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.
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)
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.
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
a.
North
American, European Public: Finally Wake Up, Damn It!
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
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
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
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?
===========
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.
WHO sanitizes Israeli responsibility for 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
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:
'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 ANGRY ARAB: Rituals of Arab Summitry
https://consortiumnews.com/2019/06/04/the-angry-arab-rituals-of-arab-summitry/
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
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:
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.”
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.
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.
‘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"
===========
e.
News
Analysis
&
Chomsky
and Herman’s Propaganda Model Foretells
a
Weaponized Facebook
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)
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
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/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
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
+
China-Russia Partnership Threatens US Global Hegemony
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
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
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:
Yellow
vest protesters STORM EU HEADQUARTERS in Strasbourg
EU
CIVIL WAR: Emmanuel Macron’s finance measures spark COLLISION
===========
j.
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/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/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/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, 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
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/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
=========== 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
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
r.
“We’re Left to Defend Ourselves on the Margins”: 8
Black Trans Women Have Been Murdered This Year
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.”
+
The
Handmaid’s Tale: On Self Defense
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.
s.
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.