Wednesday, July 31, 2019
Tuesday, July 30, 2019
Israel Has "The Most Moral Army in the World"?
Eight days ago eleven Palestinian buildings containing seventy family apartments located in the illegally Israeli occupied East Jerusalem village of Wadi al-Hummus were demolished in a military-led operation by more than 1,000 Israeli soldiers, policemen and municipal workers using bulldozers, backhoes and explosives. Residents who resisted were beaten by the soldiers, kicked down flights of stairs and even shot at close range with rubber bullets. The soldiers were recorded laughing and celebrating as they did their dirty work. Occupants who did not resist and who held their hands up in surrender were also not spared the rod, as were also foreign observers who were present to add their voices to those who were protesting the outrage. The injuries sustained by some of the victims have been photographed and are available online.
Twelve Palestinians and four British observers were injured badly enough to be hospitalized. The British reported that they were “stamped on, dragged by the hair, strangled with a scarf and pepper sprayed by Israeli border police.” One who was hospitalized described how Israeli soldiers dragged him by his feet, lifting him up, and kicking him in the stomach, while one soldier stamped on his head four times “at full force” before standing on his head and pulling his hair. Another suffered a fractured rib after “[the policeman] then stamped on my throat and others started punching my torso. It was a sadistic display of violence…”
Yet another foreign observer was dragged out of the house, “…her hands were crushed so badly that she suffered a fractured knuckle on her left hand, and her right hand suffered severe tissue damage ‘which will be permanently misshapen unless she gets cosmetic surgery.’”
Edmond Sichrovsky, an Austrian activist of Jewish origin, who was in one of the houses, described how Israeli forces broke the door down, first dragging out the Palestinians, “knocking the grandfather to the floor in front of his crying and screaming grandchildren.” Cell phones were forcibly removed to eliminate any picture taking or filming before soldiers began attacking him and four other activists. “I was repeatedly kicked and kneed, which left a bloody nose and multiple cuts, as well breaking my glasses from a knee in the face. Once outside, they slammed me against a car while shouting verbal insults at me and women activists, calling them whores.”
Read the entire article
Twelve Palestinians and four British observers were injured badly enough to be hospitalized. The British reported that they were “stamped on, dragged by the hair, strangled with a scarf and pepper sprayed by Israeli border police.” One who was hospitalized described how Israeli soldiers dragged him by his feet, lifting him up, and kicking him in the stomach, while one soldier stamped on his head four times “at full force” before standing on his head and pulling his hair. Another suffered a fractured rib after “[the policeman] then stamped on my throat and others started punching my torso. It was a sadistic display of violence…”
Yet another foreign observer was dragged out of the house, “…her hands were crushed so badly that she suffered a fractured knuckle on her left hand, and her right hand suffered severe tissue damage ‘which will be permanently misshapen unless she gets cosmetic surgery.’”
Edmond Sichrovsky, an Austrian activist of Jewish origin, who was in one of the houses, described how Israeli forces broke the door down, first dragging out the Palestinians, “knocking the grandfather to the floor in front of his crying and screaming grandchildren.” Cell phones were forcibly removed to eliminate any picture taking or filming before soldiers began attacking him and four other activists. “I was repeatedly kicked and kneed, which left a bloody nose and multiple cuts, as well breaking my glasses from a knee in the face. Once outside, they slammed me against a car while shouting verbal insults at me and women activists, calling them whores.”
Read the entire article
Monday, July 29, 2019
Friday, July 26, 2019
End Forever War? Divest Zionism. US Congress Passes Resolution which Violates Constitution
BREAKING: 398 House members just voted for H.Res.246 in a powerful statement opposing the global BDS campaign and its deliberate discrimination of Israel. This overwhelming vote is representative of the breadth, depth and diversity of bipartisan support for Israel in Congress.
The AIPAC servitors in Congress believe the ability to confront Israel’s apartheid must be criminalized, even at the expense of the Constitution they supposedly swore an oath to uphold (and this has been a joke for some time).
More than 250 million Americans, some 78 percent of the population, live in states with anti-boycott laws or policies.
Three members of Congress are fighting back to defend the First Amendment. https://www.aclu.org/blog/right-boycott-under-attack-some-members-congress-are-pushing-back …
But never mind the Constitution, which is close to being a dead letter. As a free human, you have a natural right to oppose and refuse to do business with any individual or entity you so please, and also encourage others to do likewise, so long as that opposition is not violent or coercive.
Read the entire article
The AIPAC servitors in Congress believe the ability to confront Israel’s apartheid must be criminalized, even at the expense of the Constitution they supposedly swore an oath to uphold (and this has been a joke for some time).
More than 250 million Americans, some 78 percent of the population, live in states with anti-boycott laws or policies.
Three members of Congress are fighting back to defend the First Amendment. https://www.aclu.org/blog/right-boycott-under-attack-some-members-congress-are-pushing-back …
But never mind the Constitution, which is close to being a dead letter. As a free human, you have a natural right to oppose and refuse to do business with any individual or entity you so please, and also encourage others to do likewise, so long as that opposition is not violent or coercive.
Read the entire article
Thursday, July 25, 2019
Wednesday, July 24, 2019
‘The Bolton Gambit Succeeded’: Critics Warn Top Trump Adviser Has Put UK on Path to War with Iran
With the United Kingdom and Iran in the midst of a tense and dangerous standoff after the tit-for-tat seizure of oil tankers in the Strait of Hormuz, international observers are warning that the British government has fallen into a trap set by hawkish U.S. national security adviser John Bolton that could lead to a devastating military conflict.
After British commandos earlier this month swarmed and detained Iran’s Grace 1 oil supertanker in waters east of Gibraltar, Bolton applauded the move as “excellent news” and said “America and our allies will continue to prevent regimes in Tehran and Damascus from profiting off this illicit trade.”
Simon Tisdall, foreign affairs editor and commentator for The Guardian, wrote over the weekend that “Bolton’s delighted reaction suggested the seizure was a surprise.”
“But accumulating evidence suggests the opposite is true, and that Bolton’s national security team was directly involved in manufacturing the Gibraltar incident,” wrote Tisdall. “The suspicion is that Conservative politicians, distracted by picking a new prime minister, jockeying for power, and preoccupied with Brexit, stumbled into an American trap.”
Read the entire article
After British commandos earlier this month swarmed and detained Iran’s Grace 1 oil supertanker in waters east of Gibraltar, Bolton applauded the move as “excellent news” and said “America and our allies will continue to prevent regimes in Tehran and Damascus from profiting off this illicit trade.”
Simon Tisdall, foreign affairs editor and commentator for The Guardian, wrote over the weekend that “Bolton’s delighted reaction suggested the seizure was a surprise.”
“But accumulating evidence suggests the opposite is true, and that Bolton’s national security team was directly involved in manufacturing the Gibraltar incident,” wrote Tisdall. “The suspicion is that Conservative politicians, distracted by picking a new prime minister, jockeying for power, and preoccupied with Brexit, stumbled into an American trap.”
Read the entire article
Tuesday, July 23, 2019
Monday, July 22, 2019
As politics are shaken up, a peace coalition emerges
After the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 turned into a mess that led to an immense loss of life and years of violent havoc in the Middle East, the war’s backers flippantly declared that “everyone” agreed on the war. The invasion’s evolving justifications – Saddam’s supposed amassing of “weapons of mass destruction” to his alleged ties to Al-Qaeda – were overblown, but if everyone was in agreement then who could possibly second-guess the military effort?
At the Editorial Board of the Orange County Register, we produced one piece after another questioning the war. We even got in a spat with one Fox News personality, who took umbrage at criticism of the war while the fighting was going on. That was somehow unpatriotic. But the United States has been involved in endless conflicts. If Americans held their tongues while bombs are dropping, then when could they ever feel free to air their concerns?
“There is no real threat to the United States, only a theoretical one based on faulty premises,” I opined at the time. “It is unjust, in that it is not a war of last resort.… It will run up tens of billions of dollars in costs, and it will lead to the limiting of civil liberties at home. Furthermore, America will be managing Iraq for years, perhaps decades, and our presence there is more likely to destabilize than democratize the region.”
Those points largely were correct. (This column isn’t about “I told you so,” by the way, but about “look how far we’ve come.”) Even the current GOP president has lamented that war. When Donald Trump recently called off airstrikes on Iran at the last minute, almost everyone expressed relief. It’s a new world ideologically and our long-standing foreign policy consensus is, finally, up for debate again. It’s taken long enough, but better late than never.
Read the entire article
At the Editorial Board of the Orange County Register, we produced one piece after another questioning the war. We even got in a spat with one Fox News personality, who took umbrage at criticism of the war while the fighting was going on. That was somehow unpatriotic. But the United States has been involved in endless conflicts. If Americans held their tongues while bombs are dropping, then when could they ever feel free to air their concerns?
“There is no real threat to the United States, only a theoretical one based on faulty premises,” I opined at the time. “It is unjust, in that it is not a war of last resort.… It will run up tens of billions of dollars in costs, and it will lead to the limiting of civil liberties at home. Furthermore, America will be managing Iraq for years, perhaps decades, and our presence there is more likely to destabilize than democratize the region.”
Those points largely were correct. (This column isn’t about “I told you so,” by the way, but about “look how far we’ve come.”) Even the current GOP president has lamented that war. When Donald Trump recently called off airstrikes on Iran at the last minute, almost everyone expressed relief. It’s a new world ideologically and our long-standing foreign policy consensus is, finally, up for debate again. It’s taken long enough, but better late than never.
Read the entire article
Friday, July 19, 2019
Thursday, July 18, 2019
The United Nations Agendas: A Totalitarian Map
If you connected all the dots to the various United Nations (U.N.) Agendas, would you create a map of mass regionalization and an eventual Totalitarian State?
Agenda 21: Global Regional Plans Implemented Locally
According to the author of Behind the Green Mask, Rosa Koire says that “U.N. Agenda 21 is an agenda for the 21st century. It is an inventory and control plan; inventory of all land, water, all minerals, all plants, all animals, all construction, all means of production, all food, all energy, all information, and all human beings in the world.” It’s about moving populations into concentrated city centers and clearing them out of rural areas under “Smart Growth.” Under the guise of “Sustainability,” Agenda 21 is the hijacking of the environmental movement.
Agenda 21 is top-down hierarchy, moving away from current government structure based on elected positions in Federal-State-County-City, to a global-regional-neighborhood structure without elections. Currently hundreds of millions of federal dollars are going to cities to create regional plans to give over control of land, and land use, to corporations. For instance, the federal government gave the Telecom Industry new powers to sidestep over the public right-of-way for the roll out of 5G technology by removing regulatory barriers that might prevent infrastructure.
In an order last year by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), If Verizon wants to build a 5G network in a city, the local government is limited in how much it can charge in application fees, and is pushed to approve permits quickly.These rules also mean cities are limited in how they can respond to residents who are upset about equipment going up near them. Many local leaders have spoken out against the FCC’s rules, dozens of whom have banded together to file a lawsuit to overturn it, which has advanced to the Tenth Circuit.
Read the entire article
Agenda 21: Global Regional Plans Implemented Locally
According to the author of Behind the Green Mask, Rosa Koire says that “U.N. Agenda 21 is an agenda for the 21st century. It is an inventory and control plan; inventory of all land, water, all minerals, all plants, all animals, all construction, all means of production, all food, all energy, all information, and all human beings in the world.” It’s about moving populations into concentrated city centers and clearing them out of rural areas under “Smart Growth.” Under the guise of “Sustainability,” Agenda 21 is the hijacking of the environmental movement.
Agenda 21 is top-down hierarchy, moving away from current government structure based on elected positions in Federal-State-County-City, to a global-regional-neighborhood structure without elections. Currently hundreds of millions of federal dollars are going to cities to create regional plans to give over control of land, and land use, to corporations. For instance, the federal government gave the Telecom Industry new powers to sidestep over the public right-of-way for the roll out of 5G technology by removing regulatory barriers that might prevent infrastructure.
In an order last year by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), If Verizon wants to build a 5G network in a city, the local government is limited in how much it can charge in application fees, and is pushed to approve permits quickly.These rules also mean cities are limited in how they can respond to residents who are upset about equipment going up near them. Many local leaders have spoken out against the FCC’s rules, dozens of whom have banded together to file a lawsuit to overturn it, which has advanced to the Tenth Circuit.
Read the entire article
Wednesday, July 17, 2019
Tuesday, July 16, 2019
Lawsuit Outs Reporter Ellen Ratner as Source for Seth Rich Information
Businessman Ed Butowsky filed a lawsuit on Monday that outed FOX News reporter Ellen Ratner was his source for the Seth Rich information.
On December 17, 2016, at the instigation of Ms. Rattner, Mr. Butowsky finally contacted Joel and Mary Rich, the parents of Seth, and he relayed the information about Ms. Rattner’s meeting with Mr. Assange. During that conversation, Mr. Rich told Mr. Butowsky that he already knew that his sons were involved in the DNC email leak, but he and his wife just wanted to know who murdered Seth. Mr. Rich said he was reluctant to go public with Seth’s and Aaron’s role in leaking the emails because “we don’t want anyone to think our sons were responsible for getting Trump elected.” Mr. Rich said he did not have enough money to hire a private investigator, so Mr. Butowsky offered to pay for one. Mr. Rich accepted the offer and thanked Mr. Butowsky in an email.
The complaint also mentions an interesting development in my ongoing Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the FBI. The feds claimed they had no information pertaining to Seth Rich, but they appear to be changing their tune. Shortly after Attorney General William Barr announced plans to declassify documents related to the Russian Collusion Hoax, the FBI’s attorney informed me that new documents were being processed. I should receive them not later than July 22, 2019. The DNC’s objections to our subpoenas for “Russian hacking’ information are also due on July 22, 2019, and production is due on August 8, 2019.
The more I’ve reviewed the Seth Rich case, the more I’m convinced of its central role in the whole Russian Collusion Hoax. I believe DNC officials knew that the emails would become public as the result of an internal leak, and they knew that the emails would be very damaging, so they attempted to turn the tables by pointing fingers at Donald Trump and the Russians. Hopefully we will know more by next week.
Read the entire article
On December 17, 2016, at the instigation of Ms. Rattner, Mr. Butowsky finally contacted Joel and Mary Rich, the parents of Seth, and he relayed the information about Ms. Rattner’s meeting with Mr. Assange. During that conversation, Mr. Rich told Mr. Butowsky that he already knew that his sons were involved in the DNC email leak, but he and his wife just wanted to know who murdered Seth. Mr. Rich said he was reluctant to go public with Seth’s and Aaron’s role in leaking the emails because “we don’t want anyone to think our sons were responsible for getting Trump elected.” Mr. Rich said he did not have enough money to hire a private investigator, so Mr. Butowsky offered to pay for one. Mr. Rich accepted the offer and thanked Mr. Butowsky in an email.
The complaint also mentions an interesting development in my ongoing Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the FBI. The feds claimed they had no information pertaining to Seth Rich, but they appear to be changing their tune. Shortly after Attorney General William Barr announced plans to declassify documents related to the Russian Collusion Hoax, the FBI’s attorney informed me that new documents were being processed. I should receive them not later than July 22, 2019. The DNC’s objections to our subpoenas for “Russian hacking’ information are also due on July 22, 2019, and production is due on August 8, 2019.
The more I’ve reviewed the Seth Rich case, the more I’m convinced of its central role in the whole Russian Collusion Hoax. I believe DNC officials knew that the emails would become public as the result of an internal leak, and they knew that the emails would be very damaging, so they attempted to turn the tables by pointing fingers at Donald Trump and the Russians. Hopefully we will know more by next week.
Read the entire article
Monday, July 15, 2019
Friday, July 12, 2019
Opposing War Is The Best Approach To Revolution
So endless war is a 100 percent indispensable element in preserving existing power structures. The US-centralized empire cannot exist without it. The trouble for the empire, however, is that it can’t just come out and tell the public “Yeah we need to destroy everyone who opposes our resource control agendas and dominance in key geostrategic regions, so we’ll be forcibly eliminating this noncompliant government on Thursday.” The public would never go for it, because that’s a plainly sociopathic values system which we are taught since school age that our society evolved beyond many generations ago. People would lose trust in all government institutions, and revolution would quickly foment as a result.
For this reason, propaganda is necessary. Because America is where the empire has centralized most of its military firepower and billionaires, Americans are the most propagandized people on earth. There are thousands of people whose whole entire job is to convince Americans that it is good and desirable to keep trillions of dollars in military hardware moving around the planet and killing complete strangers who pose no threat to any American.
The challenge for the propagandists is that this is plainly bat shit crazy. It’s an assignment that is both absolutely necessary and extremely difficult. When the entire world order depends on convincing millions of people that something transparently insane and ridiculous is perfectly sane and rational, you’re naturally going to have difficulty smoothing over all the plot holes in the narratives you’re selling. That’s why you’re always seeing glaring discrepancies in the narratives used to promote US foreign policy agendas. In retrospect I’ve pretty much built my career on highlighting these discrepancies.
There are plenty of moral arguments against imperialism, but you don’t even need to enter into morality to see that it’s smart to make opposing war your foremost priority. The kingdom of the bastards who are grinding us all down and trying to make us poorer, sicker and stupider so we can’t muster the chutzpah to toss them out on their asses is fed by an umbilical cord of endless war, and we have the power to cut that cord by opposing war and attacking war propaganda together.
Read the entire article
For this reason, propaganda is necessary. Because America is where the empire has centralized most of its military firepower and billionaires, Americans are the most propagandized people on earth. There are thousands of people whose whole entire job is to convince Americans that it is good and desirable to keep trillions of dollars in military hardware moving around the planet and killing complete strangers who pose no threat to any American.
The challenge for the propagandists is that this is plainly bat shit crazy. It’s an assignment that is both absolutely necessary and extremely difficult. When the entire world order depends on convincing millions of people that something transparently insane and ridiculous is perfectly sane and rational, you’re naturally going to have difficulty smoothing over all the plot holes in the narratives you’re selling. That’s why you’re always seeing glaring discrepancies in the narratives used to promote US foreign policy agendas. In retrospect I’ve pretty much built my career on highlighting these discrepancies.
There are plenty of moral arguments against imperialism, but you don’t even need to enter into morality to see that it’s smart to make opposing war your foremost priority. The kingdom of the bastards who are grinding us all down and trying to make us poorer, sicker and stupider so we can’t muster the chutzpah to toss them out on their asses is fed by an umbilical cord of endless war, and we have the power to cut that cord by opposing war and attacking war propaganda together.
Read the entire article
Thursday, July 11, 2019
Wednesday, July 10, 2019
The Conservative Crack-Up Comes to the Antiwar Right
If libertarians have a political problem, populists have a policy one. Their critiques of free market fundamentalism have yet to give way to a workable program of their own. They don’t control Twitter but neither will they often run the FCC. There have been some more innovative proposals, but Trumpism so far resembles conventional Republican policies plus higher tariffs and lower immigration rates—and even that is largely aspirational.
These domestic policy concerns could lead to bigger foreign policy ones. Trump could either ratify his party’s break with the neocons or court still greater disasters. But some of his intraparty foils, like former Representative Mark Sanford before Amash, are more supportive of the president’s stated goal of a smaller military footprint in the Middle East than anyone on his team. And now the GOP establishment has trained its sights on Massie.
In these volatile political times, no one can predict the future. There was far less reason to think the Republican Party could change when Ron Paul first sought its presidential nomination than when Amash left it. It’s easy to see a big-spending Democratic administration and congressional majorities ushering in another “libertarian moment,” as in 1994 or the 2010s, making Trumpism as ephemeral as Bush. Or in a country where, according to one survey, only 4 percent marry economic conservatism to social liberalism, populist nationalism could prove the GOP’s last best hope.
Read the entire article
These domestic policy concerns could lead to bigger foreign policy ones. Trump could either ratify his party’s break with the neocons or court still greater disasters. But some of his intraparty foils, like former Representative Mark Sanford before Amash, are more supportive of the president’s stated goal of a smaller military footprint in the Middle East than anyone on his team. And now the GOP establishment has trained its sights on Massie.
In these volatile political times, no one can predict the future. There was far less reason to think the Republican Party could change when Ron Paul first sought its presidential nomination than when Amash left it. It’s easy to see a big-spending Democratic administration and congressional majorities ushering in another “libertarian moment,” as in 1994 or the 2010s, making Trumpism as ephemeral as Bush. Or in a country where, according to one survey, only 4 percent marry economic conservatism to social liberalism, populist nationalism could prove the GOP’s last best hope.
Read the entire article
Tuesday, July 9, 2019
Monday, July 8, 2019
US Foreign Policy Is A War On Disobedience
In an excellent new essay titled “We’re Not the Good Guys — Why Is American Aggression Missing in Action?“, Tom Engelhardt criticizes the way western media outlets consistently describe the behavior of disobedient nations like Iran as “aggressions”, but never use that label for the (generally antecedent and far more egregious) aggressions of the United States.
“When it comes to Washington’s never-ending war on terror, I think I can say with reasonable confidence that, in the past, the present, and the future, the one phrase you’re not likely to find in such media coverage will be ‘American aggression,'” Engelhardt writes. He then asks a very fair question:
“So here’s the strange thing, on a planet on which, in 2017, U.S. Special Operations forces deployed to 149 countries, or approximately 75% of all nations; on which the U.S. has perhaps 800 military garrisons outside its own territory; on which the U.S. Navy patrols most of its oceans and seas; on which U.S. unmanned aerial drones conduct assassination strikes across a surprising range of countries; and on which the U.S. has been fighting wars, as well as more minor conflicts, for years on end from Afghanistan to Libya, Syria to Yemen, Iraq to Niger in a century in which it chose to launch full-scale invasions of two countries (Afghanistan and Iraq), is it truly reasonable never to identify the U.S. as an ‘aggressor’ anywhere?
In other words, does it really make sense for any nation to be able to take over the world and then look up with Bambi-eyed innocence saying “I was attacked! Completely out of the blue!” whenever any government pushes back on this? If you ask the empire’s narrative makers, the answer is a resounding yes.
Read the entire article
“When it comes to Washington’s never-ending war on terror, I think I can say with reasonable confidence that, in the past, the present, and the future, the one phrase you’re not likely to find in such media coverage will be ‘American aggression,'” Engelhardt writes. He then asks a very fair question:
“So here’s the strange thing, on a planet on which, in 2017, U.S. Special Operations forces deployed to 149 countries, or approximately 75% of all nations; on which the U.S. has perhaps 800 military garrisons outside its own territory; on which the U.S. Navy patrols most of its oceans and seas; on which U.S. unmanned aerial drones conduct assassination strikes across a surprising range of countries; and on which the U.S. has been fighting wars, as well as more minor conflicts, for years on end from Afghanistan to Libya, Syria to Yemen, Iraq to Niger in a century in which it chose to launch full-scale invasions of two countries (Afghanistan and Iraq), is it truly reasonable never to identify the U.S. as an ‘aggressor’ anywhere?
In other words, does it really make sense for any nation to be able to take over the world and then look up with Bambi-eyed innocence saying “I was attacked! Completely out of the blue!” whenever any government pushes back on this? If you ask the empire’s narrative makers, the answer is a resounding yes.
Read the entire article
Friday, July 5, 2019
Wednesday, July 3, 2019
We’re Not the Good Guys
What you might say about the United States is that, as the self-proclaimed leading proponent of democracy and human rights (even if its president is now having a set of love affairs with autocrats and dictators), Americans consider ourselves at home just about anywhere we care to be on planet Earth. It matters little how we may be armed and what we might do. Consequently, wherever Americans are bothered, harassed, threatened, attacked, we are always the ones being provoked and aggressed upon, never provoking and aggressing. I mean, how can you be the aggressor in your own house, even if that house happens to be temporarily located in Afghanistan, Iraq, or perhaps soon enough in Iran?
That, of course, was before Washington’s first (covert) Afghan War, the one the CIA oversaw, with the help of Saudi money (yes, even then!) and a major hand from the Pakistani intelligence services. Do you remember that conflict, which began in 1979 and ended a decade later with the Red Army limping out of Kabul in defeat, heading for a land, the Soviet Union, which would implode within two years? What a “victory” that proved to be for America, not to speak of the groups of extremist Islamic militants we helped to fund and support, including a young Saudi named Osama bin Laden.
And keep in mind as well that that was our “short” war in Afghanistan, a mere decade long. In October 2001, soon after the 9/11 attacks, instead of launching a police action against Osama bin Laden and crew, the administration of George W. Bush decided to invade that country. Almost 18 years later, the U.S. military is still fighting there (remarkably unsuccessfully) against a thoroughly rejuvenated Taliban and a new branch of ISIS. It now qualifies as the longest war in our history (without even adding in that first Afghan War of ours).
Read the entire article
That, of course, was before Washington’s first (covert) Afghan War, the one the CIA oversaw, with the help of Saudi money (yes, even then!) and a major hand from the Pakistani intelligence services. Do you remember that conflict, which began in 1979 and ended a decade later with the Red Army limping out of Kabul in defeat, heading for a land, the Soviet Union, which would implode within two years? What a “victory” that proved to be for America, not to speak of the groups of extremist Islamic militants we helped to fund and support, including a young Saudi named Osama bin Laden.
And keep in mind as well that that was our “short” war in Afghanistan, a mere decade long. In October 2001, soon after the 9/11 attacks, instead of launching a police action against Osama bin Laden and crew, the administration of George W. Bush decided to invade that country. Almost 18 years later, the U.S. military is still fighting there (remarkably unsuccessfully) against a thoroughly rejuvenated Taliban and a new branch of ISIS. It now qualifies as the longest war in our history (without even adding in that first Afghan War of ours).
Read the entire article
Tuesday, July 2, 2019
Monday, July 1, 2019
How Israeli spies are flooding Facebook and Twitter
Israel secretly operates a troll army of thousands, partly funded by a government department.
The Ministry of Strategic Affairs is dedicated to a global “war” against BDS, the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement for Palestinian rights.
To conceal its involvement, the ministry has admitted to working through front groups that “do not want to expose their connection with the state.”
The troll army Act.IL is one of many such groups. It focuses on spreading Israeli propaganda online.
What does it do with its million dollar budget?
Act.IL is run by a former Israeli spy who has argued that his outfit is involved in “a new kind of war.”
While Act.IL publicly denies being supported by the Israeli government, the group’s chief executive has admitted in Hebrew to working closely with Israeli ministries, and in English that his staff are mostly former Israeli spies.
Read the entire article
The Ministry of Strategic Affairs is dedicated to a global “war” against BDS, the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement for Palestinian rights.
To conceal its involvement, the ministry has admitted to working through front groups that “do not want to expose their connection with the state.”
The troll army Act.IL is one of many such groups. It focuses on spreading Israeli propaganda online.
What does it do with its million dollar budget?
Act.IL is run by a former Israeli spy who has argued that his outfit is involved in “a new kind of war.”
While Act.IL publicly denies being supported by the Israeli government, the group’s chief executive has admitted in Hebrew to working closely with Israeli ministries, and in English that his staff are mostly former Israeli spies.
Read the entire article
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