feeley@u-grenoble3.fr>
Sent: Wednesday, June 5, 2019 5:32:55 PM
Subject: NEW RELEASE: Anarchism, Anarchist Communism, and The State: Three Essays

 

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https://files.constantcontact.com/b52f97fa001/059cd648-e5e1-49ed-b723-f9bdf5ca9de5.jpg

$14.95 | 140 Pages

ISBN 9781629635750

 

Anarchism, Anarchist Communism, and The State: Three Essays

https://imgssl.constantcontact.com/letters/images/1101116784221/S.gif

 

By Peter Kropotkin

Introduction by Brian Morris

Bibliographic notes by Iain McKay

https://imgssl.constantcontact.com/letters/images/1101116784221/S.gif

 

Paperback $14.95 $7.48

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Save 50% with coupon code JUNE until 6/30

 

 

https://imgssl.constantcontact.com/letters/images/1101116784221/S.gif

 

Amid the clashes, complexities, and political personalities of world politics in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Peter Kropotkin stands out. Born a prince in Tsarist Russia and sent to Siberia to learn his militaristic, aristocratic trade, he instead renounced his titles and took up the “beautiful idea” of anarchism. Across a continent he would become known as a passionate advocate of a world without borders, without kings and bosses.



From a Russian cell to France, to London and Brighton, he used his extraordinary mind to dissect the birth of State power and then present a different vision, one in which the human impulse to liberty can be found throughout history, undying even in times of defeat. In the three essays presented here, Kropotkin attempted to distill his many insights into brief but brilliant essays on the state, anarchism, and the ideology for which he became a founding name—anarchist communism.

 

With a detailed and rich introduction from Brian Morris, and accompanied by bibliographic notes from Iain McKay, this collection contextualises and contemporises three of Kropotkin’s most influential essays.

 

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“In this collection of essays, Kropotkin excels in his grasp of the state, its dynamics, and the social relations out of which it emerges, dovetailed with his radical vision for libertarian egalitarian social change. Including an informative foreword by Brian Morris on the great anarchist’s colourful life, and Kropotkin’s own extended analysis of the origins of anarchism, the book goes to the core of what makes Kropotkin’s work so stimulating: he is peculiarly capable, through detailed historical accounts and discussions of his own times, of somehow speaking to our own contemporary dilemmas and challenges.”

—Anthony Ince, coeditor of Historical Geographies of Anarchism

 

“This is one of the most excellent introductions to anarchism, putting paid to the usual objections to the system, synonymous as it has become, wrongly, with disorganisation and chaos.”

Workers Solidarity

 

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Contributors

 

Author: Peter Kropotkin (1842–1921) was a Russian revolutionary and geographer as well as the foremost theorist of the anarchist movement. His classic works include The Conquest of BreadFields, Factories and WorkshopsMemoirs of a RevolutionistMutual Aid; and the essays contained in this collection: Anarchism, Anarchist Communism, and The State.

 

Introduction: Brian Morris, professor emeritus at Goldsmiths College, University of London, has written extensively in the fields of botany, ecology, ethnobiology, religion, history, philosophy, and anthropology. His many books include Kropotkin: The Politics of Community and Anthropology, Ecology, and Anarchism: A Brian Morris Reader.

 

Bibliographic notes: Iain McKay is an independent anarchist writer and researcher. He was the main author of An Anarchist FAQ as well as numerous other works, including Mutual Aid: An Introduction and Evaluation. In addition, he has edited and introduced Property Is Theft! A Pierre-Joseph Proudhon AnthologyDirect Struggle Against Capital: A Peter Kropotkin Anthology; and Kropotkin’s 1913 book Modern Science and Anarchy.

 

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Kropotkin: The Politics of Community

Author: Brain Morris

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This book reaffirms with an attitude of critical sympathy the contemporary relevance of Kropotkin as a political and moral philosopher and as a pioneering social ecologist.

 

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Anthropology, Ecology, and Anarchism: A Brian Morris Reader

Author: Brian Morris Introduction: Peter Marshall 

 

This work takes an interdisciplinary approach moving seamlessly among topics, offering up coherent and practical connections between various scholarly interests and his deeply held commitment to anarchist politics and thought.

 

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“We’re Left to Defend Ourselves on the Margins”: 8 Black Trans Women Have Been Murdered This Year

Seg4 ashlee chynal split

https://www.democracynow.org/2019/6/5/were_left_to_defend_ourselves_on

with Ashlee Marie Preston

 

The body of 26-year-old Chynal Lindsey was recovered Saturday from a lake in Northeast Dallas. Police said they are investigating her death as a homicide. Chynal is the third transgender black woman killed in Dallas since October, including the high-profile death of Muhlaysia Booker just two weeks ago. Another Dallas trans woman was stabbed multiple times in April but survived. Trans rights activists say the violence in Dallas is indicative of the larger threat to black transgender women. At least eight black trans women have been murdered in the U.S. this year. According to the Human Rights Campaign, at least 26 transgender murders were recorded last year, although it’s likely the actual number is higher; the majority of those were black transgender women. We speak with Ashlee Marie Preston, a media personality and civil rights activist. She made history as the first transgender editor-in-chief of a national publication—Wear Your Voice magazine—as well as the first openly trans person to run for state office in California. She says, “Our law enforcement are looking at black trans women as women who are breaking the law, instead of looking at the laws that are breaking black trans women.”

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The Handmaid’s Tale: On Self Defense

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https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/06/07/the-handmaids-tale-on-self-defense/

by Lana Habash

 

When we watch the main character June (Offred), a white woman suffering gender oppression in a totalitarian world where language has been restructured to vilify dissent (“heresy”), we understand why she stands up, why she fights, why she and other handmaids are willing to commit violence to be free. We see their humanity– their desire to maintain their dignity as human beings and we cheer them on when they fight. And we understand that because they have been stripped of every possible means to defend themselves– not allowed to have weapons, not allowed freedom of movement, not allowed to congregate freely, not allowed to express themselves, not even allowed to read– that they must use whatever is available to them to liberate themselves. They engage in all manner of daily resistance: whether it be non-cooperation, writing down their narratives, organizing with and supporting each other, and yes, fighting by any means necessary and available to them (in some cases with a car to run over a “Guardian,” in another a knife as in the case of Emily’s attack on Aunt Lydia or as a human bomb in the case of Lillie (Ofglen #2)). We don’t question the necessity of these actions because we know these women have to fight when the opportunity and the means present themselves. We marvel at their creativity and celebrate any moments of resistance that move them one step closer to freedom. But, ironically, this history is presented in the context of white nostalgia. Remember, the white women dream, when not too long ago, we were all free? The hypocrisy of these moments is not lost on black and brown people.

Imagine you are black and living in America with its genocidal legacy of slavery, lynching, mass incarceration, Cointelpro –a land where you can still be shot by a police officer, or another citizen for that matter, for nothing more than the color of your skin, or that you are an indigenous person whose land has been repeatedly stolen, a genocide committed against your people, your own children taken from your family and placed in schools where they are not allowed to speak or cultivate their own languages or traditions. Imagine you are living in Puerto Rico and you have had a sterilization program perpetrated against the women in your community as a means of colonial control.


 
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From: Jim O'Brien
Sent: Friday, June 7, 2019 10:13:06 PM
Subject: [H-PAD] H-PAD Notes, 6/7/19: AHA plans; links to recent articles of interest
http://lists.historiansforpeace.org/listinfo.cgi/h-pad-historiansforpeace.org

 

Note: Historians for Peace and Democracy (H-PAD) and the Radical History Review are planning a set of eleven affiliate sessions at the January 3-6 annual meeting of the American Historical Association in New York City. Click here for more information.

 

 

Links to Recent Articles of Interest:

 

"Here Comes the D-Day Myth Again"
By Kevin Kennedy, History News Network, posted June 6
On the way in which Western celebrations of D-Day ignore the far more important role of the Soviet Union in defeating Nazi Germany.The author is a German-American historian, lecturer, and writer who lives in Postdam, Germany. 

 

"The American Cult of Bombing and Endless War: Ten Tenets of Air Power That I Didn't Learn in the Air Force"
By William J. Astore, TomDispatch.com, posted June 4
The author is a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel who has taught history in military and civilian schools.

 

"Manifest Destinies: TheTangled History of American and Israeli Exceptionalism"
By Rashid Khalidi, The Nation, posted June 3 
A review-essay on Amy Kaplan's new book Our American Israel: The Story of an Entangled Alliance. The author teaches Arab Studies at Columbia University and is the author of a forrhcoming book, The Hundred Years' War on Palestine.

"A Black Feminist's Response to Attacks on Martin Luther King Jr.'s Legacy"
By Barbara Ransby, New York Times, posted June 3
The author teaches history, African American Studies, and Gender and Women's Studies at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

 

"Troika Fever: Key American Allies in the Middle East Are the Real Tyrants"
By Danny Sjursen, TomDispatch.com, posted May 30
The author is a recently retired major in the U.S. Army who formerly taught history at West Point.

 

"Inside Argentina's Killing Machine: U.S. Intelligence Documents Record Gruesome Human Rights Crimes of 1976-1983"
Edited by Carlos Osorio, Silvia Tandeciarz, and Johanna Weech for the National Security Archive, posted May 30

 

"How About a Peace Race Instead of an Arms Race?"
By Lawrence Wittner, History News Network, posted May 26
The author is a professor emeritus of history at SUNY Albany. 

 

"Useful Enemies by Noel Malcolm Review"
By Christopher de Bellaigue, The Guardian, posted May 22 
A review essay highlighting the nuanced relationships between Christians and Muslims in early-modern Europe.Sir Noel Malcolm, author of Useful Enemies, is a British political journalist and historian.

 

"Radhida Tlaib's Critics Have  Palestinian History All Wrong"
By Maha Nassar, Washington Post, posted May 17
The author teaches in the School of Middle Eastern and North African Studies at the University of Arizona.

 

"We Don't Have to Imagine the Consequences of Abortion Bans. We Just Have to Look to the Past" 
By Leslie J. Reagan, Time, posted My 16
The author teaches history, law, and gender and women's studies at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign and is the author of When Abortion Was a Crime and Dangerous Pregnancies. 

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Suggestions for these occasional article lists can be sent to jimobrien48@gmail.com.