Protecting the Shaky Russia-gate Narrative

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ROBERT PARRY, Chief Editor, Consortium News

Exclusive: The New York Times continues its sorry pattern of falsifying the record on Russia-gate, giving its readers information that the newspaper knows not to be true, reports Robert Parry.

If Russia-gate is the massive scandal that we are told it is by so many Important People — across the U.S. mainstream media and the political world — why do its proponents have to resort to lies and exaggerations to maintain the pillars supporting the narrative?

The New York Times building in Manhattan. (Photo credit: Robert Parry)

A new example on Thursday was The New York Times’ statement that a Russian agency “spent $100,000 on [Facebook’s] platform to influence the United States presidential election last year” – when the Times knows that statement is not true.

According to Facebook, only 44 percent of that amount appeared before the U.S. presidential election in 2016 (i.e., $44,000) and few of those ads addressed the actual election. And, we know that the Times is aware of the truth because it was acknowledged in a Times article in early October.

As part of that article, Times correspondents Mike Isaac and Scott Shane reported that the ads also covered a wide range of other topics: “There was even a Facebook group for animal lovers with memes of adorable puppies that spread across the site with the help of paid ads.”

As nefarious as the Times may think it is for Russians to promote a Facebook page about “adorable puppies,” the absurdity of that concern – and the dishonesty of the Times then “forgetting” what it itself reported just two months ago about the timing and contents of these “Russian-linked ads” – tells you a great deal about Russia-gate.

On Thursday, the Times chose to distort what it already knew to be true presumably because it didn’t want to make the $100,000 ad buy (which is not a particularly large sum) look even smaller and less significant by acknowledging the pre-election total was less than half that modest amount – and even that total had little to do with the election.

Why would the Times lie? Because to tell the truth would undercut the narrative of evil Russians defeating Hillary Clinton and putting Donald Trump in the White House – the core narrative of Russia-gate.

Another relevant fact is that Facebook failed to find any “Russian-linked” ads during its first two searches and only detected the $100,000 after a personal visit from Sen. Mark Warner, D-Virginia, the vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee and a leading legislator on Internet regulation.

In other words, Facebook’s corporate executives dredged up something to appease Warner. That way, Warner and the Democrats could blame Russia for the Trump presidency, sparing further criticism of Clinton’s dreadful campaign (in which she labeled half of Trump’s voters “deplorables”) and her neo-liberal economic policies (and neo-conservative foreign policies) that have alienated much of America’s working class as well as many progressives.

Leaving Out Context

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]he Times also might have put the $100,000 in “Russian-linked” ads over a two-year period in the context of Facebook’s $27 billion in annual revenue, but the Times didn’t do that – apparently because it would make even the full $100,000 look like a pittance.

Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton in the third presidential debate in 2016, during which Clinton called Trump Vladimir Putin’s “puppet.”

Trimming the total down to $44,000 and admitting that only a few of those ads actually dealt with Clinton and Trump would be even worse for the Russia-gate narrative.

Ironically, the Times’ latest false depiction of the $100,000 in ads as designed “to influence” the 2016 election appeared in an article about Facebook determining that other Russian-linked ads, which supposedly had a powerful effect on Great Britain’s Brexit vote, totaled just three ads at the cost of 97 cents. (That is not a misprint.)

According to Facebook, the three ads, which focused on immigration, were viewed some 200 times by Britons over four days in May 2016. Of course, the response from British parliamentarians who wanted to blame the Brexit vote on Moscow was to assert that Facebook must have missed something. It couldn’t be that many Britons had lost faith in the promise of the European Union for their own reasons.

We have seen a similar pattern with allegations about Russian interference in German and French elections, with the initial accusations being widely touted but not so much the later conclusions by serious investigations knocking down the claims. [See, for instance, Consortiumnews.com’s “German Intel Clears Russia on Interference.”]

The only acceptable conclusion, it seems, is “Russia Guilty!”

These days in Official Washington, it has become almost forbidden to ask for actual evidence that would prove the original claim that Russia “hacked” Democratic emails, even though the accusation came from what President Obama’s Director of National Intelligence James Clapper acknowledged were “hand-picked” analysts from the CIA, FBI and National Security Agency.

These “hand-picked” analysts produced the evidence-lite Jan. 6 “assessment” about Russia “hacking” the emails and slipping them to WikiLeaks – a scenario denied by both WikiLeaks and Russia.

When that “assessment” was released almost a year ago, even the Times’ Scott Shane noticed the lack of proof, writing: “What is missing from the [the Jan. 6] public report is what many Americans most eagerly anticipated: hard evidence to back up the agencies’ claims that the Russian government engineered the election attack. … Instead, the message from the agencies essentially amounts to ‘trust us.’”

But the Times soon “forgot” what Shane had inconveniently noted and began reporting the Russian “hacking” as accepted wisdom.

The 17-Agencies Canard

[dropcap]W[/dropcap]henever scattered expressions of skepticism arose from a few analysts or non-mainstream media, the doubts were beaten back by the claim that “all 17 U.S. intelligence agencies” concurred in the conclusion that Russian President Vladimir Putin had ordered the hacking to hurt Hillary Clinton and help Donald Trump. And what kind of nut would doubt the collective judgment of all 17 U.S. intelligence agencies!

Director of National Intelligence James Clapper (right) talks with President Barack Obama in the Oval Office, with John Brennan and other national security aides present. (Photo credit: Office of Director of National Intelligence)

Though the 17-agency canard was never true, it served an important purpose in establishing the Russia-gate groupthink. Wielding the “all 17 intelligence agencies” club, the U.S. mainstream media pounded politicians and policymakers into line, making any remaining skeptics seem more out of step and crazy.

So, in May 2017, when Clapper (along with former CIA Director John Brennan) admitted in congressional testimony that it wasn’t true that all 17 agencies concurred in the Russian hacking conclusion, those statements received very little attention in the mainstream media.

The New York Times among other major news outlets just continued asserting the 17-agency falsehood until the Times was finally pressured to correct its lie in late June, but that only led to the Times shifting to slightly different but still misleading wording, citing a “consensus” among the intelligence agencies without mentioning a number or by simply stating the unproven hacking claim as flat fact.

Even efforts to test the Russian-hack claims through science were ignored or ridiculed. When former NSA technical director William Binney conducted experiments that showed that the known download speed of one batch of DNC emails could not have occurred over the Internet but matched what was possible for a USB-connected thumb drive — an indication that a Democratic insider likely downloaded the emails and thus that there was no “hack” — Binney was mocked as a “conspiracy theorist.”

Even with the new disclosures about deep-seated anti-Trump bias in text messages exchanged between two senior FBI officials who played important early roles in the Russia-gate investigation, there is no indication that Official Washington is willing to go back to the beginning and see how the Russia-gate story might have been deceptively spun.

In a recently released Aug. 15, 2016 text message from Peter Strzok, a senior FBI counterintelligence official, to his reputed lover, senior FBI lawyer Lisa Page, Strzok referenced an apparent plan to keep Trump from getting elected before suggesting the need for “an insurance policy” just in case he did. A serious investigation into Russia-gate might want to know what these senior FBI officials had in mind.

But the Times and other big promoters of Russia-gate continue to dismiss doubters as delusional or as covering up for Russia and/or Trump. By this point – more than a year into this investigation – too many Important People have bought into the Russia-gate narrative to consider the possibility that there may be little or nothing there, or even worse, that it is the “insurance policy” that Strzok envisioned.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Amazon and barnesandnoble.com).

ROBERT PARRY—Though the 17-agency canard was never true, it served an important purpose in establishing the Russia-gate groupthink. Wielding the “all 17 intelligence agencies” club, the U.S. mainstream media pounded politicians and policymakers into line.

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The Best Definition of Donald Trump We Have Found

In his zeal to prove to his antagonists in the War Party that he is as bloodthirsty as their champion, Hillary Clinton, and more manly than Barack Obama, Trump seems to have gone “play-crazy” -- acting like an unpredictable maniac in order to terrorize the Russians into forcing some kind of dramatic concessions from their Syrian allies, or risk Armageddon.However, the “play-crazy” gambit can only work when the leader is, in real life, a disciplined and intelligent actor, who knows precisely what actual boundaries must not be crossed. That ain’t Donald Trump -- a pitifully shallow and ill-disciplined man, emotionally handicapped by obscene privilege and cognitively crippled by white American chauvinism. By pushing Trump into a corner and demanding that he display his most bellicose self, or be ceaselessly mocked as a “puppet” and minion of Russia, a lesser power, the War Party and its media and clandestine services have created a perfect storm of mayhem that may consume us all.— Glen Ford, Editor in Chief, Black Agenda Report

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Trump’s Misuse of Intelligence on Iran

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A dispatch from Consortium News | By Paul R. Pillar

Bowing to Israeli-Saudi desires, the Trump administration is abusing the U.S. intelligence process to whip up a war fever against Iran, much like George W. Bush did on Iraq, reports ex-CIA analyst Paul R. Pillar.

The most widely remembered episode of a U.S. administration using an intelligence-based public presentation to stir up hostility toward a country with which it was intent on picking a fight was Secretary of State Colin Powell’s presentation on Iraq to the United Nations Security Council in February 2003.

Nikki Haley, United States Permanent Representative to the UN (UN Photo)

That presentation and the Bush administration’s year-long campaign, of which Powell’s speech was a part, to sell the U.S. invasion of Iraq represented a misuse of intelligence — less because of the substance than because of the whole nature and purpose of the exercise. Instead of using intelligence for its proper purpose of informing policy decisions yet to be made, this campaign was instead a selective and tendentious use of intelligence to sell a decision already made.

There was substantive misrepresentation, to be sure. The portion of the speech about terrorist ties was designed to foment a belief about supposed alliances that was contrary to the judgments of the U.S. intelligence community.

But even if everything in the speech about weapons of mass destruction has been valid, the speech missed the most important questions about U.S. policy toward Iraq. These questions included what would warrant the launching by the United States of a major war of aggression, and what the ensuing mess and repercussions would be, in Iraq and in the region, after Saddam Hussein was ousted, WMD or no WMD.

Now Nikki Haley has provided the closest replication yet of the notorious show-and-tell from 2003. She has tendentiously and selectively brandished pieces, including physical pieces, of intelligence to stir up hostility toward Iran, with which the Trump administration seems intent on picking a fight.

The featured piece consisted of remnants of a missile fired from Yemen in the direction of Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

Haley and the Trump administration have gone beyond Powell and the Bush administration in dragging U.S. intelligence agencies into their hostility-selling campaign.

"Instead of using intelligence for its proper purpose of informing policy decisions yet to be made, this campaign was instead a selective and tendentious use of intelligence to sell a decision already made..."

For Powell’s speech, the imprimatur of the intelligence community was symbolized by Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet sitting in the camera frame right behind Powell. Although Haley is the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, such an image in the Security Council chamber evidently wasn’t enough. Instead, she did her show-and-tell at the Defense Intelligence Agency in Washington. And rather than a small vial that Powell used as a prop in talking about a biological weapon, she displayed a warehouse full of wrecked hardware, including the missile remnants.

Distorting Reality

[dropcap]J[/dropcap]ust as in 2003, the show missed the fundamental issues involved in the relevant Middle Eastern mayhem. The missile fired at Riyadh was a rather feeble and ineffective response to the continuing air assault on Yemen by a Saudi-led coalition that has turned a civil war sparked by tribal disgruntlement into one of the world’s biggest current humanitarian disasters.

According to the United Nations and other sources, more than 5,000 civilians have been killed, along with the thousands of injuries and other deaths as well as related consequences such as a cholera epidemic that has killed thousands more. The Saudi-led air war is clearly the biggest source of the carnage.

The United States aids that air war. The exact nature and extent of the assistance are unclear, but what is publicly acknowledged includes U.S. provision of targeting information and refueling of Saudi warplanes. The Trump administration reportedly has considered increasing the military assistance to Saudi Arabia, including possible resumption of shipments of guided missiles that the Obama administration had suspended because of the indiscriminate Saudi targeting of civilians.

It is both misguided policy and morally offensive for Haley to try to focus attention on Iranian-related markings on a missile fragment while her own government abets far more suffering and destruction in the same war of which that missile was a part.

On the very day that Haley was showcasing Iran-related munitions came news that one of the latest aerial attacks by the Saudi-led coalition destroyed a prison in the capital Sanaa and killed at least 30 people, most of whom were detainees in the prison. And on the day that Haley was drawing attention to her warehouse full of arms that, in her words, “include parts made in Iran, some by Iran’s government-run defense industry” came reports of how many U.S.- and Saudi-supplied arms wound up in the hands of the Islamic State (ISIS). Evidently a factory marking on a munition is supposed to constitute a case for condemnation of the country of manufacture when Iran is involved, but not when another state is, or at least when the United States or Saudi Arabia is.

Haley’s remarks at the show-and-tell did nothing to explain how the munitions displayed around her demonstrate anything about either Iranian policies or the drivers of conflict and instability in the Middle East, much less about implications for U.S. policy. Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates had handed over the materiel, and U.S. officials either would not or could not say where much of it had been recovered. Nor could they say when the weapons had been supplied or when they were used. To use such military detritus as a basis for conclusions about what Iran is or is not contributing to violence in the Middle East makes little more sense than holding Mikhail Kalashnikov responsible for all attacks in which AK-47s have been used.

Dirty U.S. Hands

[dropcap]O[/dropcap]fficials of the United States — the world’s leading exporter of arms — ought to be especially careful about suggesting that factory markings on munitions equate to evidence about a country’s foreign policy, given how U.S.-origin arms have been used even by the likes of ISIS.

Secretary of State Colin Powell addressed the United Nations on Feb. 5. 2003, citing satellite photos which supposedly proved that Iraq had WMD, but the evidence proved bogus.

Haley’s comments were more telling about the nature of what the Trump administration is trying to do with such displays. She talked about going to “great lengths” to declassify “evidence” and said, “As you know, we do not often declassify this type of military equipment recovered from these attacks.”

That’s right, we do not. And the administration’s upending of normal procedures for the sake of the public hostility-stoking campaign shows how far removed any of this is from a healthy and proper use of intelligence services.

Haley grossly mischaracterized a new United Nations report on implementation of Security Council Resolution 2231, which is the international community’s official endorsement of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the agreement that restricts Iran’s nuclear program. She made it sound as if there were united international backing for her blame-everything-on-Iran message, saying, “In its strongest language yet, the Secretary-General’s report describes violation after violation of weapons transfers and ballistic missile activity.”

Haley knows well that the only obligations that Iran undertook in either the JCPOA or the U.N. resolution that endorsed the agreement concern nuclear activities. The reference in Resolution 2231 to missiles was intentionally and carefully worded as a “call” that entails no additional obligation.

The Secretary-General’s report, like most such U.N. documents, is more a compilation of reports and assertions by member countries than the reaching of any grand conclusion. A U.N. monitoring committee did investigate missile firings by the Houthi forces in Yemen earlier this year and expressed agnosticism about who was involved in supplying the weapons, even though they appeared to be of Iranian design and manufacture.

The monitors also stated they saw no evidence of something else Haley has suggested, which was a presence of Iranian missile specialists within Yemen. In the international scrutiny that matters most in assessing Iran’s compliance with its obligations, the International Atomic Energy Agency continues to certify that Iran is meeting its nuclear commitments under the JCPOA.

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, who must have cringed when seeing Haley’s remarks, spoke to some of the same subjects on the day of Haley’s presentation. Guterres repeated his endorsement of the JCPOA as “the best way” to ensure that Iran’s nuclear program stays peaceful, while expressing concern about how President Trump’s withholding of certification to Congress in October had created “considerable uncertainty” about the future of the agreement.

Scare tactics were a big part of the Bush administration’s campaign of selling its war, with the brandishing of things like vials we were told to imagine might be filled with anthrax spores. Haley got fully into the same mode when she said about the missile that hit close to the Riyadh airport, “Just imagine if this missile had been launched at Dulles Airport or JFK, or the airports in Paris, London, or Berlin. That’s what we’re talking about here. That’s what Iran is actively supporting.”

No, Iran isn’t supporting that at all. There is zero evidence of any Iranian move toward obtaining a weapon with intercontinental reach. There is no evidence that Iranian military development and procurement are proceeding with anything in mind other than responding to what Iran sees as threats and rivals within its own region.

The heads of the Iranian military and Revolutionary Guard Corps have talked publicly about 2,000 kilometers being a sufficient range for Iranian weapons to meet that need. Such a range is not just talk and is consistent with the larger strategic logic of Iran’s defense posture.

It is a harmful waste of the time and attention not only of the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, but also of all the intelligence officers who were involved in putting together that display at DIA, to be hyping an imaginary intercontinental threat when the United States faces a real one from North Korea.

We still don’t know exactly where Trump, Haley, or anyone else in the current administration wants or expects to go with their campaign of stoking maximum tension with, and hostility toward, Iran. But more and more of their campaign sounds a lot like what the Bush administration and neoconservatives were saying about Iraq in 2002 and 2003. Add to the other similarities a perversion of the relationship between policy and intelligence.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Paul R. Pillar, in his 28 years at the Central Intelligence Agency, rose to be one of the agency’s top analysts. He is author most recently of Why America Misunderstands the World. (This article first appeared as a blog post at The National Interest’s Web site. Reprinted with author’s permission.)

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License

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Jerusalem – The Straw that Breaks the Empire’s Back?

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When President Trump on 6 December 2017 declared unilaterally Jerusalem as the capital of Israel to where the US Embassy shall relocate, he violated UN Resolutions, international law, common sense and went against all diplomatic efforts to eventually bring peace to the region, not to speak about 130 countries that have already voiced opposition to such a decision. And this, before the Peace Process is coming to an end, at which point the 1993 Oslo Peace Accords would play out. They are also called the Road Map for Peace, between Palestine and Israel, which foresees a two-state solution and accordingly a mutual decision on Jerusalem becoming the capital city for both Palestine and Israel. These Oslo Peace Accords are still valid today.

[dropcap]B[/dropcap]ut Mr. Trump may not have a clue that such a Peace Accord even exists. And his handlers obviously had no interest of telling him. – And even if they did, it would make no difference, because the exceptional nation has no scruples demolishing any agreements of the past, regardless whether or not it – the US of A – were party to the shaping of them. – See also the Iranian Nuclear Deal.

By the same token, Washington does not give a hoot about international law and UN Resolutions. We are talking about the only and perfect rogue state the world has known in the past two centuries, by far surpassing, actually without any comparison with the western customarily accused villains, like Zimbabwe, North Korea, Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Cuba --- and all those that refuse to bend to the Chief-Rogue-State, the United States of America.

In fact, what Trump has done, was just confirming what previous US Administrations had already as an objective, namely following the so-called „Jerusalem Embassy Act of 1995“, with which the US Congress already 20 years ago, requested and prepared this step by legislation that says, “Since 1950, Jerusalem is the Capital of the State of Israel…”. Never mind and, of course not reported by the mainstream media, that immediately after promising the US Embassy would be moved to Jerusalem, Trump signed a ‘waiver’ postponing the move indefinitely, or until the international situation becomes ‘clear(er)’. – Who does the US Congress think they are – God the Almighty? To decide over the “Holy City”, Jerusalem, the historic center of the three-religion monotheist culture of 5,000 years of Judeo-Christianism, also incorporating Islam, is an act of arrogance without comparison.

This insensitive Trump decision or affirmation at this point in time – another one in his basket of disasters – brought everything else but peace to the region, and especially to Palestine. It caused unrest, angry demonstrations from people who are basically fighting with their bare hands; protests which were immediately oppressed with firepower and violence by the Israeli military and police force, killing people in the Israel imposed ghetto of Gaza and the West Bank – i.e. in Palestine, what should become an independent state.

"At no time was even mentioned that Jerusalem, if anything, might also be the capital of Palestine. The Motherland of Israel, let’s not forget, Palestine, was ignored. Palestine was provoked into protests, just to be brutally suffocated by the Israeli defense Forces (IDF). They do this with sadistic pleasure, like killing helpless flies. All this prompted by the criminal and irresponsible behavior of the President of the United States, the exceptional Nation – or rather his invisible handlers behind the throne..."

Instead of bringing peace, Trump killed the aspiration of peace, he de facto killed the notion of a two-state solution – and he effectively isolated the US from literally the rest of the world. Was this a bold provocation inspired by Trump’s Zionist masters, a trial balloon to find out how much of impunity the world would tolerate?

At no time was even mentioned that Jerusalem, if anything, might also be the capital of Palestine. The Motherland of Israel, let’s not forget, Palestine, was ignored. Palestine was provoked into protests, just to be brutally suffocated by the Israeli defense Forces (IDF). They do this with sadistic pleasure, like killing helpless flies. All this prompted by the criminal and irresponsible behavior of the President of the United States, the exceptional Nation – or rather his invisible handlers behind the throne.

But the propaganda mantra must go on – the lie that declaring Jerusalem the capital of Israel was good for the Middle East, was good for peace, was and still is repeated over and over again, like a mantra, tras-mantra, tras-mantra - by Trump and his mannequins, his foreign affair puppets, Rex Tillerson and Nikki Haley, who is masquerading as Washington’s UN Ambassador, repeating over and over again, the same lie, the same lie, the same lie, in the hope, as the common saying goes after Goebbels, Hitler’s Propaganda Minister, if repeated enough, the lie becomes the truth. Do these clowns really believe that if a world renowned repeat-liar keeps repeat-lying the globe's populace believes that the repeat-lie becomes the truth?

The people at large have moved forward towards awakening since the horrendous murderous lies about Iraq with weapons of mass destruction that weren’t; about Gaddafi horrors committed to his people, which he didn’t, to the contrary, he provided them with free education, health services and cutting edge medical facilities, with free infrastructure and a broad social safety net; or UN-proven lies about Bashar Al-Assad’s poison gas used against his own people; the lies about Iran’s nuclear program that never was; the lies about Russia’s meddling in Ukraine, when it is now amply proven that the Maidan massacre was planned and carried out via the US Embassy in Kiev and through US and NATO military and paid mercenaries; the lies about the US and NATO fighting against ISIS which Washington created – and the list of lies go on – endlessly.

Balfour

The entire vassal state of the European Union, country after country – led by the three “Ms”, Germany’s Merkel, France’s Macron, and the UK’s May – have said they would not go along with Trump’s decision and moving their Embassies to Jerusalem. Bravo! – Will this decision last, or will there be some high-power arm-twisting by Washington? – Is Washington still able to do arm-twisting, economic sanctions? Haven’t they noticed yet, that the west, even the hitherto puppet West, is gradually but surely moving away from the Atlantic Alliance towards the East. Probably for purely selfish economic and financial reasons, though some western politicians may look deeper and see the light, what I call, the Future is in the East.

What is also amazing though, is that nobody seems to even question the basics – the right of the self-styled emperor Trump, the typical emperor without clothes – interfering with the decision of another nation’s capital city. Of course, we know that Trump’s buddy and family friend, Bibi Netanyahu, holds and / or twists arms (smilingly) with the Donald on Jerusalem through the infamous family relations of the two warrying aggressors and through the seemingly unbeatable Zion-power the western world is being subjected to.

Trump, with this unwise decision, may have brought Jerusalem back to the 12^th Century, the ages of the Crusades, when in 1187, on behalf of the Muslim Ayyubids Dynasty, Sultan Saladin, a Sunni Muslim, of Kurdish origins, besieged and eventually re-conquered the so-called Christian Kingdom of Heaven, invaded and stolen by the ‘Christian’ emperors of Rome two-hundred years earlier.

Perhaps Mr. Trump nilly-willy has started a new Arab Crusade against the artificially imposed Kingdom of Israel, artificially implanted in the land of Palestine, implanted by the Zionists who used the power of the British Empire which at that time was colonizing Palestine, to corrupt the freshly created UN system in 1948 to cut up and destroy Palestine – see the Balfour Declaration, reproduced on this page. The British Foreign Secretary, Arthur Balfour, wrote on 2^nd November 1917, hundred years ago, to Lord Rothschild, a leader of the British Jewish community, suggesting the carving up of Palestine the creation of a State of Israel. The ‘proposal’ was to be transmitted to the Zionist Federation of Great Britain and Ireland. Lord Rothschild was co-drafter of the letter. The text of the declaration was made official by publication in the media on 9 November 1917.

The idea was eventually carried out by a UN Resolution in 1948, bringing about the State of Israel on 14 May 1948, the day Palestine became a non-country and enslaved to Israel.

Behind the Trump strategy lays a broader objective, the creation of a Greater Israel, that would stretch from the Euphrates to the Nile, cutting through Saudi Arabia, absorbing Jordan, a large portion of Syria and most of Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula. This is to make Israel a Middle Eastern super-power, sitting on a huge chunk of the sub-continent’s energy wealth and on most of the Middle east’s fresh water reserves, on behalf of the Anglo-Zionist Empire.

It is yet to be seen whether this bold and aggressive move by Trump went a step too far; whether this impunity is the straw that may break the empire’s back.

What if nobody – not even the traditional allies – participates in this nefarious endeavor to move their embassies from Tel Avia to Jerusalem?

What if sanctions that Washington undoubtedly may dish out to those who do not obey its orders do no longer work?

What if this Trump lunacy opens the gates to the East even further for all those who have been fed-up with the empire’s financial-, fury-and-fire, and propaganda-crusades to conquer the world; and that this Washington insanity leads them to a new healthier, promising and honest economic system striving towards equality – of which we know already the fundamental bedrock – the multi-trillion New Silk Road, President Xi’s One Belt Initiative?

About the Author

Peter Koenig is an economist and geopolitical analyst. He is also a former World Bank staff and worked extensively around the world in the fields of environment and water resources. He lectures at universities in the US, Europe and South America. He writes regularly for Global Research, ICH, RT, Sputnik, PressTV, The 4th Media (China), TeleSUR, The Vineyard of The Saker Blog, and other internet sites. He is the author of Implosion – An Economic Thriller about War, Environmental Destruction and Corporate Greed – fiction based on facts and on 30 years of World Bank experience around the globe. He is also a co-author of The World Order and Revolution! – Essays from the Resistance.

PETER KOENIG—This insensitive Trump decision or affirmation at this point in time – another one in his basket of disasters – brought everything else but peace to the region, and especially to Palestine. It caused unrest, angry demonstrations from people who are basically fighting with their bare hands; protests which were immediately oppressed with firepower and violence by the Israeli military and police force, killing people in the Israel imposed ghetto of Gaza and the West Bank – i.e. in Palestine, what should become an independent state.

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WANTED: MEDIA FELONS
All abject servants of the plutocracy

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Trump’s decision reveals U.S. reality at its ugliest

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By JIM MILES

"The main 'reveal' is that Trump has no veneer, he is the epitome of the vile, corrupt, greedy corporate ‘ugly American’ that has always existed and mostly dominated under all the soft power propaganda that accompanies the hard power military occupation of much of the world..."

•

Trump—a narcissistic coarse and dangerous fool, but not an aberration to a good system as Democrats and liberals would like us think but a logical and inevitable product of the same system.

After Trump announced his decision on Jerusalem being the capital of Israel to be signaled by moving the U.S. embassy there, the condemnation came swift and strong, as well as the praise coming swift and strong from those supporting the decision - in the latter case mainly the Christian evangelicals and the Israelis.

The comments were generally clear, without equivocation. Those supporting the motion relied on their religious beliefs and mythological narratives in order to support it. Those opposed - most of the rest of the world - argued from the perspective of the various UN resolutions, the Geneva Accords and other international agreements, and from the simple common sense indignation against a colonial-settler enterprise engineered in part and now wholly supported by the U.S.government.

I - Richard Falk

However, the comment that most concerned me was one written by Richard Falk,

What is already evident on the basis of the decision itself is the severe damage done to the global and regional leadership reputation of the United States....Prospects for a diplomacy based on the equality of rights of Palestinians and Israelis have been reduced to zero, and thus no just end of the Palestinian ordeal can be foreseen. Overall, it is not a pleasant balance sheet of gains and losses if evaluated from the perspective of American grand strategy in the Middle East, and if the wider regional setting of Iran’s spreading influence is taken into account, the situation looks even worse.[ "Jerusalem Is (Is Not) the Capital of Israel", Richard Falk. Foreign Policy Journal, December 11, 2017. www.foreignpolicyjournal.com]

Falk is much more experienced than I am, much more in the centre of power, much better informed, and perhaps much smarter. But this concluding paragraph to an article he wrote that has been reproduced in several outlets providing an insight that perhaps he has absorbed a bit of the U.S. soft power propaganda concerning the U.S.' reputation and of how its grand strategy relates to Iran. It is a touch of equivocation that allows some wiggle room in support of empire.

His first line argues that "severe damage" has been "done to the global and regional leadership reputation of the United States." Perhaps not, as far as I know the global and regional reputation of the U.S. has for a long time been highly tarnished if not corrupted and decomposed. Personally, for many decades, I have seen the U.S. reputation as a false veneer of platitudes, rhetoric, and hubris covering up a military empire that wished to dominate the world for its own corporate greed and power. If simply removing that veneer is causing severe damage, that only speaks to the ability of U.S. soft power and propaganda to cover up the reality of what it is trying to do to the people of the world. It is surprising that Falk did not see through that veneer as the implication is that before Trump’s announcement perhaps things were okay with the U.S.

Those sentiments are strengthened by his subsequent statements that the "situation looks even worse" vis a vis "Iran’s spreading influence" versus the U.S.’ "grand strategy". That grand strategy as far as I can tell is to deconstruct all governments surrounding Israel in order that they become puppets to the U.S./Israeli overlords, using Saudi backed terrorists as an integral part of that strategy. Is Falk also under the propagandized illusion that Iran in the Middle East is worse than the U.S. in the Middle East? Surely he knows the history of Iran and the reasons it is hostile to the U.S.? Which country is located in the Middle East again? Is Falk unaware of the dynamics between Saudi Arabia, the U.S., oil, and the petrodollar? I hope I am misinterpreting what Falk is trying to say but it appears that perhaps some of the U.S. propaganda has filtered into his subconscious.

II - Videos

[dropcap]I[/dropcap] have also spent much of the past few weeks watching videos, all concerned to some degree or other with the power of the Israeli state in its relationship with the U.S. empire.

"Personally, for many decades, I have seen the U.S. reputation as a false veneer of platitudes, rhetoric, and hubris covering up a military empire that wished to dominate the world for its own corporate greed and power. If simply removing that veneer is causing severe damage, that only speaks to the ability of U.S. soft power and propaganda to cover up the reality of what it is trying to do to the people of the world. It is surprising that Falk did not see through that veneer as the implication is that before Trump’s announcement perhaps things were okay with the U.S..."

The longest and scariest is "Shadow World", a film highlighting what is commonly called the deep state. In particular in this case it emphasizes the Saudi relationship and the nastiness of Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld as they led the neocons through several U.S. presidents with John Bolton still carrying the banner forward. [trailers are readily available, but the movie itself appears to have been delisted by Google] The ICC has plenty of work waiting for it.

Another video I watched with interest is "The Occupation of the American Mind" detailing how the hasbara department of Israel has succeeded in occupying the headspace of most citizens of the U.S. in particular the politician's.["Defending the Indefensible 2016 The Occupation of the American Mind PART 1" 9/11 Truth. July 17, 2016.] The ordinary citizens, generally ignorant of world affairs, only understand what the politicians and their media outlets allow them to see, if they are paying attention at all.

The third video of note this past week concerns the Israeli attack on the USS Liberty in 1967. This recent documentary concerns the well concealed military attack against a relatively defenseless spy ship monitoring the Six Day War in international waters off the coast of Egypt. ["The Day Israel Attacked America", Director Richard Belfield, Produced by James Scott and Elaine Morris. January 10, 2016] Lyndon Johnson, then president, was highly supportive of Israel and this film documents the manipulations that occurred in part by the Israelis to placate the U.S. government, and by the U.S.government to hide the action from its own public.

III - The Saker

[dropcap]I[/dropcap]n a wonderfully sarcastic commentary, the blogger ‘the Saker’ admitted that Trump is obviously a Russian agent for his recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. [ "Okay, I admit it: Trump is a Russian agent." The Saker. Russia Insider. Thursday December 14, 2017. http://russia-insider.com/en/okay-i-admit-it-trump-russian-agent/ri21939] The crux of the argument is the brilliance (remember this is sarcasm) of how the decision united the Islamic world against the decision and thus against Israel and the U.S. - with the aside that Saudi Arabia and Jordan will have to watch their backs as they are quite simply U.S./Israeli allies.

The "FINAL COMMUNIQUÉ OF THE EXTRAORDINARY ISLAMIC SUMMIT CONFERENCE" [available at https://drive.google.com/file/d/1WwVwbjE85VeJYxeNVI5bjXWdkVnQYDjw/view] demonstrates the unity of the Islamic world in rejecting the U.S. position, using arguments based on the Geneva Conventions and various UN resolutions concerning Jerusalem.

The Saker’s summary says a lot,

Let’s sum it up: this document, signed by representatives of 57 member states, with a total population of over 1.6 billion, categorically condemns the USA, declares that Jerusalem is central to the Islamic world, accuses the USA of violating international law, holds the USA fully responsible for all the consequences of this action and declares that the US is no longer considered a sponsor of the peace process.

Bravo Donald! The military defeat of the USA in Iraq and Afghanistan and the political defeat of the USA in Syria just needed a little something to truly make the USA irrelevant in the Middle-East and thanks to you, Donald, that has now happened! [The Saker, ibid]

IV— A decision highlighting U.S. intentions vis a vis Palestine.

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]he election of Trump to the Presidency reveals much about the true nature of U.S. intentions and past actions.

The main 'reveal' is that Trump has no veneer, he is the epitome of the vile, corrupt, greedy corporate ‘ugly American’ that has always existed and mostly dominated under all the soft power propaganda that accompanies the hard power military occupation of much of the world. Domestically, he highlights the racist, misogynist, narcissistic, ego-centered undercurrents of life in the U.S. In other words, he shows the world what the U.S. is really about if actions speak louder than words.

As for Israel - U.S. relationships, the decision simply footnotes that the U.S. never was an "honest broker", never interested anymore than the Israelis are in a negotiated settlement of the occupation with a two state solution, that the U.S. is not and never has been a "peacekeeper" in that or any other global region. Trump has united the Islamic world in support of Jerusalem as an international city, in support of the rights of the Palestinian people for a fair and just resolution to the occupation of Palestine (being, honestly, the entirety of the region from the Mediterranean to the Jordan River.)

Trump’s incompetence, combined with the videos mentioned above, and combined with the surreal Russiagate investigations going against Trump (and conflicting the Democrats as well), especially as presented by the Saker, leads to the not surprising conclusion that the U.S. is politically owned by Israel. Both are powerful, highly technological, seemingly incompetent military nations (as is their Saudi ally). One relies on mercenaries and collateral damage airpower; the other uses its military to suppress the indigenous population it is trying to ethnically cleanse. The U.S. has ceded political power to Israel in the belief that Israel will be of long term hegemonic benefit for Middle East power.

V - But little change

[dropcap]A[/dropcap]ll that being said, the reality is that not much will change, a prediction I hope is wrong. Israel will continue building settlements, will become increasingly hardline towards the Palestinians now that Trump has exposed the baseline U.S. interests to all. The Arab states will cry and shout, but do not have the power to do anything about the situation, and as with the past are probably more concerned about their own survival from their own citizens than of the plight of the Palestinians. Saudi Arabia will continue to play a double game, while Jordan simply sits and sweats out its survival - as does the rest of the world while Trump tweets away.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

JIM MILES, Distinguished Collaborator

jimMiles Jim Miles is a Canadian educator living in British Columbia. He writes regularly about the Middle East and its militarization and economic subjugation. His concerns include the commodification of the world by corporate governance and the American government. He writes book reviews and opinion pieces which are published here, as well as in The Palestine Chronicle and Foreign Policy Journal. His work is widely distributed across the Internet.”

JIM MILES—The main ‘reveal’ is that Trump has no veneer, he is the epitome of the vile, corrupt, greedy corporate ‘ugly American’ that has always existed and mostly dominated under all the soft power propaganda that accompanies the hard power military occupation of much of the world. Domestically, he highlights the racist, misogynist, narcissistic, ego-centered undercurrents of life in the U.S. In other words, he shows the world what the U.S. is really about if actions speak louder than words.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License

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Parting shot—a word from the editors
The Best Definition of Donald Trump We Have Found

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Trump’s Jerusalem Ploy

MAKE SURE YOU CIRCULATE THESE MATERIALS! BREAKING THE EMPIRE'S PROPAGANDA MACHINE DEPENDS ON YOU.

Photo by Kristoffer Trolle | CC BY 2.0

President Trump’s decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital is not only a clear violation of international law, but a moral outrage when it comes to its acquiescence in apartheid, ethnic cleansing and the violation of the rights of the Palestinian people.

Delivered with the insouciance of a mafia don parcelling out territory to one of his capos, in this instance Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu, Trump’s announcement did not so much signal the recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital as it did provide confirmation that the US and Israel are rogue states.

Under the stewardship of Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel has embraced with unfailing ardour a rejectionist stance when it comes to a Palestinian state. He knows that peace, a viable peace, cannot exist and will never exist unless justice for the Palestinians is placed at its heart. Hitherto the Israeli prime minister had stood isolated in his obduracy – even if opposition to it had been more sotto voce than meaningful on the part of a supine international community – but now in Trump his greatest dream has come true, providing him with a willing partner in his refusal to depart as much as an inch from his embrace of Israeli exceptionalism and belief that Israel’s right to the land of Palestine is inviolate.

In truth, of course, Israel has never and will never have any right to Palestinian land – unless, that is, religious and biblical obscurantism, buttressed by settler colonialism, is the kernel of international law and diplomacy in the 21^st century.

Jerusalem is unequivocally and indisputably a part of occupied Palestine, adjudged such by both the General Assembly and Security Council of the United Nations. Its ooccupation also constitutes a breach of the Fourth Geneva Convention, specifically Article 49 concerning forced transfer and deportations of civilians out of an occupied territory, and the transfer of its own civilians into said territory.

Thus the violation of international law reflected in the assumption of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital is clear and inarguable, just as it has been over its decades-long occupation. What has been lacking, and grievously, throughout this time is the requisite will on the part of the international community to take serious measures by which to compel Israel to conform to its obligations under international law as a UN member state.

The only reason Israel has been able to continue to flout those obligations is its longstanding alliance with Washington, providing it with unparalleled military, financial, and military support. The bond which the political establishments of both countries share is long and, in the inimitable words of the 44^th President of the United States Barack Obama, “unbreakable.”

The point surely, though, is that no one is asking or expecting it to be broken. All people who are of goodwill expect, and are entitled to expect, is that Washington – with the extirpation of its own indigenous population as part of its own shameful history – stand on the side of international law (the operative word here being ‘international’) instead of being complicit in its breach, as it has been and continues to be when it comes to its support for Israel’s occupation of Palestine.

Trump’s recklessness and disregard for the craft of diplomacy has once again thrown a metaphoric hand grenade into the midst of an issue and region that needs another incendiary development like a malnourished man needs to go on a crash diet. Does the current US president think this is a game? Does he understand that he’s supposed to be the leader of the most powerful country in the world and not a recurring character in The Sopranos?

The barrage of criticism that has met this development from across the world tells its own story. It is a development which constitutes the final nail in the coffin of the Middle East peace process, pushing the Palestinians down the path towards physical resistance in the form of a third intifada as a consequence.

Who could possibly blame them? Decades spent existing under the brute heel of occupation in the West Bank – where Jewish only illegal settlements have expanded and continue to spread, where hundreds of checkpoints are a daily reminder of their subjugation and degradation, occupied land the natural resources of which have and continue to be expropriated – can only but leave a sour taste. Meanwhile, Gaza continues to exist under a siege that amounts to collective punishment, one that evinces no sign of abating anytime soon. Taken together, the ‘only democracy in the Middle East’ has been engaged in a mass experiment in human despair.

Ironically, such a brazen move by Trump can only weaken rather than increase Israel’s security. It will serve to marginalize moderate Palestinian voices and allow more radical ones to come to the fore, able to point to this measure as irrefutable evidence of the futility of a diplomatic solution to the crisis, attracting support for their belief in resistance by any means necessary, including, as mentioned, physical resistance. Increasingly, it seems this is the only language these thugs in tailored suits understand.

That Trump’s understanding of the Middle East, with all its complexities, is of insufficient breadth to fit on the back of a postage stamp, is not in dispute. Indeed it is tempting to ascribe to the 45^th president the withering verdict of one of his predecessors, Lyndon Johnson – “so dumb he can’t fart and chew gum at the same time.”

John Wight is the author of a politically incorrect and irreverent Hollywood memoir – Dreams That Die – published by Zero Books. He’s also written five novels, which are available as Kindle eBooks. You can follow him on Twitter at @JohnWight1

JOHN WIGHT—Ironically, such a brazen move by Trump can only weaken rather than increase Israel’s security. It will serve to marginalize moderate Palestinian voices and allow more radical ones to come to the fore, able to point to this measure as irrefutable evidence of the futility of a diplomatic solution to the crisis, attracting support for their belief in resistance by any means necessary, including, as mentioned, physical resistance. Increasingly, it seems this is the only language these thugs in tailored suits understand.

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