Does Israel attempts to rig the US elections ?

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The Israel attempts to influence the USA elections are directly related to the power of foreign lobbies in the USA, in this case Israel lobby.  Also foreign intelligence agencies are also involved iether in supporting role for CIA activities or as on their own, or both.  So Mossad activities int he USA also play a role.

The current Russiagate witch hunt tends to mask three more powerful players: Great Britain, Israel and KSA.   Russia does not any significant political lobby within the USA so no matter how hard Russians try they can't  influence the election in a way countries with powerful lobbies can.

Wealthy pro-Israel donors also play outsize role in the US politics. According  to Wikipedia:

A summary of pro-Israel campaign donations for the period of 1990–2008 collected by Center for Responsive Politics indicates current totals and a general increase in proportional donations to the US Republican party since 1996.[46] The Center for Responsive Politics' 1990–2006 data shows that "pro-Israel interests have contributed $56.8 million in individual, group and soft money donations to federal candidates and party committees since 1990."[47] In contrast, Arab-Americans and Muslim PACs contributed slightly less than $800,000 during the same (1990–2006) period.[48]

In 2006, 60% of the Democratic Party’s fundraising and 25% of that for the Republican Party's fundraising came from Jewish-funded PACs. According to a Washington Post estimate, Democratic presidential candidates depend on Jewish sources for as much as 60% of money raised from private sources.[49]

Casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, well known for his pro-Israel views even was called Trump’s Patron-in-Chief. The casino billionaire, Netanyahu supporter and owner of Israel HaYom newspaper won’t be the only Jewish friend and donor of politicians in 2016 elections.   Jewish pro-Isreal donors who have put millions - and in some cases tens of millions - into SuperPACs supporting Democrats include Bloomberg, Donald Sussman, James and Marilyn Simons, and the Republican’s bete noire - George Soros.

Money - no matter who it comes from - doesn’t always determine the outcome of races. But the ability to initiate - and counter - expensive ad campaigns from opponents, or pay for voter turnout efforts such as assisting elderly or handicapped voters get to the polls on election day certainly has an impact. And often this impact can mean the difference between winning and losing.

There is also another  line of influencing the results of the US elections -- via appointment to key cabinet positions in the new administration.  Several influential Washington figures who were deeply involved by attempt to influence the USA foreign policy belong to neocons. One example is neocon stalwart Robert Kagan, whose first major job in Washington was as chief of Reagan’s State Department Office of Public Diplomacy for Latin America.

What is interesting that no matter who is elected, several key position in the new administration are occupied by pro-Israel politicians. Even the head of staff in Obama administration was a pro-Israel politician. And that's essentially the No.2 political figure in the USA political structure, the politician with power that is higher  the the  vice-president of the USA.

The current foreign policy team in Trump administration is dominated by neocons, who managed to completely capture this administration. 


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Old News ;-)

[May 09, 2021] Democrats en Deshabille

May 09, 2021 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

“A Top Biden Cybersecurity Aide Donated Over $500,000 to AIPAC as an NSA Official†[David Corn, Mother Jones (via the War Nerd )]. “Several other national security expertsâ€"who asked not to be namedâ€"say that the foundation’s donations to AIPAC create, at the least, an appearance problem for Anne Neuberger.†• Apparently Neuberger was too much not only for Corn, but for his handlers in the intelligence community, to stomach. The whole piece is well worth a read. It’s all horrible.

[May 09, 2021] Israeli exceptionalism

Notable quotes:
"... "If the day should ever come when we must go, if some day we are compelled to leave the scene of history, we will slam the door so hard that the universe will shake and mankind will stand back in stupefaction.." ― Joseph Goebbels ..."
"... 'We have the capability to take the world down with us. And I can assure you that that will happen before Israel goes under' ― General Moshe Dayan ..."
May 09, 2021 | www.moonofalabama.org

librul , May 5 2021 16:41 utc | 46

I went lateral in researching today's b-post and in so doing came across a Goebbels quote:

"If the day should ever come when we must go, if some day we are compelled to leave the scene of history, we will slam the door so hard that the universe will shake and mankind will stand back in stupefaction.."
― Joseph Goebbels

And I was sure that I had read something like that before:

'We have the capability to take the world down with us. And I can assure you that that will happen before Israel goes under'
― General Moshe Dayan

[Aug 08, 2020] No Difference Between John Bolton, Brian Hook Or Elliott Abrams-- Iran FM

Why did Trump hire all these neocons, and don't forget that other warmonger, David Wurmser, who was hired by Trump, the psychopath who 'designed' the disastrous Second Iraq War
Aug 08, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com

Bokkenrijder , 6 hours ago

Why did Trump hire all these neocons, and don't forget that other warmonger, David Wurmser, who was hired by Trump, the psychopath who 'designed' the disastrous Second Iraq War.

https://theintercept.com/2020/01/16/david-wurmser-iran-suleimani-iraq-war/

It probably has NOTHING to do with "3-D chess" but more to do with all the Zionist money backing Trump or perhaps even bailing out Trump's failed businesses.

Trump, failed miserably in the casino business, so is it a coincidence that a neocon zionist Las Vegas casino billionaire financed Trump's election campaign, and that all those neocon zionists were hired by Trump?

Is that why Trump is so scared to death about releasing his tax returns, because those tax returns might expose a LOT of unsavoury money flows...? 😉

HedgeJunkie , 15 hours ago

I guess the swamp is draining Trump.

Kinskian , 15 hours ago

Trump is a clumsy and transparent Zionist stooge.

PT , 14 hours ago

Gotta admit, if you're going to have a Zionist stooge then you are better off having a clumsy and transparent one.

Pliskin , 9 hours ago

You're all idiots!

Can't you see that this is just another multi-dimensional chess move to 'drain the swamp' by filling the swamp with swamp creatures!

Genius move...pure 'stable' genius move!

Bokkenrijder , 10 hours ago

"No Difference Between John Bolton, Brian Hook Or Elliott Abrams": Iran FM

Trump: "I'll hire the best people and drain the swamp." 🙄

What Trump meant was: I'll hire neocons and war criminals and continue the US Empire and funnel more money to the MIC.

Thank you Trumpturds!

saoirse1981 , 6 hours ago

America is and has been, ruled by a moronic kakistrocracy from time immemorial. Trump and the imbeciles he surrounds himself with are, all simultaneously, suffering from the "Dunning-kruger" effect, well known in psychology...( although being stupid to the point of idiocy, they imagine themselves to be the brightest stars in the universe ). They believe thay have the mental capabilities and the military might to take on Iran or China, or both. America has got accustomed to blitz-bombing defenceless countries back to the stoneage or inciting "regime change" by bribing Judas characters as their henchmen. Neither of these options will work here. Whilst engaged in perpetual war around the planet, America itself became parasitised by the biggest leech of all, the squatter in Palestine. This bringer of evil, now controls America completely and is both metaphorically and physically sucking her dry, her collapse is imminent so the threat she poses deteriorates daily.

needtoshit , 8 hours ago

It's high time the USA would cease to bully the entire world on behalf of the occupied strip of land paid for in money and blood by the USA themselves, and named israel.
5 play_arrow

To Hell In A Handbasket , 8 hours ago

I heard a statement in the early 80's, I don't know by whom, but they said "The President might change, but foreign policy stays the same" It was one of those frown of the eyes, deep thought moments, where I tried to make sense of the statement at the time, but still thought in terms of Left VS Right, where I listened and believed in words over deeds.

hugin-o-munin , 13 hours ago

How much will it take for people to realize that Trump is a puppet?

I keep hearing how he is fighting the deep state and how infinitely better he is compared to Hillary etc. Why is it so hard for people to admit they were conned? All Presidential candidates are carefully chosen to portray what the vast majority of people want to hear and Trump is no different. He was chosen to play the role of the outsider who was to clean house. Mainstream media are playing their part of the charade and people bought it hook line and sinker.

Even the current smoke and mirrors show between the Democrats and Republicans bickering endlessly seems to draw enough attention for people to stay engaged and distracted. The characters Trump appoints should be enough for most to see what he is doing - perpetuating the US Empire's push towards total global domination. He never had the intention of ending wars or locking anyone up. Draining the swamp? He is filling it yet people can't even see that which is right in front of them.

Does Trump even have a plan for how to handle a failing USD? It seems he does everything possible to distance the US from the world by acting more and more like a crazed emperor clinging on desperately to something that is nothing but a fake illusion. Die hard followers keep providing him a long list of excuses and explanations as he continues on. He is destined to finish off the US economically and unlike the calls claiming that the Democrats are going to steal the election it is the opposite way around. Joe Biden as contender is such a big joke that Trump couldn't lose even if he wanted to. The trajectory is set, the US will soon go through a financial destruction the likes of which the world has never seen and it will destroy the lives on billions.

Why is he going down this path? Partly because it is inevitable but mostly because those in power today want to remain in power when everything reboots. The same parasites calling the shots today want to be on top of whatever comes next. Using Trump is how they plan to do it. The fake outsider leading the fake battle against the 'swamp' has the perfect alibi to bring in the new dystopian system of total control that they've always wanted. There will only be a small window of time and opportunity for people to avoid this but it requires that they can see through all the smoke screens and mind games. When the USD implodes soon there will be a new currency rolled out perhaps digital but equally phony that will not last more than a year and that is when awake people need to break free. Good luck to us all.

Michael Norton , 14 hours ago

I will live long enough to watch all the old NWO guard and jackals of the establishment drop dead of old age. For that I am grateful.

Bokkenrijder , 4 hours ago

KEY ARCHITECT OF 2003 IRAQ WAR IS NOW A KEY ARCHITECT OF TRUMP IRAN POLICY

https://theintercept.com/2020/01/16/david-wurmser-iran-suleimani-iraq-war/

Taras Bulba , 4 hours ago

I would argue that no one compares with the extreme evilness of abrams-look at his record in latin america, covering up, defending, denyingm massacres of civilians which were vioe to the extreme, mass machine gunning of civilians, mass rapes by local armiess and defended by abrams. Look at his face if that does not reflect evil, I do not know what does.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/02/ilhan-omar-elliott-abrams-and-el-mozote-massacre/582889/

[May 24, 2020] FBI Document Reveals That Without Direct Israeli 'Intervention' Trump Would Have Lost 2016 Election

May 24, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

Mao , May 24 2020 20:56 utc | 30

FBI Document Reveals That Without Direct Israeli 'Intervention' Trump Would Have Lost 2016 Election

https://christiansfortruth.com/fbi-document-reveals-that-without-direct-israeli-intervention-trump-would-not-have-won-2016-election/

[May 24, 2020] FBI Document Reveals That Without Direct Israeli 'Intervention' Trump Would Have Lost 2016 Election

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... The explicit reference to Jerusalem appears later in the same document , in the context of communication between Stone and his unnamed contact in the Israeli capital. "On or about August 12, 2016, [NAME REDACTED] messaged STONE, "Roger, hello from Jerusalem. Any progress? He is going to be defeated unless we intervene. We have critical intell. The key is in your hands! Back in the US next week. How is your Pneumonia? Thank you. STONE replied, "I am well. Matters complicated. Pondering. R" The "he" is an apparent reference to Trump. ..."
"... Referring to the Israeli mentions in a report on the documents late Tuesday, the US website Politico noted: "The newly revealed messages often raise more questions than answers. They show Stone in touch with seemingly high-ranking Israeli officials attempting to arrange meetings with Trump during the heat of the 2016 campaign." ..."
"... Of course, this story is seen as a positive development from the Israeli (and evangelical) perspective because a Trump presidency was an essential part fulfilling an aggressive Zionist "wish list" which included moving the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem, annexing the Golan Heights and the West Bank, and perhaps a major move against Iran in the second term. ..."
"... This story also explains why the jewish-controlled press saturated the airwaves with fake stories of "Russian" intervention in the election -- and why we will be seeing similar non-stop stories of "Chinese" intervention in the upcoming 2020 election in November. ..."
"... And Netanyahu hasn't wasted a second of Trump's presidency in expanding Israel's power, territory and influence. As one Jewish media pundit claimed , Donald Trump has been " the greatest president for Jews and for Israel in the history of the world." Trump has even bragged that he is so popular among Israelis that they would elect him Prime Minister if he ran. ..."
May 24, 2020 | christiansfortruth.com

According to recently released FBI documents, Donald Trump's longtime confidant, Roger Stone, who was convicted last year in Robert Mueller's investigation into ties between Russia and the Trump campaign, was in contact with one or more apparently well-connected Israelis at the height of the 2016 US presidential campaign, one of whom warned Stone that Trump was "going to be defeated" unless Israel intervened in the election :

The exchange between Stone and this Jerusalem-based contact appears in FBI documents made public on Tuesday. The documents -- FBI affidavits submitted to obtain search warrants in the criminal investigation into Stone -- were released following a court case brought by The Associated Press and other media organizations.

A longtime adviser to Trump, Stone officially worked on the 2016 presidential campaign until August 2015, when he said he left and Trump said he was fired. However he continued to communicate with the campaign, according to Mueller's investigation.

The FBI material, which is heavily redacted, includes one explicit reference to Israel and one to Jerusalem, and a series of references to a minister, a cabinet minister, a "minister without portfolio in the cabinet dealing with issues concerning defense and foreign affairs," the PM, and the Prime Minister . In all these references the names and countries of the minister and prime minister are redacted.

Benjamin Netanyahu was Israel's prime minister in 2016 , and the Israeli government included a minister without portfolio, Tzachi Hanegbi, appointed in May with responsibility for defense and foreign affairs. One reference to the unnamed PM in the material reads as follows:

"On or about June 28, 2016, [NAME REDACTED] messaged STONE, "RETURNING TO DC AFTER URGENT CONSULTATIONS WITH PM IN ROME. MUST MEET WITH YOU WED. EVE AND WITH DJ TRUMP THURSDAY IN NYC."

Netanyahu made a state visit to Italy at the end of June 2016 .

The explicit reference to Israel appears early in the text of a May 2018 affidavit by an FBI agent in support of an application for a search warrant, and relates to communication between Stone and Jerome Corsi, an American author, commentator and conspiracy theorist. " On August 20, 2016, CORSI told STONE that they needed to meet with [NAME REDACTED] to determine "what if anything Israel plans to do in Oct," the affidavit states .

The explicit reference to Jerusalem appears later in the same document , in the context of communication between Stone and his unnamed contact in the Israeli capital. "On or about August 12, 2016, [NAME REDACTED] messaged STONE, "Roger, hello from Jerusalem. Any progress? He is going to be defeated unless we intervene. We have critical intell. The key is in your hands! Back in the US next week. How is your Pneumonia? Thank you. STONE replied, "I am well. Matters complicated. Pondering. R" The "he" is an apparent reference to Trump.

The redacted material features numerous references to an "October surprise," apparently relating to a document dump by Wikileaks' Julian Assange, intended to harm Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign and salvage Trump's .

Referring to the Israeli mentions in a report on the documents late Tuesday, the US website Politico noted: "The newly revealed messages often raise more questions than answers. They show Stone in touch with seemingly high-ranking Israeli officials attempting to arrange meetings with Trump during the heat of the 2016 campaign."

Mueller's investigation identified significant contact during the 2016 campaign between Trump associates and Russians, but did not allege a criminal conspiracy to tip the outcome of the presidential election.

This story first appeared last month, at the height of the COVID-19 plandemic, which conveniently and not coincidentally allowed all the mainstream media in America to ignore it.

Of course, this story is seen as a positive development from the Israeli (and evangelical) perspective because a Trump presidency was an essential part fulfilling an aggressive Zionist "wish list" which included moving the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem, annexing the Golan Heights and the West Bank, and perhaps a major move against Iran in the second term.

This story also explains why the jewish-controlled press saturated the airwaves with fake stories of "Russian" intervention in the election -- and why we will be seeing similar non-stop stories of "Chinese" intervention in the upcoming 2020 election in November.

We can only guess what further information about Israel's involvement in the election was redacted from this FBI document, but there can be little doubt that the orders to help Trump win came from the very top -- from Netanyahu himself.

And Netanyahu hasn't wasted a second of Trump's presidency in expanding Israel's power, territory and influence. As one Jewish media pundit claimed , Donald Trump has been " the greatest president for Jews and for Israel in the history of the world." Trump has even bragged that he is so popular among Israelis that they would elect him Prime Minister if he ran.

And even if the brain-dead American public found out about this Israeli intervention (i.e., "subversion of our democracy"), they would probably just shrug it off -- after all, Israel is our "most trusted friend and ally," goyim .

[May 05, 2020] Newly released FBI documents show Israel intervened in 2016 election to help Trump

Highly recommended!
Looks like Mueller barked to the wrong tree... And that was not accidental
Notable quotes:
"... The back story that's really significant here is that Mueller redacted evidence of Israeli interference in the U.S. election, and the Russiagate! scandal was a cover for that and other third-country meddling. Most of us here knew that a couple years ago ..."
"... @Blue Republic ..."
"... @leveymg ..."
"... @leveymg ..."
May 05, 2020 | caucus99percent.com

leveymg on Tue, 05/05/2020 - 8:17am

Previously sealed FBI documents indicate close contacts between Israel and the Trump campaign and that the Mueller investigation found evidence of Israeli involvement, but largely redacted it.

May 04th, 2020
By Alison Weir @alisonweir
https://www.mintpressnews.com/fbi-documents-israel-collusion-2016-trump-...

Menifee, CA (IAK) -- Newly released FBI documents suggest that Israeli government officials were in contact with the 2016 Trump presidential campaign and offered "critical intel."

In one of the extensively redacted documents, an official who appears to be an Israeli minister warns that Trump was "going to be defeated unless we intervene." He goes on to tell a Trump campaign official: "The key is in your hands."

The previously classified documents were released in response to a lawsuit brought by the Associated Press, CNN, the New York Times, Politico, and the Washington Post. The unsealed documents suggest that rather than Russia, it was Israel that covertly interfered in the election.

While all these media companies except one seem to have ignored the apparent Israeli connection revealed in the FBI documents, Israeli media have been quick to jump on it.

Israel's i24 News reports:

Newly released documents from the FBI suggest that Roger Stone, a senior aide in the 2016 Trump campaign, had one or more high-ranking contacts in the Israeli government willing to help the then-Republican Party nominee win the presidential election."

Israel's Ha'aretz newspaper reports:

Tantalizing hints" of "alleged clandestine contacts came to light in recent publication of redacted FBI documents."

The Times of Israel (TOI) the first to report on this, states:

The FBI material, which is heavily redacted, includes one explicit reference to Israel and one to Jerusalem, and a series of references to a minister, a cabinet minister, a minister without portfolio in the cabinet dealing with issues concerning defense and foreign affairs,' the PM, and the Prime Minister."

TOI points out: "Benjamin Netanyahu was Israel's prime minister in 2016," and reports circumstantial evidence that the "PM" mentioned in the document refers to Netanyahu:

One reference to the unnamed PM in the material reads as follows: 'On or about June 28, 2016, [NAME REDACTED] messaged STONE, "RETURNING TO DC AFTER URGENT CONSULTATIONS WITH PM IN ROME.MUST MEET WITH YOU WED. EVE AND WITH DJ TRUMP THURSDAY IN NYC.' Netanyahu made a state visit to Italy at the end of June 2016."

TOI also notes that "the Israeli government included a minister without portfolio, Tzachi Hanegbi, appointed in May with responsibility for defense and foreign affairs."

Ha'aretz also names Hanebi as the likely contact, and confirms that he "was in the United States on the dates mentioned, attending, among other things, a roll out of the first Israeli F-35 jet at a Lockheed Martin plant in Fort Worth, Texas."

The previously classified FBI affidavit says: "On or about August 12, 2016, [name redacted] messaged STONE, "Roger, hello from Jerusalem. Any progress? He is going to be defeated unless we intervene. We have critical intell. The key is in your hands! Back in the US next week."

Another section of the affidavit states: "On August 20, 2016, CORSI told STONE that they needed to meet with [name redacted] to determine "what if anything Israel plans to do in Oct." (Corsi refers to Jerome Corsi, a pro-Israel commentator and author known for extremist statements.)

Roger Stone, a longtime confidant of President Trump who worked on the 2016 campaign, was convicted last year in the Robert Mueller investigation into alleged collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign.

Stone has denied wrongdoing, consistently criticizing the accusations against him as politically motivated. Numerous analysts have found the "Russiagate" theory unconvincing, and the American Bar Association reported that Mueller's investigation "did not find sufficient evidence that President Donald Trump's campaign coordinated with Russia to influence the United States' 2016 election."

There have been previous suggestions that it was Israel that had most worked to influence the election.

[MORE]

The back story that's really significant here is that Mueller redacted evidence of Israeli interference in the U.S. election, and the Russiagate! scandal was a cover for that and other third-country meddling. Most of us here knew that a couple years ago .

Comments

Blue Republic on Tue, 05/05/2020 - 9:07am
Thank for posting

Mint Press has also reported on Israeli intelligence involvement/infiltration into critical US defense networks as well as their strong presence in social media.

I'd be surprised if there was an election in recent decades that they weren't involved in.

If Trump campaign people were actually soliciting Israeli help, that would be newsworthy and probably criminal. But Mueller throwing the book at Stone and Corsi over BS and covering what could actually be serious? That's twisted.

leveymg on Tue, 05/05/2020 - 9:26am
Laura Rozen who covers these things, has posted the FBI docs

@Blue Republic and adds this:

Laura Rozen
@lrozen
Profile picture
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1255347751153434624.html
Apr 29th 2020, 5 tweets, 2 min read
Stone arranged for meeting, but said in later email that a "fiasco" ensued after the associate brought a foreign military officer along
Unroll available on Thread Reader

https://twitter.com/kyledcheney/status/1255344430443347969

On Aug.20, 2016, CORSI told STONE they
needed to meet w/[ ] to determine "what if anything Israel plans to do in Oct"courtlistener.com/recap/gov.usco
huh courtlistener.com/recap/gov.usco
courtlistener.com/recap/gov.usco
(One PM in Rome on June 27 2016 was Netanyahu) mfa.gov.il/MFA/PressRoom/

Copy of FBI docs, including this, are linked at: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EWvp-fZWkAECFaN.jpg

Mint Press has also reported on Israeli intelligence involvement/infiltration into critical US defense networks as well as their strong presence in social media.

I'd be surprised if there was an election in recent decades that they weren't involved in.

If Trump campaign people were actually soliciting Israeli help, that would be newsworthy and probably criminal. But Mueller throwing the book at Stone and Corsi over BS and covering what could actually be serious? That's twisted.

leveymg on Tue, 05/05/2020 - 9:38am
The entire Court filing and Order sealing the FBI warrant app

@leveymg is reposted below, for those who want to read for themselves:

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
for the
District of Columbia
In the Matter of the Search of
(Briefly describe the property to be searched
or identify the person by name and address)
INFORMATION ASSOCIATED WITH THE GOOGLE
ACCOUNT ,
)
Case: 1:18-sc-01518
Assigned To : Howell, Beryl A.
Assign. Date: 5/4/2018
Description: Search & Seizure Warrant
SEARCH AND SEIZURE WARRANT
To: Any authorized law enforcement officer
An application by a federal law enforcement officer or an attorney for the government requests the search
of the following person or property located in the Northern District of California
(identify the person or describe the property to be searched and give its location):
See Attachment A.
I find that the affidavit(s), or any recorded testimony, establish probable cause to search and seize the person or property
described above, and that such search will reveal (identify the person or describe the property to be seized):
See Attachment B.
YOU ARE COMMANDED to execute this warrant on or before May 18, 2018 (not to exceed 14 days)
';$ in the daytime 6:00 a.m. to 10:00 p.m. 0 at any time in the day or night because good cause has been established.
Unless delayed notice is authorized below, you must give a copy of the warrant and a receipt for the property taken to the
person from whom, or from whose premises, the property was taken, or leave the copy and receipt at the place where the
property was taken.
The officer executing this warrant, or an officer present during the execution of the warrant, must prepare an inventory
as required by law and promptly return this warrant and inventory to Hon. Beryl A. Howell
(United States Magistrate Judge)
0 Pursuant to 18 U.S.C. § 3103a(b), I find that immediate notification may have an adverse result listed in 18 U.S.C.
§ 2705 ( except for delay of trial), and authorize the officer executing this warrant to delay notice to the person who, or whose
property, will be searched or seized (check the awropriate box)
0 for __ days (not to exceed 30) 0 until, the facts justifying, the later specific date of
Date and time issued:
Judge 's signature
City and state: Washington, DC Hon. Beryl A. Howell, Chief U.S. District Judge
Printed name and title
Case 1:19-mc-00029-CRC Document 29-7 Filed 04/28/20 Page 1 of 35
AO 93 (Rev 11/13) Search and Seizure Warrant (Page 2)
Return
Case No.: Date and time warrant executed: Copy of warrant and inventory left with:
Inventory made in the presence of :
Inventory of the property taken and name of any person(s) seized:
Certification
I declare under penalty of pe1jury that this inventory is correct and was returned along with the original warrant to the
designated judge.
Date:
Executing officer's signature
Printed name and title
Case 1:19-mc-00029-CRC Document 29-7 Filed 04/28/20 Page 2 of 35
UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA Cf erk, U.S. District & Bankrupicy
Gourts for tirn District of Columbl&
IN THE MATTER OF THE SEARCH OF
INFORMATION ASSOCIATED WITH
THE GOOGLE ACCOUNT
ORDER
Case: 1: 18-sc-01518
Assigned To : Howell, Beryl A.
Assign. Date: 5/4/2018
Description: Search & Seizure Warrant
The United States has filed a motion to seal the above-captioned warrant and related
documents, including the application and affidavit in support thereof ( collectively the "Warrant"),
and to require Google LLC, an electronic communication and/or remote computing services with
headquarters in Mountain View, California, not to disclose the existence or contents of the Warrant
pursuant to !8 U.S.C. § 2705(b).
The Court finds that the United States has established that a compelling governmental
interest exists to justify the requested sealing, and that there is reason to believe that notification
of the existence of the Warrant will seriously jeopardize the investigation, including by giving the
targets an opportunity to flee from prosecution, destroy or tamper with evidence, and intimidate
witnesses. See 18 U.S.C. § 2705(b)(2)-(5).
IT IS THEREFORE ORDERED that the motion is hereby GRANTED, and that the
warrant, the application and affidavit in support thereof, all attachments thereto and other related
materials, the instant motion to seal, and this Order be SEALED until further order of the Court;
and
Page 1 of2
Case 1:19-mc-00029-CRC Document 29-7 Filed 04/28/20 Page 3 of 35
IT IS FURTHER ORDERED that, pursuant to 18 U.S.C. § 2705(b), Google and its
employees shall not disclose the existence or content of the Warrant to any other person ( except
attorneys for Google for the purpose of receiving legal advice) for a period of one year unless
otherwise ordered by the Court.
Date 41/Y>lf
THE HONORABLE BERYL A. HOWELL
CHIEF UNITED STATES DISTRICT JUDGE
Page 2 of2
Case 1:19-mc-00029-CRC Document 29-7 Filed 04/28/20 Page 4 of 35
AO 106 (Rev. 04/10) Application for a Search Warrant
UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
In the Matter of the Search of
(Briefly describe the property to be searched
or identify the person by name and address)
for the
District of Columbia
MA\t !,
•'II·\! • ·r 2018
,,t,c,rk, U.S. District & Bankruptcy
C . ,,gurt~ lar 1hli-•D1strlctof Gollf/nh]•
ase.1:18-sc-01518 ·'
Ass!gned To: Howell, Beryl A
INFORMATION ASSOCIATED WITH THE GOOGLE
ACCOUNT
)
)
)
)
)
)
Assign. Date: 5;412018 ·
Description: Search & Seizure Warrant
APPLICATION FOR A SEARCH WARRANT
I, a federal law enforcement officer or an attorney for the government, request a search warrant and state under
penalty of perjury that I have reason to believe that on the following person or property (identify the person or describe the
property to be searched and give ifs location):
See Attachment A.
located in the Northern District of _____ C,-_a-,.l"'if.=o,..rn~ia.._ __ , there is now concealed (identijj, the
person or describe the property to be seized):
See Attachment B.
The basis for the search under Fed. R. Crim. P. 4 l(c) is (check one or more):
~ evidence of a crime;
ief contraband, fruits of crime, or other items illegally possessed;
r'lf property designed for use, intended for use, or used in committing a crime;
D a person to be arrested or a person who is unlawfully restrained.
The search is related to a violation of:
Code Section
18 U.S.C. § 2
· et al.
The application is based on these facts:
See attached Affidavit.
r;/ Continued on the attached sheet.
Offense Description
aiding and abetting
see attached affidavit
D Delayed notice of __ days (give exact ending date if more than 30 days: ______ ) is requested
under 18 U.S.C. § 3103a, the basis of which is set forth on the attached sheet.
~44 Reviewed by AUSA/SAUSA: Appbcant's signature
•Aaron Zelinsky (Special Counsel's Office) Andrew Mitchell, Supervisory Special Agent, FBI
Printed name and title
Sworn to before me and signed in my presence.
Date:
City and state: Washington, D.C. Hon. Beryl A. Howell, Chief U.S. District Judge
Printed name and title
Case 1:19-mc-00029-CRC Document 29-7 Filed 04/28/20 Page 5 of 35
UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA
MAY ·· ti 1018
Clerk, LLS. District & Bar1i

#1 and adds this:

Laura Rozen
@lrozen
Profile picture
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1255347751153434624.html
Apr 29th 2020, 5 tweets, 2 min read
Stone arranged for meeting, but said in later email that a "fiasco" ensued after the associate brought a foreign military officer along
Unroll available on Thread Reader

https://twitter.com/kyledcheney/status/1255344430443347969

On Aug.20, 2016, CORSI told STONE they
needed to meet w/[ ] to determine "what if anything Israel plans to do in Oct"courtlistener.com/recap/gov.usco
huh courtlistener.com/recap/gov.usco
courtlistener.com/recap/gov.usco
(One PM in Rome on June 27 2016 was Netanyahu) mfa.gov.il/MFA/PressRoom/

Copy of FBI docs, including this, are linked at: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EWvp-fZWkAECFaN.jpg

leveymg on Tue, 05/05/2020 - 9:54am
The entire FBI affidavit supporting the FBI seizure order and

@leveymg request for sealing of the record -- Case 1:19-mc-00029-CRC Document 29-7 Filed 04/28/20 Pages 3 to 35 for those who want to read for themselves:

Judge's signature
Hon. Bery[ A. Howell, Chief U.S. District Judge

Printed name and title

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA Glcrk, LL$. District & Bar1kruptcy
Gourts tor tirn District of ColumtHa

IN THE MATTER OF THE SEARCH OF INFORMATION ASSOCIATED WITH THE GOOGLE ACCOUNT

Case: 1:18-sc-01518
Ass!gned To : Howell, BerylA Assign. Date : S/4/20 18
Description: Search & S izure Warrant

AFFIDAVIT IN SUPPORT OF AN APPLICATION FOR A SEARCH WARRANT

I, Andrew Mitchell, having been first duly sworn, hereby depose and state as follows:

1. I make this affidavit in support of an application for a search warrant for

information associated with the following Google Account: (hereafter

the "Target Account 1"), that is stored at premises owned, maintained, controlled or operated by Google, Inc., a social networking company headquartered in Mountain View, California ("Google"). The information to be searched is described in the following paragraphs and in Attachments A and B. This affidavit is made in support of an application for a search warrant under 18 U.S.C. §§ 2703(a), 2703(b)(l)(A) and 2703(c)(l)(A)to require Google to disclose to the government copies of the information (including the content of communications) further described in Attachment A. Upon receipt of the information described. in Attachment A, government"authorized persons will review that information to locate the items described in Attachment B.
2. I am a Special Agent with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and have been since 2011. As a Special Agent of the FBI, I have received training and experience in investigating criminal and national security matters.
3. The facts in this affidavit come from my personal observations, my training and experience, and information obtained from other agents and witnesses. This affidavit is intended

to show merely that there is sufficient probable cause for the requested warrant and does not set fotth all of my knowledge about this matter.
4. Based on my training and experience and the facts as set forth in this affidavit, there is probable cause to believe that the Target Accounts contain communications relevant to violations of 18 U.S.C. § 2 (aiding and abetting), 18 U.S.C. § 3 (accessory after the fact), 18
U.S.C. § 4 (misprision of a felony), 18 U.S.C. § 371 (conspiracy), 18 U.S.C. § 1001 (making a

false statement); 18 U.S.C. §1651 (pe1jury); 18 U.S.C. § 1030 (unauthodzed access of a protected computer); 18 U.S.C. § 1343 (wire fraud), 18 U.S.C. § 1349 (attempt and conspiracy to commit wire fraud), , and 52 U.S.C. § 30121 (foreign contribution ban) (the "Subject
Offenses"). 1

5. As set forth below, in May 2016, Jerome CORSI provided contact information for
that there was an "OCTOBER SURPRISE COMING" and that Trump, ''[i]s going to be defeated unless we intervene. We have critical intel." In that same time period, STONE communicated directly via Twitter with WikiLeaks, Julian ASSANGE, and Guccifer 2.0. On July 25, 2016, STONE emailed instructions to Jerome CORSI to "Get to Assange" in person at the Ecuadorian Embassy and "get pending WikiLeaks emails[.]" On August 2, 2016, CORSI emailed STONE back that,"Word is friend in embassy plans 2 more dumps. One shortly after I1m back. 2nd in Oct. Impact planned to be very damaging." On August 20, 2016, CORSI told STONE that they
needed to meet o determine "what if anything Israel plans to do in Oct."

1 Federal law prohibits a foreign national from making, directly or indirectly, an expenditure or independent expenditure in connection with federal elections. 52 U.S.C. § 3012l(a)(l)(C); see also id. § 30101(9) & (17) (defining the terms "expenditure" and "independent expenditure").

(the Target Account) is le Account, which

sed to communicate with STONE and CORSI.

JURISDICTION

6. This Court has jurisdiction to issue the requested warrant because it is "a court of competent jurisdiction" as defined by 18 U.S.C. § 2711. Id. §§ 2703(a), (b)(l)(A), & (c)(l)(A). Specifically, the Court is "a district court of the United State (including a magistrate judge of such a court) ... that has jurisqiction over the offense being investigated." 18 U.S.C.
§ 2711(3)(A)(i). The offense conduct included activities in Washington, D.C., as detailed below, including in paragraph 8.
PROBABLE CAUSE

A. U.S. Intelligence Community (USIC) Assessment of Russian Government­ Backed Hacking Activity during the 2016 Presidential Election

7. On October 7, 2016, the U.S. Depa1tment of Homeland Security and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence released a joint statement of an intelligence assessment of Russian activities and intentions during the 2016 presidential election. In the report, the USIC assessed the following, with emphasis added:
8. The U.S. Intelligence Community (USIC) is confident that the Russian Government directed the recent compromises of e mails frorri US persons and institutions, including from US political organizations. The recent disclosures of alleged hacked e mails on sites like DCLeaks.com and WikiLeaks and by the Guccifer 2.0 online persona are consistent with the methods and motivations of Russian-directed efforts. These thefts and disclosures

#1 and adds this:

Laura Rozen
@lrozen
Profile picture
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1255347751153434624.html
Apr 29th 2020, 5 tweets, 2 min read
Stone arranged for meeting, but said in later email that a "fiasco" ensued after the associate brought a foreign military officer along
Unroll available on Thread Reader

https://twitter.com/kyledcheney/status/1255344430443347969

On Aug.20, 2016, CORSI told STONE they
needed to meet w/[ ] to determine "what if anything Israel plans to do in Oct"courtlistener.com/recap/gov.usco
huh courtlistener.com/recap/gov.usco
courtlistener.com/recap/gov.usco
(One PM in Rome on June 27 2016 was Netanyahu) mfa.gov.il/MFA/PressRoom/

Copy of FBI docs, including this, are linked at: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EWvp-fZWkAECFaN.jpg

[Apr 10, 2020] US Department of Defense give 1 million masks to IDF for coronavirus use

From comments: "Of course, Israel is the Pentagons biggest ally in keeping the military budget up. "
Apr 10, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org
Brendan , Apr 8 2020 8:49 utc | 5
April 7: Hospitals say feds are seizing masks and other coronavirus supplies without a word

bigger

April 8: US Department of Defense give 1 million masks to IDF for coronavirus use


bigger

Posted by b on April 8, 2020 at 7:43 UTC | Permalink

The Jpost article that b links to says that a million masks from China (donated by the US Department of Defense) arrived in Tel Aviv on Tuesday night. But Israel should have already had two million masks if this report from last weekend is correct:
The shipment will include two million masks, landing in Israel on Monday morning,
https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog-april-4-2020/

So that appears to be three million masks from China, plus those seized from American hospitals. Or are they fiddling the figures and pretending that those seized masks were legally purchased in China?


Brendan , Apr 8 2020 9:53 utc | 8

It appears that Mossad and others have recently acquired about two surgical masks per Israeli:

"5 April 2020,
(...)Last week, the Health Ministry said that security services and government ministries had managed to obtain 27 ventilators and a hoard of other medical equipment from abroad.

Hebrew media reported that the Mossad intelligence service, which has been tasked with securing medical equipment from abroad from unspecified countries amid worldwide shortages, helped obtain 25,000 N95 respiratory masks , 20,000 virus test kits, 10 million surgical masks , and 700 overalls for ambulance workers who usually carry out the initial testing for the virus.

It was the third such shipment by the Mossad over the past few weeks, aimed at addressing shortages in Israel."
https://www.timesofisrael.com/with-11-planes-israel-airlifts-huge-quantities-of-medical-equipment-from-china/

Mao , Apr 8 2020 9:58 utc | 9
Pompeo: "America remains the world's leading light of humanitarian goodness."

https://twitter.com/thehill/status/1247559857206628354

Emily , Apr 8 2020 10:12 utc | 11
One million masks for the IDF.
Eat your heart out US Theodore Roosevelt and Guam.
US sailors right at the bottom of the Pentagon's priorities, thats for sure.
American military?.
Have one duty - die as required for Israel.
Including death by coronavirus by looks of things.....
More fool them.
Richard Steven Hack , Apr 8 2020 10:13 utc | 12
Bloody hell. The Pentagon procures a million masks from China, then gives them to Israel - when US doctors are running low in almost every city - not to mention that the military itself has soaring coronavirus cases it can't handle.

You gotta know some rich Jewish corporate billionaire was behind that crap and Kushner was just the conduit to get Trump to agree to it - probably in exchange for a big donation to Trump's campaign.

If there was ever a country that deserved to be on the end of a US bombing campaign - it's Israel - a racist, fanatical. colonialist, fascist, illegal terrorist state. Zionists - the biggest scumbags on the planet. But instead the US bombs everyone else Israel doesn't like.

But cheer up. Israel is a doomed nation. There is no way they can continue their path forever, historically speaking. I suspect they won't exist within another fifty years. They'll either be annihilated by their own nuclear weapons, or transformed into a bi-national state that is no longer primarily Jewish. And I don't particularly care which.

Mao , Apr 8 2020 12:41 utc | 17
The U.S. government's efforts to clean up Cold War-era waste from nuclear research and bomb making at federal sites around the country has lumbered along for decades, often at a pace that watchdogs and other critics say threatens public health and the environment.

Now, fallout from the global coronavirus pandemic is resulting in more challenges as the nation's only underground repository for nuclear waste finished ramping down operations Wednesday to keep workers safe.

Over more than 20 years, tons of waste have been stashed deep in the salt caverns that make up the southern New Mexico site. Until recently, several shipments a week of special boxes and barrels packed with lab coats, rubber gloves, tools and debris contaminated with plutonium and other radioactive elements were being trucked to the remote facility from South Carolina, Idaho and other spots.

That's all but grinding to a halt.

Shipments to the desert outpost will be limited for the foreseeable future while work at the country's national laboratories and defense sites shift to only those operations considered "mission critical."

Officials at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant warned state regulators in a letter Tuesday that more time would be needed for inspections and audits and that work would be curtailed or shifts would be staggered to ensure workers keep their distance from one another.

https://apnews.com/36eec1b19f113b62fa94f2f0388e240d

Ghost Ship , Apr 8 2020 12:41 utc | 18
... ... ...

BTW, the Al Quds Post (aka Jerusalem Post to Zionists) has changed the headline on that article to "Israel brings 1 million masks from China for IDF soldiers" Looks like the "New York Purchasing and Logistics Division" is part of the Israeli Ministry Of War All The Time. So the original was a nice story but fake news. Since there was no correction attached to the new version, it could be that Washington/Tel Aviv reckoned that this was a step to far even for Trump and the new version is the fake news.

Willy2 , Apr 8 2020 12:45 utc | 20
- This news simply confirms again that the US, under Trump, has become more corrupt. But this is a development that already started years, decades ago before Trump became president.
William Gruff , Apr 8 2020 13:00 utc | 22
Willy2 @20

I think the possibility should be considered that Trump just made preexisting corruption more visible rather than adding significantly to it. There are elaborate protocols and circuitous speech that professional politicians learn to use to obfuscate the corruption and make their own participation in that corruption seem not only acceptable but necessary or even in the public interest. Trump is either ignorant of these protocols or he just doesn't care.

vk , Apr 8 2020 13:26 utc | 24
This is not surprising at all. Israel's economy is completely dependent on American constant aid:

All is not what it seems: Israeli economy's relative success based on massive direct aid from the US and donations from the Jewish diaspora

Even with all this help (of which most go to the military sector), the Isreali economy can barely keep itself afloat:

[...] inequality of income and wealth is huge in Israel, the second worst in the 36 nation OECD group. The relative poverty rate for Haredim and Arabs (25% of the population) is near 50%, and even for other Israelis, it is higher than the OECD average. The gap in median wage levels from skilled to unskilled; from Haredim/Arabs to others is huge - and yet the former will constitute 50% of the population by 2060.

And this mask fiasco is the lesser problem for the American working class right now. A significant portion of its people is going hungry . That magic USD 1,200 check is not coming soon:

"the checks are not in the mail."

And the problem isn't just in the USA. The periphery of Western Civilization is also going to suffer:

Germany and France: the sharpest contractions in national output for 75 years.

Germany's economy will shrink almost 10 per cent in the three months to June, according to the country's top economic research institutes, the sharpest decline since quarterly national accounts began in 1970 and double the size of the biggest drop in the 2008 financial crisis.

The shutdown of vast swaths of economic activity to contain the spread of the pandemic is knocking 1.5 percentage points off French growth for every two weeks that it continues, the Banque de France warned on Wednesday.

After more than three weeks in lockdown, French economic output is expected to have fallen by the sharpest rate since the second world war, the central bank said, forecasting that gross domestic product contracted 6 per cent in the first three months of the year.


jared , Apr 8 2020 13:41 utc | 26
However, to the matter of Israel and the virus:
I thought they were having strangely little impact from virus.

Anyway, this is all very revealing.

You know how people always question:
Why did that woman remain in that abusive relationship?

Nathan Mulcahy , Apr 8 2020 14:18 utc | 29
"US Department of Defense give 1 million masks to IDF for coronavirus use"

MIGA

Phryne's frock , Apr 8 2020 14:23 utc | 31
Get everyone you know to read "Against Our Better Judgment" by Alison Weir. Absolutely the best short, supereasy read to open eyes of those who are unaware that they are unaware, I promise. If you can afford to, buy copies to give away.
red1chief , Apr 8 2020 14:34 utc | 32
Very brief, "b", but one of your best posts. This is an unmitigated outrage. The arrogance of the ruling class knows no bounds, and they are acting with impunity. Seems the ruling class doesn't even care anymore how widely known it is that the US has little sovereignty.
Circe , Apr 8 2020 14:41 utc | 35
Is Trump charging for the masks or are they an added bonus to the 4 billion Israel already gets annually?

In 2018 Trump cut all aid to UNRWA destined for Palestine.

Screw Trump. Palestinians have started producing their own masks; up to 50,000 per day as well as protective gowns.

[Jan 30, 2020] The foreign government that has long been most active in interfering in US politics and US elections is that of Israel by Paul R. Pillar

Jan 30, 2020 | nationalinterest.org

The misconduct for which Donald Trump has been impeached centers on an attempt to drag a foreign government into a U.S. election campaign. That caper has increased public attention to the problem of foreign interference in U.S. politics, but the problem is more extensive than discourse about the impeachment process would suggest.

[Jul 28, 2019] Actually the culprits to watch out for interfering into our so called democracy are the Saudi's and the Israeli's

Jul 28, 2019 | consortiumnews.com

Joe Tedesky , July 25, 2019 at 10:29

Where there are many who wish and hope that the Epstein scandal will roll up Trump and everybody with him I must warn you to be careful of what you wish and hope for. It is starting to appear that this de Rothschild purveyor of underage girls may have had way more contact with certain Democrats than Epstein ever had with President I'm terrifically Red, White, & Orange.

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-07-25/epstein-visited-clinton-white-house-multiple-times-1990s

Here's a hint Democrats start talking up progressive political issues and quit with these bogus attacks against Trump without sufficient evidence. Trump could be beat but he can't lose to trivial or made up accusations which don't exist. It's long overdue to confront the many hard issues we struggle with and time for the Democrats to let go of this corporate conspired nonsense.

Gregory Herr , July 25, 2019 at 21:36

It is long overdue Joe. Thanks for the link.

"In the media the Epstein story died almost immediately, submerged in the tale of Donald Trump telling several congresswomen to go back where they came from." Philip Giraldi

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/51970.htm

Joe Tedesky , July 26, 2019 at 14:06

Gregory your link is an excellent article for my comment to jump off from. I too think that collusion in US politics is far from just any curious Russians trying to flip an election. Actually the culprits to watch out for interfering into our so called democracy are the Saudi's and the Israeli's. In fact look no further than the Middle East if you don't believe me. I mean who's wars are Americans fighting anyway certainly not any Russian wars but, a ton of support is given to both Israel and Saudi Arabian this field of destruction. The American public is being driven in car with hardly any brakes while the driver drives us in the dark to creepy unknown destinations who needs headlights anyway?

Gregory Herr , July 26, 2019 at 21:29

Good to hear from you Joe. It's such a sad state of affairs that our nation's people are bamboozled to such an extent that the demonization of Russia and the canard of Russian state "interference" in our election gained widespread traction. But the government of Israel and their agents of "influence" can mount all manner of coercion and bribery (obvious and well documented) to the extent that nearly the entire representative structure of our "democracy" is affected. Our people turn a blind eye to the horrific injustices cast upon Palestinians while Congress, including Tulsi Gabbard, "condemns" non-violent First Amendment rights of boycott.

I'll leave a link to a discussion. Be sure to catch Rashida Tlaib's stirring speech in Congress embedded in the video.

https://youtu.be/37WmWwv83ZY

[Apr 14, 2019] The Complete Unexpurgated AIPAC Tape from 1993

Jul 07, 2018 | www.unz.com

renfro , July 5, 2018 at 7:41 pm GMT

Why I am all for wire tapping and all other spying by the CIA and FBI ...get all the uber Jews and all the politicians and make it public. Would be delighted if all the news channels did nothing but play the tapes on the daily news.

The Complete Unexpurgated AIPAC Tape

https://www.wrmea.org/1992-december/january-1993/the-complete-unexpurgated-aipac-tape.html

Following is a transcript of the Oct. 22, 1992 conversation with President David Steiner of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) recorded without his knowledge by New York businessman Haim (Harry) Katz. Its existence was first revealed to the Washington Times and its release triggered Steiner's resignation.

(sample)

HK: Let me tell you, I was planning, I was planning to, to . . . Inouye, by the way, is in real trouble? He's been there forever. . .

DS: Yeah! Well, we might lose him. There's been such a sea change, such trouble this year, I can't believe all our friends that are in trouble. Because there's an anti-incumbency mood, and foreign aid has not been popular. You know what I got for, I met with [U.S. Secretary of State] Jim Baker and I cut a deal with him. I got, besides the $3 billion, you know they're looking for the Jewish votes, and I'll tell him whatever he wants to hear . . .

HK: Right.

DS: Besides the $10 billion in loan guarantees which was a fabulous thing, $3 billion in foreign, in military aid, and I got almost a billion dollars in other goodies that people don't even know about .

HK: Such as?

DS: $700 million in military draw-down, from equipment that the United States Army's going to give to Israel; $200 million the U.S. government is going to preposition materials in Israel, which Israel can draw upon; put them in the global warning protection system; so when if there's a missile fired, they'll get the same advanced notification that the U.S., is notified, joint military exercises -- I've got a whole shopping list of things .

HK: So this is from Baker?

DS: From Baker and from the Pentagon.

[Mar 25, 2019] The establishment represented by Bill Barr is 110% behind Trump

Notable quotes:
"... While all the establishment may not have been aware that Trump had massive Zionist help in 2016 to make the argumentative distraction look credible in the media, all the establishment is now on board. Trump is the Chosen of the elites, he is holding all the cards. Tomorrow he is signing over sovereignty of the Golan Heights to Israel as a gift to Netanyahu and the oligarchs and the Board of Genie Oil in thanks for conspiring together to ensure Trump became President. ..."
Mar 25, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

Circe , Mar 24, 2019 5:04:21 PM | link

The establishment represented by Bill Barr is 110% behind Trump. He is now clear on all charges because Mueller discovered it was Zionist oligarchs who put Trump in power with the help of at least 2 Zionist Russian oligarchs to provide the Russia red herring that served as a massive distraction for the real collusion.

Mueller and Barr both delivered their report and conclusions precisely when the AIPAC EXTRAVAGANZA begins celebrating 4 more years of Trump as Mueller has provided Trump with bragging rights from here to 2020.

While all the establishment may not have been aware that Trump had massive Zionist help in 2016 to make the argumentative distraction look credible in the media, all the establishment is now on board. Trump is the Chosen of the elites, he is holding all the cards. Tomorrow he is signing over sovereignty of the Golan Heights to Israel as a gift to Netanyahu and the oligarchs and the Board of Genie Oil in thanks for conspiring together to ensure Trump became President.

It's all coming together on schedule just in time for the AIPAC CELEBRATION set to HAIL Trump.

Democracy is non-existant thanks to Zionism.

HAIL TRUMP!

[Mar 24, 2019] Israeli intervention in US elections vastly overwhelms anything Russia has done, claims Noam Chomsky

Notable quotes:
"... Benjamin Netanyahu supports US rejection of Iran nuclear deal: 'Israel has opposed Iran's nuclear deal from the start' Attacking Mr Obama proposal of dealing with Iran, he added: "We must all stand together to stop Iran's march of conquest, subjugation and terror." Mr Chomsky said Mr Putin had never made such a speech to Congress, which political observers said was unique in the way a foreign leader so acidly attacked the policy of the US government. "Did Putin come to give an address to the joint sessions of Congress trying to calling on them to reverse US policy, without even informing the president," he said. ..."
"... The power of the pro-Israel lobby has long been one of the contentious, and disputed, issues in Washington. In 2007, John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, published The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy , which described the lobby as "loose coalition of individuals and organisations who actively work to steer US foreign policy in a pro-Israel direction". ..."
Jul 30, 2018 | The Independent

Veteran activist Noam Chomsky has accused Israel of "brazenly" interfering in US electoral politics in a way that vastly outweighs any efforts that may have been carried out by Russia .

In comments in which he accused much of the media of concentrating on stories he considered marginal and ignoring issues such as the "existential threat" of climate change, the 89-year-old linguist said in much of the world, the US media's focus with Russia's alleged interference in the 2016 was "a joke".

"First of all, if you're interested in foreign interference in our elections, whatever the Russians may have done barely counts or weighs in the balance as compared with what another state does, openly, brazenly and with enormous support," he said.

Speaking to Democracy Now, Mr Chomsky added : "Israeli intervention in US elections vastly overwhelms anything the Russians may have done, I mean, even to the point where the prime minister of Israel, Netanyahu, goes directly to Congress, without even informing the president, and speaks to Congress, with overwhelming applause, to try to undermine the president's policies - what happened with Obama and Netanyahu in 2015."

In March 2015, at the invitation of then Republican House Speaker John Boehner, and assisted by Israel's Ambassador to the US, Ron Dermer, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addressed the joint houses of Congress about the yet to be signed Iran nuclear deal. He did so without formally informing the White House, something said to have infuriated Barack Obama, whose administration would the following month join a seven-party agreement to limit Iran's alleged nuclear weapons ambitions.

In a speech to Congress that was boycotted by more than 50 Democrats, Mr Netanyahu made clear his opposition to the deal.

"This deal won't be a farewell to arms," said Mr Netanyahu, to loud applause. "It would be a farewell to arms control. And the Middle East would soon be crisscrossed by nuclear tripwires. A region where small skirmishes can trigger big wars would turn into a nuclear tinderbox."

Benjamin Netanyahu supports US rejection of Iran nuclear deal: 'Israel has opposed Iran's nuclear deal from the start'
Attacking Mr Obama proposal of dealing with Iran, he added: "We must all stand together to stop Iran's march of conquest, subjugation and terror." Mr Chomsky said Mr Putin had never made such a speech to Congress, which political observers said was unique in the way a foreign leader so acidly attacked the policy of the US government. "Did Putin come to give an address to the joint sessions of Congress trying to calling on them to reverse US policy, without even informing the president," he said.

"And that's just a tiny bit of this overwhelming influence. So if you happen to be interested in influence of. foreign influence on elections, there are places to look. But even that is a joke."

The power of the pro-Israel lobby has long been one of the contentious, and disputed, issues in Washington. In 2007, John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, published The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy , which described the lobby as "loose coalition of individuals and organisations who actively work to steer US foreign policy in a pro-Israel direction".

The coalition includes groups such as the powerful American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) a US-based pro-Israel lobbying group this year has spent $1.75m to promote pro-Israel policies .

The group's annual convention is a frequent stopping off point for politicians seeking election or reelection, and Mr Netanyahu has addressed it several times. In 2016, top speakers included Vice President Joe Biden, former secretary of state Hillary Clinton, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, Governor John Kasich, Senator Ted Cruz, and Speaker Paul Ryan.

The group's website says: "The mission of AIPAC is to strengthen, protect and promote the US-Israel relationship in ways that enhance the security of the United States and Israel."

Neither the Israeli Embassy in Washington or AIPAC immediately responded to enquiries about Mr Chomsky's claim.

In his comments to Democracy Now, Mr Chomsky said the media was "focusing on issues which are pretty marginal. There are much more serious issues that are being put to the side".

"Of all Trump's policies, the one that is the most dangerous and destructive, in fact poses an existential threat, is his policies on climate change, on global warming," he said. "That's really destructive. And we're facing an imminent threat, not far removed, of enormous damage. The effects are already visible but nothing like what's going to come."

He added: "These are the kinds of issues that should be under discussion. Instead here is a focus on what I believe are marginalia."

Read more

[Mar 24, 2019] The Israel-gate Side of Russia-gate by Dennis J Bernstein

Notable quotes:
"... At Netanyahu's behest, Flynn and President Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner reportedly took the lead in the lobbying to derail the U.N. resolution, which Flynn discussed in a phone call with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak (in which the Russian diplomat rebuffed Flynn's appeal to block the resolution). ..."
"... In this case, what Flynn and Kushner were doing was going directly against US foreign policy, because Obama wanted the resolution to pass; He just didn't want to vote for it because that would cross the Israel lobby in the United States. The US finally ended up abstaining on the resolution and it passed 14-0. ..."
"... But before that happened, Flynn went to the Russians and to Egypt, both members of the Security Council, and tried to get the resolution delayed. But all of Israel's machinations to derail this resolution failed and that is what Mueller was investigating, the intervention and disruption of American foreign policy by private citizens who had no official role. ..."
"... While I think Bibi is an idiot, I also think the Logan Act is overinvoked, overstated, probably of dubious legal value and also of dubious constitutional value. ..."
"... In short, especially because Trump had been elected, though not yet inaugurated, I think he is not at all guilty of a Logan Act violation. This is nothing close to Spiro Agnew calling Anna Chenault from the airplane in August 1968. ..."
"... Probably true, although evidence of extreme collusion with Israel eliminates any case against Russia, with whom we have far more reasons for amity. Bringing out the Israel collusion greatly improves public understanding of political corruption. Perhaps it will awaken some to the Agnew-Chennault betrayal of the people of the US. ..."
"... It's ironic that Russia-gate is turning out to be Israel's effort to distract attention from its complete control over the Democratic party in 2016. From Israeli billionaires behind the scenes to Debbie Wasserman-Schultz at the helm. ..."
"... "Whether we like it or not, the former and current administration view Russia is as an enemy state." So that is how it works, the White House says it is an enemy state and therefore it is. The so called declaration is the hammer used for trying to make contact with Russia a criminal offense. We are not at war with Russia although we see our leaders doing their best to provoke Russia into one. ..."
"... The Israel connection disclosed by the malpracticer hack Mueller in the recent Flynn-flam just made Trump bullet-proof (so to speak). ..."
"... So Mueller caught Kushner and Flynn red-handed, sabotaging the Obama administration? What of it? He can't use that evidence, because it would inculpate the Zionist neocons that are orchestrating his farcical, Stalinist witchhunt. And Mueller, being an efficient terminator bot, knows that his target is Russia, not Israel. ..."
"... So Mueller will just have to continue swamp-fishing for potential perjurers ahem witnesses, for the upcoming show trials (to further inflame public opinion against Russia and Russia sympathizers). And continue he will, because (as we all know from Schwarzenegger's flicks), the only way to stop the terminator is to terminate him/it first. ..."
"... Trump and Kushner have nothing to worry about, even if a smoking gun is found that proves their collusion with Israel. That's because the entire political and media establishment will simply ignore the Israeli connection. ..."
"... Journalists and politicians will even continue to present Mike Flynn's contacts as evidence of collusion with Russia. They'll keep on repeating that "Flynn lied about his phone call to the Russian ambassador". But there will be no mention of the fact that the purpose of this contact was to support Israel and not any alleged Russian interference. ..."
"... I think you have it right Brendan. The MSM, Intelligence Community, and Mueller would never go down any path that popularized undue Israeli influence on US foreign policy. "Nothing to see here folks, move along." ..."
"... The Nice Zionists responsible for the thefts and murders for the past 69 years along with the "Jewish Community" in the rest of the world will resolve the matter so as to be fair to both parties. This is mind-boggling fantasy. ..."
"... FFS, Netanyahu aired a political commercial in Florida for Romney saying vote for this guy (against Obama)! I mean, it doesn't get any more overtly manipulative than that. Period. End of story. ..."
"... God, I hate to go all "Israel controls the media" but there it is. Not even a discussion. Just a fact. ..."
"... I also have to point out that he "fist pumped" Hillary Clinton at Mohammed Ali's eulogy. If he's as astute as he purports to be, he has to know that Hillary would have invaded Syria and killed a few hundred thousand more Syrians for the simple act of defiantly preserving their country. By almost any read of Ali's history, he would have been adamantly ("killing brown people") against that. But there was Silverstein using the platform to promote, arguably, perpetual war. ..."
"... Yeah I found a couple of Silverstein's statements to be closer to neocon propaganda than reality: "Because this is Israel and because we have a conflicted relationship with the Israel lobby . . ." "Instead of going directly to the Obama administration, with which they had terrible relations, they went to Trump instead." My impression was that the whole "terrible relationship between Obama and Netanyahu" was manufactured by the Israel lobby to bully Obama. However these are small blips within an otherwise solid critique of the Israel lobby's influence. ..."
Dec 25, 2017 | consortiumnews.com

The Israel-gate Side of Russia-gate December 23, 2017

While unproven claims of Russian meddling in U.S. politics have whipped Official Washington into a frenzy, much less attention has been paid to real evidence of Israeli interference in U.S. politics, as Dennis J Bernstein describes.

In investigating Russia's alleged meddling in U.S. politics, special prosecutor Robert Mueller uncovered evidence that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pressured the Trump transition team to undermine President Obama's plans to permit the United Nations to censure Israel over its illegal settlement building on the Palestinian West Bank, a discovery referenced in the plea deal with President Trump's first National Security Adviser Michael Flynn.

At Netanyahu's behest, Flynn and President Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner reportedly took the lead in the lobbying to derail the U.N. resolution, which Flynn discussed in a phone call with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak (in which the Russian diplomat rebuffed Flynn's appeal to block the resolution).

I spoke on Dec, 18 with independent journalist and blogger Richard Silverstein, who writes on national security and other issues for a number of blogs at Tikun Olam .

Dennis Bernstein: A part of Michael Flynn's plea had to do with some actions he took before coming to power regarding Israel and the United Nations. Please explain.

Richard Silverstein:

The Obama administration was negotiating in the [UN] Security Council just before he left office about a resolution that would condemn Israeli settlements. Obviously, the Israeli government did not want this resolution to be passed. Instead of going directly to the Obama administration, with which they had terrible relations, they went to Trump instead. They approached Michael Flynn and Jared Kushner became involved in this. While they were in the transition and before having any official capacity, they negotiated with various members of the Security Council to try to quash the settlement resolution.

One of the issues here which is little known is the Logan Act, which was passed at the foundation of our republic and was designed to prevent private citizens from usurping the foreign policy prerogatives of the executive. It criminalized any private citizen who attempted to negotiate with an enemy country over any foreign policy issue.

In this case, what Flynn and Kushner were doing was going directly against US foreign policy, because Obama wanted the resolution to pass; He just didn't want to vote for it because that would cross the Israel lobby in the United States. The US finally ended up abstaining on the resolution and it passed 14-0.

But before that happened, Flynn went to the Russians and to Egypt, both members of the Security Council, and tried to get the resolution delayed. But all of Israel's machinations to derail this resolution failed and that is what Mueller was investigating, the intervention and disruption of American foreign policy by private citizens who had no official role.

This speaks to the power of the Israel lobby and of Israel itself to disrupt our foreign policy. Very few people have ever been charged with committing an illegal act by advocating on behalf of Israel. That is one of the reasons why this is such an important development. Until now, the lobby has really ruled supreme on the issue of Israel and Palestine in US foreign policy. Now it is possible that a private citizen will actually be made to pay a price for that.

This is an important development because the lobby till now has run roughshod over our foreign policy in this area and this may act as a restraining order against blatant disruption of US foreign policy by people like this.

Bernstein: So this information is a part of Michael Flynn's plea. Anyone studying this would learn something about Michael Flynn and it would be part of the prosecution's investigation.

Silverstein:

That's absolutely right. One thing to note here is that it is reporters who have raised the issue of the Logan Act, not Mueller or Flynn's people or anyone in the Trump administration. But I do think that Logan is a very important part of this plea deal, even if it is not mentioned explicitly.

Bernstein: If the special prosecutor had smoking-gun information that the Trump administration colluded with Russia, in the way they colluded with Israel before coming to power, this would be a huge revelation. But it is definitely collusion when it comes to Israel.

Silverstein: Absolutely. If this were Russia, it would be on the front page of every major newspaper in the United States and the leading story on the TV news. Because this is Israel and because we have a conflicted relationship with the Israel lobby and they have so much influence on US policy concerning Israel, it has managed to stay on the back burner. Only two or three media outlets besides mine have raised this issue of Logan and collusion. Kushner and Flynn may be the first American citizens charged under the Logan Act for interfering on behalf of Israel in our foreign policy. This is a huge issue and it has hardly been raised at all.

Bernstein: As you know, Rachel Maddow of MSNBC has made a career out of investigating the Russia-gate charges. She says that she has read all this material carefully, so she must have read about Flynn and Israel, but I haven't heard her on this issue at all.

Silverstein:

Even progressive journalists, who you'd think would be going after this with a vengeance, are frightened off by the fact the lobby really bites back. So, aside from outlets like the Intercept and the Electronic Intifada, there is a lot of hesitation about going after the Israel lobby. People are afraid because they know that there is a high price to be paid. It goes from being purely journalism to being a personal and political vendetta when they get you in their sights. In fact, one of the reasons I feel my blog is so important is that what I do is challenge Israeli policy and Israeli intervention in places where it doesn't belong.

Bernstein: Jared Kushner is the point man for the Trump administration on Israel. He has talked about having a "vision for peace." Do you think it is a problem that this is someone with a long, close relationship with the prime minister of Israel and, in fact, runs a foundation that invests in the building of illegal Israeli settlements? Might this be problematic?

Silverstein:

It is quite nefarious, actually. When Jared Kushner was a teenager, Netanyahu used to stay at the Kushner family home when he visited the United States. This relationship with one of the most extreme right political figures in Israel goes back decades. And it is not just Kushner himself, but all the administration personnel dealing with these so-called peace negotiations, including Jason Greenblatt and David Friedman, the ambassador. These are all orthodox Jews who tend to have very nationalist views when it comes to Israel. They all support settlements financially through foundations. These are not honest brokers.

We could talk at length about the history of US personnel who have been negotiators for Middle East peace. All of them have been favorable to Israel and answerable to the Israel lobby, including Dennis Ross and Makovsky, who served in the last administration. These people are dyed-in-the-wool ultra-nationalist supporters of [Israeli] settlements. They have no business playing any role in negotiating a peace deal.

My prediction all along has been that these peace negotiations will come to naught, even though they seem to have bought the cooperation of Saudi Arabia, which is something new in the process. The Palestinians can never accept a deal that has been negotiated by Kushner and company because it will be far too favorable to Israel and it will totally neglect the interests of the Palestinians.

Bernstein: It has been revealed that Kushner supports the building of settlements in the West Bank. Most people don't understand the politics of what is going on there, but it appears to be part of an ethnic cleansing.

Silverstein:

The settlements have always been a violation of international law, ever since Israel conquered the West Bank in 1967. The Geneva Conventions direct an occupying power to withdraw from territory that was not its own. In 1967 Israel invaded Arab states and conquered the West Bank and Gaza but this has never been recognized or accepted by any nation until now.

The fact that Kushner and his family are intimately involved in supporting settlements–as are David Friedman and Jason Greenblatt–is completely outrageous. No member of any previous US administration would have been allowed to participate with these kinds of financial investments in support of settlements. Of course, Trump doesn't understand the concept of conflict of interest because he is heavily involved in such conflicts himself. But no party in the Middle East except Israel is going to consider the US an honest broker and acceptable as a mediator.

When they announce this deal next January, no one in the Arab World is going to accept it, with the possible exception of Saudi Arabia because they have other fish to fry in terms of Iran. The next three years are going to be interesting, supposing Trump lasts out his term. My prediction is that the peace plan will fail and that it will lead to greater violence in the Middle East. It will not simply lead to a vacuum, it will lead to a deterioration in conditions there.

Bernstein: The Trump transition team was actually approached directly by the Israeli government to try to intercede at the United Nations.

Silverstein:

I'm assuming it was Netanyahu who went directly to Kushner and Trump. Now, we haven't yet found out that Trump directly knew about this but it is very hard to believe that Trump didn't endorse this. Now that we know that Mueller has access to all of the emails of the transition team, there is little doubt that they have been able to find their smoking gun. Flynn's plea meant that they basically had him dead to rights. It remains to be seen what will happen with Kushner but I would think that this would play some role in either the prosecution of Kushner or some plea deal.

Bernstein: The other big story, of course, is the decision by the Trump administration to move the US embassy from Tel-Aviv to Jerusalem. Was there any pre-election collusion in that regard and what are the implications?

Silverstein:

Well, it's a terrible decision which goes against forty to fifty years of US foreign policy. It also breaches all international understanding. All of our allies in the European Union and elsewhere are aghast at this development. There is now a campaign in the United Nations Security Council to pass a resolution condemning the announcement, which we will veto, but the next step will be to go to the General Assembly, where such a resolution will pass easily.

The question is how much anger, violence and disruption this is going to cause around the world, especially in the Arab and Muslim world. This is a slow-burning fuse. It is not going to explode right now. The issue of Jerusalem is so vital that this is not something that is simply going to go away. This is going to be a festering sore in the Muslim world and among Palestinians. We have already seen attacks on Israeli soldiers and citizens and there will be many more.

As to collusion in all of this, since Trump always said during the campaign that this was what he was going to do, it might be difficult to treat this in the same way as the UN resolution. The UN resolution was never on anybody's radar and nobody knew the role that Trump was playing behind the scenes with that–as opposed to Trump saying right from the get-go that Jerusalem was going to be recognized as the capital of Jerusalem.

By doing that, they have completely abrogated any Palestinian interest in Jerusalem. This is a catastrophic decision that really excludes the United States from being an honest broker here and shows our true colors in terms of how pro-Israel we are.

Dennis J Bernstein is a host of "Flashpoints" on the Pacifica radio network and the author of Special Ed: Voices from a Hidden Classroom . You can access the audio archives at www.flashpoints.net .

Drew Hunkins , December 23, 2017 at 5:37 pm

As most regular readers of CN already know, some dynamite books on the inordinate amount of influence pro-Israel zealots have on Washington:

1.) 'The Host and the Parasite' by Greg Felton
2.) 'Power of Israel in the United States' by James Petras
3.) 'They Dare to Speak Out' by Paul Findley
4.) 'The Israel Lobby' by Mearsheimer and Walt
5.) 'Zionism, Militarism and the Decline of U.S. Power' by James Petras

I suggest that anyone relatively knew to this neglected topic peruse a few of the aforementioned titles. An inevitable backlash by the citizens of the United States is eventually forthcoming against the Zionist Power Configuration. It's crucial that this impending backlash remain democratic, non-violent, eschews anti-Semitism, and travels in a progressive in direction.

Annie , December 23, 2017 at 5:47 pm

Which one would you suggest? I already read "The Israel Lobby."

Sam F , December 23, 2017 at 8:38 pm

Findley and Mearsheimer are certainly worthwhile. I will look for Petras.

Larry Larsen , December 24, 2017 at 6:38 pm

If you haven't already read them, the end/footnotes in "The Israel Lobby" are more illuminating.

SocraticGadfly , December 23, 2017 at 6:10 pm

That influence is also shown, of course, by the fact that Obama waited until the midnight hours of his tenure and after the 2016 election to even start working on this resolution.

SocraticGadfly , December 23, 2017 at 6:05 pm

While I think Bibi is an idiot, I also think the Logan Act is overinvoked, overstated, probably of dubious legal value and also of dubious constitutional value.

In short, especially because Trump had been elected, though not yet inaugurated, I think he is not at all guilty of a Logan Act violation. This is nothing close to Spiro Agnew calling Anna Chenault from the airplane in August 1968.

Sam F , December 23, 2017 at 8:41 pm

Probably true, although evidence of extreme collusion with Israel eliminates any case against Russia, with whom we have far more reasons for amity. Bringing out the Israel collusion greatly improves public understanding of political corruption. Perhaps it will awaken some to the Agnew-Chennault betrayal of the people of the US.

JWalters , December 24, 2017 at 3:32 am

It's ironic that Russia-gate is turning out to be Israel's effort to distract attention from its complete control over the Democratic party in 2016. From Israeli billionaires behind the scenes to Debbie Wasserman-Schultz at the helm.

The leaked emails showed the corruption plainly, and based on the ACTUAL evidence (recorded download time), most likely came from a highly disgruntled insider. The picture was starting to spill into public view. I'd estimate the real huge worry was that if this stuff came out, it could bring out other Israeli secrets, like their involvement in 9/11. That would mean actual jail time. Might be hard to buy your way out of that no matter how much money you have.

Annie , December 23, 2017 at 10:48 pm

The Logan act states that anyone who negotiates with an enemy of the US, and Israel is not defined as an enemy.

Annie , December 23, 2017 at 6:59 pm

The Logan act would not apply here, although I wish it would. I don't think anyone has been convicted based on this act, and they were part of a transition team not to mention the Logan act clearly states a private citizen who attempts to negotiate with an enemy state, and that certainly doesn't apply to Israel. In this administration their bias is so blatant that they can install Kushner as an honest broker in the Israeli-Palestine peace process while his family has a close relationship with Netanyahu, and he runs a foundation that invests in the building of illegal settlements which goes against the Geneva conventions. Hopefully Trump's blatant siding with Israel will receive a lot of backlash as did his plan to make Jerusalem the capital of Israel.

I also found that so called progressive internet sites don't cover this the way they should.

Al Pinto , December 24, 2017 at 9:16 am

@Annie

"The Logan act would not apply here, although I wish it would."

You and me both .

From the point of starting to read this article, it has been in my mind that the Logan act would not apply here. After reading most of the comments, it became clear that not many people viewed this as such. Yes, Joe Tedesky did as well

The UN is the "clearing house" for international politics, where countries freely contact each other's for getting support for their cause behind the scene. The support sought after could be voting for or against the resolution on hand. At times, as Israel did, countries reach out to perceived enemies as well, if they could not secure sufficient support for their cause. This is the normal activity of the UN diplomacy.

Knowing that the outgoing administration would not support its cause, Israel reached out to the incoming administration to delay the vote on the UN resolution. I fail to see anything wrong with Israel's action even in this case; Israel is not an enemy state to the US. As such, there has been no violation of any acts by the incoming administration, even if they tried to secure veto vote for Israel. I do not like it, but no action by Mueller in this case is correct.

People, just like the article in itself, implying that the Logan Act applies in this case are just plain wrong. Not just wrong, but their anti-Israel bias is in plain view.

Whether we like it or not, the former and current administration view Russia is as an enemy state. Even then, Russia contacting the incoming administration is not a violation of the Logan Act. That is just normal diplomacy in the background between countries. What would be a violation is that the contacted official acted on the behalf of Russia and tried to influence the outgoing administration's decision. That is what the Mueller investigation tries to prove hopelessly

Herman , December 24, 2017 at 10:54 am

"Whether we like it or not, the former and current administration view Russia is as an enemy state." So that is how it works, the White House says it is an enemy state and therefore it is. The so called declaration is the hammer used for trying to make contact with Russia a criminal offense. We are not at war with Russia although we see our leaders doing their best to provoke Russia into one.

Annie , December 24, 2017 at 1:55 pm

Thanks for your reply. When I read the article and it referenced the Logan Act, which I am familiar with in that I've read about it before, I was surprised that Bernstein and Silverstein even brought it up because it so obviously does not apply in this case, since Israel is not considered an enemy state. Many have even referenced it as flimsy when it comes to convictions against those in Trump's transition team who had contacts with Russia. No one has ever been convicted under the Logan Act.

Larry Larsen , December 24, 2017 at 6:41 pm

The Logan Act either should apply equally, or not apply at all. This "Russia-gate" hype seems to apply it selectively.

mrtmbrnmn , December 23, 2017 at 7:36 pm

You guys are blinded by the light. The Israel connection disclosed by the malpracticer hack Mueller in the recent Flynn-flam just made Trump bullet-proof (so to speak).

There is no doubt that Trump is Bibi's and the Saudi's ventriloquist dummy and Jared has been an Israel agent of influence since he was 12.

But half the Dementedcrat Sore Loser Brigade will withdraw from the field of battle (not to mention most of the GOP living dead too) if publically and noisily tying Israel to Trump's tail becomes the only route to his removal. Which it would have to be, as there is no there there regarding the yearlong trumped-up PutinPutinPutin waterboarding of Trump.

Immediately (if not sooner) the mighty (pro-Israel) Donor Bank of Singer (Paul), Saban (Haim), Sachs (Goldman) & Adelson (Sheldon), would change their passwords and leave these politicians/beggars with empty begging bowls. End of $ordid $tory.

alley cat , December 23, 2017 at 7:45 pm

So Mueller caught Kushner and Flynn red-handed, sabotaging the Obama administration? What of it? He can't use that evidence, because it would inculpate the Zionist neocons that are orchestrating his farcical, Stalinist witchhunt. And Mueller, being an efficient terminator bot, knows that his target is Russia, not Israel.

Mueller can use that evidence of sabotage and/or obstruction of justice to try to coerce false confessions from Kushner and Flynn. But what are the chances of that, barring short stayovers for them at some CIA black site?

So Mueller will just have to continue swamp-fishing for potential perjurers ahem witnesses, for the upcoming show trials (to further inflame public opinion against Russia and Russia sympathizers). And continue he will, because (as we all know from Schwarzenegger's flicks), the only way to stop the terminator is to terminate him/it first.

Leslie F. , December 23, 2017 at 8:28 pm

He used it, along with other info, to turn flip Flynn and possibly can use it the same way again Kusher. Not all evidence has end up in court to be useful.

JWalters , December 23, 2017 at 8:40 pm

This is an extremely important story, excellently reported. All the main "facts" Americans think they know about Israel are, amazingly, flat-out lies.

1. Israel was NOT victimized by powerful Arab armies. Israel overpowered and victimized a defenseless, civilian Arab population. Military analysts knew the Arab armies were in poor shape and would not be able to resist the zionist army.

2. Muslim "citizens" of Israel do NOT have all the same rights as Jews.

3. Israelis are NOT under threat from the indigineous Palestinians, but Palestinians are under constant threats of theft and death from the Israelis.

4. Israel does NOT share America's most fundamental values, which rest on the principle of equal human rights for all.

Maintaining such a blanket of major lies for decades requires immense power. And this power would have to be exercised "under the radar" to be effective. That requires even more power. Both Congress and the press have to be controlled. How much power does it take to turn "Progressive Rachel" into "Tel Aviv Rachel"? To turn "It Takes a Village" Hillary into "Slaughter a Village" Hillary? It takes immense power AND ruthlessness.

War profiteers have exactly this combination of immense war profits and the ruthlessness to victimize millions of people.
"War Profiteers and the Roots of the War on Terror"
http://warprofiteerstory.blogspot.com

Vast war profits easily afford to buy the mainstream media. And controlling campaign contributions for members of Congress is amazingly cheap in the big picture. Such a squalid sale of souls.

And when simple bribery is not enough, they ruin a person's life through blackmail or false character assassination. And if those don't work they use death threats, including to family members, and finally murder. Their ruthlessness is unrestrained. John Perkins has described these tactics in "Confessions of an Economic Hit Man".

For readers who haven't seen it, here is an excellent riff on the absurdly overwhelming evidence for Israel's influence compared to that of Russia, at a highly professional news and analysis website run by Jewish anti-Zionists.
"Let's talk about Russian influence"
http://mondoweiss.net/2016/08/about-russian-influence/

mike k , December 23, 2017 at 8:44 pm

Hitler and Mussolini, Trump and Netanyahoo – matches made in Hell. These characters are so obviously, blatantly evil that it is deeply disturbing that people fail to see that, and instead go to great lengths to find some complicated flaws in these monsters.

mike k , December 23, 2017 at 8:49 pm

Keep it simple folks. No need for complex analyses. Just remember that these characters as simply as evil as it gets, and proceed from there. These asinine shows that portray mobsters as complex human beings are dangerously deluding. If you want to be victimized by these types, this kind of overthinking is just the way to go.

Sam F , December 23, 2017 at 9:00 pm

There is a modern theory of fiction that insists upon the portrayal of inconsistency in characters, both among the good guys and the bad guys. It is useful to show how those who do wrongs have made specific kinds of errors that make them abnormal, and that those who do right are not perfect but nonetheless did the right thing. Instead it is used by commercial writers to argue that the good are really bad, and the bad are really good, which is of course the philosophy of oligarchy-controlled mass publishers.

Sam F , December 23, 2017 at 8:54 pm

A very important article by Dennis Bernstein, and it is very appropriate that non-zionist Jews are active against the extreme zionist corruption of our federal government. I am sure that they are reviled by the zionists for interfering with the false denunciations of racism against the opponents of zionism. Indeed critics face a very nearly totalitarian power of zionism, which in league with MIC/WallSt opportunism has displaced democracy altogether in the US.

backwardsevolution , December 23, 2017 at 9:18 pm

A nice little set-up by the Obama administration. Perhaps it was entrapment? Who set it up? Flynn and Kushner should have known better to fall for it. So at the end of his Presidency, Obama suddenly gets balls and wants to slap down Israel? Yeah, right.

Nice to have leverage over people, though, isn't it? If you're lucky and play your cards right, you might even be lucky enough to land an impeachment.

Of course, I'm just being cynical. No one would want to overturn democracy, would they?

Certainly people like Comey, Brenner, Clinton, Clapper, Mueller, Rosenstein wouldn't want that, would they?

Joe Tedesky , December 23, 2017 at 10:33 pm

I just can't see any special prosecutor investigating Israel-Gate. Between what the Zionist donors donate to these creepy politicians, too what goods they have on these same mischievous politicians, I just can't see any investigation into Israel's collusion with the Trump Administration going anywhere. Netanyahu isn't Putin, and Russia isn't Israel. Plus, Israel is considered a U.S. ally, while Russia is being marked as a Washington rival. Sorry, this news regarding Israel isn't going to be ranted on about for the next 18 months, like the MSM has done with Russia, because our dear old Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East, or so they tell us. So, don't get your hopes up.

JWalters , December 24, 2017 at 3:33 am

It's true the Israelis have America's politicians by the ears and the balls. But as this story gets better known, politicians will start getting questions at their town meetings. Increasingly the politicians will gag on what Israel is force-feeding them, until finally they reach a critical mass of vomit in Congress.

Joe Tedesky , December 24, 2017 at 11:12 am

I hope you are right JWalters. Although relying on a Zionist controlled MSM doesn't give hope for the news getting out properly. Again I hope you are right JWalters. Joe

Jeff Blankfort , December 24, 2017 at 12:18 am

Actually, Netanyahu was so desperate to have the resolution pulled and not voted on that he reached out to any country that might help him after the foreign minister of New Zealand, one of its co-sponsors refused to pull the plug after a testy phone exchange with the Israeli PM ending up threatening an Israeli boycott oturnef the KIwis.

He then turned to his buddy, Vladimir Putin, who owed him a favor for having Israel's UN delegate absent himself for the UNGA vote on sanctioning Russia after its annexation of Crimea.

Putin then called Russia's UN Ambassador, Vitaly Churkin, since deceased, and asked him to get the other UNSC ambassadors to postpone the vote until Trump took over the White House but the other ambassadors weren't buying it. Given Russia's historic public position regarding the settlements, Churkin had no choice to vote Yes with the others.

This story was reported in detail in the Israeli press but blacked out in the US which, due to Zionist influence on the media, does not want the American public to know about the close ties between Putin and Netanyahu which has led to the Israeli PM making five state visits there in the last year and a half.

Had Clinton won the White House we can assume that there would have been no US veto. That Netanyahu apparently knew in advance that the US planned to veto the resolution was, I suspect, leaked to the Israelis by US delegate Samantha Power, who was clearly unhappy at having to abstain.

Abe , December 24, 2017 at 12:39 am

The Israeli Prime Minister made five state visits to Russia in the last year and a half to make sure the Russians don't accidentally on purpose blast Israeli warplanes from the sky over Syria (like they oughtta). Putin tries not to snicker when Netanyahu bloviates ad nauseum about the purported "threat" posed by Iran.

argos , December 24, 2017 at 7:00 am

He thinks Putin is a RATS ASS like the yankee government

JWalters , December 24, 2017 at 3:34 am

"This story was reported in detail in the Israeli press but blacked out in the US"

We've just had a whole cluster of big stories involving Israel that have all been essentially blacked out in the US press. e.g.
"Dionne and Shields ignore the Adelson in the room"
http://mondoweiss.net/2017/12/jerusalem-israels-capital

This is not due to chance. There is no doubt that the US mainstream media is wholly controlled by the Israelis.

alley cat , December 24, 2017 at 4:49 am

"He [Netanyahu] then turned to his buddy, Vladimir Putin "

Jeff, that characterization of Putin and Netanyahu's relationship makes no sense, since the Russians have consistently opposed Zionism and Putin has been no exception, having spoiled Zionist plans for the destruction of Syria.

"Had Clinton won the White House we can assume that there would have been no US veto."

Not sure where you're going with that, since the US vote was up to Obama, who wanted to get some payback for all of Bibi's efforts to sabotage Obama's treaty with Iran.

For the record, Zionism has had no more rabid supporter than the Dragon Lady. If we're going to make assumptions, we could start by assuming that if she had won the White House we'd all be dead by now, thanks to her obsession (at the instigation of her Zionist/neocon sponsors) with declaring no-fly zones in Syria.

Brendan , December 24, 2017 at 6:18 am

Trump and Kushner have nothing to worry about, even if a smoking gun is found that proves their collusion with Israel. That's because the entire political and media establishment will simply ignore the Israeli connection.

Journalists and politicians will even continue to present Mike Flynn's contacts as evidence of collusion with Russia. They'll keep on repeating that "Flynn lied about his phone call to the Russian ambassador". But there will be no mention of the fact that the purpose of this contact was to support Israel and not any alleged Russian interference.

Skip Scott , December 24, 2017 at 7:59 am

I think you have it right Brendan. The MSM, Intelligence Community, and Mueller would never go down any path that popularized undue Israeli influence on US foreign policy. "Nothing to see here folks, move along."

argos , December 24, 2017 at 6:57 am

The zionist will stop at nothing to control the middle east with American taxpayers money/military equiptment its a win win for the zionist they control America lock stock and barrel a pity though it is a great country to be led by a jewish entity.

Herman , December 24, 2017 at 10:47 am

What will Israel-Palestine look like twenty years from now? Will it remain an apartheid regime, a regime without any Palestinians, or something different. The Trump decision, which the world rejects, brings the issue of "final" settlement to the fore. In a way we can go back to the thirties and the British Mandate. Jewish were fleeing Europe, many coming to Palestine. The British, on behalf of the Zionists, were delaying declaring Palestine a state with control of its own affairs. Seeing the mass immigration and chafing at British foot dragging, the Arabs rebelled, What happened then was that the British, responding to numerous pressures notably war with Germany, acted by granting independence and granting Palestine control of its borders.

With American pressure and the mass exodus of Jews from Europe, Jews defied the British resulting in Jewish resistance. What followed then was a UN plan to divide the land with a Jerusalem an international city administered by the UN. The Arabs rebelled and lost much of what the UN plan provided and Jerusalem as an international city was scrapped.

Will there be a second serious attempt to settle the issue of the land and the status of Jerusalem? Will there be a serious move toward a single state? How will the matter of Jerusalem be resolved. The two state solution has always been a fantasy and acquiescence of Palestinians to engage in this charade exposes their leaders to charges of posturing for perks. Imagined options could go on and on but will there be serious options placed before the world community or will the boots on the ground Israeli policies continue?

As I have commented before, it will most probably be the Jewish community in Israel and the world that shapes the future and if the matter is to be resolved that is fair to both parties, it will be they that starts the ball rolling.

Zachary Smith , December 24, 2017 at 1:34 pm

As I have commented before, it will most probably be the Jewish community in Israel and the world that shapes the future and if the matter is to be resolved that is fair to both parties, it will be they that starts the ball rolling.

The Nice Zionists responsible for the thefts and murders for the past 69 years along with the "Jewish Community" in the rest of the world will resolve the matter so as to be fair to both parties. This is mind-boggling fantasy.

Larry Larsen , December 24, 2017 at 5:56 pm

Truly mind-boggling. Ahistorical, and as you say, fantasy.

Larry Larsen , December 24, 2017 at 5:48 pm

FFS, Netanyahu aired a political commercial in Florida for Romney saying vote for this guy (against Obama)! I mean, it doesn't get any more overtly manipulative than that. Period. End of story.

$50K of Facebook ads about puppies pales in comparison to that blatant, prima facia, public manipulation. God, I hate to go all "Israel controls the media" but there it is. Not even a discussion. Just a fact.

Larry Larsen , December 24, 2017 at 6:11 pm

Just for the record, Richard Silverstein blocked me on Twitter because I pointed out that he slammed someone who was suggesting that the Assad government was fighting for its (Syria's) life by fighting terrorists. Actually, more specifically, because of that he read my "Free Palestine" bio on Twitter and called me a Hamas supporter (no Hamas mentioned) and a "moron" for some seeming contradiction.

I also have to point out that he "fist pumped" Hillary Clinton at Mohammed Ali's eulogy. If he's as astute as he purports to be, he has to know that Hillary would have invaded Syria and killed a few hundred thousand more Syrians for the simple act of defiantly preserving their country. By almost any read of Ali's history, he would have been adamantly ("killing brown people") against that. But there was Silverstein using the platform to promote, arguably, perpetual war.

Silverstein is probably not a good (ie. consistent) arbiter of Israeli impact on US politics. Just sayin'.

I wish it were otherwise.

Taras 77 , December 24, 2017 at 6:35 pm

https://www.therussophile.org/virus-found-inside-dnc-server-is-linked-to-a-company-based-in-pakistan.html/

This may be a tad ot but it relates to the alleged hacking of the DNC, the role debbie wasserman schultz plays in the spy ring (awan bros) in house of rep servers: I have long suspected that mossad has their fingers in this entire mess. FWIW

Good site, BTW.

Zachary Smith , December 24, 2017 at 7:35 pm

I can't recall why I removed the Tikun Olam site from my bookmarks – it happened quite a while back. Generally I do that when I feel the blogger crossed some kind of personal red line. Something Mr. Silverstein wrote put him over that line with me.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/06/us/06leak.html?hp

In the course of a search I found that at the neocon NYT. Mr. Silverstein claims several things I find unbelievable, and from that alone I wonder about his ultimate motives. I may be excessively touchy about this, but that's how it is.

Larry Larsen , December 24, 2017 at 8:51 pm

Yeah Zachary, "wondering about ultimate motives" is probably a good way to put it/his views. He's obviously conflicted, if not deferential in some aspects of Israeli policy. He really was a hero of mine, but now I just don't get whether what he says is masking something or a true belief. He says some good stuff, but, but, but .

P. Michael Garber , December 24, 2017 at 11:54 pm

Yeah I found a couple of Silverstein's statements to be closer to neocon propaganda than reality: "Because this is Israel and because we have a conflicted relationship with the Israel lobby . . ." "Instead of going directly to the Obama administration, with which they had terrible relations, they went to Trump instead." My impression was that the whole "terrible relationship between Obama and Netanyahu" was manufactured by the Israel lobby to bully Obama. However these are small blips within an otherwise solid critique of the Israel lobby's influence.

[Mar 24, 2019] Why Not a Probe of 'Israel-gate' by Robert Parry

Late Robert Parry was a great investigative reporter...
Notable quotes:
"... So, the open secret of Israeli influence is studiously ignored, even as presidential candidates prostrate themselves before the annual conference of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump both appeared before AIPAC in 2016, with Clinton promising to take the U.S.-Israeli relationship "to the next level" – whatever that meant – and Trump vowing not to "pander" and then pandering like crazy. ..."
"... Israeli officials and AIPAC also coordinate their strategies to maximize political influence, which is derived in large part by who gets the lobby's largesse and who doesn't. On the rare occasion when members of Congress step out of line – and take a stand that offends Israeli leaders – they can expect a well-funded opponent in their next race, a tactic that dates back decades. ..."
"... Well-respected members, such as Rep. Paul Findley and Sen. Charles Percy (both Republicans from Illinois), were early victims of the Israeli lobby's wrath when they opened channels of communication with the Palestine Liberation Organization in the cause of seeking peace. Findley was targeted and defeated in 1982; Percy in 1984. ..."
"... Today, many U.S. pols grovel before the Israeli government seeking a sign of favor from Prime Minister Netanyahu, almost like Medieval kings courting the blessings of the Pope at the Vatican. ..."
"... During the 2008 campaign, then-Sen. Barack Obama, whom Netanyahu viewed with suspicion, traveled to Israel to demonstrate sympathy for Israelis within rocket-range of Gaza while steering clear of showing much empathy for the Palestinians. ..."
"... Money, of course, has become the lifeblood of American politics – and American supporters of Israel have been particularly strategic in how they have exploited that reality. ..."
"... One of Israel's most devoted advocates, casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, has poured millions of dollars in "dark money" into political candidates and groups that support Israel's interests. Adelson, who has advocated dropping a nuclear bomb inside Iran to coerce its government, is a Trump favorite having donated a record $5 million to Trump's inaugural celebration. ..."
"... Israel's involvement in U.S. politics also can be covert. For instance, the evidence is now overwhelming that the Israeli government of right-wing Prime Minister Menachem Begin played a key role in helping Ronald Reagan's campaign in 1980 strike a deal with Iran to frustrate President Jimmy Carter's efforts to free 52 American hostages before Election Day. ..."
"... In a 1992 memoir, Profits of War , former Israeli intelligence officer Ari Ben-Menashe also noted that Begin and other Likud leaders held Carter in contempt. ..."
"... "Begin loathed Carter for the peace agreement forced upon him at Camp David," Ben-Menashe wrote. "As Begin saw it, the agreement took away Sinai from Israel, did not create a comprehensive peace, and left the Palestinian issue hanging on Israel's back." ..."
"... Ben-Menashe was among a couple of dozen government officials and intelligence operatives who described how Reagan's campaign, mostly through future CIA Director William Casey and past CIA Director George H.W. Bush, struck a deal in 1980 with senior Iranians who got promises of arms via Israel in exchange for keeping the hostages through the election and thus humiliating Carter. (The hostages were finally released on Jan. 20, 1981, after Reagan was sworn in as President.) ..."
"... In particular, NED has been at the center of efforts to flip elections to U.S.-backed candidates, such as in Nicaragua in 1990, or to sponsor "color revolutions," which typically organize around some color as the symbol for mass demonstrations. Ukraine – on Russia's border – has been the target of two such operations, the Orange Revolution in 2004, which helped install anti-Russian President Viktor Yushchenko, and the Maidan ouster of elected pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych in 2014. ..."
"... NED president Carl Gershman, a neoconservative who has run NED since its founding in 1983, openly declared that Ukraine was "the biggest prize" in September 2013 -- just months before the Maidan protests -- as well as calling it an important step toward ousting Russian President Vladimir Putin. In 2016, Gershman called directly for regime change in Russia. ..."
"... In some European circles, the neocons are described as "Israel's American agents," which may somewhat overstate the direct linkage between Israel and the neocons although a central tenet of neocon thinking is that there must be no daylight between the U.S. and Israel. The neocons say U.S. politicians must stand shoulder to shoulder with Israel even if that means the Americans sidling up to the Israelis rather than any movement the other way. ..."
"... Since the mid-1990s, American neocons have worked closely with Benjamin Netanyahu. Several prominent neocons (including former Assistant Defense Secretary Richard Perle, Douglas Feith, David Wurmser, Meyrav Wurmser and Robert Loewenberg) advised Netanyahu's 1996 campaign and urged a new strategy for "securing the realm." Essentially, the idea was to replace negotiations with the Palestinians and Arab states with "regime change" for governments that were viewed as troublesome to Israel, including Iraq and Syria. ..."
"... Bush also could pursue "regime change" in Syria only as a proxy effort of subversion, rather than a full-scale U.S. invasion. President Barack Obama escalated the Syrian proxy war in 2011 with the support of Israel and its strange-bedfellow allies in Saudi Arabia and the other Sunni-ruled Gulf States, which hated Syria's government because it was allied with Shiite-ruled Iran -- and Sunnis and Shiites have been enemies since the Seventh Century. Israel insists that the U.S. take the Sunni side, even if that puts the U.S. in bed with Al Qaeda . ..."
"... In Campaign 2016, both Clinton and Trump wore their love for Israel on their sleeves, Clinton promising to take the relationship to "the next level" (a phrase that young couples often use when deciding to go from heavy petting to intercourse). Trump reminded AIPAC that he had a Jewish grandchild and vowed to move the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. ..."
"... By contrast to Israel's long history of playing games with U.S. politics, the Russian government stands accused of trying to undermine the U.S. political process recently by hacking into emails of the Democratic National Committee -- revealing the DNC's improper opposition to Sen. Bernie Sanders's campaign -- and of Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta -- disclosing the contents of Clinton's paid speeches to Wall Street and pay-to-play aspects of the Clinton Foundation -- and sharing that information with the American people via WikiLeaks. ..."
Apr 20, 2017 | consortiumnews.com

237 Comments

Special Report: As Official Washington fumes about Russia-gate, Israel's far more significant political-influence-and-propaganda campaigns are ignored. No one dares suggest a probe of Israel-gate, says Robert Parry.

The other day, I asked a longtime Democratic Party insider who is working on the Russia-gate investigation which country interfered more in U.S. politics, Russia or Israel. Without a moment's hesitation, he replied, "Israel, of course."

Which underscores my concern about the hysteria raging across Official Washington about "Russian meddling" in the 2016 presidential campaign: There is no proportionality applied to the question of foreign interference in U.S. politics. If there were, we would have a far more substantive investigation of Israel-gate.

The problem is that if anyone mentions the truth about Israel's clout, the person is immediately smeared as "anti-Semitic" and targeted by Israel's extraordinarily sophisticated lobby and its many media/political allies for vilification and marginalization.

So, the open secret of Israeli influence is studiously ignored, even as presidential candidates prostrate themselves before the annual conference of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump both appeared before AIPAC in 2016, with Clinton promising to take the U.S.-Israeli relationship "to the next level" – whatever that meant – and Trump vowing not to "pander" and then pandering like crazy.

Congress is no different. It has given Israel's controversial Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a record-tying three invitations to address joint sessions of Congress (matching the number of times British Prime Minister Winston Churchill appeared). We then witnessed the Republicans and Democrats competing to see how often their members could bounce up and down and who could cheer Netanyahu the loudest, even when the Israeli prime minister was instructing the Congress to follow his position on Iran rather than President Obama's.

Israeli officials and AIPAC also coordinate their strategies to maximize political influence, which is derived in large part by who gets the lobby's largesse and who doesn't. On the rare occasion when members of Congress step out of line – and take a stand that offends Israeli leaders – they can expect a well-funded opponent in their next race, a tactic that dates back decades.

Well-respected members, such as Rep. Paul Findley and Sen. Charles Percy (both Republicans from Illinois), were early victims of the Israeli lobby's wrath when they opened channels of communication with the Palestine Liberation Organization in the cause of seeking peace. Findley was targeted and defeated in 1982; Percy in 1984.

Findley recounted his experience in a 1985 book, They Dare to Speak Out: People and Institutions Confront Israel's Lobby , in which Findley called the lobby "the 700-pound gorilla in Washington." The book was harshly criticized in a New York Times review by Adam Clymer, who called it "an angry, one-sided book that seems often to be little more than a stringing together of stray incidents."

Enforced Silence

Since then, there have been fewer and fewer members of Congress or other American politicians who have dared to speak out, judging that – when it comes to the Israeli lobby – discretion is the better part of valor. Today, many U.S. pols grovel before the Israeli government seeking a sign of favor from Prime Minister Netanyahu, almost like Medieval kings courting the blessings of the Pope at the Vatican.

During the 2008 campaign, then-Sen. Barack Obama, whom Netanyahu viewed with suspicion, traveled to Israel to demonstrate sympathy for Israelis within rocket-range of Gaza while steering clear of showing much empathy for the Palestinians.

In 2012, Republican nominee Mitt Romney tried to exploit the tense Obama-Netanyahu relationship by stopping in Israel to win a tacit endorsement from Netanyahu. The 2016 campaign was no exception with both Clinton and Trump stressing their love of Israel in their appearances before AIPAC.

Money, of course, has become the lifeblood of American politics – and American supporters of Israel have been particularly strategic in how they have exploited that reality.

One of Israel's most devoted advocates, casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, has poured millions of dollars in "dark money" into political candidates and groups that support Israel's interests. Adelson, who has advocated dropping a nuclear bomb inside Iran to coerce its government, is a Trump favorite having donated a record $5 million to Trump's inaugural celebration.

Of course, many Israel-connected political donations are much smaller but no less influential. A quarter century ago, I was told how an aide to a Democratic foreign policy chairman, who faced a surprisingly tough race after redistricting, turned to the head of AIPAC for help and, almost overnight, donations were pouring in from all over the country. The chairman was most thankful.

The October Surprise Mystery

Israel's involvement in U.S. politics also can be covert. For instance, the evidence is now overwhelming that the Israeli government of right-wing Prime Minister Menachem Begin played a key role in helping Ronald Reagan's campaign in 1980 strike a deal with Iran to frustrate President Jimmy Carter's efforts to free 52 American hostages before Election Day.

President Jimmy Carter signing the Camp David peace agreement with Egypt's Anwar Sadat and Israel's Menachem Begin.

Begin despised Carter for the Camp David Accords that forced Israel to give back the Sinai to Egypt. Begin also believed that Carter was too sympathetic to the Palestinians and – if he won a second term – would conspire with Egyptian President Anwar Sadat to impose a two-state solution on Israel.

Begin's contempt for Carter was not even a secret. In a 1991 book, The Last Option , senior Israeli intelligence and foreign policy official David Kimche explained Begin's motive for dreading Carter's reelection. Kimche said Israeli officials had gotten wind of "collusion" between Carter and Sadat "to force Israel to abandon her refusal to withdraw from territories occupied in 1967, including Jerusalem, and to agree to the establishment of a Palestinian state."

Kimche continued, "This plan prepared behind Israel's back and without her knowledge must rank as a unique attempt in United States's diplomatic history of short-changing a friend and ally by deceit and manipulation."

But Begin recognized that the scheme required Carter winning a second term in 1980 when, Kimche wrote, "he would be free to compel Israel to accept a settlement of the Palestinian problem on his and Egyptian terms, without having to fear the backlash of the American Jewish lobby."

In a 1992 memoir, Profits of War , former Israeli intelligence officer Ari Ben-Menashe also noted that Begin and other Likud leaders held Carter in contempt.

"Begin loathed Carter for the peace agreement forced upon him at Camp David," Ben-Menashe wrote. "As Begin saw it, the agreement took away Sinai from Israel, did not create a comprehensive peace, and left the Palestinian issue hanging on Israel's back."

So, in order to buy time for Israel to "change the facts on the ground" by moving Jewish settlers into the West Bank, Begin felt Carter's reelection had to be prevented. A different president also presumably would give Israel a freer hand to deal with problems on its northern border with Lebanon.

Ben-Menashe was among a couple of dozen government officials and intelligence operatives who described how Reagan's campaign, mostly through future CIA Director William Casey and past CIA Director George H.W. Bush, struck a deal in 1980 with senior Iranians who got promises of arms via Israel in exchange for keeping the hostages through the election and thus humiliating Carter. (The hostages were finally released on Jan. 20, 1981, after Reagan was sworn in as President.)

Discrediting History

Though the evidence of the so-called October Surprise deal is far stronger than the current case for believing that Russia colluded with the Trump campaign, Official Washington and the mainstream U.S. media have refused to accept it, deeming it a "conspiracy theory."

President Ronald Reagan, delivering his Inaugural Address on Jan. 20, 1981, as the 52 U.S. hostages in Iran are simultaneously released.

One of the reasons for the hostility directed against the 1980 case was the link to Israel, which did not want its hand in manipulating the election of a U.S. president to become an accepted part of American history. So, for instance, the Israeli government went to great lengths to discredit Ben-Menashe after he began to speak with reporters and to give testimony to the U.S. Congress.

When I was a Newsweek correspondent and first interviewed Ben-Menashe in 1990, the Israeli government initially insisted that he was an impostor, that he had no connection to Israeli intelligence. However, when I obtained documentary evidence of Ben-Menashe's work for a military intelligence unit, the Israelis admitted that they had lied but then insisted that he was just a low-level translator, a claim that was further contradicted by other documents showing that he had traveled widely around the world on missions to obtain weapons for the Israel-to-Iran arms pipeline.

Nevertheless, the Israeli government along with sympathetic American reporters and members of the U.S. Congress managed to shut down any serious investigation into the 1980 operation, which was, in effect, the prequel to Reagan's Iran-Contra arms-for-hostages scandal of 1984-86. Thus, U.S. history was miswritten. [For more details, see Robert Parry's America's Stolen Narrative ; Secrecy & Privilege ; and Trick or Treason . ]

Looking back over the history of U.S.-Israeli relations, it is clear that Israel exercised significant influence over U.S. presidents since its founding in 1948 , but the rise of Israel's right-wing Likud Party in the 1970s – led by former Jewish terrorists Menachem Begin and Yitzhak Shamir – marked a time when Israel shed any inhibitions about interfering directly in U.S. politics.

Convicted Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard in the photo from his U.S. Naval Intelligence ID.

Much as Begin and Shamir engaged in terror attacks on British officials and Palestinian civilians during Israel's founding era, the Likudniks who held power in 1980 believed that the Zionist cause trumped normal restraints on their actions. In other words, the ends justified the means.

In the 1980s, Israel also mounted spying operations aimed at the U.S. government, including those of intelligence analyst Jonathan Pollard , who fed highly sensitive documents to Israel and – after being caught and spending almost three decades in prison – was paroled and welcomed as a hero inside Israel.

A History of Interference

But it is true that foreign interference in U.S. politics is as old as the American Republic. In the 1790s, French agents – working with the Jeffersonians – tried to rally Americans behind France's cause in its conflict with Great Britain. In part to frustrate the French operation, the Federalists passed the Alien and Sedition Acts.

Wanted Poster of the Palestine Police Force offering rewards for the capture of Stern Gang terrorists: 1. Jaacov Levstein (Eliav), 2. Yitzhak Yezernitzky (Shamir), 3. Natan Friedman-Yelin

In the Twentieth Century, Great Britain undertook covert influence operations to ensure U.S. support in its conflicts with Germany, while German agents unsuccessfully sought the opposite.

So, the attempts by erstwhile allies and sometimes adversaries to move U.S. foreign policy in one direction or another is nothing new, and the U.S. government engages in similar operations in countries all over the world, both overtly and covertly.

It was the CIA's job for decades to use propaganda and dirty tricks to ensure that pro-U.S. politicians were elected or put in power in Europe, Latin America, Asia and Africa, pretty much everywhere the U.S. government perceived some interest. After the U.S. intelligence scandals of the 1970s, however, some of that responsibility was passed to other organizations, such as the U.S.-funded National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).

NED, USAID and various "non-governmental organizations" (NGOs) finance activists, journalists and other operatives to undermine political leaders who are deemed to be obstacles to U.S. foreign policy desires.

In particular, NED has been at the center of efforts to flip elections to U.S.-backed candidates, such as in Nicaragua in 1990, or to sponsor "color revolutions," which typically organize around some color as the symbol for mass demonstrations. Ukraine – on Russia's border – has been the target of two such operations, the Orange Revolution in 2004, which helped install anti-Russian President Viktor Yushchenko, and the Maidan ouster of elected pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych in 2014.

NED president Carl Gershman, a neoconservative who has run NED since its founding in 1983, openly declared that Ukraine was "the biggest prize" in September 2013 -- just months before the Maidan protests -- as well as calling it an important step toward ousting Russian President Vladimir Putin. In 2016, Gershman called directly for regime change in Russia.

The Neoconservatives

Another key issue related to Israeli influence inside the United States is the role of the neocons, a political movement that emerged in the 1970s as a number of hawkish Democrats migrated to the Republican Party as a home for more aggressive policies to protect Israel and take on the Soviet Union and Arab states.

Prominent neocon intellectual Robert Kagan. (Photo credit: Mariusz Kubik, http://www.mariuszkubik.pl)

In some European circles, the neocons are described as "Israel's American agents," which may somewhat overstate the direct linkage between Israel and the neocons although a central tenet of neocon thinking is that there must be no daylight between the U.S. and Israel. The neocons say U.S. politicians must stand shoulder to shoulder with Israel even if that means the Americans sidling up to the Israelis rather than any movement the other way.

Since the mid-1990s, American neocons have worked closely with Benjamin Netanyahu. Several prominent neocons (including former Assistant Defense Secretary Richard Perle, Douglas Feith, David Wurmser, Meyrav Wurmser and Robert Loewenberg) advised Netanyahu's 1996 campaign and urged a new strategy for "securing the realm." Essentially, the idea was to replace negotiations with the Palestinians and Arab states with "regime change" for governments that were viewed as troublesome to Israel, including Iraq and Syria.

By 1998, the Project for the New American Century (led by neocons William Kristol and Robert Kagan) was pressuring President Bill Clinton to invade Iraq, a plan that was finally put in motion in 2003 under President George W. Bush.

But the follow-on plans to go after Syria and Iran were delayed because the Iraq War turned into a bloody mess, killing some 4,500 American soldiers and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis. Bush could not turn to phase two until near the end of his presidency and then was frustrated by a U.S. intelligence estimate concluding that Iran was not working on a nuclear bomb (which was to be the pretext for a bombing campaign).

Bush also could pursue "regime change" in Syria only as a proxy effort of subversion, rather than a full-scale U.S. invasion. President Barack Obama escalated the Syrian proxy war in 2011 with the support of Israel and its strange-bedfellow allies in Saudi Arabia and the other Sunni-ruled Gulf States, which hated Syria's government because it was allied with Shiite-ruled Iran -- and Sunnis and Shiites have been enemies since the Seventh Century. Israel insists that the U.S. take the Sunni side, even if that puts the U.S. in bed with Al Qaeda .

But Obama dragged his heels on a larger U.S. military intervention in Syria and angered Netanyahu further by negotiating with Iran over its nuclear program rather than bomb-bomb-bombing Iran.

Showing the Love

Obama's perceived half-hearted commitment to Israeli interests explained Romney's campaign 2012 trip to seek Netanyahu's blessings. Even after winning a second term, Obama sought to appease Netanyahu by undertaking a three-day trip to Israel in 2013 to show his love.

Still, in 2015, when Obama pressed ahead with the Iran nuclear agreement, Netanyahu went over the President's head directly to Congress where he was warmly received, although the Israeli prime minister ultimately failed to sink the Iran deal.

In Campaign 2016, both Clinton and Trump wore their love for Israel on their sleeves, Clinton promising to take the relationship to "the next level" (a phrase that young couples often use when deciding to go from heavy petting to intercourse). Trump reminded AIPAC that he had a Jewish grandchild and vowed to move the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

Both also bristled with hatred toward Iran, repeating the popular falsehood that "Iran is the principal source of terrorism" when it is Saudi Arabia and other Sunni sheikdoms that have been the financial and military supporters of Al Qaeda and Islamic State, the terror groups most threatening to Europe and the United States.

By contrast to Israel's long history of playing games with U.S. politics, the Russian government stands accused of trying to undermine the U.S. political process recently by hacking into emails of the Democratic National Committee -- revealing the DNC's improper opposition to Sen. Bernie Sanders's campaign -- and of Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta -- disclosing the contents of Clinton's paid speeches to Wall Street and pay-to-play aspects of the Clinton Foundation -- and sharing that information with the American people via WikiLeaks.

Although WikiLeaks denies getting the two batches of emails from the Russians, the U.S. intelligence community says it has high confidence in its conclusions about Russian meddling and the mainstream U.S. media treats the allegations as flat-fact.

The U.S. intelligence community also has accused the Russian government of raising doubts in the minds of Americans about their political system by having RT, the Russian-sponsored news network, hold debates for third-party candidates (who were excluded from the two-party Republican-Democratic debates) and by having RT report on protests such as Occupy Wall Street and issues such as "fracking."

The major U.S. news media and Congress seem to agree that the only remaining question is whether evidence can be adduced showing that the Trump campaign colluded in this Russian operation. For that purpose, a number of people associated with the Trump campaign are to be hauled before Congress and made to testify on whether or not they are Russian agents.

Meanwhile, The Washington Post, The New York Times and other establishment-approved outlets are working with major technology companies on how to marginalize independent news sources and to purge "Russian propaganda" (often conflated with "fake news") from the Internet.

It seems that no extreme is too extreme to protect the American people from the insidious Russians and their Russia-gate schemes to sow doubt about the U.S. political process. But God forbid if anyone were to suggest an investigation of Israel-gate.

Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his latest book, America's Stolen Narrative, either in print here or as an e-book (from Amazon and barnesandnoble.com ).

[Mar 24, 2019] Top Democrat is right: there was a collition, but not with Russians, but Zionist billionaires and Isreal lobby

Highly recommended!
Trump is definitely deeply compromised politician, a marionette of a lobby, but not Russian lobby. Just look at Jared Kushner and Ivanka role in WH (the books Kushner Inc shed some light on Trump son-in-law) This is both nepotism and pandering to Israeli lobby. As one Amazon reviewer put it "I'd also advise counting your fingers after you shake hands with any of the Kushners..." and "The best way to describe Kushner and Ivanka is that they are both nothing but "Dirty Rotten Scoundrels" - unpatriotic, self-enriching, lying, scheming, tax dodging POS's."
Trump campaign was a large extent financed by Sheldon Adelson . Trump connection to convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein are also of great concerns ( Flight logs reveal trips Bill Clinton and Alan Dershowitz took on Jeffrey Epstein's private jet Daily Mail Online ) if we view this as an attempt to compromise and then control US politicians. And the content of the hard drive of Anthony Wiener laptop was never revealed. Death of Seth Rich was highly suspicious as was the content of Podesta email box. Mueller did not dare to move his investigation in this direction.
Mar 24, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

Top-ranking Democrat, and House Judiciary Committee Chairman, Jerry Nadler did the rounds of Sunday's political shows this morning but it wasn't until he reached the safety of CNN that he decided to unleash his 'facts' in response to the narrative-crushing conclusions reached by special counsel Robert Mueller.

"We know there was collusion," Nadler insisted several times during an appearance on CNN's "State of the Union" while shrugging off Mueller's apparent facts - " Why there's been no indictments, we don't know. "

[Feb 23, 2019] Well I'd rather Mueller spend time looking into the activities at Epstein island than this Russian crap

Was Epstein "Lolita exress" a special operation to compromise Us politicians?
Notable quotes:
"... Of course it shouldn't be Mueller, he's probably on video there too. I bet ((Mossad)) has video on a lot of the "goy" D.C. traitors. ..."
"... Judge Rules Plea Deal For "Orgy Island Billionaire" Broke Federal Law. My response : I would bet money that there are a whole lot of "plea deals" that broke federal law. I think the new AG BARR needs to look at all of these deals. The ones that come to mind are the plea deals given to members of both the CLINTON and 'OBOZO' administrations. ..."
"... Start with the Awan bros! ..."
"... "Epstein will likely live out his life as a free man (unless new offenses are committed, or if other victims of his sex trafficking in different jurisdictions come forward. There's no statute of limitations on sex trafficking)." If the prosecutor was corrupt, then the above is not a true statement ..."
"... "... ferried Bill Clinton and actor Kevin Spacey to his "Orgy Island" aboard his plane, which has been termed "the Lolita Express... " ..."
"... Losing focus here.... Russia! Russia! Russia! ..."
Feb 23, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

Nice timing. Right after a prostitution sting nets some pretty high-profile players in . . . S. Florida.


bh2 , 5 hours ago

It isn't Epstein who they were most trying to protect, even though he was the one directly charged. It was all the cronies in political life who hung out with him on his island "paradise". Perhaps now the underage women who were molested will be able to name names. Could be interesting. Trump should dump Acosta like a hot rock.

NiggaPleeze , 4 hours ago

Well I'd rather Mueller spend time looking into the activities at Epstein island than this Russian crap. There's a real threat to national security if the Orangutan is compromised, which IMO, he very much seems to be. And IMO, that is where the real "collusion" probably lies.

Of course it shouldn't be Mueller, he's probably on video there too. I bet ((Mossad)) has video on a lot of the "goy" D.C. traitors.

GUS100CORRINA , 5 hours ago

Judge Rules Plea Deal For "Orgy Island Billionaire" Broke Federal Law. My response : I would bet money that there are a whole lot of "plea deals" that broke federal law. I think the new AG BARR needs to look at all of these deals. The ones that come to mind are the plea deals given to members of both the CLINTON and 'OBOZO' administrations.

sodbuster , 4 hours ago

Start with the Awan bros!!!!!!!!!!!

spoonful , 5 hours ago

"Epstein will likely live out his life as a free man (unless new offenses are committed, or if other victims of his sex trafficking in different jurisdictions come forward. There's no statute of limitations on sex trafficking)." If the prosecutor was corrupt, then the above is not a true statement - the case can be retried as a fraud on the court by a so-called "officer of the court" - the new Labor Secretary . . . drumroll please . . . Alex Acosta . . . appointed as a cabinet member by the President, who just so happens to be a potential witness in the very same case.

sixsigma cygnusatratus , 5 hours ago

"... ferried Bill Clinton and actor Kevin Spacey to his "Orgy Island" aboard his plane, which has been termed "the Lolita Express... "

Wait, so is he going to be CEO of Disney or will it be Netflix?

Old Poor Richard , 5 hours ago

Losing focus here.... Russia! Russia! Russia!

[Oct 09, 2018] NYT Claims Trump Campaign (Almost) Colluded With Israeli Spies

Highly recommended!
Oct 09, 2018 | www.zerohedge.com

It's been 24-48 hours since the 'deep state'-media lost their battle over Kavanaugh's SCOTUS confirmation, so it makes sense that the narrative should quickly flip to something else to throw shade on President Trump. The New York Times stepped up to the plate with a story that had everything needed for the next news cycle - a Trump campaign staff member involved in collusion with a third party that is linked to a foreign government... oh and meeting at Trump Tower.

There's just one thing (well three): the 'colluding' nation is allegedly Israel (not Russia), the plans were not acted upon, and lawyers claim none of this actually happened.

The NYT Story begins with a great Deep State headline - Rick Gates Sought Online Manipulation Plans From Israeli Intelligence Firm for Trump Campaign

How can you not be intrigued?

The report is simple in its claims, as Daily Caller's Chuck Ross summarizes - a former aide to the Trump campaign, requested proposals from an Israeli intelligence firm to target Hillary Clinton and to use fake online personas to influence GOP delegates toward Donald Trump.

The New York Times reports that Rick Gates, the campaign's deputy chairman, met in March 2016 with an Israeli political operative who later contacted Psy-Group, an intelligence firm operated by former Israeli spies.

Mr. Gates first heard about Psy-Group's work during a March 2016 meeting at the Mandarin Oriental hotel along the Washington waterfront with George Birnbaum, a Republican consultant with close ties to current and former Israeli government officials.

According to Mr. Birnbaum, Mr. Gates expressed interest during that meeting in using social media influence and manipulation as a campaign tool , most immediately to try to sway Republican delegates toward Mr. Trump.

"He was interested in finding the technology to achieve what they were looking for," Mr. Birnbaum said in an interview. Through a lawyer, Mr. Gates declined to comment. A person familiar with Mr. Gates's account of the meeting said that Mr. Birnbaum first raised the topic of hiring an outside firm to conduct the social media campaign .

All of which seems a little different from the headline's claim that Gates "sought online manipulation plans," especially since later in the stroy, NYT admits that Birnbaum initiated the meeting...

Mr. Birnbaum appeared to initiate the contact with Mr. Gates, asking for his email address from Eckart Sager, a political consultant who had worked with both men, to pitch Mr. Gates on a technology that could be used by Mr. Gates's and Mr. Manafort's clients in Eastern Europe.

NYT then claims that the Trump campaign's interest in the work began as Russians were escalating their effort to aid Donald J. Trump, which is odd since there is no evidence that that took place at all (or did we miss something in Mr. Mueller's probe?)

Five paragraphs deep, NYT sheepishly admits that there is no evidence that the Trump campaign acted on the proposals, and Mr. Gates ultimately was uninterested in Psy-Group's work , a person with knowledge of the discussions said

In addition to that, twelve paragraphs in, NYT admits :

"It is unclear whether the Project Rome proposals describe work that would violate laws regulating foreign participation in American elections. "

However, to ensure there is more intrigue, NYT reports that, although it appears that Trump campaign officials declined to accept any of the proposals, Mr. Zamel pitched the company's services in at least general terms during a meeting on Aug. 3, 2016, at Trump Tower with Donald Trump Jr.

Which NYT then admits, Zamel's lawyer Marc Mukasey denies:

"Mr. Zamel never pitched, or otherwise discussed, any of Psy-Group's proposals relating to the U.S. elections with anyone related to the Trump campaign, including not with Donald Trump Jr., except for outlining the capabilities of some of his companies in general terms."

So... to summarize - an intermediary approached a Trump campaign staff member offering potential opposition research and social media strategy... the intermediary reached out to a company known for its ex-Mossad members who sent three proposals to Gates... who turned them all down...

[Sep 16, 2018] How Israel Spies on US Citizens by Alain Gresh

Notable quotes:
"... He won their trust and they opened up to him, abandoning doublespeak and official lines. How, he asked, did they go about influencing the US Congress? "Congressmen don't do anything unless you pressure them, and the only way to do that is with money." ..."
"... His qualifications were genuine, but he was of course an undercover reporter, sent by Al Jazeera to investigate the pro-Israel lobby. He filmed conversations using a hidden camera and later, as part of an Al Jazeera investigations team led by executive producer Phil Rees, put together a spectacular documentary. ..."
"... There was all the more excitement over its impending broadcast, because a 2017 Al Jazeera report on the pro-Israel lobby in the UK had revealed Israel's interference in Britain's internal affairs, and its attempts to bring down the deputy foreign secretary, Alan Duncan, whom it considered too pro-Palestinian. ..."
"... This had led to the Israeli ambassador in London making a public apology and a high-ranking diplomat being recalled to Tel Aviv. The documentary was expected to be a media sensation, bringing outraged denials and intense controversy. But then the broadcast was postponed, with no official explanation ..."
"... The Electronic Intifada ..."
Sep 16, 2018 | www.thenation.com

A never-shown Al Jazeera documentary on the pro-Israel lobby in the United States reveals possibly illegal Israeli spying on American citizens, and the lobby's fear of a changing political mood.

A n investigative documentary by Qatari broadcaster Al Jazeera scheduled for broadcast earlier this year was expected to cause a sensation. Its four 50-minute episodes centered on the young and personable James Anthony Kleinfeld, British, Jewish, an Oxford graduate who speaks six languages, including Dutch and Yiddish, and is well-informed about Middle East conflicts -- seemingly a natural fit for a Western foreign ministry or a major think thank.

Translated by Charles Goulden. This essay continues our exclusive collaboration with Le Monde Diplomatique, monthly publishing jointly commissioned and shared articles, both in print and online. To subscribe to LMD, go to mondediplo.com/subscribe .

The documentary showed Kleinfeld being enthusiastically recruited for his skills by The Israel Project (TIP), which defends Israel's image in the media, and associating with senior members of organizations that support Israel unconditionally, especially the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac), the powerful US lobbying group. For five months, he mixed with them at cocktail parties, congresses, and conventions, and on training courses.

He won their trust and they opened up to him, abandoning doublespeak and official lines. How, he asked, did they go about influencing the US Congress? "Congressmen don't do anything unless you pressure them, and the only way to do that is with money." How did they counter Palestinian-rights activists on university campuses? "With the anti-Israel people, what's most effective, what we found at least in the last year, is you do the opposition research, put up some anonymous website, and then put up targeted Facebook ads."

Kleinfeld's contacts told him they were spying on US citizens with the help of Israel's Ministry of Strategic Affairs, founded in 2006, which reports directly to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. One official said: "We are a different government working on foreign soil, [so] we have to be very, very cautious." And indeed some of the things they do could be subject to prosecution under US law. At the end of Kleinfeld's time at TIP, his boss there, Eric Gallagher, was so happy with his performance that he wanted to hire "Tony" on a permanent basis: "I would love it if you came to work for me. I need someone who's a team player, hardworking, excited, passionate, curious, well-rounded, well-spoken, well-read. You're all of those things." Kleinfeld turned down the job.

His qualifications were genuine, but he was of course an undercover reporter, sent by Al Jazeera to investigate the pro-Israel lobby. He filmed conversations using a hidden camera and later, as part of an Al Jazeera investigations team led by executive producer Phil Rees, put together a spectacular documentary.

There was all the more excitement over its impending broadcast, because a 2017 Al Jazeera report on the pro-Israel lobby in the UK had revealed Israel's interference in Britain's internal affairs, and its attempts to bring down the deputy foreign secretary, Alan Duncan, whom it considered too pro-Palestinian.

This had led to the Israeli ambassador in London making a public apology and a high-ranking diplomat being recalled to Tel Aviv. The documentary was expected to be a media sensation, bringing outraged denials and intense controversy. But then the broadcast was postponed, with no official explanation.

Eventually, articles in the US Jewish media revealed that it would never be shown. Clayton Swisher, Al Jazeera's director of investigative journalism, expressed regret at the decision in a published article, and announced he was taking sabbatical leave. The documentary had been sacrificed to the fierce battle between Qatar on one side and Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) on the other for US support in the feud that began in June 2017. What better way to do this than by winning the favour of the pro-Israel lobby, known for its influence on US policy in the Middle East?

BURYING THE PROJECT

To tip the balance in its favor, Qatar "postponed" the broadcast, winning a halt to the campaign against Doha by a section of the right wing of an already right-wing lobby. Morton Klein, president of the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) and a close friend of Donald Trump's former adviser Steve Bannon, flew to Doha and said he was delighted to see the documentary buried. That groups such as the ZOA, which had not long ago been accusing Qatar of funding Hamas and terrorism, should change sides in return for the documentary's suppression says a lot about its explosive revelations.

But burying over a year's work caused turmoil at Al Jazeera. Some were keen for the revelations not to sink into the quicksand of geopolitical compromise, which is why, thanks to a friend in the Gulf, I was able to watch all four episodes in their near-final version.

What was striking to see was the feverish mood of the pro-Israel lobby over the last few years due to a blind fear of losing its influence. How can that be, when support for Israel is massive in the United States, and both Republicans and Democrats unfailingly back it, no matter what its ventures? And when, since Trump's election, Washington no longer wishes to act as "unfair" broker in the Israeli-Arab conflict, and has sided with Israel's most right-wing government ever? Despite this apparently favorable climate, a specter haunts the lobby: the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement (BDS).

BDS, launched in 2005, aims to use the nonviolent methods that proved effective in South Africa under apartheid. It is growing in popularity on US campuses, but David Brog, director of strategic affairs of Christians United for Israel and executive director of the Maccabee Task Force, a group fighting against BDS, questioned whether it is really a cause for alarm. He said: "Israel's booming. It's the start-up nation. More venture capital is going into Israel today than at any other time in history. So why don't we just calm down, realise that BDS is worthless, it's losing, and ignore it? I don't think BDS was ever supposed to be about getting colleges to take their money out of Israel. So if we focus on the dollars we can feel really good about ourselves. If we focus on the fact that an effort is being made to distance us, those who love Israel, from the rising generation, I think we need to worry. When you get to millennials and students, it's a bad situation. And it's getting to the point now where the majority is more favorable towards the Palestinians than the Israelis." Jacob Baime, executive director of the Israel on Campus Coalition, a group of organizations that fights BDS in universities, is also worried: "The one thing every member of Congress and president and ambassador and newspaper editors has in common is, by and large, they spent a little bit of time on campus and probably those were formative years."

There's another worry for the lobby: Support for Israel has traditionally transcended the Republican-Democrat divide, and a few months before the end of his presidency, Barack Obama unconditionally approved $38 billion of aid to Israel over 10 years, though his relations with Netanyahu were terrible. But the political landscape is changing, and the lobby's unconditional support for Trump is narrowing its base to the Republican Party and the evangelical right.

"THE BIGGER PROBLEM"

David Hazony, founding editor of The Tower magazine and an influential member of TIP, said in the documentary: "The specific potential of an immediate boycott, that's not a problem. What's a bigger problem is the Democratic Party, the Bernie Sanders people, bringing all the anti-Israel people into the Democratic Party. Then being pro-Israel becomes less a bipartisan issue, and then every time the White House changes, the policies towards Israel change. That becomes a dangerous thing for Israel. There is actually an important battle being fought on the campuses." John Mearsheimer, co-author of a well-known book on the lobby, confirmed this in his frequent comments in the documentary. He said that support for Israel is now growing among Republicans and falling among Democrats: "There is a substantial difference in support for Israel in the two parties."

"The lobby's research operation is very high-tech. When I got here a few years ago the budget was $3,000. Today it's like a million and a half, or more." -- Jacob Baime

How to halt this trend? It would be hard to do it through political debate. Since the failure of the 1993 Oslo accords, Israel has been led by far-right parties that reject any diplomatic solution. There is no question of any discussion of the fate of the Palestinians, the future of the settlements, or the tragedy in Gaza. And the lobby's support for Netanyahu and Trump is unlikely to generate much enthusiasm among US students. Journalist Max Blumenthal points out that the lobby took a similar approach to the documentary, refusing discussion and likening investigative journalism to espionage; discrediting Al Jazeera by dismissing it as a puppet of Qatar; and insisting that the documentary's subject was "the Jewish lobby" not support for Israel (Twitter, February 15, 2018). It could thus avoid any discussion of the details of the documentary's revelations.

Noah Pollak, executive director of the Emergency Committee for Israel, said to a gathering of pro-Israel students: "You discredit the messenger as a way of discrediting the message. When you talk about BDS, you talk about them as a hate group, as a movement that absolutely endorses violence against civilians aka terrorism" -- and of course as anti-Semitic. Pollak called Jewish Voice for Peace (a US left-wing organization focused on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict) "Jewish Voice for Hamas." He told Kleinfeld: "The majority of Americans are pro-Israel. Whereas if you take a poll of Israel in the UK, it's just pure hatred of Israel. Your country basically let half of fucking Pakistan move in. So you have a different problem than we do here."

To discredit the messenger, as the documentary reveals, the pro-Israel lobby has built up a spy network over the last few years to gather information on opponents' private lives, careers, and political convictions. Baime said: "The research operation is very high-tech. When I got here a few years ago the budget was $3,000. Today it's like a million and a half, or more. Probably it's 2 million at this point. I don't even know, it's huge. It's a massive budget." He and his colleagues are keen to stay invisible: "We do it securely and anonymously. That's the key."

"IF YOU'RE A RACIST, THE WORLD SHOULD KNOW"

One of the groups most feared by Palestinian-rights activists is Canary Mission, whose funding, members, and methods are shrouded in secrecy. A journalist with close links to the lobby said: "People who hate it, the people who are being targeted by it, call it a blacklist. You have names here that show up on this database. Students and professors, faculty, speakers, organizations that have ties to terrorism, outright ties to terrorism, or terrorists who have called for the destruction of the Jewish state." Canary Mission's website describes its aim as being to "ensure that today's radicals are not tomorrow's employees." Above the biography of each victim is the slogan, "If you're a racist, the world should know."

Kleinfeld managed to talk to Canary Mission's founder and financial backer, Adam Milstein, chairman of the Israeli-American Council (IAC). Milstein was jailed briefly for tax fraud in 2009, but that didn't prevent him from carrying on his activities from prison. He explained his philosophy to Kleinfeld: "First of all, investigate who they [the pro-Palestine activists] are. What's their agenda? They're picking on the Jews because it's easy, because it's popular. We need to expose what they really are. And we need to expose the fact that they are anti everything we believe in. And we need to put them on the run. We're doing it by exposing who they are, what they are, the fact that they are racist, the fact that they are bigots, [that] they're anti-democracy."

Students recounted in the documentary exactly what they faced. Summer Awad, who took part in a campaign for Palestinian rights in Knoxville, Tennessee, was harassed on Twitter, and information about her, some of it dating back a decade, was posted online: "They are digging and digging. Somebody contacted my employer and asked for me to be fired. If they continue to employ me they will be denounced as anti-Semitic." Denunciation can end careers or make it hard for students to find a job after graduation. To get their names off the blacklist, some victims write messages of "repentance," which Canary Mission posts on its site. These anonymous confessions, whose writers explain that they were "deceived," are much like those of suspected communist sympathizers under McCarthyism in the United States in the 1950s, or victims of authoritarian regimes today. Baime said: "It's psychological warfare. It drives them crazy. They either shut down, or they spend time investigating [the accusations against them] instead of attacking Israel. It's extremely effective." Another person told Kleinfeld: "I think anti-Semitism as a smear is not what it used to be."

These campaigns, based on personal information gathered about US citizens, would not be possible without the resources of Israel's Ministry of Strategic Affairs. Its director general, Sima Vaknin-Gil, said in a talk at the IAC annual conference shown in the documentary: "The fact that the Israeli government decided to be a key player means a lot because we can bring things that NGOs or civilian entities involved in this thing [don't have]. We've got the budget. We can bring things to the table that are quite different. Everybody out there who has anything to do with BDS should ask himself twice: Should I be on this side or do I want to be on the other side?"

"A DESTABILIZING FORCE"

Vaknin-Gil admitted that to gather information, "we have FDD. We have others working on this." The Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) is a conservative think tank that has played an important role in the recent rapprochement between the UAE and Israel. It took part in the 2017 campaign against Qatar and Al Jazeera, which was accused of being a destabilizing force in the region. Under US law, organizations and individuals working for foreign governments must register with the Department of Justice. Would the DOJ dare take the FDD to court for failing to register?

As Ali Abunimah, co-founder of the website The Electronic Intifada , says, "if you had on tape a statement of a senior Russian or Iranian or even Canadian official saying that they were running covert operations, to spy on Americans, and using an organization like the Foundation for Defense of Democracies as a front it would be a bombshell." This kind of cooperation is not limited to the FDD, and many of the people Kleinfeld talked to, including Baime, told him so in confidence, though they didn't want to elaborate on such as sensitive subject.

[Sep 09, 2018] Sharon s famous statement we control America is not the only one

Notable quotes:
"... "The role of the President of the United States is to support the decisions that are made by the people of Israel." -- Ann Lewis, speaking for Hillary Clinton, at the meeting for Jewish Leadership sponsored by the United Jewish Communities on March 18, 2008 ( Jewess Ann Lewis, is sister to Homo Congressman Barney Frank). ..."
"... "The US shouldn't give high clearances to Jews, because when asked to help, we're willing to do anything for the love of our country, Israel." -- Jew Spy Jonathan Pollard during interrogation by the FBI. Make note that Pollard was born in the US and his spying put America in serious nuclear risk back in the 1980's. ..."
"... "We killed them out of a certain naive hubris. Believing with absolute certitude that now, with the White House, the Senate, and much of the American media in our hands, the lives of others do not count as much as our own ." -- Ari Shavit, an Israeli columnist, reflected sorrowfully on the wanton Israeli killing of more than a hundred Lebanese civilians in an essay reprinted (from the Israeli paper Ha'aretz) in the May 27, 1996, issue of the New York Times. ..."
Sep 09, 2018 | www.unz.com

Them Guys , says: September 6, 2018 at 5:29 am GMT

@jilles dykstra Two remarks, Sharon's famous statement 'we control America', and the fact that any, or nearly all Chiefs of Staff in the White House were jews.

"The role of the President of the United States is to support the decisions that are made by the people of Israel." -- Ann Lewis, speaking for Hillary Clinton, at the meeting for Jewish Leadership sponsored by the United Jewish Communities on March 18, 2008 ( Jewess Ann Lewis, is sister to Homo Congressman Barney Frank).

"[Shimon] Peres warned [Ariel] Sharon Wednesday that refusing to heed incessant American requests for a cease-fire with the Palestinians would endanger Israeli interests and 'turn the US against us.' At this point, a furious Sharon reportedly turned toward Peres, saying 'every time we do something you tell me Americans will do this and will do that. I want to tell you something very clear, don't worry about American pressure on Israel, we, the Jewish people control America, and the Americans know it.'"
-- Kol Yisrael (Israel Radio), 3 October, 2001 (IAP)

"My opinion of Christian Zionists? They're scum. But don't tell them that. We need all the useful idiots we can get right now "

"I know what America is. America is something that can easily be moved. Moved to the right direction."
-- Benjamin "Bibi" Netanyahu, Prime Minister of Israel. Bibi just happened to be in New York City on 9/11 and London during the 7/7 subway bombings.

"The US shouldn't give high clearances to Jews, because when asked to help, we're willing to do anything for the love of our country, Israel." -- Jew Spy Jonathan Pollard during interrogation by the FBI. Make note that Pollard was born in the US and his spying put America in serious nuclear risk back in the 1980's.

"The U.S. has no longer a government of goyim [Gentiles], but an administration in which the Jews are full partners in the decision making at all levels. Perhaps the aspects of the Jewish religious law connected with the term 'government of goyim' should be re-examined, since it is an outdated term in the U.S." -- The major Israeli newspaper, Maariv, "The Jews Who Run Clinton's Court" on September 2, 1994.

"We killed them out of a certain naive hubris. Believing with absolute certitude that now, with the White House, the Senate, and much of the American media in our hands, the lives of others do not count as much as our own ." -- Ari Shavit, an Israeli columnist, reflected sorrowfully on the wanton Israeli killing of more than a hundred Lebanese civilians in an essay reprinted (from the Israeli paper Ha'aretz) in the May 27, 1996, issue of the New York Times.

"The Census Bureau has just reported that about half of the American population will soon be non-White or non-European. And they will all be American citizens. We have tipped beyond the point where a Nazi-Aryan party will be able to prevail in this country. We have been nourishing the American climate of opposition to ethnic bigotry for about a half century. That climate has not yet been perfected, but the heterogeneous nature of our population tends to make it irreversible and makes constitutional constraints against bigotry more practical than ever." -- Earl Raab, executive director emeritus of the Perlmutter Institute of Jewish Advocacy (offshoot of the ADL), Jewish Bulletin, Feb. 19, 1993

"We Jews have spoiled the blood of all the races of Europe. Taken as a whole, everything is Jewdified. Our ideas animate everything. Our spirit reigns over the world. We are the Lords." -- Dr. Kurt Munzer, "The Way to Zion."

"The Roosevelt Administration has selected more Jews to fill influential positions than any previous administration." -- Brooklyn Jewish Examiner, October 20, 1933.

"The Revolution won't happen with guns, rather it will happen incrementally, year by year, generation by generation. We will gradually infiltrate their educational institutions and their political offices, transforming them slowly into Marxist entities as we move towards universal egalitarianism." -- Max Horkheimer, Marxist Jew of the Frankfurt School

"The Jewish Question is being discussed by statesmen in a way more acute and compelling than ever before in the history of the world. They can do whatever they want, but the nations of the earth well never be able to get away from this question. The Jewish serpent will show its hydra's heads everywhere, blocking the way to a relaxation of international tensions. We Jews will not allow peace in the world, however hard statesmen and peace advocates try to bring it about." -- London Jewish Chronicle, March 3, 1939

Under the heading of "A brief History of the Terms for Jew" in the 1980 Jewish Almanac is the following: "Strictly speaking it is incorrect to call an Ancient Israelite a 'Jew' or to call a contemporary Jew an Israelite or a Hebrew." -- 1980 Jewish Almanac, p. 3 (the writer is obliquely referring to the true history of the Eastern European Ashkenazim, or Khazars).

"The world revolution which we will experience will be exclusively our affair and will rest in our hands. This revolution will tighten the Jewish domination over all other people." -- Le Peuple Juif, February 8, 1919.

"There is much in the fact of Bolshevism (Communism) itself, in the fact that so many Jews are Bolshevists, in the fact that the ideals of Bolshevism at many points are consonant with the finest ideals of Judaism." -- The Jewish Chronicle, April 4, 1919.

"The Bolshevist revolution in Russia was the work of Jewish brains, of Jewish dissatisfaction, of Jewish planning, whose goal is to create a NEW ORDER IN THE WORLD. What was performed in so excellent a way in Russia, thanks to Jewish brains, and because of Jewish dissatisfaction, and by Jewish planning, shall also, through the same Jewish mental and physical forces, became a reality all over the world." -- The American Hebrew Magazine – September 10, 1920. Sometimes misquoted to say "New World Order."

"Jewish history has been tragic to the Jews and no less tragic to the neighboring nations who have suffered them. Our major vice of old as of today is parasitism. We are a people of vultures living on the labor and good fortune of the rest of the world." -- Samuel Roth, "Jews Must Live," page 18.

"I hardly exaggerate. Jewish life consists of two elements: Extracting money and protesting." -- Nahum Goldmann "The Jewish Paradox" 1978

Real, Factual, Honest, TRUTH'S Straight from the Mouth's & Pen's of .wait for it! .JEWS!

And, yet Still, the stupid, delusional, Naysayers, Jew Defenders, and all who remain in Deep Denial of such factual Truths Will continue to be and act as such. They simply cannot ever admit they have been so totally wrong, all those year's now, eh.

What does their Judaic Zionist Talmud, Holiest of Holy Book's teach Jews, such as Trumps SIL Kushner? ..This for one example ..Religious teaching and belief of Talmudic Jewry.

"To communicate anything to a Goy about our religious relations would be equal to the killing of all Jews, for if the Goyim knew what we teach about them, they would kill us openly." -- The Talmud: Libbre David 37

[Sep 09, 2018] In Britain Israel uses the same tactics as in in the USA

Sep 09, 2018 | www.unz.com

El Dato , says: September 9, 2018 at 10:03 am GMT

Rubin revealed that Ryan was in almost daily contact with Shai Masot, an Israeli embassy staffer in London, caught on camera plotting to "take down" MPs perceived as hostile to Israel. Masot is also filmed discussing with leading figures in Conservative Friends of Israel, including Maria Strizzolo, a senior aide to Education Minister Robert Halfon and a former political director of CFI, about whether Strizzoli could help "take down" Foreign Office deputy, Sir Alan Duncan. The affair now looks like a practice run for the operation mounted against Corbyn.

No doubt about that. Are these people in prison yet?

No?

Oh well.

[Sep 09, 2018] Israel s Fifth Column: Exercising control from inside the government by Philip Giraldi

Looks like Zionists and Jews serve as scapegoats for neocons and neoliberalism induced problems ;-)
We probably should also talk about financial capital fifth column, which intersects with Zionist fifth column and is more powerful. I do not think that without the power of financial fifth column Zionist fifth column would achieve such a prominence.
But in any case a better organized minority often dominates often disorganized majority: this is the essence of the iron law of oligarchy.
We also can view Israel as yet another US state as the destiny of Israel is so closely lined to the the USA.
Too many people mix Zionists and neocons ("Full Spectrum Dominance" religious cult). As well as Zionists and neoliberals.
Notable quotes:
"... Specially Designated Nationals And Blocked Persons List ( ..."
"... Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is www.councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is ..."
"... Two remarks, Sharon's famous statement 'we control America', and the fact that any, or nearly all Chiefs of Staff in the White House were zionists. ..."
Sep 04, 2018 | www.unz.com
1,800 Words 431 Comments Reply

Referring to Israel during an interview in August 1983, U.S. Navy Admiral and former head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Thomas Moorer said "I've never seen a President -- I don't care who he is -- stand up to them. It just boggles the mind. They always get what they want. The Israelis know what is going on all the time. I got to the point where I wasn't writing anything down. If the American people understood what a grip these people have got on our government, they would rise up in arms. Our citizens certainly don't have any idea what goes on."

Moorer was speaking generally but he had something specific in mind, namely the June 8, 1967, Israeli attack on the American intelligence ship, U.S.S. Liberty, which killed 34 American crewmen and wounded 173 more. The ship was operating in international waters and was displaying a huge stars and stripes but Israeli warplanes, which had identified the vessel as American, even strafed the life rafts to kill those who were fleeing the sinking ship. It was the bloodiest attack on a U.S. Naval vessel ever outside of wartime and the crew deservedly received the most medals every awarded to a single ship based on one action. Yes, it is one hell of a story of courage under fire, but don't hold your breath waiting for Hollywood to make a movie out of it.

President Lyndon B. Johnson, may he burn in hell, had ordered the recall of U.S. carrier planes sent to aid the stricken vessel, saying that he would prefer the ship go to the bottom rather than embarrass his good friend Israel. Then came the cover-up from inside the U.S. government. A hastily convened and summarily executed board of inquiry headed by Admiral John McCain, father of the senator, deliberately interviewed only a handful of crewmen before determining that it was all an accident. The sailors who had survived the attack as well as crewmen from Navy ships that arrived eventually to provide assistance were held incommunicado in Malta before being threatened and sworn to secrecy. Since that time, repeated attempts to convene another genuine inquiry have been rebuffed by congress, the White House and the Pentagon. Recently deceased Senator John McCain was particularly active in rejecting overtures from the Liberty survivors.

The Liberty story demonstrates how Israel's ability to make the United States government act against its own interests has been around for a long time. Grant Smith of IRMEP, cites how Israeli spying carried out by AIPAC in Washington back in the mid-1980s resulted in a lopsided trade agreement that currently benefits Israel by more than $10 billion per year on the top of direct grants from the U.S. Treasury and billions in tax exempt "charitable" donations by American Jews.

If Admiral Moorer were still alive, I would have to tell him that the situation vis-à-vis Israeli power is much worse now than it was in 1983. He would be very interested in reading a remarkable bit of research recently completed by Smith demonstrating exactly how Israel and its friends work from inside the system to corrupt our political process and make the American government work in support of Jewish state interests. He describes in some detail how the Israel Lobby has been able to manipulate the law enforcement community to protect and promote Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's agenda.

A key component in the Israeli penetration of the U. S. government has been President George W. Bush's 2004 signing off on the creation of the Office of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence (OTFI) within the Department of the Treasury. The group's website proclaims that it is responsible for "safeguarding the financial system against illicit use and combating rogue nations, terrorist facilitators, weapons of mass destruction (WMD) proliferators, money launderers, drug kingpins, and other national security threats," but it has from its founding been really all about safeguarding Israel's perceived interests. Grant Smith notes however, how "the secretive office has a special blind spot for major terrorism generators, such as tax-exempt money laundering from the United States into illegal Israeli settlements and proliferation financing and weapons technology smuggling into Israel's clandestine nuclear weapons complex."

The first head of the office was Undersecretary of Treasury Stuart Levey, who operated secretly within the Treasury itself while also coordinating regularly both with the Israeli government as well as with pro-Israel organizations like AIPAC, WINEP and the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies (FDD). Levey also traveled regularly to Israel on the taxpayer's dime, as did his three successors in office.

Levey left OTFI in 2011 and was replaced by David Cohen. It was reported then and subsequently that counterterrorism position at OTFI were all filled by individuals who were both Jewish and Zionist. Cohen continued the Levey tradition of resisting any transparency regarding what the office was up to. Smith reports how, on September 12, 2012, he refused to answer reporter questions "about Israel's possession of nuclear weapons, and whether sanctioning Iran, a signatory to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, over its internationally-inspected civilian nuclear program was an example of endemic double standards at OTFI."

Cohen was in turn succeeded in 2015 by Adam Szubin who was then replaced in 2017 by Sigal Pearl Mandelker, a former and possibly current Israeli citizen . All of the heads of OTFI have therefore been Jewish and Zionist. All work closely with the Israeli government, all travel to Israel frequently on "official business" and they all are in close liaison with the Jewish groups most often described as part of the Israel Lobby. And the result has been that many of the victims of OTFI have been generally enemies of Israel, as defined by Israel and America's Jewish lobbyists. OTFI's Specially Designated Nationals And Blocked Persons List ( SDN ), which includes sanctions and enforcement options , features many Middle Eastern Muslim and Christian names and companies but nothing in any way comparable relating to Israel and Israelis, many of whom are well known to law enforcement otherwise as weapons traffickers and money launderers . And once placed on the SDN there is no transparent way to be removed, even if the entry was clearly in error.

Here in the United States, action by OTFI has meant that Islamic charities have been shut down and individuals exercising their right to free speech through criticism of the Jewish state have been imprisoned. If the Israel Anti-Boycott Act succeeds in making its way through congress the OTFI model will presumably become the law of the land when it comes to curtailing free speech whenever Israel is involved.

The OTFI story is outrageous, but it is far from unique. There is a history of American Jews closely attached to Israel being promoted by powerful and cash rich domestic lobbies to act on behalf of the Jewish state. To be sure, Jews who are Zionists are vastly overrepresented in all government agencies that have anything at all to do with the Middle East and one can reasonably argue that the Republican and Democratic Parties are in the pockets of Jewish billionaires named Sheldon Adelson and Haim Saban.

Neoconservatives, most of whom are Jewish, infiltrated the Pentagon under the Reagan Administration and they and their heirs in government and media (Doug Feith, Paul Wolfowitz, Scooter Libby, Richard Perle, Bill Kristol) were major players in the catastrophic war with Iraq, which, one of the architects of that war, Philip Zelikow, described in 2004 as being all about Israel. The same people are now in the forefront of urging war with Iran.

American policy towards the Middle East is largely being managed by a small circle of Orthodox Jews working for presidential son-in-law Jared Kushner. One of them, David Friedman, is currently U.S. Ambassador to Israel. Friedman, a bankruptcy lawyer who has no diplomatic or foreign policy credentials, is a Zionist Jew who is also a supporter of the illegal settlements on the West Bank and a harsh critic of other Jews who in any way disagree with the Israeli government. He has contributed money to settlement construction, which would be illegal if OTFI were doing its job, and has consistently defended the settlers while condemning the Palestinians in speeches in Israel. He endlessly and ignorantly repeats Israeli government talking points and has tried to change the wording of State Department communications, seeking to delete the word "occupied" when describing Israel's control of the West Bank. His humanity does not extend beyond his Jewishness, defending the Israeli shooting thousands of unarmed Gazan protesters and the bombing of schools, hospitals and cultural centers. How he represents the United States and its citizens who are not dual nationals must be considered a mystery.

Friedman's top adviser is Rabbi Aryeh Lightstone, who is described by the Embassy as an expert in "Jewish education and pro-Israel advocacy." Once upon a time, in an apparently more enlightened mood, Lightstone described Donald Trump as posing "an existential danger both to the Republican Party and to the U.S." and even accused him of pandering to Jewish audiences. Apparently when opportunity knocked he changed his mind about his new boss. Pre-government in 2014, Lightstone founded and headed Silent City, a Jewish advocacy group supported by extreme right-wing money that opposed the Iran nuclear agreement and also worked to combat the nonviolent Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement. He is reportedly still connected financially with anti BDS groups, which might be construed as a conflict of interest. As the Senior Adviser to Friedman he is paid in excess of $200,000 plus free housing, additional cash benefits to include a 25% cost of living allowance and a 10% hardship differential, medical insurance and eligibility for a pension.

So, what's in it all for Joe and Jill American Citizens? Not much. And for Israel? Anything, it wants, apparently. Sink a U.S. warship? Okay. Tap the U.S. Treasury? Sure, just wait a minute and we'll draft some legislation that will give you even more money. Create a treasury department agency run exclusively by Jews that operates secretly to punish critics of the Jewish state? No brainer. Meanwhile a bunch of dudes at the Pentagon are dreaming of new wars for Israel and the White House sends an ignorant ambassador and top aide overseas to represent the interests of the foreign government in the country where they are posted. Which just happens to be Israel. Will it ever end?

Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is www.councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is [email protected] .


Greg Bacon , says: Website September 4, 2018 at 8:23 am GMT

billions in tax exempt "charitable" donations by American Jews.

Do a little research on these and you'll find nearly 4,500 of them in the USA alone

Directory of Charities and Nonprofit Organizations: Jewish (Displaying 1 – 100 of 4,421 )

https://www.guidestar.org/nonprofit-directory/religion/jewish/1.aspx

Since these groups are tax-free entities, gathering in at least 26 billion a year-not including money to synagogues–that's close to 30 billion a year Americans have to make up for out of their wallets on April 15 of each year.

26 Billion Bucks: The Jewish Charity Industry Uncovered

The Forward's investigation has uncovered a tax-exempt Jewish communal apparatus that operates on the scale of a Fortune 500 company and focuses the largest share of its donor dollars on Israel.

This analysis doesn't include synagogues and other groups that avoid revealing their financial information by claiming a religious exemption.

https://forward.com/news/israel/194978/26-billion-bucks-the-jewish-charity-industry-unco/

The Office of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence has been run by either American or Israeli Jews since its inception. Similar to the US Treasury, where five out of the last eight Treasury heads were American Jews. One of the GOYIM appointed, Hank Paulson, was installed to put an American face on the 2008 MBS generated economic crash, which enriched Wall Street before AND after, but devastated Main Street.

After Israel realized it could attack the USS Liberty and not only not be held accountable, but the USG would help them protect their lies, that gave them the incentive to start planning their biggest attack on the USA to date: the 9/11 False Flag. And like the Liberty incident, the USG is protecting Israel by helping with the lies that keep the Big Lie alive, that Bin Laden and his posse were the attackers, so Israel could use it's MSM buddies to generate an army of lies about Iraq; Libya, Syria and Iran, three of which we've already destroyed with Iran in the cross-hairs of unhinged psychos like Bolton and Nutty Nikki.

Drain the Swamp? Hell, Trump and his minions like Shadow President Kushner come from the murkiest depths of that Swamp.

Bottom line? Either we WTFU and realize that our nation has been taken over by Israel, which is using our military might, wealth and blood to do their dirty work in the ME, invading and busting up nations Israel wants destroyed, or we resign ourselves and condemn our offspring to a lifetime of poverty, misery, tyranny and endless wars for the glory of Apartheid Israel.

jilles dykstra , says: September 4, 2018 at 10:13 am GMT
Two remarks, Sharon's famous statement 'we control America', and the fact that any, or nearly all Chiefs of Staff in the White House were zionists.
RVBlake , says: September 4, 2018 at 10:39 am GMT
I wonder at the reference for the claim that LBJ stated his preference that the LIBERTY sink rather than embarass Israel. I am mindful of LBJ's apparent indifference to the violent deaths of thousands of US servicemen in another part of the world at that time.
Johnny Rottenborough , says: Website September 4, 2018 at 10:47 am GMT
An Israeli journalist stated over 20 years ago that 'the White House, the Senate, and much of the American media [are] in our hands'. His words were picked up by Joseph Sobran:

'In an essay reprinted in the May 27, 1996, issue of the New York Times Ari Shavit, an Israeli columnist, reflected sorrowfully on the wanton Israeli killing of more than a hundred Lebanese civilians in April. "We killed them out of a certain naive hubris. Believing with absolute certitude that now, with the White House, the Senate, and much of the American media in our hands, the lives of others do not count as much as our own "'

Sobran observes that 'this is interesting less for what it tells us about Israel than for what it tells us about America. Frank discussion of Israel is permitted in Israel, as Mr Shavit's article illustrates. It's rarely permitted here. Charges of anti-Semitism and a quiet but very effective boycott will be the reward of any journalist who calls attention to his own government's -- and his own profession's -- servitude to Israeli interests.'

hobo , says: September 4, 2018 at 12:22 pm GMT
The bastards have the whole system wired. Their tenures at the Office of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence (OTFI) provided a springboard to critical posititions within the architecture of 'the system'.

From Wikipedia:

In January 2012, Levey joined HSBC as the bank's Chief Legal Officer.

(trivia : In 2014 HSBC closed North London Central Mosque's account and some Muslim clients' and groups' accounts. Several sources report that HSBC closed them because they donated their money to Palestine during the recent conflict)

and

In 2015 Cohen was appointed Deputy Director of the Central Intelligence Agency . At the time of his appointment, some speculated that Cohen's selection was due to the Obama administration's reluctance in picking someone with ties to past incidences of CIA torture and extraordinary rendition. The post of deputy director has traditionally been filled by military officers or intelligence community veterans.

(note the whitewashing of Cohen's appointment. No mention of the jewish/zionist angle.)

And that folks is how they roll.

JoaoAlfaiate , says: September 4, 2018 at 12:48 pm GMT
@rafael martorell thank you for your articles but is time for you to explain how and why we get to such ridiculous,caricaturesque level of control,that cant be explain even if the case we are inferiors to them. Everything is for sale in the USA, including our foreign policy and the lives of our soldiers.
APilgrim , says: September 4, 2018 at 12:59 pm GMT
British immigrants are required to RENOUNCE UK Citizenship, to become US Citizens.

This is entirely proper.

Mexicans & Jews retain dual citizenship, without any problem. This is so wrong. Jews routinely serve in IDF & Mossad, but seldom in the US Military. This is a GLARING form of disloyalty. Such 'citizenship' should be revoked, and the holders deported. IMHPO.

I suspect that Jews & Mexicans on SCOTUS, are at the bottom of this.

T. Weed , says: September 4, 2018 at 1:08 pm GMT
Will it ever end? Mr. Giraldi asks (rhetorically). Trump got something right when he said that Media was the enemy, but he didn't say who owned Media. "Masters of Discourse" Israel Shamir calls Jews who control what we see and hear. Since Media lies to us 24/7, and since Congress is scared to death of AIPAC's power and money (Netanyahu's 29 standing ovations before that group of pathetic whores), nothing will change until Media changes ownership and Congress is subjected to campaign finance reform. No more "campaign contributions" (bribes).
Eighthman , says: September 4, 2018 at 1:22 pm GMT
It is terrifying but both US warmongering and Israeli control will only end when the dollar system collapses. That's a very sad thing to say but Israel will abandon the US like a used condom if the US fails economically.
TheOldOne , says: September 4, 2018 at 1:31 pm GMT
How about this: NO DUAL CITIZENSHIP!

Don't want to give up your Israeli citizenship (or any other, for that matter)?–then leave the USA and go to your hole!

lysias , says: September 4, 2018 at 1:57 pm GMT
When LBJ ordered the recall of the fighters that were flying to the rescue of the Liberty, he said that he didn't want to embarrass his ally. This was at a time when the sailors on the Liberty had not yet identified the nationality of the attackers. People in the White House knew it was Israel before the sailors on the Liberty knew. Think about the implications of that.
Uncle Sam , says: September 4, 2018 at 2:06 pm GMT
Any time a political system can be hijacked by a foreign power and forced to do the bidding of that foreign power that political system has to be replaced.

The American political system based on republican and constitutional government has collapsed, largely because the Jewish people have made a total, complete and utter mockery out of that system. The so-called American "democracy" is a code word for plutocracy. Wherever you have a "democracy" what you have in practice is a plutocracy.

The Jews love plutocracies because with their money they can literally buy politicians. Furthermore, the non-Jewish populations cannot defend themselves from the Jewish power in these so-called "democracies".

It will take the proverbial man on the white horse to remedy this situation, i.e., a Caesar, Napoleon, Mussolini or Hitler. If any of you reading this think that this collapsed political system can be resurrected, well then you are living in la-la land.

Sam Shama , says: September 4, 2018 at 2:10 pm GMT

OTFI's Specially Designated Nationals And Blocked Persons List (SDN), which includes sanctions and enforcement options , features many Middle Eastern Muslim and Christian names and companies but nothing in any way comparable relating to Israel and Israelis, many of whom are well known to law enforcement otherwise as weapons traffickers and money launderers .

OTFI SDN features names only, of those individuals/businesses/organisations which are engaged in illegal activities against the United States and her interests.

Your well-known bias clouds your vision.

Went through the list cursorily and looked for names I knew to be criminally engaged and thus under U.S. surveillance and sanctions. Names with a Jewish ethnicity, that is. Lo behold, they are indeed there:

Mikhail Abramov
Valerii Abramov
Nicolai Shusanshvili a.k.a Moshe Israel
Arkadevic Rotenberg
Roman Rotenberg

I am sure there are more.

Don't suppose any clarification, let alone a retraction, of your demonstrated hatred of Jews and the resulting bias would be forthcoming

AaronB , says: September 4, 2018 at 2:54 pm GMT
Let me explain to you stupid goyim why the Jews dominate you.

Take 2 groups of people of roughly equal ability –

Group A – divides its time between making money and quality of life activities. Has aesthetic and moral limits on what its willing to do to make money.

Group B – devotes 98 percent if it's time to making money. No aesthetic and moral limits on what its willing to do to make money.

Group B will swiftly dominate and concentrate all wealth in its hands, even if it is no more talented than group A, and vastly outnumbered by group A, and will reshape society to fit its agenda of money uber alles.

That's all there is to it. There is no mystery.

Now there are literally only 2 ways, and only 2 ways, to fight this –

1) Group A must learn to devote 98 percent of its time to making money and have no moral or aesthetic limits.

2) Group A must practice collective action to preserve its leisured way of life and exclude group B from too much power.

This is why individualism was the greatest gift to people who care only about money.

There is no use complaining about Jews. They are what they are. Money to Jews are "God points" – the more you have the closer you are to God. Puritans had the same idea later.

The problem transcends Jews.

Lets say 80 percent of Jews are willing to sacrifice their lives to money, but only 20 percent of gentiles are. Even in a country with no Jews, that 20 percent of gentiles will dominate and shape the county to fit its joyless agenda and oppress everyone else.

That's why in England the powerful classes acted as horrifically as Jews with things like the Land Enclosures and the rape of the monasteries and the like.

People who care only for money will always dominate people who have other interests in life – it is a law of nature, easy to understand, not at all mysterious. Unless the majority who care less for money are willing to band together to put a check on the joyless minority.

When individualism was accepted, the dominance if the joyless minority was assured.

Z-man , says: September 4, 2018 at 3:20 pm GMT
@Johnny Rottenborough An Israeli journalist stated over 20 years ago that 'the White House, the Senate, and much of the American media [are] in our hands'. His words were picked up by Joseph Sobran:

'In an essay reprinted in the May 27, 1996, issue of the New York Times Ari Shavit, an Israeli columnist, reflected sorrowfully on the wanton Israeli killing of more than a hundred Lebanese civilians in April. "We killed them out of a certain naive hubris. Believing with absolute certitude that now, with the White House, the Senate, and much of the American media in our hands, the lives of others do not count as much as our own "'

Sobran observes that 'this is interesting less for what it tells us about Israel than for what it tells us about America. Frank discussion of Israel is permitted in Israel, as Mr Shavit's article illustrates. It's rarely permitted here. Charges of anti-Semitism and a quiet but very effective boycott will be the reward of any journalist who calls attention to his own government's -- and his own profession's -- servitude to Israeli interests.' What ever happened to Rick Sanchez? LOL!!!

On September 30, 2010, Sanchez was interviewed on Sirius XM's radio show Stand Up With Pete Dominick. Sanchez's interview occurred on the final day of his show in the 8 p.m. time slot, and he was reportedly angry about being replaced by CNN's new Parker Spitzer talk show[11][12] as well as the occasional jokes made at his expense on The Daily Show:
It's not just the Right that does this. 'Cause I've known a lot of, you know, elite Northeast establishment liberals that may not use this as a business model, but deep down when they look at a guy like me, they see a guy automatically who belongs in the second tier and not the top tier . I had a guy who works here at CNN who's a top brass come to me one day and say, 'You know what, I don't want you anchoring anymore. I really don't see you as an anchor. I see you more as a reporter. I see you more as a John Quiñones .' Did he not realize that he was telling me, 'When I see you, I think of Hispanic reporters'? 'Cause in his mind, I can't be an anchor. An anchor's what you give the high-profile White guys, you know? So he knocks me down to that and compares me to that, and it happens all the time. I think to a certain extent Jon Stewart and Colbert are the same way. I think Jon Stewart's a bigot.[11]
After Dominick questioned him, Sanchez retracted the term, "bigot," and referred to Stewart as "prejudicial" and "uninformed,"[13] but he defended feeling discriminated, saying, "He's upset that someone of my ilk is almost at his level" and that Stewart is "not just a comedian. He can make and break careers."[14] When queried on the issue of whether Stewart likewise belonged to a minority group on account of his Jewish faith, Sanchez responded:
Yeah, very powerless people. [laughs] He's such a minority. I mean, you know, please. What -- are you kidding? I'm telling you that everybody who runs CNN is a lot like Stewart, and a lot of people who run all the other networks are a lot like Stewart. And to imply that somehow they, the people in this country who are Jewish, are an oppressed minority?[11][12]
A day after his remarks,[15] CNN announced that Sanchez was no longer employed with the company.[11]
Despite his firing, upon leaving CNN, Sanchez said, "I want to go on record to say that I have nothing but the highest regard for CNN and for my six wonderful years with them. I appreciate every opportunity that they have given me, and it has been a wonderful experience working for them."[20]
Apology for comments
In the days after the incident, Sanchez apologized several times. In an appearance on Good Morning America, Sanchez told George Stephanopoulos, "I said some things I shouldn't have said. They were wrong. Not only were they wrong, they were offensive." He added, "I apologize and it was wrong for me to be so careless and so inartful. But it happened and I can't take it back and, you know what, now I have to stand up and be responsible."[21]
Sanchez also called and personally apologized to Stewart. He released a statement expressing regret for his "inartful" comments, adding "I am very much opposed to hate and intolerance, in any form, and I have frequently spoken out against prejudice."[20][22] On October 20, 2010, Jon Stewart told Larry King that Sanchez should not have been fired for what Sanchez said in the radio interview; Stewart called the firing "absolute insanity",[23] and stating that he was not "personally hurt".[24]
In a letter to Abraham Foxman -- the head of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) -- Sanchez apologized once again, writing, "[T]here are no words strong enough for me to express my regret and sorrow over what I said. It was offensive, and I deeply, sincerely and unequivocally apologize for the hurt that I have caused. I tell my children that when they make a mistake, they should take responsibility, atone and work to repair whatever they have done. I cannot undo the offense or controversy I caused; all I can do is to try and learn from this experience and strive to become a better person."
Following a meeting with Foxman, Foxman said Sanchez can now "put the matter to rest", adding that he hoped Sanchez can now move on with his life and work.

After his groveling (appology tour) to Big Joo Sanchez was able to resuscitate his journalistic career to some extent but at a much lower level.
Beware the POWER of the CABAL

Z-man , says: September 4, 2018 at 3:33 pm GMT
Trumps comments that 'he would meet with the Iranians', even though his Treasury Department is destroying their country, is, I believe, a dog whistle to American Nationalists like me, that he is not completely controlled by the evil Cabal. I certainly hope so but we shall see.

That comment that Trump 'would meet with the Iranians' must have gotten the Cabal's underwear all in knots but some like Alan 'Douche-a-witz' still stayed on the Trump support team vs. the Deep State. Interestink times. (Grin)

Anonymouse2 , says: September 4, 2018 at 4:22 pm GMT
As a Zionist jew I had no idea we were so powerful. It gives me a warm fuzzy feeling all over. We're said to be super smart too. What's not to like?
Rev. Spooner , says: September 4, 2018 at 4:54 pm GMT
@NoseytheDuke Good thinking Philip Giraldi, it really is time for a movie to be made about the attempted sinking of the USS Liberty and the wilful killing of so many US sailors. It should be done without any Hollywood backing and distribution along the lines of Mel Gibson's Passion of the Christ. (Hey Mel, do you read The Unz Review? You should).

It could easily be crowdfunded if necessary, with survivors of the incident serving as consultants. There are loads of 60s era military surplus items available on the cheap, including aircraft and I would imagine a massive response to a call for actors and extras. It certainly would help kick open the door to awareness of where the real threat to America lies. Its not just about the jews, its about the american elites too. The commoners, the fatties, the crackers, the trailer thrash, the single mums, the idiots awaiting the second coming will be the last to know what is now becoming common knowledge the world over.
I'm no genius or economist but reading online, I understood it well. The common minimum wage burger slinger will support the empire, the jews and the dollar when he understands what uncle sam is doing and so will you if you happen to be american.

Take a gander-

https://www.thehindubusinessline.com/opinion/columns/ajay-srivastav/the-real-reason-behind-trumps-trade-war/article24856757.ece/amp/

And they say "there's no such thing as a free lunch" Duh!

AB , says: September 4, 2018 at 5:40 pm GMT
@AaronB Let me explain to you stupid goyim why the Jews dominate you.

Take 2 groups of people of roughly equal ability -

Group A - divides its time between making money and quality of life activities. Has aesthetic and moral limits on what its willing to do to make money.

Group B - devotes 98 percent if it's time to making money. No aesthetic and moral limits on what its willing to do to make money.

Group B will swiftly dominate and concentrate all wealth in its hands, even if it is no more talented than group A, and vastly outnumbered by group A, and will reshape society to fit its agenda of money uber alles.

That's all there is to it. There is no mystery.

Now there are literally only 2 ways, and only 2 ways, to fight this -

1) Group A must learn to devote 98 percent of its time to making money and have no moral or aesthetic limits.

2) Group A must practice collective action to preserve its leisured way of life and exclude group B from too much power.

This is why individualism was the greatest gift to people who care only about money.

There is no use complaining about Jews. They are what they are. Money to Jews are "God points" - the more you have the closer you are to God. Puritans had the same idea later.

The problem transcends Jews.

Lets say 80 percent of Jews are willing to sacrifice their lives to money, but only 20 percent of gentiles are. Even in a country with no Jews, that 20 percent of gentiles will dominate and shape the county to fit its joyless agenda and oppress everyone else.

That's why in England the powerful classes acted as horrifically as Jews with things like the Land Enclosures and the rape of the monasteries and the like.

People who care only for money will always dominate people who have other interests in life - it is a law of nature, easy to understand, not at all mysterious. Unless the majority who care less for money are willing to band together to put a check on the joyless minority.

When individualism was accepted, the dominance if the joyless minority was assured. Spot on.

Put it another way: people who are dishonest, corrupt, ruthless and unscrupulous will always win over people who are honest, trusting and law abiding, and make them look like fools, i.e. the impure at heart will always win over the pure at heart.

This doesn't just apply to Jews, it applies to basically all non-WASPs. That's why groups like Indians and Chinese are also doing well in the US, they are almost equally as dishonest, corrupt, ruthless and unscrupulous as the Jews, the only difference is, the Chinese are not nearly as power hungry as the Jews or the Indians.

The only truly honest people in the world are Germans and Scandinavians. That's why they did not colonize the 3rd world or engaged in the slave trade like the rest of Europe. The British aristocracy has been too deeply infiltrated by Jews for too long, they've long lost their sense of honor and honesty. America became a Jew run country since LBJ came to power, it's basically Israel x 100. It is no longer a benevolent superpower, not since the CIA was formed. It is now the military wing of Israel, Inc.

Iris , says: September 4, 2018 at 6:31 pm GMT
@ChuckOrloski Hi RVBlake,
... Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D. AIPAC-approved/RI) now opines upon how the Zionist Chief Justice Roberts' Supreme Court was prejudiced against N.W.O.'s "constructed" & subsequent approval of downsized worker "Unions."
(zzZigh)
... Selah, a remake of the ole cowboy song, "Home, home on The Homeland range..., where, selah, the cloud-cover is sunny all day!"
Thanks, RVBlake. Censored Al-Jazeera documentary shows how the Israel lobby spies and blackmail US citizens on US soil in violation of the law.

Information about the censored documentary was posted by Geokat62 on the precedent P. Giraldi's article: French journalist Alain Gresh was given a private screening and wrote a headline article in "Le Monde Diplomatique".

The Israel lobby deploys a web of systematic, anonymous and secure spying techniques on US citizens who oppose Zionist policies, such as BDS activists. It gathers personal and confidential information on these individuals, then puts this information on line to ruin their lives.
It also digs up any political activity or comments that could be twisted and misinterpreted, and blackmails employers with anti-Semitism accusations, should they not sack the targeted individuals.

This is just institutionalised blackmail on US soil, for the benefit of a foreign power, in total impunity.
Full article in English version:

https://mondediplo.com/2018/09/02israel-lobby

KG , says: September 4, 2018 at 7:04 pm GMT
New book on attack on USS Liberty as a coordinated Isaeli/U.S. false flag.
Blood in The Water

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1633884643/ref=cm_sw_r_em_tai_c_R1QJBb4S0ZA5S

AaronB , says: September 4, 2018 at 7:06 pm GMT
@AB Spot on.

Put it another way: people who are dishonest, corrupt, ruthless and unscrupulous will always win over people who are honest, trusting and law abiding, and make them look like fools, i.e. the impure at heart will always win over the pure at heart.

This doesn't just apply to Jews, it applies to basically all non-WASPs. That's why groups like Indians and Chinese are also doing well in the US, they are almost equally as dishonest, corrupt, ruthless and unscrupulous as the Jews, the only difference is, the Chinese are not nearly as power hungry as the Jews or the Indians.

The only truly honest people in the world are Germans and Scandinavians. That's why they did not colonize the 3rd world or engaged in the slave trade like the rest of Europe. The British aristocracy has been too deeply infiltrated by Jews for too long, they've long lost their sense of honor and honesty. America became a Jew run country since LBJ came to power, it's basically Israel x 100. It is no longer a benevolent superpower, not since the CIA was formed. It is now the military wing of Israel, Inc. There are no innocent groups. Different groups are innocent at different times.

j2 , says: September 4, 2018 at 8:19 pm GMT
@AaronB But the monarchs and the nobility themselves turn rapacious - Henry 8 couldn't control his greed and raped the monasteries. Later, British nobility stole everyone's land and impoverished and starved millions out of greed.

Plus, the nobility themselves employed Jews as ruthless tax farmers and moneylenders! The Jews were the proxies of the nobility so the anger of the people would be deflected.

Examples across the world are legion.

People who care only about money always win against relaxed people who enjoy life - it's utterly un-mysterious and easily understandable.

There is no political system that can corrall greed. Religion controls it for a time then becomes a vehicle for greed and oppression.

It's a cycle. Greed rises, rises, then makes everything go to shit and collapse, then there is breathing room and life becomes relatively enjoyable again (a period that greedy people generally call the Dark Ages, or the Middle Ages). "It's a cycle. Greed rises, rises, then makes everything go to shit and collapse, then there is breathing room and life becomes relatively enjoyable again (a period that greedy people generally call the Dark Ages, or the Middle Ages)."

You are too pessimistic. For the majority of the time humans have existed there was no such problem: a big man had to give a party and spend his wealth. These are problems of later times. It took humans 8000 years to get rid of slavery. Earlier there was no slavery as there was no work where to put slaves, today slaves are not needed as there are machines, but for a long time they were needed. There will be a time when collecting wealth by doing anything will be impossible, but this time will have to wait until development can be stopped. There are theoretical systems where these problems do not appear. No finance, no investment, no interest, no accumulation of money, only maintaining technical infra. It is not yet, but how long lasted the dominance of agriculture, and it is no more. But I think the problem is different, it is not some people thinking only of money. I think it is old capital and acting as a group against all others. Genetic admixture would break the group and old capital can be destroyed. Has been done before.

Realist , says: September 4, 2018 at 8:44 pm GMT

President Lyndon B. Johnson, may he burn in hell, had ordered the recall of U.S. carrier planes sent to aid the stricken vessel, saying that he would prefer the ship go to the bottom rather than embarrass his good friend Israel.

In addition to the above mentioned transgression, he signed the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, he promoted federal funding for education, he promoted the war on poverty, he promoted gun control and many other Great Society horse shit programs.
LBJ was an evil, corrupt son of a bitch. He killed over 58,000 Americans in the god damn useless Vietnam 'war'.

To be sure, Jews who are Zionists are vastly overrepresented in all government agencies that have anything at all to do with the Middle East and one can reasonably argue that the Republican and Democratic Parties are in the pockets of Jewish billionaires named Sheldon Adelson and Haim Saban.

This situation can be directly blamed on Buckley v. Valeo, 424 U.S. 1976 and exacerbated by continuing dumb shit SC decisions First National Bank of Boston v. Bellotti, Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission and McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission

Will it ever end?

Not through electoral means.

Mike P , says: September 4, 2018 at 10:32 pm GMT
@Realist

President Lyndon B. Johnson, may he burn in hell, had ordered the recall of U.S. carrier planes sent to aid the stricken vessel, saying that he would prefer the ship go to the bottom rather than embarrass his good friend Israel.
In addition to the above mentioned transgression, he signed the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, he promoted federal funding for education, he promoted the war on poverty, he promoted gun control and many other Great Society horse shit programs.
LBJ was an evil, corrupt son of a bitch. He killed over 58,000 Americans in the god damn useless Vietnam 'war'.

To be sure, Jews who are Zionists are vastly overrepresented in all government agencies that have anything at all to do with the Middle East and one can reasonably argue that the Republican and Democratic Parties are in the pockets of Jewish billionaires named Sheldon Adelson and Haim Saban.
This situation can be directly blamed on Buckley v. Valeo, 424 U.S. 1976 and exacerbated by continuing dumb shit SC decisions First National Bank of Boston v. Bellotti, Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission and McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission

Will it ever end?
Not through electoral means.

Will it ever end?

Not through electoral means.

A key problem of our Western so-called democracies is that they are "representative." This might have been conducive to getting stuff done in the age of horse and carriage, but nowadays it is no longer necessary; it is perfectly possible to let the people vote on the latest raise for the Pentagon, if they bring a motion. In Switzerland this is done routinely; for example, a while ago the people threw out the government's decision to buy the F-35 for the Swiss air force.

A purely representative democracy is designed to withhold power from the public and hand it over to the rich and their lobbies. Direct democracy would be a powerful weapon against corruption – no lobby can bribe the whole of the population. Of course, it does not immediately solve problems like control of mass media etc.; but nevertheless it is plain that Switzerland, the world's most democratic country, is also prosperous, well-governed, with sound finances and without brain-dead foreign policy adventures.

Direct democracy has to potential to provide greatly improved governance, and it is a cause people on the left and the right can all agree on.

Peter Maya , says: Website September 4, 2018 at 10:46 pm GMT
I keep wishing that Mr. Giraldi would write a series of articles (book) about the COSTS (specially economic/human) of USA blind support for Israli Zio establishment. Often times the world praises Israeli making the "dessert bloom" well any nation could do so if that nation enjoyed secure perpetual markets, subsidies (US agricultural Dept) in the US. and Europe, which Palestinians are often denied. Under ZIO banking threats ,Global Airlines must stop in Israeli Airport eventhought it adds heavy economic burdens to their rolls$$. While Israel pushes America to enforce Trade/Arms/Finance sanctions and embargos against other nations it seem that Israel is readily available to trade, sell weapons, and finance that very nations that AIPAC black listed!!! in fact US embargoes are an economic boom for Israeli Defense Military industries. While Tel Aviv emerges a major technological powerhouse (Talpiot) at the expense of American Tech Industries that usually powerless to stop Israeli theft, fraud, spying and outright robberies of corporate/Pentagon/Secret tech many US cities plunge into chaos, Bankruptcy, industrial, manufacturing dilapidation such as Detroit, Chicago, Flynn, etc. Perhaps it would help Americans understand the consequences of uncritical support for Israel once they realize that their Children are paying for trillions in debt enslavement, worthless currency, shrinking middle class, expanding poverty, decaying: infrastructure, schools, medical services, education etc. and of course the endless dying and bleeding of many young Americans in endless wars that do NOT benefit their country at all only Israel profits from them. Couple with the political costs for USA alienation, and hatred for America, and the constant of terrorist attacks targeting major urban cities in the Western World, spreading death and destruction all over the world which may bring a global confrontation between Muslims/Christians countries that only Israel can benefit. It remains to consider how long can USA sustain economically/politically/culturally such support for Jewish-Zio-Israeli interests while ignoring its own internal/external well being (population/geographic) and national cohesiveness.
Greg Bacon , says: Website September 4, 2018 at 11:56 pm GMT
@FKA Max

Now however, when through the malice of fate a large part of these Jews whom we fought against are alive, I must concede that fate must have wanted it so. I always claimed that we were fighting against a foe who through thousands of years of learning and development had become superior to us.

I no longer remember exactly when, but it was even before Rome itself had been founded that the Jews could already write. It is very depressing for me to think of that people writing laws over 6,000 years of written history. But it tells me that they must be a people of the first magnitude, for lawgivers have always been great.

- http://archive.is/wl8On#selection-785.5-789.335

Life Magazine, November 28, 1960 – Carroll Baker

Table of Contents

Eichmann's story
World War, 1939-1945 (War criminals), Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945) [p.] 20

– https://www.oldlifemagazines.com/november-28-1960-life-magazine.html

- https://www.unz.com/runz/american-pravda-holocaust-denial/#comment-2497112

Life Magazine, December 5, 1960 – Pro football kickoff

Table of Contents

Eichmann and the duty of man
Adolf Eichmann; 1906-1962, World War, 1939-1945 (War criminals), Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945) [p.] 46

– https://www.oldlifemagazines.com/december-05-1960-life-magazine.html

- https://www.unz.com/runz/american-pravda-holocaust-denial/#comment-2497165

" think of that people writing laws over 6,000 years of written history."

Wow, thanks for that history lesson. Always thought that the Code of Hammurabi was one of the first times laws were put into written form, that the Law of Moses came later?

The Code of Hammurabi was one of the only sets of laws in the ancient Near East and also one of the first forms of law . The code of laws was arranged in orderly groups, so that all who read the laws would know what was required of them.[10] Earlier collections of laws include the Code of Ur-Nammu, king of Ur (c. 2050 BC), the Laws of Eshnunna (c. 1930 BC) and the codex of Lipit-Ishtar of Isin (c. 1870 BC), while later ones include the Hittite laws, the Assyrian laws, and Mosaic Law.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_of_Hammurabi#Laws_of_Hammurabi's_Code

Thanks for the correction of history that archeologists must have overlooked!
Probably nasty anti-Semites, eh?

NoseytheDuke , says: September 5, 2018 at 1:08 am GMT
@Eighthman It is terrifying but both US warmongering and Israeli control will only end when the dollar system collapses. That's a very sad thing to say but Israel will abandon the US like a used condom if the US fails economically.

Israel will abandon the US like a used condom if the US fails economically.

Israel will abandon the US like a used condom WHEN the US fails economically.

I fixed that for you. It will be by design too but the military power will be exploited first.

Deschutes , says: September 5, 2018 at 9:09 am GMT
Yes, it's a disgraceful situation that the US government (Pentagon, Treasury, Congress, etc) has been co-opted Israel-firsters. Indeed, these pro-Israel Zionists are morally and ethically bankrupt and have no qualms with taking over and dictating US foreign policy for Israel's gain.

And while articles like this certainly have merit, the 'blame game' can only go so far before it becomes sore loser whining. Don't like the situation as it stands? Then do something about it besides whingeing.

There is a need for reflection: how did this sad state of affairs come to pass? Why didn't government and military leadership stop this silent Jewish-Zionist-Israeli coup from happening? In a way, it is the fault of gentile, or goy Americans for not being able to recognize and to have stopped it dead in its tracks.

The Jews in general are much more closely knit than goys are. This is why they beat you: they work as a very loyal, tight-knit team; whereas gentiles, WASPS etc are largely atomized. This is the goy's main failing: it's 'everybody's on his/her own'; there is no community, no teamwork, no 'we're in this together' organization that the Jews have.

Even on the family level, Jewish families are much more close-knit. They look out for each other, help each other get jobs, very good networking. Whites just don't do this, so many dysfunctional, fucked up families, broken families .families that only see each other at Christmas–and beyond that 'don't bother me!'. Hard to face, but quite true. Goys are atomized. This is why they lost.

Or look at how a synagogue works compared to a roman catholic church. In a synagogue, they are talking about what is really happening now, who needs a job, who is starting a new business and go and be a customer there; or a special event everybody must go to, etc. It is alive, a thriving central hub for the local Jewish community that has real relevance. On the other hand a roman catholic church is a bore! Some old fart reading passages from the bible .people in the pews nodding off .nobody really gives a shit. The only thing on their mind is when this raging bore of a church service will end so they can leave–and pronto! You know it's true. That's why numbers of attendees to churches in USA are in a tailspin.

So my main point is this: the Jews beat you because they are so much better organized and integrated. Because of this they hijacked the government for their own gain.

Sam Shama , says: September 5, 2018 at 2:54 pm GMT
@geokat62

Geo, once again I am glad to observe that you are amongst the precious few on UR perfectly capable of being objective whilst engaging in debate.
Appreciate the compliment, Sam.

But, speaking of objectivity:


Moreover, I shall be happier still, when he takes the trouble to distinguish between the vast majority of innocent Jewish citizens of America and "America's Jews are Driving America's ".
would this modest revision satisfy your thirst for objectivity:

"America's Organized Jews (who are generally supported by the Jewish Community, at large) are Driving America's Wars."
If it does, consider it implied, as the latter wouldn't do as snappy title, would it? "America's Leaders are Driving America's Wars"

By all means, name all the leaders: top, middle and lower in the article. By all means, observe that a significant group of middle leadership were Jewish. But don't paint the rest of American Jewry with the same brush. They have nothing to do with it. As you know I've looked into the financial contributions coming to the lobbies. The contributions from about the top 0.1% account for 99.99% of the total. And that is no distortion of facts. Why would you hold the ordinary Jewish dentist or professor responsible for the actions of an Adelson anymore than you would the actions of the ordinary gentile professor or engineer for the actions of a Koch or Walton?

[Sep 03, 2018] The First Attempted Assassination of President Truman

Sep 03, 2018 | ariwatch.com

The Attempted Assassination of President Truman

The year is 1947, the place the White House. But before we visit that venerable edifice we need some background about the British Empire. At this time numbered among Britain's possessions is an area in the Middle East called Palestine, about the size of New Jersey. The British have ruled Palestine since the breakup of the Ottoman Empire following World War I.

The British still administer Palestine pursuant to a "declaration" in a letter dated November 2, 1917 from James Balfour of the British Foreign Office to, in effect, the British Zionist Federation. Nominally the letter was addressed to Walter Rothschild, the liaison between the Foreign Office and the Zionist Federation. At the time – during World War I – Palestine was part of the Ottoman Empire which was on the Axis side in the war. The letter gave Rothschild a "declaration of sympathy with Jewish Zionist aspirations" that had been approved by the Cabinet:

His Majesty's Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.
Balfour concluded the letter by asking Rothchild to bring this declaration to the attention of the Zionist Federation.

We won't address why the British did this, [1] suffice it to say that they kept the declaration's promise to the Zionists. The Balfour Declaration, as it came to be known, was later incorporated into the Allies' peace treaty with Turkey (head of the soon to be defunct Ottoman empire) and into the League of Nations' "Mandate for Palestine" which placed Palestine under British rule in 1923.

It wasn't long before the Zionists, led mostly by Jews from Eastern Europe, began to chaff under the British protectorate. What irked them most was "nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine ... ." The Zionists' goal was total control of Palestine, massive Jewish immigration beyond what the British had already allowed and the expulsion of all existing non-Jews. By the 1930s the Zionists, crying "Independence!", were trying to drive the British out of Palestine to accomplish this.

Though the Zionists engaged in open battles against British troops their principle method of operation was terrorism, first in Palestine, later to include England and, as we shall see, elsewhere. The militant group Irgun Zva'i Le'ummi began operations in 1931. An even more violent offshoot, Lehi ( Lohamei Herut Yisrael ), better known as the Stern Gang after its founder Avraham Stern, split from the Irgun in 1940. Avraham Stern declared that his group's goal was to establish a Jewish state based on "nationalist and totalitarian principles ... ." [2] After Stern's death in 1942 the group was commanded jointly by three men, and by 1943 Yitzhak Shamir was one of them. In 1944 Menachem Begin assumed leadership of the Irgun. Under cover of World War II and its aftermath the attacks by the Irgun and Stern Gang increased in frequency and violence.

Some planned attacks were never carried out, for example sending agents to London to assassinate Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin. Some attacks didn't come off, for example on April 15, 1947 a Stern Gang agent planted a twenty-four stick bomb at the Colonial Office of Whitehall, the seat of British government, which failed to explode because of a faulty timer. Some attacks were thwarted, for example when the Stern Gang mailed booby-trapped letters – letter bombs, designed to maim and kill – eventually totaling 21 in number, to various officials in England, including (in 1947) Ernest Bevin and his predecessor Anthony Eden. All but one, which injured two employees at a London post office, were intercepted in time. Other terrorist attacks succeeded only too well. The Stern Gang murdered Walter Guinness (Lord Moyne), the British Minister in State for the Middle East, in Cairo on November 6, 1944 (they also killed his driver, Arthur Fuller). The Irgun planted a huge seven piece time bomb in the King David Hotel, in Palestine, on July 22, 1946 killing 91 people and injuring 46, most of whom were not British officials. [3] On October 31, 1946 the Irgun bombed the British Embassy in Rome, injuring three people. By 1947 the British are ready to give up on Palestine. [4]

Which brings us to President Harry Truman. By 1947 his ambivalent, at times even hostile, attitude toward the promoters of a "Jewish state" has become well known. A few quotes, three taken from an article by David Martin, will give some indication of that attitude. [5] The first is from a letter Truman wrote to Edward Pauley dated October 22, 1946. [6] Speaking of the situation in Palestine:

That situation is insoluble in my opinion. I have spent a year and a month trying to get some concrete action on it. Not only are the British highly successful in muddling the situation as completely as it could possibly be muddled, but the Jews themselves are making it almost impossible to do anything for them. They seem to have the same attitude toward the "underdog" when they are on top as they have been treated as "underdogs" themselves.
From Truman's Memoirs : [7]
My efforts to persuade the British to relax immigration restrictions in Palestine might have fallen on more receptive ears if it had not been for the increasing acts of terrorism that were being committed in Palestine. There were armed groups of extremists who were guilty of numerous outrages. On June 16 eight bridges were blown up near the Trans-Jordan border, and two other explosions were set off in Haifa. The following day there was a pitched battle between Jews and British troops in Haifa, after explosions had started a fire and caused great damage in the rail yards there. British officers were kidnapped. Others were shot at from passing automobiles. Explosions took place in ever-increasing numbers, and the British uncovered a plot by one extremist group to kidnap the British commander in chief in Palestine.

The Zionist faction in the U.S., though not numerous, is vocal and persistent, and pressures Truman to help their cause of increased Jewish immigration to Palestine. Though Truman is on their side he becomes annoyed with their methods. A Truman biographer describes [8] "the irritation with which he reacted to excessive Jewish lobbying":

In June of 1946 he at first refused to see a delegation of all the New York Congressmen, and finally received them only with obvious impatience. He was no better when the two Senators from the state ... brought a former member of the Anglo-American Committee of Enquiry (into Palestine) to see him. "I am not a New Yorker," Truman is alleged to have told them. "All these people are pleading for a special interest. I am an American."
Another Truman biographer, [9] referring to Abba Hillel Silver of Cleveland, co-chairman of the American Zionist Emergency Council:
Truman despised Rabbi Silver. [In 1947] he was to write to [his aide David] Niles: "... Terror and Silver are the contributing causes of some , if not all, of our troubles." ...
...
At a cabinet meeting July 30, 1946, [Commerce Secretary Henry] Wallace warned Truman that the Morrison-Grady Plan was "loaded with political dynamite." Feeling harassed, Truman was angry at the Jews -- "put out" with them, as Wallace recalled his words. According to Wallace, Truman snapped, "Jesus Christ couldn't please them when he was on earth, so how could anyone expect that I would have any luck?"

By 1947 Truman's bad attitude has likely come to the attention of the worst of the Zionists. Seen from a Zionist fanatic's eyes there is good reason to punish him, as much reason as there had been to punish Ernest Bevin and Anthony Eden in England.

What happens next is told by Ira Smith, a White House staff mail reader under nine successive presidents, in his autobiographical book Dear Mr. President: The Story of Fifty Years in the White House Mail Room , p. 229:

... in the summer of 1947 I was summoned back to Washington from my vacation because controversy over important issues, including the Palestine question, had greatly increased the volume of mail to the President. I was rather surprised that the volume should be more than could be handled routinely by the office but when I got back I found that not all the difficulty was due to volume. Some of the letters received had obviously been intended to kill.

There had been a flurry in England in June of that summer because eight or more government officials and political personages had received terrorist letters in which explosives were cleverly concealed. Among those who got such letters were Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin, Colonial Secretary Arthur Creech Jones, President of the Board of Trade Sir Stafford Cripps, and former Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden. Cripps's secretary noticed that the letter he received was hot (police said later it was apparently about ready to explode) and he stuck it in water. Eden carried his letter unopened in his briefcase for twenty-four hours before a secretary, tipped off by police, found it. There were two envelopes, the outer one about eight by six inches and cream-colored. The inner envelope was marked "Private and Confidential," presumably in an effort to see that it was opened by the man to whom it was addressed. Inside the second envelope was powdered gelignite, a pencil battery, and a detonator arranged to explode when the envelope was opened. Police exploded one experimentally and said that it was powerful enough to kill a man. The so-called Stern gang of Palestine terrorists later claimed responsibility for having sent the letters from its "branch in Europe." The letters were postmarked from Italy.

The same kind of terrorist letters had been found in the White House mail, and as a result the staff had been handling all letters with great care, thus slowing up the routine. So far as I know none of those received in this country resulted in an explosion, which may have been due to the excellent system introduced for handling the White House mail during the war.

This craven act of terror against Truman and his staff is confirmed by his daughter, Margaret, in her biography Harry S. Truman . The following starts on page 489 (Avon Books hardback edition). Note that by "Palestine terrorists" she means Jewish terrorists in Palestine. [10]

In the summer of 1947, the so-called Stern gang of Palestine terrorists tried to assassinate Dad by mail. A number of cream-colored envelopes about eight by six inches, arrived in the White House, addressed to the President and various members of the staff. Inside them was a smaller envelope marked "Private and Confidential." Inside that second envelope was powdered gelignite, a pencil battery and a detonator rigged to explode the gelignite when the envelope was opened. Fortunately, the White House mail room was alert to the possibility that such letters might arrive. The previous June at least eight were sent to British government officials, including Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin and former Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden. The British police exploded one of these experimentally and said it could kill, or at the very least maim, anyone unlucky enough to open it. The mail room turned the letters over to the Secret Service and they were defused by their bomb experts.

For whatever reason, on May 14, 1948 President Truman, representing the U.S., recognizes the state of Israel.

The Israelis honor the terrorists as heroes, eventually making them leaders of their country. They elect some of them to the Knesset, Israel's Congress, in the first year. In 1977 they elect the Irgun's former leader, Menachem Begin, Prime Minister of Israel. When he retires in 1983 one of the Stern Gang's former leaders, Yitzhak Shamir, takes over for the remainder of his term. The Israelis elect him Prime Minister again in 1986.

The Ayn Rand Institute says: "Israel is our ally in the Middle East."

This is our ally?


1 The Balfour Declaration was Britain's promise to pay the Zionists for their help in getting America into the Great War.

Britain wanted the U.S. to enter the war in order to defeat Germany unconditionally. However President Woodrow Wilson had won reelection on the slogan "He kept us out of war." The Zionists would try to get the U.S. into the war in return for the British giving them Palestine afterwards – which the British had as much right to do as give Mexico to China, but that was the bargain. The British were lobbied by Chaim Weizman on behalf of the Zionist Federation. Wilson was influenced through his advisors Louis Brandeis and Felix Frankfurter, who were ardent Zionists. Using the sinking of the RMS Lusitania as a pretext, in April 1917 Wilson asked Congress to declare war on Germany to, in his words, "make the world safe for democracy." It was a complete disaster for freedom. See the Links page on this website under "World War I."

In addition there was Russia, which had abandoned the war after the October Revolution. The British may have thought that the Bolshevik leaders, being almost all Jewish, would be sympathetic to Zionism and resume fighting with the Allies if the Allies supported the Zionists. However, Russia remained out of the war.

For what England did to itself during World War I see John A. Hobson's satire 1920: Dips into the Near Future .

For more on the Balfour Declaration see "Balfour and Palestine, a legacy of deceit" by Anthony Nutting, a review of the book The Palestine Papers: 1917-1922: Seeds of Conflict by Doreen Ingrams:
www.balfourproject.org/balfour-and-palestine

2 Avraham Stern and other Lehi / Stern Gang members at first praised Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, as related in Zionism and the Foundations of Israeli Diplomacy , by Sasson Sofer p. 254 (for his references see footnote 14 on p. 426). Sofer is a professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. I am using the English translation of his book, originally in Hebrew, published by Cambridge University Press.

Our quote of Stern in the main text, from late 1940, is incomplete. When he said that his group's goal was to establish a Jewish state based on "nationalist and totalitarian principles" he went on to say: "and linked to the German Reich by an alliance ... ." Another Stern Gang leader, Israel Eldad, had written in the spring of 1940:

From a purely Zionist point of view, a pure and consistent point of view, it is not Hitler who is the enemy of the Jews and the Return to Zion, it is not Hitler who condemns us to fall into his hands time and again, but only Britain.
It's not too consistent but the general idea of this and other Zionist statements was that the Nazis were driving Jews to Israel and that was comparatively good, while Britain was limiting Jewish immigration to Israel (after the Jewish population had gone from 65,000 in 1917 to 384,000 in 1936) and that was bad.

In 1943 the alliance the Stern Gang desired switched from Germany and Italy to Soviet Russia, from the Third Reich to the Third International. Because Witold Hulanicki, the former Polish consul-general for Palestine, opposed an alliance with the Soviets, in February 1948 he was abducted and shot by the Stern Gang. A similar end for the same reason came to Stefan Arnold, a Polish journalist in Palestine.

Years later when Uri Avnery asked Shamir which historical personality he admired most, he immediately answered: Lenin. Avnery "understood that he admired him because Lenin ruthlessly followed the maxim 'the end justifies the means'."

See footnote 2 of Ayn Rand on Israel on this website, about Israel's first Prime Minister, David Ben-Gurion, and his admiration of the Communists.

3 54 of the 91 killed were not British officials. The King David Hotel, in Jerusalem, housed – besides the headquarters of the British – the staff and clientele of a regular hotel.

The public reaction of the elderly Chaim Weisman (formerly of the British Zionist Federation, see footnote 1) was anger, for he had ostensibly been opposed to violent resistance. But he showed his true feelings during a visit by Richard Crossman, member of the British Parliament and of the Anglo-American Commission, and a lifelong supporter of the Zionist movement. When Crossman mentioned the King David bombing, Weisman replied, "I can't help feeling proud of our boys." Then Weisman said something the logic of which takes a little thought to understand: "If only it had been a German headquarters, they would have gotten the Victoria Cross." The Victoria Cross is a British medal of honor. If there is any logic to his reply (WW II in Europe had ended over two years before) he meant that "our boys" deserve a corresponding Zionist medal of honor.

The attack on the King David Hotel was not the first of the Irgun's bombings. On July 6, 1938 agents threw a grenade from an automobile into a busy Haifa Arab market. Seconds later a milk churn packed with explosives the Irgun had planted there earlier detonated. 23 Arab men, women and children were killed in the explosion.

Sixty years after the King David massacre almost to the day, on July 19 and 20, 2006, a group of Israelis, including Benjamin Netanyahu, met at the restored hotel to commemorate the Irgun bombing of it. Irgun "veterans" and the Menachem Begin Heritage Center sponsored the event.

The Israelis unveiled a commemorative plaque they had attached to the gates of the hotel, held speeches, a two day seminar, and one of the former Jewish "resistance fighters" who had helped deliver the bomb gave a tour of the hotel basement.

The text on the plaque is a lie. It claims the British brought the deaths upon themselves because the Irgun had phoned them in advance warning of the impending explosion. People were killed, it says, only because the British ignored their warning. This is absurd, a case of blaming the victim. (1) The British had no choice but to routinely ignore unverified phone calls because to act on them would give any random person enormous disruptive power. Hoax warnings were common, and the Irgun surely knew this. (2) No one in authority received such a phone call unless they were among those killed in the massacre. (3) The Irgun says the alleged phone calls were made a few minutes before the detonation, not enough time for information to percolate through the chain of command and be evaluated.

The Irgun had killed other Westerners in previous terrorist attacks, the only difference was that this one killed more at one time. The plaque expressed the Irgun's "regret" over the casualties. What fools they think people are. They got what they wanted, and obviously that was all that mattered to them.

Netanyahu celebrated the bombing in a speech on the first day of the two day event. He said the Irgun was governed by morality, unlike some other groups:

It's very important to make the distinction between terror groups and freedom fighters, and between terror action and legitimate military action. ... Imagine that Hamas or Hezbollah would call the military headquarters in Tel Aviv and say, "We have placed a bomb and we are asking you to evacuate the area." They don't do that. That is the difference.
Some difference, to be sarcastic. Like a shyster lawyer he makes a big thing out of an inconsequentiality.

Two days after the massacre in 1946 the Irgun broadcast the following on its radio station "Voice of Fighting Zion":

The British Department of Information published the content of our announcement of July 23rd and said that the Irgun Zvai Leumi had announced that it "mourned the high number of victims," etc.
This is a distortion. We wrote that "we mourn for Jewish victims" and we meant -- as always -- what we said. It is true that the objective of our attack was in this case not any person but the destruction of the objective itself, and all the victims who fell, fell because of the guilty negligence of the British. However, the British did not mourn at all for the six million Jews who lost their lives, because of them, during the war; ...
Etc, etc.

During the festivities in 2006 The Times interviewed Sarah Agassi, an aged former member of the Irgun, in the lobby of the King David. Her rôle in the bombing 60 years before had been to help with the planning. She and an accomplice visited the hotel posing as a couple, then as they "danced tangos and waltzes, sipped whisky and wine" as guests – they cased the premises.

On the day for the bombing Irgun agents gained entry by posing as Arabs delivering milk. Holding some British guards at gunpoint, they brought in seven milk churns each containing 50 kg of explosives (360 kg total of gelignite and TNT) and piled them together in the basement of the south wing. Agassi says she waited across the street and claims she made a warning phone call to the British command in the hotel. In fact, someone phoned the hotel switchboard, not the British command, which per above ignored the call.

In the interview Agassi expressed her pride in the bombing and its effect: "If I had to fight for Israel, I swear even now I would do anything." See "British anger at terror celebration" The Sunday Times July 20, 2006.

The King David Hotel terrorist attack was the first of its kind. It succeeded only because the British vastly underestimated the savagery of their opponent.

For more on the bombing see the BBC documentary
The Age of Terror: In the Name of Liberation
www.youtube.com/watch?v=kfYi3XPVwo4
and the exhaustive book
By Blood and Fire
by Thurston Clarke. (Some of the facts and quotes used in the above are on pages 76, 247, 249.)

4 By April 1936 the Arabs, realizing the British are facilitating, even if not enough for the Zionists, an ultimate Zionist conquest of Palestine by immigration, themselves had begun to revolt against the British. In April 1947 at the United Nations, successor to the League of Nations, Britain announced its desire to terminate the Mandate for Palestine and it ended in May 1948.

The Irgun and Stern Gang collaborated in the Deir Yassin village attack on April 9, 1948 in which they killed over a hundred residents.

It has become common to say that Israel represents civilization in the Middle East, but there had been a civilization there, primitive and growing, before the Zionist invasion. After it, all in all the day the British left Palestine was the day civilization left Palestine.

After the British were gone the Israeli terror didn't let up, as the treatment afforded Folke Bernadotte attests. Count Bernadotte had been a Swedish diplomat and head of the Swedish Red Cross during World War II. He negotiated with Heinrich Himmler, head of the German Gestapo, to release thousands of prisoners from German concentration camps which he then transported in a fleet of buses, himself one of the drivers, to Swedish hospitals in the Spring and Summer of 1945.

(After the Battle of Stalingrad Germany had effectively lost the war. Himmler's motive in releasing the prisoners was ultimately to negotiate a peace treaty with the Allies, except for Soviet Russia which Germany would continue to fight. To digress into this fascinating bit of history, when in April 1945 Himmler offered his plan to Britain and the U.S. they flatly rejected it, insisting that Soviet Russia be included in the peace. The Normandy Invasion in June allowed the Soviets to eventually overrun Eastern Europe.)

The UN created Israel in 1948 by partitioning Palestine, and made Count Bernadotte mediator between the Arabs and Israelis. The Stern Gang's three leaders, Yitzhak Shamir still among them, decided they must deal with Bernadotte. In Jerusalem on September 17, 1948 four Irgun "freedom fighters" ambushed Bernadotte's car and broke open the door. Using a machine gun they shot and killed Bernadotte. Mistaking the man sitting next to him, a French officer, for Bernadotte's American deputy Dr. Ralph Bunche, they shot and killed him too.

The Stern Gang at first denying any part in the killing, later boasted of it. Israel arrested many of the group's members, released most of them without charge, and convicted and immediately pardoned the rest. The assassination's aftermath permanently ended the Stern Gang, though none of its three leaders were arrested. The Israelis elected one of those leaders to the Knesset during the trials. As noted in our main text the Israelis eventually elected one of the others Prime Minister.

The Israeli government used the affair to reach an agreement with the Irgun, a different group from the Stern Gang, that its members would disband and join the ranks of the IDF.

One more word about the letter bombs to Britain: they continued right up until the UN established Israel. On September 3, 1947 one addressed to the British War Office exploded in the post office sorting room in London, injuring two people. On May 3, 1948 a book bomb addressed to a British Army officer, who had been stationed in Palestine, exploded killing his brother. On May 11, 1948 a letter bomb addressed to Sir Evelyn Barker, former Commanding Officer in Palestine, was detected by his wife and later disarmed.

Israel granted general amnesty to all Stern Gang members in 1949. In 1980 Israel created a special ribbon – a multi-colored military decoration – for former Stern Gang members to wear, called the LEHI ribbon. The year before, Israel had created a special ribbon for former Irgun members, called the ETZEL ribbon.

More on the Bernadotte killing can be found in the book by Kati Marton, A Death in Jerusalem: The Assassination by Jewish Extremists of the First Arab/Israeli Peacemaker . The "extremist" in the title is a mistake though, they were typical.

5 The article is " 'Jews' Tried to Kill Truman in 1947" by David Martin. We quote a bit more from what is our third reference, and what is our fourth reference replaces his quote from David McCullough's biography, which is unreliable. I have verified, and in some cases corrected, his quotes using the original sources. For a link to David Martin's articles see the Links page on this website.

A few words about Truman's career are in order. Franklin Roosevelt chose Truman as his running mate for the 1944 election and when FDR died less than three months into his fifth term Truman succeeded him as president. Truman, just as much a socialist, continued FDR's "New Deal" under the rubric "Fair Deal." In 1945 he refused Japan's offer of surrender and dropped two atom bombs on the country instead. By creating the National Security Council and, using the OSS as basis, the Central Intelligence Agency he vastly increased executive power and corruption. By working to establish NATO he helped make foreign intervention permanent. One of the worst presidents in U.S. history.

6 Robert Ferrell, Harry S. Truman, A Life , p. 307.

7 Memoirs of Harry S. Truman , Vol. 2, p. 150.

8 Roy Jenkins, Truman , p. 117. Truman may be making himself look better than he was, but the point remains that he was a reluctant supporter of Zionism. Edwin M. Wright, a State Department official in the 1940s, described the first meeting referred to in the quote, or one like it, many years later during an interview for the Truman Library. He stated (starting on transcript page 36, his bracketed insertions silently removed):

... when the election was coming up in 1946 in New York [when the governor, Thomas Dewey, was up for reelection – A.W.], the group of New York Jews called upon Mr. Truman. Emmanuel Cellar was the head of this committee. Rabbi Steven Wise and several others were in it. They called upon Mr. Truman and said, "We have just been talking with Mr. Thomas Dewey. He is willing to come out and declare for a Jewish state, and we are going to turn our money and urge the Jews to vote for him [apparently referring to the next presidential election, in 1948 – A.W.] unless you beat him to it." Then Emmanuel Cellar pounded upon Mr. Truman's desk and said, "And if you don't come out for a Jewish state we'll run you out of town."
This, I'm sure, is the threat that Mr. Truman refers to in his book, saying [paraphrasing – A.W.], "The extreme Zionists threatened me." They were Emmanuel Cellar, Rabbi Steven Wise, etc. These are not the extreme Zionists, these are just the run of the mill Zionists. What Mr. Truman did was to cave in to these threats that they would support Mr. Dewey.
Wright's paraphrase doubtless refers to the following, from volume two of Truman's Memoirs , p. 225:
The facts were that not only were there pressure movements around the United Nations unlike anything that had been seen there before, but that the White house, too, was subjected to a constant barrage. I do not think I ever had as much pressure and propaganda aimed at the White House as I had in this instance. The persistence of a few of the extreme Zionist leaders – actuated by political motives and engaging in political threats – disturbed and annoyed me.
Truman does not admit that the pressure affected his decision to support Israel.

Regarding the propaganda, according to Wright in his essay "The Great Zionist Cover-Up," about this time the Zionists coined the slogan "What is good for Israel is good for the U.S.A."

9 Robert Donovan, Conflict and Crisis: The Presidency of Harry S. Truman, 1945-1948 , p. 319.

10 Perhaps her circumlocution was due to a certain fear syndrome: the fear of being labeled "anti-semitic." See the last comment of Jeers on this website.

David Martin, when titling his article (see footnote 5 above), was quoting the title of another article: "Jews sent President Truman letter bombs, book tells" – from the Tri City Herald of Washington State, December 2, 1972 – the item having been furnished by the AP newswire. It quotes excerpts from Margaret's biography reprinted in the New York Times the day before.
www.news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1951&dat=19721201&id=s00xAAAAIBAJ&sjid=AeIFAAAAIBAJ&pg=2264,343939

After sending the letter bombs to Britain, the Stern Gang claimed responsibility, not that it was necessary. (Besides the obviousness, around the time the letters bombs were arriving in Britain two Stern Gang members were caught red handed in Europe carrying letter bombs addressed to British officials.) On the other hand no former Stern Gang member has admitted to sending the letter bombs, identical to the British ones, to the U.S. One former leader explicitly denied it. Considering that it is a known murderer issuing this denial, that lying is rather less a problem than killing, that he waited until after Truman was dead to make the denial after the facts had been public for over 20 years, his denial has zero credibility.

The Israelis are masters of the expedient lie and have a long history of deceit toward the U.S. The attack on Truman makes the Jewish State look bad when it matters – by the time of the denial there is a constant flow of foreign aid from America to Israel – therefore it didn't happen. A more recent example of Israeli perfidy is the case of the traitor Jonathan Pollard. For many years Israel claimed, and self-righteously, that it had not authorized Pollard's spying. (Apparently you were to believe Israel receives thousands of top secret U.S. defense documents and doesn't wonder or care about the source.)

Another argument in defense of the Irgun goes as follows. The Zionists would not attempt to murder Truman because, successful or not, if the Zionists were suspected it would only drive him or his successor away from supporting Israel. The error in that argument is assuming one is dealing with rational people. In fact one is dealing with fanatics blinded by Jewish chauvinism.

The assassination attempt on Truman we've been considering was the first of two. The perps in the second attempt, made on November 1, 1950, were two Puerto Ricans. One of them died in the attack after mortally shooting a White House policeman, Leslie Coffelt, who managed to shoot and kill his assailant before he died.

The earlier, Zionist, attempt on Truman's life might help explain the death of James Forrestal, former Secretary of Defense, in 1949. For more about it see The Willcutts Report: On the Death of James Forrestal on this website.

[Sep 01, 2018] WHEN ARE THEY GOING TO INDICT AIPAC?

Notable quotes:
"... AIPAC intferes in every election. ..."
Sep 01, 2018 | www.unz.com

Rational , says: Next New Comment September 1, 2018 at 4:11 am GMT

WHEN ARE THEY GOING TO INDICT AIPAC?

AIPAC intferes in every election. Soros interferes all over the world. Judaists interefere all over the world and tell people in other countries how to vote.

So does CNN. Many on its staff are dual Isreali citizens, and did not register as foreign agents. And many Jewish Oligarchs.

Even Chomsky, a Jewish scholar, and a darling of the left, agrees that Israeli interference in US elections "vastly overwhelms" what Russia has done (if anything):

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/israel-us-elections-intervention-russia-noam-chomsky-donald-trump-a8470481.html

[Aug 30, 2018] Petition about Israeli interference in British politics

Aug 30, 2018 | craigmurray.org.uk

frank , August 28, 2018 at 21:46

It's really important that as many people as possible sign this petition about Israeli interference in British politics https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/214072

Reply ↓
Shakesvshav , August 28, 2018 at 15:08

Some of you former ambassadors have had a torrid time of it: https://www.sott.net/article/394112-Former-US-ambassador-claims-Israel-tried-to-assassinate-him-in-1980

There are forces at work which a humble citizen can only hope he never falls foul of.

Yonatan , August 28, 2018 at 15:55

FWIW an Israeli journalist has made an FOI request to the Israeli government in an attempt to tease out Israeli government connections with the villification of Corbyn by the various 'Friends of Israel' in the UK and the role of Masot wrt Israel as partially exposed in the Al Jazeera undercover video on attempts to oust UK MPs insufficiently obeisant to Israel..

https://mondoweiss.net/2018/08/attorney-determine-campaign/

[Aug 14, 2018] Why Confronting Israel is Important by Philip Giraldi

I believe Mr. Giraldi should choose his language more carefully. Perhaps instead of referring to "Jews," he should narrow this to "Jewish Likud supporters" or Jewish supremacists, or something similar
Notable quotes:
"... Jewish power ..."
"... Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is www.councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is ..."
Aug 14, 2018 | www.unz.com

I am often asked why I have this "thing" about Israel, with friends suggesting that I would be much more respected as a pundit if I were to instead concentrate on national security and political corruption. The problem with that formulation is that the so-called "special relationship" with Israel is itself the result of terrible national security and foreign policy choices that is sustained by pervasive political and media corruption, so any honest attempt to examine the one inevitably leads to the other. Most talking heads in the media avoid that dilemma by choosing to completely ignore the dark side of Israel.

Israel – not Russia – is the one foreign country that can interfere with impunity with the political processes in the United States yet it is immune from criticism. It is also the single most significant threat to genuine national security as it and its powerful domestic lobby have been major advocates for the continuation of America's interventionist warfare state. The decision to go to war on false pretenses against Iraq, largely promoted by a cabal of prominent American Jews in the Pentagon and in the media, killed 4,424 Americans as well as hundreds of thousands Iraqis and will wind up costing the American taxpayer $7 trillion dollars when all the bills are paid. That same group of mostly Jewish neocons more-or-less is now agitating to go to war with Iran using a game plan for escalation prepared by Israel which will, if anything, prove even more catastrophic.

And I can go on from there. According to the FBI, Israel runs the most aggressive spying operations against the U.S. among ostensibly "friendly" nations, frequently stealing our military technology for resale by its own arms merchants. Its notable successes in espionage have included the most devastating spy in U.S. history Jonathan Pollard, while it has also penetrated American communications systems and illegally obtained both the fuel and the triggers for its own secret nuclear weapons arsenal.

Israel cares little for American sovereignty. It's prime ministers Ariel Sharon and Benjamin Netanyahu have both boasted how they control the United States. In 2001, Israel was running a massive secret spying operation directed against Arabs in the U.S. Many in the intelligence and law enforcement communities suspect that it had considerable prior intelligence regarding the 9/11 plot but did not share it with Washington. There was the spectacle of the "dancing Shlomos," Israeli "movers" from a company in New Jersey who apparently had advanced knowledge of the terrorist attack and danced and celebrated as they watched the Twin Towers go down.

Jewish power , both in terms of money and of access to people and mechanisms that really matter, is what allows Israel to act with impunity, making the United States both poorer and more insecure. A well-funded massive lobbying effort involving hundreds of groups and thousands of individuals in the U.S. has worked to the detriment of actual American interests, in part by creating a permanent annual gift of billions of dollars to Israel for no other reason but that it is Israel and can get anything it wants from a servile Congress and White House without any objection from a controlled media.

Israel has also obtained carte blanche political protection from the U.S. in fora like the United Nations, which is damaging to America's reputation and its actual interests. This protection now extends to the basing of U.S. troops in Israel to serve as a tripwire, guaranteeing that Washington will become involved if Israel is ever attacked or even if Israel itself starts a war. The current U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Nikki Haley is little more than a shill for Israel while America's Ambassador in Israel David Friedman is an open supporter of Israel's illegal settlements, which the U.S. opposes, who spends much of his time defending Israeli war crimes .

And here on the home front Israel is doing damage that might be viewed as even more grave in Senator Ben Cardin's attempt to destroy First Amendment rights by making any criticism of Israel illegal. The non-violent Israel Boycott movement (BDS) has already been sanctioned in many states, the result of intensive and successful lobbying by the Israeli government and its powerful friends.

So if there is a real enemy of the United States in terms of the actual damage being inflicted by a foreign power, it is Israel. In the recent Russiagate investigations it was revealed that it was Israel, not Russia, that sought favors from Michael Flynn and the incoming Trump Administration yet Special Counsel Robert Mueller has evidently not chosen to go down that road with his investigations, which should surprise no one.

Noam Chomsky, iconic progressive intellectual, has finally come around on the issue of Israel and what it means. He has always argued somewhat incoherently that Israeli misbehavior has been due to its role as a tool of American imperialism and capitalism. At age 89, he has finally figured out that it is actually all about what a parasitic Israel wants without any regard for its American host, observing on "Democracy Now" that

..take, say, the huge issue of interference in our pristine elections. Did the Russians interfere in our elections? An issue of overwhelming concern in the media. I mean, in most of the world, that's almost a joke. First of all, if you're interested in foreign interference in our elections, whatever the Russians may have done barely counts or weighs in the balance as compared with what another state does, openly, brazenly and with enormous support. Israeli intervention in U.S. elections vastly overwhelms anything the Russians may have done I mean, even to the point where the prime minister of Israel, Netanyahu, goes directly to Congress, without even informing the president, and speaks to Congress, with overwhelming applause, to try to undermine the president's policies – what happened with Obama and Netanyahu in 2015 .

Politicians are terrified of crossing the Jewish lobby by saying anything negative about Israel, which means that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu always gets a pass from the American government, even when he starves civilians and bombs hospitals and schools. Netanyahu uses snipers to shoot dead scores of unarmed demonstrators and the snipers themselves joke about their kills without a peep from Washington, which styles itself the "leader of the free world."

Just recently, Israel has declared itself a Jewish State with all that implies. To be sure, Israeli Christians and Muslims were already subject to a battery of laws and regulations that empowered Jews at their expense but now it is the guiding principle that Israel will be run for the benefit of Jews and Jews alone. And it still likes to call itself a "democracy."

A recent television program illustrates just how far the subjugation of America's elected leaders by Israel has gone. British comedian Sacha Baron Cohen is featured on a new show called "Who is America?" in which he uses disguises and aliases to engage politicians and other luminaries in unscripted interviews that reveal just how ignorant or mendacious they actually are. Several recent episodes remind one of a February 2013 Saturday Night Live skit on the impending confirmation of Chuck Hagel as Secretary of Defense. A Senator asks Hagel. "It is vital to Israel's security for you to go on national television and perform oral sex on a donkey Would you do THAT for Israel?" A "yes" answer was, of course, expected from Hagel. The skit was never aired after objections from the usual suspects.

Baron Cohen, who confronted several GOP notables in the guise of Colonel Erran Morad, an Israeli security specialist, provided a number of clues that his interview was a sham but none of the victims were smart enough to pick up on them. Cohen, wearing an Israeli military uniform and calling himself a colonel, clearly displayed sergeant's stripes. Hinting that he might actually be a Mossad agent, Cohen also sported a T-shirt on which the Hebrew text was printed backwards and he claimed that the Israeli spy agency's motto was "if you want to win, show some skin."

Cohen set up Dick Cheney by complimenting him on being the "the king of terrorist killers" before commenting that "my neighbor in Tel Aviv is in jail for murder, or, as we call it, enhanced tickling." Morad went on to tell Cheney that he once waterboarded his wife to check for infidelity and then convinced the former Vice President to sign a "waterboarding kit" that "already had" the signatures of Benjamin Netanyahu, Ariel Sharon and Demi Lovato.

Another more spectacular sketch included a Georgia state senator Jason Spencer who was convinced to shout out the n-word as part of an alleged video being made to fight terrorism. After Cohen told Spencer that it was necessary to incite fear in homophobic jihadists, Spencer dropped his pants and underwear, before backing up with his exposed rear end while shouting "USA!" and "America!" Spencer also spoke with a phony Asian accent while simulating using a selfie-stick to secretly insert a camera phone inside a Muslim woman's burqa.

In another series of encounters, Cohen as Morad managed to convince current and ex-Republican members of Congress -- to include former Senate majority leader Trent Lott -- to endorse a fictional Israeli program to arm grade school children for self-defense.

Cohen's footage included a former Illinois congressman and talk radio host named Joe Walsh saying : "The intensive three-week 'Kinderguardian' course introduces specially selected children from 12 to 4 years old to pistols, rifles, semiautomatics and a rudimentary knowledge of mortars. In less than a month -- less than a month -- a first-grader can become a first grenade-er."

Both controversial Alabama judge Roy Moore and Walsh were fooled into meeting Cohen to attend a non-existent pro-Israel conference to accept an award for "significant contributions to the state of Israel." Representative Dana Rohrabacher, meanwhile, also was interviewed and he commented that, "Maybe having young people trained and understand how to defend themselves and their school might actually make us safer here." And Congressman Joe Wilson observed that "A 3-year-old cannot defend itself from an assault rifle by throwing a 'Hello Kitty' pencil case at it."

Cohen's performance is instructive. A man shows up in Israeli uniform, claims to be a terrorism expert or even a Mossad agent, and he gains access to powerful Americans who are willing to do anything he says. How Cohen did it says a lot about the reflexive and completely uncritical support for Israel that many American politicians -- particularly Republicans -- now embrace. This, in a nutshell, is the damage that Israel and its Lobby have done to the United States. Israel is always right for many policymakers and even palpably phony Jews like Colonel Morad are instantly perceived as smarter than the rest of us so we'd better do what they say. That kind of thinking has brought us Iraq, Libya, Syria and the possibility of something far worse with Iran.

Israel routinely interferes in American politics and corrupts our institutions without any cost to itself and that is why I write and speak frequently regarding the danger to our Republic that it poses. It is past time to change the essentially phony narrative. Israel is nothing but trouble. It has the right to defend itself and protect its interests but that should not involve the United States. One can only hope that eventually a majority of my fellow American citizens will also figure things out. It might take a while, but the ruthless way Israel openly operates with no concern for anyone but itself provides a measure of optimism that that day is surely coming.

Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is www.councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is [email protected] .

Anonymous [679] Disclaimer , August 14, 2018 at 4:50 am GMT

. The decision to go to war on false pretenses against Iraq, largely promoted by a cabal of prominent American Jews in the Pentagon and in the media, killed 4,424 Americans as well as hundreds of thousands Iraqis and will wind up costing the American taxpayer $7 trillion dollars when all the bills are paid. That same group of mostly Jewish neocons more-or-less is now agitating to go to war with Iran using a game plan for escalation prepared by Israel which will, if anything, prove even more catastrophic.

Oh right, who can forget the cabal of Jews controlling the US government and military at the time of the Iraq invasion, such as President George W. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of State Colin Powell, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Richard Myers, CIA director George Tenet, National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice Every.Single.Time, am I right, folks?

Oh wait, they aren't Jewish? Well, I blame the Jews away. Just look at uh Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Doug Feith, Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Woflowitz and journalist Bill Kristol. That sounds like an extremely powerful cabal easily capable of commanding such trivial figures as the President, CIA director, Secretary of State, et cetera, to do their bidding.

Besides, just look at how much the Iraq War benefited Israel. You see, Israel wants to pursue a strategy of destabilizing the region, so it cleverly pulled off a false flag attack on 9/11; I'm not quite sure why Mossad didn't frame one of Israel's actual enemies, like the Palestinians or Iranians, or even Saddam for that matter, as the perpetrators of the attacks, but I'm sure it's all part of the plan.

Anyway, Israel got the United States to invade Iraq, which destabilized the region and created chaos, predictably leading to a massive increase in Iranian influence in Iraq and likely enabling more Iranian intervention in the Syrian Civil War, which benefited Israel because uh chaos and destabilization.

And if you doubt that neocons totally control the US government, just look at how we're at war with Iran! Well we're not technically at war yet, a decade after neoconservatives began promoting the war .and President Obama did somehow manage to sign a nuclear deal with Iran that infuriated his neocon and Israeli puppetmasters but I'm sure that President Trump, famously beloved by Jews and neocons everywhere, will soon go to war with Iran.

Colin Wright , Website August 14, 2018 at 7:25 am GMT

@Ben_C

' I'm not entirely sure why you keep hanging on to this tired and false narrative that US politicians are some sort of stooges and puppets of Israel '

Maybe because they are stooges and puppets? In extreme cases, they even boast of it. When Romney was running for president, he promised he would check with Israel on any action we took in the Middle East. When Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State was promoting civil war in Syria, she explained that this was necessary because Israel wished it.

It goes on, and on. If someone is considering a run for Congress, he gets a nice little packet from AIPAC. Among other things, he's asked to write an essay expressing his feelings about Israel.

If the essay isn't satisfactory, AIPAC backs his opponent.

Not surprisingly, when Netanyahu -- the premier of a tiny state on the other side of the planet -- spoke to Congress he was interrupted with standing ovations seventeen times. The display put me in mind of the sort of frenzied adulation Communist delegates used to display towards Stalin.

and the motives, of course, would be similar, even if actual death isn't in prospect. For most in Congress, displease Israel, and your political career just ended.

Colin Wright , Website August 14, 2018 at 7:29 am GMT
@NoseytheDuke

"Many in the intelligence and law enforcement communities suspect that it (Israel) had considerable prior intelligence regarding the 9/11 plot but did not share it with Washington."

It's certainly difficult to explain how else Mossad came to be filming the attack.

Colin Wright , Website August 14, 2018 at 7:52 am GMT
I think it needs to be emphasized that it's not merely a matter of practical politics.

Israel is evil -- she brings misery to millions, actual happiness to almost no one, and engages in behavior with no defensible moral foundation at all. She has attacked every single one of her neighbors, compulsively seeks out further conflict to paper over the shortcomings in her own national identity, and treats her Palestinian subjects with a morality about like that of a nasty little boy pulling the wings off a fly.

Arguably, others are as bad. However, unlike the others, Israel could not have come into being without our support, and could not continue to exist today without our continued moral, economic, diplomatic, and military support. If we pulled the plug, Israel would cease to exist as a Jewish supremacist state within -- at most -- a decade.

We are, in fact, responsible for Israel, and hence responsible for Israel's crimes. Other people's teenaged sons may well be out there stealing cars and raping girls. This happens to be our son doing it. We're responsible.

We pursue many policies I regard as futile, short-sighted, deluded, or self-destructive. My personal list would include 'come one come all' immigration, global warming denial, maintaining a massive military establishment, condoning 'Black Lives Matter,' and probably some other things.

No doubt the reader has his own list. However, that's not the point. The point is that essentially, these policies are merely stupid rather than actually evil. It's not evil to think we should just let whoever wants come into the US. It's dumb -- but it isn't evil. In fact, I'll willingly credit people who vote for 'sanctuary cities' et al with the most laudable sentiments. I merely question their intelligence.

Israel is different. Israel is evil, and hence our support for it is as well. It is the most fundamentally wrong act we are engaged in.

There is a moral dimension to life. There is a distinction between striving to do good -- however unsuccessfully -- and willingly participating in evil.

We need to stop supporting Israel.

The Alarmist , August 14, 2018 at 8:59 am GMT

"A well-funded massive lobbying effort involving hundreds of groups and thousands of individuals in the U.S. has worked to the detriment of actual American interests, in part by creating a permanent annual gift of billions of dollars to Israel for no other reason but that it is Israel and can get anything it wants from a servile Congress and White House without any objection from a controlled media."

Kind of begs the question, why are we giving any aid to a first-world country with a GDP growth rate in the 3% to 4% rate for years (even while we were stuck below 2%) and an unemployment rate below 4%?

The Israeli economy is in better shape than the US economy; they should be giving us aid.

"Baron Cohen, who confronted several GOP notables in the guise of Colonel Erran Morad, an Israeli security specialist, provided a number of clues that his interview was a sham but none of the victims were smart enough to pick up on them."

Yes, it is truly amazing what our "Best & Brightest" will do to stay on-side. Following Mr. Giraldi's earlier post regarding the gubernatorial run of Israeli puppet Ron DeSantis and the Big Sugar connections of Adam Putnam, it would seem a Floridian's least worst choice is Bob White.

skrik , August 14, 2018 at 9:31 am GMT

Israel is nothing but trouble. It has the right to defend itself

1st part: Absolutely, indubitably correct.

2nd part: ¿Qué? Why do people say/write this? Under what corrupt arrangement does an oh, so obvious outlaw have any such right?

Consider: A gang of out-of-towners turns up at a block of flats, breaks the doors down and occupies the building, killing some erstwhile owner/occupiers and ejecting most of the rest on the way in, thereafter whooping it up big, and ignoring [obviously too feeble] orders to RoR+R*3 [= Right of Return + Revest, Reparations and Reconciliation.] Since when can such outlaws dictate anything, thumb their noses at the Law?

Property, especially here land, is alienable – but this does not mean ' subject to seizure by aliens .'

Kindly consider: "A fair exchange is no robbery." A fair exchange means willing seller, interested buyer, and a freely and fairly agreed price. No such thing exists vis-à-vis the forcible colonisation of Palestine. Some proof may be seen here [my bolding]:

By 1949, some 700,000 Palestinians had fled or been expelled from their lands and villages. Israel was now in control of some 20.5 million dunams (approx. 20,500 km²) or 78% of lands in what had been Mandatory Palestine

Land laws were passed to legalize changes to land ownership.[5]

5. Ruling Palestine, A History of the Legally Sanctioned Jewish-Israeli Seizure of Land and Housing in Palestine. Publishers: COHRE & BADIL, May 2005, p. 37.

Especially in reference to the illegitimate entity which terms itself Israel, wiki is not reliable, being, like the US Congress, Israeli-occupied territory. So it is noteworthy that they write "in control of" as opposed to 'own.' They can't ever own it due to not having purchased it, and Palestinians may not surrender it, due to the UDHR which specifies *inalienable* rights:

Article 3.
• Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person.
Article 17.
• (1) Everyone has the right to own property alone as well as in association with others.
• (2) No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his property.

Also, see the Washington Consensus:

10.Legal security for property rights.

Further, there is UNSC242: inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war, plus only just law may earn respect, and/or be respected. A law dispossessing erstwhile legal owner/occupiers is an utter travesty.

Me; comment: Its illegitimacy is all so howlingly obvious!

Fazit: Apart from the ~6% of 'pre-Herzl Palestine' which 'invading by stealth' alien, mostly European Jews managed to purchase, the illegitimate entity does not own nor can they ever own the land/property they squat upon, which still belongs to the erstwhile owner/occupiers, specifically the 'native' pre-Nakba Palestinians [now including heirs & successors]. Then, the illegitimate entity does not declare borders for two reasons 1) any such declaration would be [probably successfully] challenged and 2) the illegitimate entity expresses the desire to expand to 'from the Nile to the Euphrates.' Q: Just how ghastly is that? A: Could hardly be worse.

Closing the loop: How can land-thieves have any 'right to defend' such improperly alienated land/property? It doesn't compute! rgds

mark green , August 14, 2018 at 10:03 am GMT
Thank you, Mr. Giraldi, for another forceful rebuke of Zionist criminality and US culpability.

The supremacist kosher state is a cancer on America. Just survey the wreckage. Count the bodies. Who benefits from this?

The Zionist project is a plague on humanity. It entertains no compromise. It will stop at virtually nothing. Examine the blood-soaked damage from Soviet Russia to Germany to Palestine and beyond. It moves Washington around via remote control.

The situation has become very grave. Speech deemed 'anti-Semitic' is rapidly being criminalized worldwide.

Right wing political expression (that Jews don't like) on Twitter, Facebook and the web is being de-platformed for speech infractions that involve 'hate'. But it's only 'hate' of a certain stripe.

After all, hatred is ubiquitous in America. It cuts in every direction. So why is the focus so intense on just one spectrum of hatred?

Might it have something to do with the political preferences of those in power?

Oh maybe.

Principles be damned. Whose ox is being gored?

With that in mind, consider this: who might actually be the biggest hater of all?–and killer? (Hint: it's certainly not the powerless Alt-right 'deplorables'.)

Might it instead be the world's foremost victims?

After all, incendiary speech–even 'hate speech'–does not kill. It takes bombs, drones, tanks and missiles to accomplish that.

So where's the uproar over routine sorties which needlessly dispense death and destruction?

It's gone missing.

Incredibly, it is rough speech and acute political criticism–not failed, horrific wars–that are being criminalized. Pro-Zionist 'wars of choice' still get a pass in our corporate board rooms, TV studios, news rooms, and in most of Official Washington.

This entrenched distortion allows neocons and their underlings to jawbone and plot their next preemptive war. The Big Squeeze is on. Beware Russia, Syria, Lebanon, Palestine and Iran. Zionism is an 'unshakable' Washington value. So get ready.

How distant wars advance the interests of average Americans remains a mystery.

Despite this puzzle, America's MSM offers little resistance and no straightforward criticism of Zio-Washington's ceaseless war efforts on behalf of a certain 'democratic ally'. In similar fashion, the Fourth Estate has also been compromised.

It's worth remembering that, according to the UN Charter, a state-sponsored 'First Strike' against another sovereign state is the most serious war crime. This elementary moral precept however matters not–at least not when Israel is pulling the strings. Quiet, children. Listen. Obey.

What we have here is a pattern of vast serial criminality.

Zio-Washington has become Israel's war vessel. We regular folk are just along for the ride.

So don't forget to cheer for the good guys!

Incredibly, US-enabled, Israeli ruthlessness has gotten even worse under 'America First' Trump. After all, Trump needlessly tore up Obama's hard-fought peace deal with Iran.

Why would Trump make such a move? (As a candidate, he was far less hawkish).

Our weakened and despised President needs desperately to please America's foremost lobby. Trump cannot govern without their support. This peculiar situation however requires additional blood-letting on behalf of the Zionist state. Foreign wars that benefit Israel are the unwritten price that the goyim leadership in America must pay. Sorry folks!

(Are you listening, Tehran?)

Jewish power corrupts. Overwhelming Jewish power corrupts in overwhelming fashion.

skrik , August 14, 2018 at 11:21 am GMT
@Colin Wright

It's certainly difficult to explain how else Mossad came to be filming the attack

Err 'do + document?' It's certainly difficult to explain how 19 reputed Muslim/Arab hijackers could have 'control demolished' WTC7; ~2.5secs at *exactly* free-fall speed, WTCs 1&2 at almost free-fall speed [plus the outwards-ejected massive steel sections], and all mainly 'all the way down' into their own 'footprints' = all three control demolished [all for one; one for all]. Camel-f ** ckers just ain't that clever, eh? The observed fact that the US rogue-regime made no 'counteractions' vis-à-vis the so-called 'attack on America' made all 'responsibles' accessories; before [covert agencies], during [order-givers] and after ['led' by the corrupt&venal MSM+PFBCs [latter = publicly financed broadcasters]; all vile traitors.] Ho, hum; just another US/Z travesty. rgds

JessicaR , August 14, 2018 at 11:43 am GMT
I read these kinds of articles with mixed reactions.

On the one hand, I believe Mr. Giraldi should choose his language more carefully. Perhaps instead of referring to "Jews," he should narrow this to "Jewish Likud supporters" or something similar.

The Jewish community as a whole is moderate, reasonable, and not especially devoted to war. It is a subset of the community–which, alas, happens to be well-funded and dedicated–that promotes war 24/7.

I believe Mr. Giraldi would appear more credible if he made this crucial distinction.

On the other hand, someone will always comment that Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, et al. are more powerful than Wolfowitz and Feith. I believe this line of attack ignores crucial facts.

1. It is these less powerful underlings that package the information that their superiors use when determining policy. One need only recall the Office of Special Plans, headed by Feith, that cherry-picked intelligence to make the case for war. Also, Wolfowitz served as Bush II's foreign policy tutor when he was a candidate.

2. It has been credibly reported, I believe by Dana Milbanks in the Washington Post, that Jewish donors provide 50% of individual donations to the Democratic party and 35% of donations made to the Republicans. This kind of money gives those hawkish elements of the Jewish community considerable power. In a system in which the vote is split almost equally between both parties, these funds are crucial to electoral success.

So, yes, the Israel lobby is extraordinarily powerful. But no, it does not represent all American Jews.

Philip Giraldi , August 14, 2018 at 12:00 pm GMT
@JessicaR

Jessica – I never say "all Jews" or even "most Jews" but to ignore that the dominance of Israel is a Jewish problem is to turn one's back on reality. It is Jewish oligarchs and organizations that push the Israeli agenda, that fund it, and that sustain it in the media and on capitol hill. I know there are a lot of liberal Jews and even some not so liberal ones that abhor what Israel is doing but are afraid to say anything lest they be called "self hating." They have to get off the fence and declare that the USA is their home and that Netanyahu's insistence that Israel is the Jewish homeland is a self-serving fraud. Until that happens, Israel will dominate America's foreign policy discussion, to our damage. Israel is a foreign country and should be treated by Washington like any other foreign country, i.e. based on US national interests.

anon [317] Disclaimer , August 14, 2018 at 12:08 pm GMT
@Ben_C

"special relationship" with Israel is itself the result of terrible national security and foreign policy" while I agree that the statement is true, if does not begin to explain the depth of Zionist control of the American Empire, nor does it look to the origin of that control.

1. Israel is the network @ Colin wright, @ anonymous in reply to Ben_C as well as

2. The well researched book entitled "The Israel Lobby and U. S. Foreign Policy by John J. Mearsheimer (the R. Wendell Harrison Distinguised Service professor of Political Science and the co director of the progarm on International Security Policy at the University of Chicago) and Stephen M. Walt (the Robert and Renee Belfer Professor international Affairs at the John f. Kennedy School of government at Harvard University and past academic dean of the Kennedy School which discusses the Impact of US Foreign Policy as it relates to America's nation interest.

3. https://www.presstv.com/Detail/2018/08/05/570217/US-aid-to-Israel-to-exceed-38B
38 billion is $112 per America given to Israel by the USA congress
What possible benefit can Americans get from giving a bunch of militants in the Middle East 38 million?

4. Article VI of the US Constitution readmitted back into Independent America the entire banking and corporate leaches which caused the American revolution, explained in some detail on this website just a few days ago. @ Anon[317] • Disclaimer says: August 12, 2018 at 12:31 pm GMT • 1,100 Words wherein the so called landed estates and landed Gentry were mostly British Banking and Trading and Slaving Corporations (many Jewish owners) doing business in America. Their wealth was derived from their land ownership and corporations licensed to do business in America by foreign governments. The British Aristocratic land grants mostly made to privately owned British banking, trading and slaving corporations or wealthy British and French Aristocrats allowed foreign nations to deed title to American land. These baron-landed owners, the so-called Gentry, were the very centers of the British a-human rights authority and vicious corporate and political powerhouses that controlled the American Colonies of Britain. It was the landed gentry that brought the American colonist to revolt against British rule. BUT just 12 years after the 1776 Declaration of Independence, the banker and Aristocrat favorable US constitution was imposed by a process called ratification? ( a third party regime change process that appears in the US Constitution as Article VII?). This ratification process was used to impose the very same British mostly Wealthy Crowd to not only keep their land granted lands, their personal wealth earned by inhumanity to mankind, and their educated Aristocratic global life styles in America. So the US constitution itself allowed to be installed: a government that only gave the British Baron Aristocrats voting control of America's destiny but it also terminated the Democracy (Articles of Confederation) that so much American blood had been spilt to bring about. These were the some of the forefathers forefathers to global Zionism, a part of the powerhouse support team of the Jewish banking and corporate global network, many of whom became team members in the formalized conspiracy to take control of the oil in the world and to weaponize immigration in order to take the oil from the Arabs. In 1896 (Switzerland , first Zionist Congress) the Jewish controlled organizations weaponized immigration and aimed it at the Ottoman Arab oil. Trace a failed coup attempt against the Ottoman, the Balfour Agreement, WWI, British and French control over once Ottoman Palestine, the Palin Commission, a network established military base that became Israel, immediate International recognition by the Jewish controlled nations of the world) and so on. .

I trust you might now be " entirely sure why .. the narrative that US Politicians {must be ] .. [elected, salaried] stooges and puppets of Israel " few outsiders are allowed to take a position among the 527 who control the law making powers and war making powers that the USA uses to force Americans into their wars.

Miggle , August 14, 2018 at 12:10 pm GMT
It seems that a large proportion of the members of the US Congress are Israeli citizens.

It is unconstitutional for a member of the Australian Parliament to be a dual citizen. This is taken to such an extent that if it's found that an MP born in New Zealand moved to Australia as a baby, that person's election becomes null and void, unless he or she was conscious of the situation and verifiably renounced NZ citizenship prior to the election. That is so even in this mad case of Australians and New Zealanders having the same head of state, the English monarch.

Why on earth can't America bring in a similar law, making it impossible for Israeli citizens to vote in its Congress, to even be there?

[Aug 04, 2018] Liberal Hero Chomsky Admits Israeli Intervention In US Elections Overwhelms Anything Russia Has Done

Aug 04, 2018 | www.zerohedge.com

...so, take, say, the huge issue of interference in our pristine elections. Did the Russians interfere in our elections? An issue of overwhelming concern in the media. I mean, in most of the world, that's almost a joke .

First of all, if you're interested in foreign interference in our elections, whatever the Russians may have done barely counts or weighs in the balance as compared with what another state does, openly, brazenly and with enormous support.

Israeli intervention in U.S. elections vastly overwhelms anything the Russians may have done...

I mean, even to the point where the prime minister of Israel, Netanyahu, goes directly to Congress, without even informing the president, and speaks to Congress, with overwhelming applause, to try to undermine the president's policies - what happened with Obama and Netanyahu in 2015 ....

https://www.youtube.com/embed/i70TPzXjsqM

Did Putin come to give an address to the joint sessions of Congress trying to - calling on them to reverse U.S. policy, without even informing the president? And that's just a tiny bit of this overwhelming influence.

So if you happen to be interested in influence of - foreign influence on elections, there are places to look. But even that is a joke.

I mean, one of the most elementary principles of a functioning democracy is that elected representatives should be responsive to those who elected them. There's nothing more elementary than that. But we know very well that that is simply not the case in the United States.

There's ample literature in mainstream academic political science simply comparing voters' attitudes with the policies pursued by their representatives, and it shows that for a large majority of the population, they're basically disenfranchised. Their own representatives pay no attention to their voices. They listen to the voices of the famous 1 percent - the rich and the powerful, the corporate sector.

The elections -- Tom Ferguson's stellar work has demonstrated, very conclusively, that for a long period, way back, U.S. elections have been pretty much bought. You can predict the outcome of a presidential or congressional election with remarkable precision by simply looking at campaign spending. That's only one part of it. Lobbyists practically write legislation in congressional offices. In massive ways, the concentrated private capital, corporate sector, super wealth, intervene in our elections, massively, overwhelmingly, to the extent that the most elementary principles of democracy are undermined. Now, of course, all that is technically legal, but that tells you something about the way the society functions.

So, if you're concerned with our elections and how they operate and how they relate to what would happen in a democratic society, taking a look at Russian hacking is absolutely the wrong place to look. Well, you see occasionally some attention to these matters in the media, but very minor as compared with the extremely marginal question of Russian hacking.

And I think we find this on issue after issue, also on issues on which what Trump says, for whatever reason, is not unreasonable. So, he's perfectly right when he says we should have better relations with Russia.

Being dragged through the mud for that is outlandish, makes - Russia shouldn't refuse to deal with the United States because the U.S. carried out the worst crime of the century in the invasion of Iraq, much worse than anything Russia has done .

But they shouldn't refuse to deal with us for that reason, and we shouldn't refuse to deal with them for whatever infractions they may have carried out, which certainly exist. This is just absurd. We have to move towards better - right at the Russian border, there are very extreme tensions, that could blow up anytime and lead to what would in fact be a terminal nuclear war, terminal for the species and life on Earth. We're very close to that.

Now, we could ask why. First of all, we should do things to ameliorate it. Secondly, we should ask why. Well, it's because NATO expanded after the collapse of the Soviet Union, in violation of verbal promises to Mikhail Gorbachev, mostly under Clinton, partly under first Bush, then Clinton expanded right to the Russian border, expanded further under Obama.

The U.S. has offered to bring Ukraine into NATO. That's the kind of a heartland of Russian geostrategic concerns.

So, yes, there's tensions at the Russian border - and not, notice, at the Mexican border. Well, those are all issues that should be of primary concern.

The fate of - the fate of organized human society, even of the survival of the species, depends on this. How much attention is given to these things as compared with, you know, whether Trump lied about something? I think those seem to me the fundamental criticisms of the media.

So to sum up - Trump's right about better relations with Russia - the fate of the world depends on it, Russia did nothing of note, Russian hacking is extremely marginal, Israel is the real meddler, US democracy no longer exists, the billionaire corporatocracy runs America.

[Aug 02, 2018] As I heard a USA female politician say about the USA Zionist lobby 'we do not like them, w're afraid of them'.

Notable quotes:
"... There is no mystery at all. Any USA politician who critises Israel knows that the end of his career is near. An opponent is financed. As I heard a USA female politician say about Jews 'we do not like them, w're afraid of them'. ..."
"... Don't forget the assassination of JFK by the CIA and their instigators. JFK and his brother Robert, at that time Attorney General, the American Zionist Committee (AZC), the predecessor organization of AIPAC, to register as a foreign agent because the AZC funneled $5 million (more than $35 million in today's dollars) into US propaganda and lobbying operations. ..."
"... Rep. Louie Gohmert recently said that, in reference to Hillary Clinton, the FBI had discovered a "foreign entity that was not Russia was getting every single one of her 30,000 emails" and further, "They did nothing". Question is: what foreign country would get a pass from the FBI for that type of behavior? ..."
Aug 02, 2018 | www.unz.com

jilles dykstra , July 31, 2018 at 10:58 am GMT

" The real mystery, if there is one, is why no American politician has either the guts or the integrity or perhaps the necessary intelligence to substitute Tel Aviv for Moscow and to call Israel out like we are currently calling out Russia for actions that pale in comparison to what Netanyahu has been up to. "

There is no mystery at all. Any USA politician who critises Israel knows that the end of his career is near. An opponent is financed. As I heard a USA female politician say about Jews 'we do not like them, w're afraid of them'.

Maybe the suspicious deaths of German politicians who criticized Israel, Möllemann, or Barschel, he would not allow Mossad to train Iranian fighter pilots in N Germany, also are factor.

Möllemann's parachute did not open, the safety mechanism was not there, it seems, Barschel went to Geneva to commit suicide.

Then we have the murders of Palme and Anna Lyndh. Anna Lyndh was to be next Swedish prime minister, she wanted an EU economic boycott of Israel.

Then there is the murder of the Dutch diplomat Ferdinand Smit, in 2000, in N Mali, he spoke Arabic fluently, Perez had sent him to Arafat. Possibly the talks were not what Perez had expected, on top of that, his ph d thesis certainly was not liked.

Ferdinand Smit, 'The battle for South Lebanon, The radicalization of Lebanon's Shi'ites, 1982-1985', Amsterdam, 2000

Ludwig Watzal , Website July 31, 2018 at 11:09 am GMT
Phil Geraldi's analogy should finally open at least the eyes of the last American dreamer of the so-called special relationship between the US and its Zionist master. It's not a mystery or a lack of guts like Phil Geraldi speculates, but 95 percent of the US Congress is in the pocket of the Zionist Lobby, and 99 percent of the US press is in the hands of "Israel Firster." The well-being of the Zionist regime is on the front burner not only for the political but also for the media class. The American people count least. When anybody meddled in the "sacrosanct" American election, which is the most corrupted election system in the world, then the Zionist regime with its fifth column, the Zionist Israel Lobby in the US. They are to blame and not Russia.

Don't forget the assassination of JFK by the CIA and their instigators. JFK and his brother Robert, at that time Attorney General, the American Zionist Committee (AZC), the predecessor organization of AIPAC, to register as a foreign agent because the AZC funneled $5 million (more than $35 million in today's dollars) into US propaganda and lobbying operations.

JFK strongly objected to Israel's secret nuclear program. After Lyndon B. Johnson succeeded JFK, everything the assassination was concerned, was glossed over. Johnson also obstructed the solving of Israel's deliberate attack on the USS Liberty.

Bobby Kennedy, who resigned in 1964 as Attorney General under Johnson, could only elucidate the assassination of his brother as President of the United States. In 1968, Bobby Kennedy was the leading candidate for the Democratic nomination for the presidency. On June 5, 1968, Kennedy was deadly wounded by his alleged assassin Sirhan Sirhan, who happened to be a Palestinian. For the American public and its political and media class, these are all real hazards.

Giraldi is entirely right that the Zionist regime wants to fight Iran on US behalf such as George W. did with Iraq. Although President Trump is at least rhetorically the most subservient US President to Israel, so, he seems not as trigger happy and politically stupid as George W. At least on his campaign trail he wanted the US out of the needless wars his predecessors started and continued. But now Trump is not only surrounded by a bunch of Zionists but also encompassed by the most hawkish adviser the US establishment has to offer, John Bolton. He wishes Iran to hell like Netanyahu.

The Zionist regime is the most significant liability the US has. This regime is fed by yearly over 3.8 billion, plus the extras in weaponry and other goodies they need to oppress the Palestinian people or against aggression from outside that they deliberately provoke. The largest interferers in US elections are Sheldon Adelson, Haim Saban, and the rest of the Zionist Israel lobby who make the candidates for US Congress look like obedient doggies.

How much longer will the American People still accept this farce?

Dante , July 31, 2018 at 11:14 am GMT
Superb article as usual on Jewish dominance of American Foreign policy MSM, I wonder just how many Americans realised their role in so many of the nation's problems ? After all all MSM propaganda sorry I mean news is declining and at least as far as I am aware fewer people than ever listen or watch it. Certainly it appears that people are waking up to the lies and hypocrisy at last.
Wally Streeter , July 31, 2018 at 12:05 pm GMT
Rep. Louie Gohmert recently said that, in reference to Hillary Clinton, the FBI had discovered a "foreign entity that was not Russia was getting every single one of her 30,000 emails" and further, "They did nothing". Question is: what foreign country would get a pass from the FBI for that type of behavior?

The question answers itself.

[Aug 02, 2018] The Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity Meet VIAB Virginia's Taxpayer-Funded Israel Lobby

Notable quotes:
"... Note: VIAB rebranded itself as the Virginia-Israel Advisory Authority as part of in its recent legislative reconstitution. ..."
"... is the director of the ..."
"... in Washington and the author of the 2016 book, ..."
"... now available as an audiobook. ..."
"... Reprinted with permission from Antiwar.com . ..."
Aug 02, 2018 | ronpaulinstitute.org

Meet VIAB: Virginia's Taxpayer-Funded Israel Lobby Written by Grant Smith Tuesday July 31, 2018
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The Virginia-Israel Advisory Board VIAB has one key difference with scores of privately funded state chambers of commerce created to foster closer economic integration between the United States and Israel while supporting the Israeli government's policy agenda.

Originally created by an uncodified act in 2001 , VIAB has been funded by Commonwealth of Virginia taxpayers. Its charter is to "advise the Governor on ways to improve economic and cultural links between the Commonwealth and the State of Israel, with a focus on the areas of commerce and trade, art and education, and general government." VIAB is a pilot for how Israel can quietly obtain taxpayer funding and official status for networked entities that advance Israel from within key state governments.

According to emails recently released under Virginia's Freedom of Information Act , VIAB's lofty claims about creating Virginia jobs and mutually beneficial business opportunities faced growing skepticism inside the governor's office. VIAB also uses state resources to fight Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions. BDS is a nonviolent movement to pressure Israel to stop violating Palestinian human rights. VIAB faced intense scrutiny over its handling of funds by the Virginia State Attorney General. Resistance to public scrutiny and oversight led VIAB to lobby for more "independence" from the governor in early 2018. This move sounded alarm bells at another Israel advocacy organization which feared that VIAB could face public backlash.

VIAB's charter severely restricts who can exercise power on its board to the state Israel advocacy community. By law 13 of the 29-citizen members of the VIAB board had to be drawn from four Virginia-based Jewish community federations. Like other such federations across the nation, Virginia's are heavily involved in advocating for Israel, fundraising and hosting candidate forums. In 2017 tax filings, the four federations that provide board members to VIAB raised a combined $20 million in tax exempt funding. Like other federations, these charities uniformly claimed to the IRS that they did not engage in any lobbying activities.

Early in 2018, the federations that staff VIAB (PDF) attempted to ram through a series of controversial changes to Virginia K-12 textbooks with the help of an outside Israel advocacy organization, the " Institute for Curriculum Services ." The proposed edits to McGraw Hill, Prentice Hall, National Geographic and other publisher textbooks demanded they teach that Israel does not occupy any foreign territory and that Arabs alone were responsible for all crisis initiation in Middle East conflicts, among other dubious claims. When the stealth campaign was disclosed, it provoked an immediate " campaign for textbook accuracy " from the Virginia Coalition for Human Rights alongside prominent state educators. VCHR is a coalition of 16 organizations representing 8,000 Virginians.

VIAB makes aggressive claims about the return on investment it brings to Virginia's economy, which are then trumpeted and celebrated by the local federations. One 2010 claim asserted "VIAB has added approximately 1,134 new jobs Virginia's workforce that in turn have generated an estimated $38.4 million in state tax revenues over the past 10 years," while complaining about a cut that brought VIAB's state budget "below $130,000." However, few of VIAB's major initiatives have panned out.

VIAB's work to bring Israeli airline El Al Dulles-to-Tel Aviv nonstop flights produced nothing after a decade of announcements, online petitions and $300 million investment infrastructure forecasts. In May of 2018, VIAB lamented that despite a visit by Governor McAuliffe to El Al headquarters in Israel, Dulles airport had been passed over in favor of San Francisco and Miami for El Al's "next direct flights." VIAB lobbying campaigns, meetings, state visits and petitions could apparently not overcome lack of market demand.

VIAB maintains a veil of secrecy over some of its projects. In 2013, the VIAB board gave an aquaculture project the code name "Project Jonah" stating that "All Board members are asked to refer to the project by this code name. Leaked information could jeopardize funding opportunities from the State."

Obtaining massive state and other local funding for Israeli projects is undeniably VIAB's principal objective. VIAB boasted in 2015 that "Project Jonah has secured a $10 million grant conditional on meeting certain benchmarks including matching private funds. Other funds of at least $1 million have also been awarded in Tazewell County and additionally Virginia Tech was involved in securing $500,000 from Federal and local sources for R&D." Documents reveal some VIAB board members have business ties to the Israel projects for which funding is sought. However, the profile of Israeli activity in Virginia also reveals the success of BDS. Few Israeli companies risk boycotts through greenfield foreign direct investment in Virginia by operating subsidiaries under their own Israeli parent organization. Instead, most attempt to license technology or engage in joint ventures with U.S. companies

VIAB thrived during Governor Terry McAuliffe's administration (2014-2018). Among McAuliffe's most generous out of state campaign contributors were Israel boosters Haim Saban and J.B. Pritzker . McAuliffe was a regular at off-the-record "no press allowed" appearances before Israel advocacy organizations where he was encouraged to talk about "the Virginia Advisory Board and its successes" But internal emails reveal how VIAB chafed under open meeting and sunshine laws and the commonwealth's financial reins even under McAuliffe. After the governor's office became skeptical about VIAB's operations, VIAB deployed a strategy used for decades by Israel affinity organizations in crisis such as the Jewish Agency for Israel , the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA): a complete reconstitution.

Before stepping down at the end of the McAuliffe administration in January, Virginia Secretary of Commerce Todd Patterson Haymore complained in a private email (PDF) about VIAB's job creation claims. "I can't argue with the short annual report where they stated they helped create 127 jobs/$436k tax dollars; however, the annual report is likely the most inflated without merit that I've seen in my decade here."

VIAB's taxpayer funded anti-BDS lobbying inside the governor's office blossomed. At a July 26, 2016 meeting at the state capitol, VIAB worked to implement a legislative version of the State of New York's anti-boycott executive order . The Virginia General Assembly subsequently passed resolution HJ 177 which claimed that the BDS movement was hampering peace and preventing negotiations while claiming boycotts are not a legitimate accountability tactic. Across the nation, such Anti-boycott laws and resolutions have similarly passed with few organizations or entities claiming any financial role in lobbying for their passage. There may be a reason for the stealthy approach. Polling indicates most Americans oppose new US laws banning boycotts as a response to Israel's human rights abuses.

The VIAB came under the scrutiny of the Virginia Conflict of Interest and Ethics Advisory Council, when in July of 2017 VIAB handed departing executive director Ralph Robbins a check from the Virginia Israel Foundation. VIAB claimed the cash was not unlawful outside compensation or a bonus for a job well done, but rather a " farewell gift. " (PDF)

The Virginia Office of the Attorney General issued on May 22, 2017 a secret letter to the VIAB "regarding the selection and appointment of the position of Executive Director of the Virginia-Israel Advisory Board." The VIAB apparently considered the letter a challenge to its authority to pick and install its own executive director without the governor's interference. VIAB had already begun searching for a "suitable" successor executive director to Robbins by posting job descriptions on Israel advocacy organization websites.

In early 2018, VIAB shaped (PDF) and monitored HB1297 , a new law designed to "keep the VIAB independent" by transferring funding and oversight of VIAB from the office of the governor to Virginia's legislature and reducing the number of gubernatorial appointments from 13 to five.

After passage, the VIAB hoped it would gain the authority to hire its own staff (under the old authorizing law, the Office of the Governor served " as staff to the Board .") VIAB would also no longer be subject to the governor's oversight via control of the purse strings. VIAB chairman Norm Chaskin explained in a January 25, 2018 email (PDF) that the bill "adds back the requirement that the Governor and all other agencies shall assist the [VIAB] Board upon request We believe this will accomplish what we have been talking about in our Board meeting for the last couple of years .Adding the word 'independent' shows that we are not part of any other agency or government office, which was the original idea in establishing the board."

This VIAB independence did not include severing its state funding, since the legislation as proposed by VIAB (PDF) required, "all members shall be reimbursed for all reasonable and necessary expenses incurred in the performance of their duties "

The VIAB's move worried the Jewish Community Relations Council for Greater Washington's executive committee, which warned via email (PDF) that "the request to grant Virginia's Israel development activities special status, status that no other economic development group enjoys, may draw negative attention to VIAB and result in VIAB's dissolution and absorption into Virginia's greater economic development activities."

However, the bill reconstituting VIAB passed Virginia's House and Senate on March 20, 2018. VIAB felt liberated and quickly filed to cover with state funds the expenses of its handpicked executive director and committed anti-BDS evangelist Dov Hoch's travel amounting to"$1,500-$2,000" as he journeyed through Virginia to discuss VIAB with Virginia "Legislative Services" on his way back to Israel.

VIAB quietly operates as a taxpayer-funded lobbyist for a foreign country in the fifth most economically important state of the union. Whether VIAB ever faces the backlash feared by a fellow Israel advocacy organization may depend on the actions of vastly more representative Virginia-based grassroots organizations dedicated to conditioning state support for Israel on improving its deplorable human rights record.

Note: VIAB rebranded itself as the Virginia-Israel Advisory Authority as part of in its recent legislative reconstitution.

Grant F. Smith is the director of the Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy in Washington and the author of the 2016 book, Big Israel: How Israel's Lobby moves America now available as an audiobook.

Reprinted with permission from Antiwar.com .

[Apr 25, 2018] The Zionists are very much like the CIA: they work secretly, scheming and planning their ugly machinations in the shadows for selfish gain.

Apr 25, 2018 | www.unz.com

deschutes , April 25, 2018 at 5:52 pm GMT

@annamaria

Great post. The Zionist Israelis are the shit and scum of planet Earth. You cannot get any worse than Avigdor Lieberman, Ariel Sharon (now dead thank god!), Bibi Netanyahu, etc. The Zionists are very much like the CIA: they work secretly, scheming and planning their ugly machinations in the shadows for selfish gain.

But seriously, Israel is arguably the most vile, hate consumed, parasitical, shithole 'country' that ever existed! Look at how it is such a massive parasite on the US taxpayer and US government: over 2 billion in 'aid' every year, and rising! Why!? Why does Israel get this American foreign aid, the largest foreign recipient by far, with not so much as a question from congress?

Because fucking AIPAC has every congressman by the balls! If they don't have their tongue deeply wedged up the collective Zionist asshole–the zionists donate massively in the next election cycle to an obedient pro-zionist candidate to replace said thinking, reasonable congressman. These are the facts!

Oh, and make sure to watch the youtube videos on illegal Israeli settlers in Hebron. Fucking outrageous: these Zionist settlers make white slave holders during the Old South era look like saints! They terrorize Palestinians, literally throwing shit, urine, vomit, molotov cocktails, rocks, burning tires, anything that causes harm at the Arab homes. And they do it with a sick fucked up kind of satisfaction as the IDF soldiers look on and couldn't give a shit. And what does the US government do about this? Nothing! Not a goddamned thing is done; in fact they provide the weapons to kill off the Palestinians. And don't forget the fucking asshole CAT corporation, making millions selling those giant tank bulldozers to the Israeli zionists to bulldoze Arab homes, olive trees, roads, and people! If I ever run into a CAT employee I'm gonna kick his fucking ass!

[Apr 16, 2018] Israeli lobby and the US foreign policy

Apr 16, 2018 | www.unz.com

renfro , April 16, 2018 at 5:57 pm GMT

@Greg Bacon

Just remember the Jew are behind ALL the US warring in the ME and ALL the following events you are looking at right now today.

AIPAC Bristles at Obama's Reminder of Iraq War Lobbying -- LobeLog

https://lobelog.com/aipac-bristles-at-obamas-reminder-of-iraq-war-lobbying/

Aug 6, 2015 -- Jim Moran (D-VA), told Tikkun Magazine that AIPAC. has pushed [the Iraq war] from the beginning. I don't think they represent the mainstream of American Jewish thinking at all, but because they are so well organized, and their members are extraordinarily powerful -- most of them are quite wealthy -- they

The Iraq war -- What did AIPAC do and when did it do it? -- Mondoweiss mondoweiss.net/2012/ /the-iraq-war-coverup-what-did-aipac-do-and-when-did-it-do

Feb 2, 2012 -- Let's skip forward to the Iraq war itself, 2003. In The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy, Walt and Mearsheimer clearly show that AIPAC pushed the Iraq war, though quietly. AIPAC usually supports what Israel wants, and Israel certainly wanted the United States to invade Iraq. Nathan Guttman made this

Barney Frank says Israel and AIPAC lobbied Congress to support war
mondoweiss.net/2015/03/lobbied-congress-support/

Mar 12, 2015 -- Tempers flared even more, they said, when Frank claimed that Israel and AIPAC had lobbied members of Congress a decade ago to support the war in Iraq. Remember that Walt and Mearsheimer were tarred as anti-Semites for saying in 2006 that the Israel lobby pushed the Iraq war.

Moran Down | The New Republic

https://newrepublic.com/article/61979/moran-down

Sep 30, 2007 -- He said that AIPAC was in favor of the Iraq war and "pushed this war from the beginning." And he claimed that on the Iraq war, AIPAC didn't represent "the mainstream of American Jewish thinking at all." Moran had other things to say -- much of it having to do with AIPAC's lobbying on U.S. relations to Iran.

AIPAC to deploy hundreds of lobbyists to push for Syria action -- Haaretz

https://www.haaretz.com/aipac-pushing-hard-for-syria-action-1.5330700

Sep 7, 2013 -- But they had generally wanted the debate to focus on U.S. national security rather than how a decision to attack Syria might help Israel, a reflection of their sensitivity to being seen as rooting for the United States to go to war. Obama AIPAC -- AP -- 22.5.11 U.S. President Barack Obama arriving at the AIPAC

Dems slam Moran's tying AIPAC to Iraq war -- POLITICO

https://www.politico.com/story/ /dems-slam-morans-tying-aipac-to-iraq-war-005925

Sep 19, 2007 -- Democrats offended by Jim Moran's statement that Israel lobby group AIPAC "pushed [the Iraq] war."

AIPAC beats the drums of war -- The Washington Post
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/aipac the war/ /gIQASVMZtR_story.htmlMar 5,

2012 -- But once inside the hall, the AIPAC attendees heard the sound of war drums. "Iran's nuclear Nine years ago this month, there was a similar feeling of inevitability -- that despite President George W. Bush's frequent insistence that "war is my last choice," war in Iraq was coming. Now Israel is moving toward

AIPAC and the Push Toward War -- The Atlantic

https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/ /aipac push-toward-war/253358/

Feb 21, 2012 -- The bad news is that, as Kampeas also reports, "AIPAC is expected to make the resolution an 'ask' in three weeks when up to 10,000 activists culminate its Greg Thielmann of the Arms Control Association notes that, "Even after crushing Iraq in the first Gulf War, the international coalition only imposed a ..

[Mar 14, 2018] Pat Buchanan was mostly right when he said that our U.S Congress is Israeli occupied territory

Mar 14, 2018 | turcopolier.typepad.com

DailyPlanet -> turcopolier ... , 13 March 2018 at 06:39 PM

Sir,
My favorite mole in all of this is the slippery Doug Feith. He is continnues to be more slippery than the Teflon Don, who by the way died in jail.

Lawrence Franklin, the former Defense Intelligence Agency analyst was another. https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Larry_Franklin

Keith Weissman, the man once recognized as a top analyst at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee
https://forward.com/news/11608/embattled-aipac-lobbyists-take-divergent-paths-00474/

Another former Aipac analyst, Steve Rosen, has been accused of handing over top-secret American documents to foreign officials and journalists. Both plead not guilty.

https://forward.com/news/11608/embattled-aipac-lobbyists-take-divergent-paths-00474/

https://original.antiwar.com/justin/2005/08/05/aipac-spy-nest-exposed/

CONGRESSIONAL QUARTERLY REPORTS THAT REPRESENTATIVE JANE HARMAN WAS CAUGHT ON TAPE PROMISING TO LOBBY FOR REDUCED CHARGES AGAINST TWO ACCUSED SPIES, IN EXCHANGE FOR HELP SECURING THE CHAIRMANSHIP OF THE HOUSE COMMITTEE ON INTELLIGENCE:

http://www.weeklystandard.com/jane-harman-d-ca-sells-favors-to-foreign-spy/article/28490

Pat Buchanan was mostly right when he said that our U.S Congress is Israeli occupied territory.

turcopolier , 13 March 2018 at 05:44 PM
JPB

On further reflection i would guess that AIPAC and the neocons control her; Bolton, Keane, Woolsey, Wolfowitz, etc. with Trump's acceptance. pl

Nancy K said in reply to turcopolier ... , 13 March 2018 at 05:44 PM
I believe Rep. Jane Harman was involved and probably should have been arrested but it involved Israel.

[Mar 14, 2018] Jefferson Morley on the CIA and Mossad Tradeoffs in the Formation of the US-Israel Strategic Relationship

Highly recommended!
Angleton was a founding father of the deep state.
Notable quotes:
"... Angleton embodied and shaped the CIA's operational ethos and its internal procedures, especially in the realm of counterintelligence. His theories of Soviet penetration dominated the thinking of Western intelligence agencies, and their legacy can even be seen in the counterintelligence investigation into the Trump campaign and allegations of collusion with Russia. I want to emphasize that I only use the term deep state as a colloquial shorthand term for the array of US national security agencies that operate under the shroud of official secrecy. ..."
"... Angleton, I'm going to put to you, was a founding father of what we call the deep state. ..."
"... With the passage of the National Security Act in July 1947, Angleton went to work at the CIA. The CIA came into existence and Angleton became the chief of the foreign intelligence staff with responsibility for intelligence collection operations worldwide. ..."
"... Angleton became the CIA's exclusive liaison with the Mossad in 1951. ..."
"... He was introduced to Amos Manor, chief of counterespionage for Israel's domestic security service known as Shabak or Shin Bet. ..."
"... "I didn't know exactly what to do, but I had the idea of giving them material we had gathered a year earlier about the efforts of the Eastern Bloc to use Israel to bypass an American trade embargo. We edited the material and informed them that they should never ask us to identify our sources." From such arrangements, the CIA-Mossad relationship began to grow. Manor would be friends with Angleton for the rest of his life. ..."
"... Asher Ben-Natan, Angleton's source dating back to the OSS days, was playing a key procurement role in the secret Israeli program to obtain nuclear weapons. Teddy Kollek, one of Angleton's closest contacts and friends in Washington, later became the mayor of Jerusalem. Angleton's Israeli friends in short were really the architects, some of the architects of the Zionist state. ..."
"... As I came to learn his story from talking to CIA veterans and Israelis and reading a lot, a couple of things stood out to me. First of all, the Israeli recruitment of Angleton was extremely astute. In the early 1950s, Angleton was a rising star at this new agency, the CIA, but he was not a senior figure and not even particularly powerful. The Israelis recognized the latent qualities that would make him powerful. ..."
"... In 1954 Angleton became the chief of the CIA's counterintelligence staff, the first one. In 1956 Amos Manor passed him a copy of Nikita Khrushchev's secret speech to the Soviet Communist Party in which he criticized the cult of personality around the deceased dictator, Joseph Stalin. This intelligence coup made Angleton a legend within the CIA and the power within the agency as well, and it was very much made possible by the Israelis. ..."
"... Angleton's formative and sometimes decisive influence on US policy towards Israel can be seen in many areas – from the impotence of US nuclear nonproliferation policy in the region, to Israel's triumph in the 1967 Six-Day War, to the feeble US response to the attack on the Liberty, to the intelligence failure represented by the Yom Kippur War of 1973. ..."
"... The question, which was put to me by Grant but is right on point, was why didn't the CIA help the FBI investigate the diversion of US weapons-grade material from the United States to Israel in the 1960s and 1970s? The short answer is because Jim Angleton didn't want to. Angleton played a key role in enabling Israel to obtain nuclear weapons, and he did so in a subtle way that characteristically left few fingerprints. He was not a man to investigate himself. Many of these details are now known thanks to Grant Smith, Roger Mattson, John Hadden, Jr. and others. ..."
"... the Nuclear Materials and Equipment Corporation, otherwise known as NUMEC, started processing highly-enriched uranium in the United States in 1959. NUMEC had been created by David Lowenthal, a Zionist financier who financed the postwar boatlift from Europe to Palestine that was romanticized in the book and movie Exodus. He hired Zalman Shapiro, a brilliant young metallurgist to run the company. ..."
"... By October 1965, the AEC estimated that 178 kilograms of highly-enriched uranium had gone missing from the NUMEC facility, by March 1968, that figure was 267 kilograms. ..."
"... John Hadden was the CIA station chief in Israel from 1964 to 1967. He worked very closely with Angleton throughout this period. He would later concur with the near unanimous assessment of CIA's nuclear scientist that Israel had indeed stolen fissile material from NUMEC and used it to build their nuclear arsenal. ..."
"... With the fissile material diverted from NUMEC, Israel was able to construct its first nuclear weapon by 1967 and become a full-blown nuclear power by 1970 – the first and still the only nuclear power in the Middle East. Angleton, it is fair to say, thought collaboration with Israel was more important than US nonproliferation policy. ..."
"... When Angleton left government service 20 years later, Israel held twice as much territory as it had in 1948. The CIA and Mossad collaborated on a daily basis and the governments of the United States and Israel were strategic allies knit together by expansive intelligence sharing, multibillion-dollar arms contracts and coordinated diplomacy. ..."
"... Angleton's influence on U.S.-Israeli relations between 1951 and 1974 exceeded that of any Secretary of State with the possible exception of Henry Kissinger. His influence was largely unseen by Congress, the press, other democratic institutions, and much of the CIA itself. He was empowered by his own ingenuity and the clandestine arrangements rationalized by doctrines of national security and counterintelligence. The arc of his career breathes life into the concept of the deep state. ..."
"... Angleton, more than any other American, enabled the Americans to gain and hold this strategic high ground in the Middle East. He was, as his friend Meir Amit said, the biggest Zionist of the lot ..."
Mar 14, 2018 | www.antiwar.com
Angleton embodied and shaped the CIA's operational ethos and its internal procedures, especially in the realm of counterintelligence. His theories of Soviet penetration dominated the thinking of Western intelligence agencies, and their legacy can even be seen in the counterintelligence investigation into the Trump campaign and allegations of collusion with Russia. I want to emphasize that I only use the term deep state as a colloquial shorthand term for the array of US national security agencies that operate under the shroud of official secrecy.

Let's not forget there are a dozen, at least a dozen such agencies based here in Washington. The CIA with its $15 billion a year budget is the largest. The NSA with a budget of about $10 billion is the second largest. The Defense Intelligence Agency is about $4 billion. Then along with some other obscure but still very large agencies like the NGIA. Never heard of the NGIA? I didn't think so. The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency is a $4.9 billion a year agency. Collectively, these agencies spend probably $50 billion to $60 billion a year, which make them a very small but powerful potent sector in the American scheme of power.

Want to know how the NGIA spent your $4.9 billion? Good luck. Want to see a line item budget of CIA activities in Africa last year? Move along. It's true that Congress nominally has oversight powers over these agencies. Our elected officials do have their security clearances that we don't have, so they can go in and look at selected operations. But the intelligence oversight system is very weak as even its defenders will admit. The intelligence committees polarized and politicized can't even agree on what kind of secret activities they're supposed to monitor. The FISA court system is supposed to protect Americans from surveillance by their government, but it largely functions as a rubberstamp of the secret agencies. A secret government is the norm in America in 2018 which is why the discourse of the deep state has such currency today.

Angleton, I'm going to put to you, was a founding father of what we call the deep state. So who was he? Born in December 1917, James Angleton grew up as the oldest son of James Hugh Angleton, a brash self-made American businessman who moved to Milan, Italy during the Depression and made a fortune during the time Benito Mussolini selling cash registers. Angleton attended private school in England. He went to Yale College, and then to Harvard Law school. He was a precocious good-looking young man with sophisticated manners and a literary frame of mind.

As an undergraduate, he befriended his fellow expatriate – Ezra Pound – in Italy. Pound was the modernist poet in the mad tribune of Mussolini's fascism. In their correspondence, which I found at Yale, Angleton sometimes ape the anti-Semitic rhetoric of Ezra Pound. For example, criticizing the Jewish book merchants who he thought overcharged for Pound's books.

In 1943, Angleton was recruited into the Office of Strategic Services, America's first foreign intelligence service stationed in Rome during and after World War II. He excelled at secret intelligence work. I tell a story in The Ghost of how he rescued a leading Nazi and a leading Italian fascist from postwar justice. Among other tasks, he reported on the flow of Jews escaping from Germany and heading for Palestine. The revelations of the Holocaust transformed his disdain for Jews into something of sympathy. He began to develop sources among the leaders of the Jewish and Zionist organizations – including Teddy Kollek who was a British intelligence agent, and a German operative named Arthur Pier who later became known as Asher Ben-Natan.

With the passage of the National Security Act in July 1947, Angleton went to work at the CIA. The CIA came into existence and Angleton became the chief of the foreign intelligence staff with responsibility for intelligence collection operations worldwide. In those days, the CIA was right here in the heart of Washington. It's hard for people to believe now, but the CIA was located in a series of temporary buildings located along the reflecting pool next to the Lincoln Memorial. The tempos, as they were called by CIA people, were drafty in the winter, hot in the summer, and devoid of charm year-round. But this is where Angleton worked, at what was known as the Office of Special Operations.

Angleton, while sympathetic to Jewish suffering, was still very wary of Israel when he started his career at the CIA. Before the 1948 war, the Jewish army had been largely armed by Czech arms manufacturers and communist Czechoslovakia. The Soviet Union was the first country to recognize the state of Israel in 1948. Angleton initially feared that the Soviets would use Israel as a platform for injecting spies into the West. The Israelis, for their part, were looking to cultivate American friends. Stalin's anti-Semitic purges in 1948 showed that his allegiance to the Jewish state was superficial at best.

In 1950 a man named Reuven Shiloah, the founder of Israel's first intelligence organization, came to Washington. He visited the CIA and he came away very impressed with how it was organized. He went back to Israel and in April 1951, he created out of a very fractious collection of security forces what was known as the Institute for Intelligence and Special Tasks – inevitably known as Mossad, Hebrew for institute.

In 1951 Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion came to the United States and brought Shiloah with him. Ben-Gurion met privately with President Truman, and Angleton arrange for Ben-Gurion to also have lunch with his friend Allen Dulles who would shortly become the director of the CIA. The purpose of this meeting, Efrain Halevy, a retired director of the Mossad and a longtime friend of Angleton's told me in an interview in Tel Aviv, the purpose was in Halevy's words to clarify in no uncertain terms that notwithstanding what had happened between Israel and United States 1948 and notwithstanding that Russia had been a key factor in Israel's survival, Israel considered itself part of the Western world and would maintain the relationship with the United States in this spirit.

Shiloah stayed on in Washington to work out the arrangements with Angleton. Shiloah, according to his biographer, soon developed a special relationship – quote/unquote – and Angleton became the CIA's exclusive liaison with the Mossad in 1951. Angleton return the favor by traveling to Israel often. He was introduced to Amos Manor, chief of counterespionage for Israel's domestic security service known as Shabak or Shin Bet.

Manor headed up Operation Balsam which was the Israeli's conduit to the Americans. "They told me I had to collect information about the Soviet bloc and transmit it to them," Manor recalled about the Americans. "I didn't know exactly what to do, but I had the idea of giving them material we had gathered a year earlier about the efforts of the Eastern Bloc to use Israel to bypass an American trade embargo. We edited the material and informed them that they should never ask us to identify our sources." From such arrangements, the CIA-Mossad relationship began to grow. Manor would be friends with Angleton for the rest of his life.

In 1963 a man named Isser Harel was succeeded as the chief of Mossad by a military intelligence officer named Meir Amit. Amit found Angleton to be a little eccentric, but he noted that his – quote – identification with Israel was a great asset for Israel. Asher Ben-Natan, Angleton's source dating back to the OSS days, was playing a key procurement role in the secret Israeli program to obtain nuclear weapons. Teddy Kollek, one of Angleton's closest contacts and friends in Washington, later became the mayor of Jerusalem. Angleton's Israeli friends in short were really the architects, some of the architects of the Zionist state.

As I came to learn his story from talking to CIA veterans and Israelis and reading a lot, a couple of things stood out to me. First of all, the Israeli recruitment of Angleton was extremely astute. In the early 1950s, Angleton was a rising star at this new agency, the CIA, but he was not a senior figure and not even particularly powerful. The Israelis recognized the latent qualities that would make him powerful.

Second, Angleton's creative intellect and his operational audacity inspired deep feelings of loyalty among the Israelis. While Angleton's counterintelligence vision would become very controversial within and bitterly divisive within the CIA, he was widely admired in Israel as a stalwart friend. He still is to this day.

In 1954 Angleton became the chief of the CIA's counterintelligence staff, the first one. In 1956 Amos Manor passed him a copy of Nikita Khrushchev's secret speech to the Soviet Communist Party in which he criticized the cult of personality around the deceased dictator, Joseph Stalin. This intelligence coup made Angleton a legend within the CIA and the power within the agency as well, and it was very much made possible by the Israelis.

Angleton's formative and sometimes decisive influence on US policy towards Israel can be seen in many areas – from the impotence of US nuclear nonproliferation policy in the region, to Israel's triumph in the 1967 Six-Day War, to the feeble US response to the attack on the Liberty, to the intelligence failure represented by the Yom Kippur War of 1973. I tell a lot of the story in The Ghost, but the story of Angleton in Israel is really so large and so profound that it probably deserves its own book. I could certainly not do justice to it in the 18 minutes that I have, so I'm going to confine myself to one narrow question about the tradeoffs that became implicit in this arrangement between the CIA and the Mossad and its implications for us.

The question, which was put to me by Grant but is right on point, was why didn't the CIA help the FBI investigate the diversion of US weapons-grade material from the United States to Israel in the 1960s and 1970s? The short answer is because Jim Angleton didn't want to. Angleton played a key role in enabling Israel to obtain nuclear weapons, and he did so in a subtle way that characteristically left few fingerprints. He was not a man to investigate himself. Many of these details are now known thanks to Grant Smith, Roger Mattson, John Hadden, Jr. and others.

I want to just give you a sense of how this transpired. So the Nuclear Materials and Equipment Corporation, otherwise known as NUMEC, started processing highly-enriched uranium in the United States in 1959. NUMEC had been created by David Lowenthal, a Zionist financier who financed the postwar boatlift from Europe to Palestine that was romanticized in the book and movie Exodus. He hired Zalman Shapiro, a brilliant young metallurgist to run the company.

At that time, the US government owned all of supplies of nuclear fuel which private companies, like NUMEC, were allowed to use but ultimately had to return to the government. Within a few years the Atomic Energy Commission noticed worrisome signs that the Apollo Plant – NUMEC had a plant in Apollo, Pennsylvania – that the plant's security and accounting were very deficient. Unexplained losses of nuclear material did happen at other companies, but NUMEC's losses were proportionately much larger. By October 1965, the AEC estimated that 178 kilograms of highly-enriched uranium had gone missing from the NUMEC facility, by March 1968, that figure was 267 kilograms.

John Hadden was the CIA station chief in Israel from 1964 to 1967. He worked very closely with Angleton throughout this period. He would later concur with the near unanimous assessment of CIA's nuclear scientist that Israel had indeed stolen fissile material from NUMEC and used it to build their nuclear arsenal. This story is now very well documented. In the spring of 1965, a technician working at the night shift at NUMEC went out on a loading dock for a breath of fresh air and saw an unusual sight. Zalman Shapiro was pacing on the dock while a foreman and truck driver loaded cylindrical storage containers, known as stovepipes, onto a flatbed truck.

The technician saw a clipboard saying that the material was destined for Israel. It was highly unusual to see Dr. Shapiro in the manufacturing section of the Apollo nuclear facility, the technician said. It was unusual to see Dr. Shapiro there at night, and it was very unusual to see Dr. Shapiro so nervous. The next day NUMEC's personnel manager visited the technician and threatened to fire him if he did not keep his mouth shut, that's a quote, concerning what he had seen. It would be 15 years before the employee told the story to the FBI.

What did Angleton know about NUMEC? Well, he knew that the AEC and the FBI were investigating starting in 1965. As the Israel desk officer of the CIA, he talked about the NUMEC case with liaison agent Sam Papich who was monitoring the investigation for the FBI. He also spoke about it with his colleague John Hadden.

On the crime scene particulars, Hadden defended his former boss. "Any suggestion that Angleton had help the Israelis with the NUMEC operation was totally without foundation," he told journalists Andrew and Leslie Cockburn. But Hadden didn't deny that Angleton had helped the Israeli nuclear program. Why would somebody whose whole life was dedicated to fighting communism have any interest in preventing a very anti-Communist nation for getting the means to defend itself, Hadden asked. The fact they stole it from us didn't worry him in the least, he went on. I suspect that in his inmost heart he would have given it to them if they had asked. Hadden knew better than to investigate any further. I never sent anything to Angleton on this – the nuclear program – because I knew he wasn't interested, Hadden later told his son, and I knew he'd try to stop it if I did.

With the fissile material diverted from NUMEC, Israel was able to construct its first nuclear weapon by 1967 and become a full-blown nuclear power by 1970 – the first and still the only nuclear power in the Middle East. Angleton, it is fair to say, thought collaboration with Israel was more important than US nonproliferation policy. He believed that the results proved his point. When he started as chief of the counterintelligence staff in 1954, the state of Israel and its leaders were regarded warily in Washington – especially at the State Department. When Angleton left government service 20 years later, Israel held twice as much territory as it had in 1948. The CIA and Mossad collaborated on a daily basis and the governments of the United States and Israel were strategic allies knit together by expansive intelligence sharing, multibillion-dollar arms contracts and coordinated diplomacy.

Angleton's influence on U.S.-Israeli relations between 1951 and 1974 exceeded that of any Secretary of State with the possible exception of Henry Kissinger. His influence was largely unseen by Congress, the press, other democratic institutions, and much of the CIA itself. He was empowered by his own ingenuity and the clandestine arrangements rationalized by doctrines of national security and counterintelligence. The arc of his career breathes life into the concept of the deep state.

I thought of this story when I visited one of the memorials to Angleton in Israel in 2016. The memorial is located on a winding road outside the city of Mevaseret Zion, which is now really a suburb of Jerusalem. Historically, control of this high ground has been seen as key to the control of Jerusalem and of Palestine itself. A nearby ruins of a castle built by 12th-century Christian crusaders for exactly that purpose stands in mute testimony to the importance of its strategic location.

The Angleton memorial consists of a pedestal of stones topped with a black plaque. To James Angleton, a friend it says. This plaque was dedicated in 1987, a few months after Angleton died, and it has been maintained by his Israeli friends ever since. It's still in perfect condition. The location is no accident. In the course of his extraordinary career, Angleton, more than any other American, enabled the Americans to gain and hold this strategic high ground in the Middle East. He was, as his friend Meir Amit said, the biggest Zionist of the lot . Thank you.

[Mar 11, 2018] Is Trump the New Clinton by Musa al-Gharbi

Notable quotes:
"... If Mueller's probe drags on and fails to produce a "smoking gun," the whole affair may end up seeming so complex, muddy, and partisan that most of the public would prefer to move on, eager to talk about something else . ..."
"... In 1996, Republican presidential nominee Bob Dole decided to take a hard line on China -- portraying the nation as a growing economic and geopolitical threat to the United States and a violator of international rules and norms. In response, China tried to leverage its extensive diplomatic , intelligence , and financial networks in the United States in order to sway the election in favor of Dole's rival, Democrat Bill Clinton. ..."
"... This is not a theory, it is historical fact: there was a major Congressional investigation . In the end, several prominent Democratic fundraisers, including close Clinton associates, were found to be complicit in the Chinese meddling efforts and pled guilty to various charges of violating campaign finance and disclosure laws (most notably James T. Riady , Johnny Chung , John Huang , and Charlie Trie ). Several others fled the country to escape U.S. jurisdiction as the probe got underway. The Democratic National Committee was forced to return millions of dollars in ill-gotten funds (although by that point, of course, their candidate had already won). ..."
"... Clinton authorized a series of controversial defense contracts with China as well -- despite Department of Justice objections . Federal investigators were concerned that the contractors seemed to be passing highly sensitive and classified information to the Chinese. And indeed, the companies in question were eventually found to have violated the law by giving cutting-edge missile technology to China, and paid unprecedented fines related to the Arms Export Control Act during the administration of George W. Bush. But they were inexplicably approved in the Bill Clinton years. ..."
Mar 11, 2018 | thebaffler.com

A president can be reelected despite corruption, foreign meddling, and sex scandals Bill Clinton was reelected with help from China. / The Baffler Imagine for a moment that special counsel Robert Mueller is unable to establish direct and intentional collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign. Or, suppose he proves collusion by a few former campaign aides but finds nothing directly implicating the president himself. In either event -- or in just about any other imaginable scenario -- it seems improbable that Congress will have the votes to impeach Trump or otherwise hold him accountable prior to 2020.

If Mueller's probe drags on and fails to produce a "smoking gun," the whole affair may end up seeming so complex, muddy, and partisan that most of the public would prefer to move on, eager to talk about something else .

In other words, Russiagate could well continue to distract and infuriate Trump without breaking his hold on power.

Is it shocking to think evidence of Russian chicanery could be shrugged off? Don't be shocked. After all, the last major case of foreign meddling and collusion in a U.S. presidential race didn't exactly end up rocking the republic.

In 1996, Republican presidential nominee Bob Dole decided to take a hard line on China -- portraying the nation as a growing economic and geopolitical threat to the United States and a violator of international rules and norms. In response, China tried to leverage its extensive diplomatic , intelligence , and financial networks in the United States in order to sway the election in favor of Dole's rival, Democrat Bill Clinton.

This is not a theory, it is historical fact: there was a major Congressional investigation . In the end, several prominent Democratic fundraisers, including close Clinton associates, were found to be complicit in the Chinese meddling efforts and pled guilty to various charges of violating campaign finance and disclosure laws (most notably James T. Riady , Johnny Chung , John Huang , and Charlie Trie ). Several others fled the country to escape U.S. jurisdiction as the probe got underway. The Democratic National Committee was forced to return millions of dollars in ill-gotten funds (although by that point, of course, their candidate had already won).

It was a scandal that persisted after the election in no small part because many of Clinton's own policies in his second term seemed to lend credence to insinuations of collusion.

Several prominent Democratic fundraisers, including close Clinton associates, were found to be complicit in Chinese meddling efforts and pled guilty to campaign finance violations.

Rather than attempting to punish the meddling country for undermining the bedrock of our democracy, Bill Clinton worked to ease sanctions and normalize relations with Beijing -- even as the U.S. ratcheted up sanctions against Cuba, Iran, and Iraq. By the end of his term, he signed a series of sweeping trade deals that radically expanded China's economic and geopolitical clout -- even though some in his administration forecast that this would come at the expense of key American industries and U.S. manufacturing workers.

Clinton authorized a series of controversial defense contracts with China as well -- despite Department of Justice objections . Federal investigators were concerned that the contractors seemed to be passing highly sensitive and classified information to the Chinese. And indeed, the companies in question were eventually found to have violated the law by giving cutting-edge missile technology to China, and paid unprecedented fines related to the Arms Export Control Act during the administration of George W. Bush. But they were inexplicably approved in the Bill Clinton years.

For a while, polls showed that the public found the president's posture on China to be so disconcerting that most supported appointing an independent counsel (a la Mueller) to investigate whether the Clinton Administration had essentially been " bought ."

Law enforcement officials shared these concerns: FBI director Louis Freeh (whom Clinton could not get rid of, having just fired his predecessor ) publically called for the appointment of an independent counsel. So did the chief prosecutor charged with investigating Chinese meddling, Charles La Bella . However, they were blocked at every turn by Clinton's Attorney General, Janet Reno -- eventually leading La Bella to resign in protest of the AG's apparent obstruction.

The 1996 Chinese collusion story, much like the 2016 Russian collusion story, dragged on for nearly two years -- hounding Clinton at every turn. That is, until it was discovered that the president had been having an affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky.

The 1996 Chinese collusion story dragged on for nearly two years -- hounding Clinton at every turn. That is, until the Monica Lewinsky scandal came along.

This was Bill Clinton's second known extra-marital affair with a subordinate : in the lead-up to his 1992 election it was also discovered that Clinton had been involved in a long-running affair with Gennifer Flowers -- an employee of the State of Arkansas during Bill's governorship there, appointed as a result of Clinton's intercession on her behalf.

The drama of the inquiry into Bill Clinton's myriad alleged sexual improprieties, the President's invocation of executive privilege to prevent his aides from having to testify against him, Clinton's perjury , subsequent impeachment by the House, acquittal in the Senate, and eventual plea-bargain deal -- these sucked the oxygen away from virtually all other stories related to the president.

Indeed, few today seem to remember that the Chinese meddling occurred at all. This despite continuing China-related financial improprieties involving both the Clintons and the DNC Chairman who presided over the 1996 debacle, Terry McAuliffe -- and despite the fact that the intended target of the current foreign meddling attempt just so happens to be married to the intended beneficiary of the last.

And the irony in this, of course, is that not only do we find ourselves reliving an apparently ill-fated collusion investigation, but the foreign meddling story is once again competing with a presidential sex scandal -- this time involving actual porn stars. (Gennifer Flowers and Paula Jones both posed for Penthouse after their involvement with Clinton surfaced. Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal are well-established in the industry.)

Much like Bill Clinton, our current president has a long pattern of accusations of infidelity, sexual harassment and even assault. However all of Trump's alleged sexual misconduct incidents occurred before he'd assumed any public office. Therefore, although some Democrats hope to provide Trump's accusers an opportunity to testify before Congress if their party manages to retake the House in 2018, the legal impact of these accounts is likely to be nil. The political significance of such theater is likely being overestimated as well.


The danger for Democrats in all this is that they could get lulled into the notion that Trump's liabilities -- the Mueller probe, the alleged affairs, and whatever new scandals and outrages Trump generates in the next two years -- will be sufficient to energize and mobilize their base in 2020. Democratic insiders and fatcats are likely to think they can put forward the same sort of unpalatable candidate and platform they did last cycle -- only this time, they'll win! A strong showing in 2018 could even reinforce this sense of complacency -- leading to another debacle in the race for the White House in 2020.

Democrats consistently snatch defeat from the jaws of victory by believing they've got some kind of lock. Remember the " Emerging Democratic Majority " thesis? Remember Hillary Clinton's alleged 2016 " Electoral Firewall ?" What have the Democrats learned from 2016? The answer is, very little if they believe the essential problem was just James Comey and the Russians.

Here's one lesson Democrats would do well to internalize:

The party has won by running charismatic people against Republican cornflake candidates (see Clinton v. Bush I or Dole, or Obama v. McCain or Romney). Yet whenever Democrats find themselves squaring off against a faux-populist who plays to voters' base instincts, the party always make the same move: running a wonky technocrat with an impressive resume, detailed policy proposals, and little else.

Does it succeed in drawing a sharp contrast? Pretty much always. Does it succeed at winning the White House? Pretty much never: Mondale, Dukakis, Gore, Kerry, and now Clinton.

Democrats could be headed for trouble if they are counting on the Mueller investigation to bring Trump down.

Democrats rely heavily on irregular voters to win elections; negative partisanship races tend to depress turnout for these constituents. More broadly, if left with a choice between a "lesser of two evils" the public tends to stick with the "devil they know." In short: precisely what Democrats don't need in 2020 is a negative partisanship race.

A referendum on Trump might not play out the way Democrats expect. Against all odds, it looks like the president will even have an actual record to run on . He should not be underestimated.

Clinton-style triangulation is also likely to backfire. Contemporary research suggests there just aren't a lot of " floating voters " up for grabs these days. Rather than winning over disaffected Republicans, this approach would likely just alienate the Democratic base.

The party's best bet is to instead focus on mobilizing the left by articulating a compelling positive message for why Americans should vote for them (rather than just against Trump). They will need to respond to Trump with a populist of their own -- someone who can credibly appeal to people in former Obama districts that Hillary Clinton lost . And they need to activate those who sat the last election out -- for instance by delivering for elements of their base that the party has largely taken for granted in recent cycles.

If the Democratic National Committee wants to spend its time talking about Russia and sex scandals instead of tending to these priorities, then we should all brace for another humiliating "black swan" defeat for the party in 2020.

But, you say, isn't Trump the least popular president ever after one year in office? Guess whose year-one (un)popularity is closest to Trump's? Ronald Reagan. He was under 50 percent in approval ratings at the end of his first year; but he went on to win reelection in an historic landslide. Barack Obama was barely breaking even after year one but won reelection comfortably. Bill Clinton was only slightly above 50 percent after his first year.

You know who else had the lowest approval rating in a quarter-century after Trump's first year in office? The Democratic Party.

Musa al-Gharbi is a Paul F. Lazarsfeld Fellow in Sociology at Columbia University. Readers can connect to his research and social media via his website .

[Mar 07, 2018] How Russiagate helps the Israel lobby

Notable quotes:
"... The Washington Report on Middle East Affairs ..."
"... The Washington Report's ..."
Mar 07, 2018 | electronicintifada.net

Ever since Hillary Clinton lost the 2016 US presidential election , the Democratic Party establishment has held tightly to the belief that her shock defeat was not the result of her and their shortcomings, but rather due to a nefarious Russian plot to "hack" the election in "collusion" with the winner.

Instead of examining why Donald Trump was able to connect with voters in economically distressed parts of the country in a way that Democrats failed to do, adherents of the Russiagate narrative hoped that investigations would quickly find a smoking gun, leading to Trump's impeachment and undoing an election result they consider aberrant and unjust.

On Friday, I spoke at a conference in Washington, DC, titled The Israel Lobby and American Policy , sponsored by The Washington Report on Middle East Affairs and IRmep , a group that researches the lobby's influence.

As I note in my talk, a handful of journalists – especially Max Blumenthal and Aaron Maté of The Real News – have consistently debunked the wild, exaggerated and sometimes fabricated claims of Russian interference made by members of the self-styled but woefully ineffectual "Resistance" to Trump.

Watch the video above.

True, over the course of the last year, special counsel Robert Mueller has made a number of indictments, but none of those cases – including the recent indictment of 13 Russians linked to a St. Petersburg troll farm – substantiates the heavily hyped claim that Russia helped Trump win the White House.

Perhaps the most high-profile indictment of someone in Trump's inner circle, the president's first national security adviser Michael Flynn , actually shows that rather than colluding with Russia, senior members of Trump's team were really working with Israel to advance its agenda.

And while no one has pinpointed evidence of Trump auctioning off his foreign policy to any Russian oligarchs, he has definitely tailored his policy toward Israel to the demands of casino billionaire Sheldon Adelson , his biggest campaign donor .

Adelson's immediate priority was securing US recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital and moving the American embassy there – and Trump duly obliged .

New censorship helps Israel

In my talk I consider how the Russiagate narrative is actually helping Israel and its lobby in particular ways.

I point out that the Russiagate hysteria being adopted by many liberals is legitimizing censorship that helps Israel clamp down on free speech and a free press.

Last year, the Russian-funded network RT was forced to register under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA).

As Maté has noted, free speech advocates and journalists were largely silent about it , perhaps thinking this tool of government control over the media would never be used against them.

But now, Israel's supporters in Congress – including Senator Ted Cruz – are demanding that Al Jazeera be investigated by the Department of Justice and forced to register as an agent of Qatar. They are explicitly citing the US government crackdown on RT as their precedent.

Al Jazeera's transgression is that it produced an undercover documentary on the workings of the Israel lobby in the US.

Qatar has come under intense pressure from that lobby to make sure the documentary is never aired. Five months after the network's head of investigations Clayton Swisher announced it would be released "very soon," the film has yet to be broadcast.

On Monday, The Electronic Intifada exclusively published details of what is in the film.

According to a source who has seen it, the film identifies a number of lobby groups as working with Israel to spy on American citizens using sophisticated data gathering techniques. It is also said to cast light on covert efforts to smear and intimidate Americans seen as too critical of Israel.

True, FARA is being used only against foreign networks, but the point is that these outlets – whatever their flaws – are providing space for discussion and dissent that docile US mainstream media keep closed.

It's simply impossible to imagine CNN, ABC – or for that matter the BBC – showing true independence and taking on the power of the Israel lobby.

While organizers diligently informed media about the Washington conference, the only outlets that invited me on to talk about the Israel lobby were the The Real News and RT. I know that other speakers were shut out of mainstream media as well.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/v7EvTIplv5I?feature=oembed

And besides, there are other forms of high-tech censorship that are being used to stifle or stigmatize dissent in domestic media: Partly as an outgrowth of Russiagate, Silicon Valley giants Google and Facebook have succumbed to political pressure to effectively throttle the exposure of independent outlets in the name of fighting extremism, "fake news" and alleged foreign interference.

The perverse effect has been to reassert state and elite control over media and erode the freedom that those of us shut out of mainstream outlets rely on. Nothing could suit Israel and its lobby better.

Stark warning

The conference in Washington featured many interesting presentations that can be seen at The Washington Report's YouTube channel .

Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, who served as chief of staff to Colin Powell when he was secretary of state in the run-up to the 2003 US invasion of Iraq, issued a stark warning that the US ramping up its military presence in Syria may be a prelude to launching a war on Iran on behalf of Israel.

Wilkerson said that Israel and its ally Saudi Arabia are encouraging the US to fight a regime-change war against Tehran that they would be incapable of mounting on their own.

"We've already done Iraq, Libya, Syria, Afghanistan," Wilkerson said, "so we'd just be seen as continuing the trend."

He warned that an Israeli confrontation and war with Lebanon – perhaps on the pretext of disputed gas fields in the Mediterranean – could provide the pretext.

In an ominous parallel, he likened the current situation to 1914, the eve of World War I – any spark could generate a broad regional or even global conflagration.

Wilkerson singled out the role of the neoconservative think tank Foundation for Defense of Democracies as leading the campaign for war on behalf of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his defense minister Avigdor Lieberman.

Notably, the source who spoke to The Electronic Intifada about Al Jazeera's suppressed Israel lobby film said that the documentary reveals that the same think tank may be acting as an agent for Israel in its covert efforts to undermine support for Palestinian rights in the US.

In spite of Wilkerson's worrying thesis, it must be said that, however powerful, the Israel lobby cannot alone force the US to undertake foreign military conquests. For one thing, US elites have never needed encouragement from anyone to wage devastating wars around the world.

When the US establishment sees a critical interest at stake, it pursues it regardless of what the lobby may want. That is why the US signed the 2015 Iran nuclear agreement despite all of Israel's efforts to sabotage it. Of course whether that deal survives the Trump administration remains to be seen .

In his keynote address , Haaretz journalist Gideon Levy stated that Israel's military rule over Palestinians "is today one of the most brutal, cruel tyrannies on Earth."

He asserted that the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement for Palestinian rights is a "legitimate tool" and the "only game in town" to force Israel to end this injustice.

[Mar 07, 2018] AIPAC Returns to Washington by Philip Giraldi

It is probably more reasonable to view Israel as another MIC lobbyist.
Mar 07, 2018 | www.unz.com
Philip Giraldi March 6, 2018 1,700 Words 199 Comments Reply

The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) is back in Washington for its annual summit. Or at least it used to be called a summit but now it is referred to as a policy conference , which is perhaps a bit of very welcome transparency as if there is one thing that AIPAC is good at it is using its $100 million budget and 300 employees to harass lawmakers on Capitol Hill and generate policy for the United States to adhere to. Eighteen thousand supporters have gathered at the city's Convention Center to hear speeches by U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley, Ambassador to Israel David Friedman, Vice President Mike Pence, plus Senators Marco Rubio, Robert Menendez, Tom Cotton and Ben Cardin. My personal favorite is Maryland Congressman and House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer who has visited Israel so many times he might as well move there and who can be relied on to deliver a loud sucking noise as he enthuses over the many wonders of the Jewish state. And for a little foreign flair there is the disheveled French "philosopher" Bernard-Henri Levy, who has described the brutal Israeli Army of occupation as the "most moral in the world."

If you want to get some idea of the money and political power represented at AIPAC this year I would recommend going through the speakers' list , a dazzling display of precisely why the United States is in bondage to Israel and its interests. The heavyweight speakers and other attendees will be joined by hundreds more Congressmen, Supreme Court Justices, and senior government officials as well as a heavy dose of "experts" from the usual Jewish-dominated pro-Israel think tanks that have sprouted up like mushrooms along K Street, including luminaries like John Bolton, Victoria Nuland, Bill Kristol, Elliot Abrams and Eric Cantor. Those participants coming from the government will, of course, be ignoring their oaths of office in which they swore to uphold the Constitution of the United States against "all enemies domestic and foreign," but it doesn't matter as everyone performs proskynesis for Israel.

The slogan of this year's gather is "Choose to Lead," an interesting objective for an organization that has led successive presidents since Bill Clinton by their respective noses. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, facing indictment back home, will also be in town and will meet with President Donald Trump. He might just decide to stay awhile as one thing that Israel is particularly good at is trying, convicting and imprisoning its corrupt leaders.

There has been some informed speculation that Trump will unveil during their meeting a "two state solution" peace plan for Israel-Palestine, but as it will possibly require Israel to withdraw from much of the large chunks of the West Bank that it has "settled," it will not be received favorably by Netanyahu. Israel is certainly vulnerable to possible pressure coming from the White House to impose a solution, but as Trump has proven unable or unwilling to punish an out-of-control Netanyahu in any way up until this point, it has to be considered unlikely that he will change course this time around.

AIPAC must be particularly pleased since Israel has had a sweet ride with the Trump Administration in place in Washington. The greatest gift to Netanyahu has been the Administration's recognition of all of Jerusalem as Israel's capital together with a commitment to move the U.S. Embassy to that city. No other country currently has its embassy in an internationally disputed Jerusalem though Guatemala has followed Washington's lead and has stated that it also intends to physically move its diplomatic facility.

The original State Department relocation plan was to phase the embassy move while a new building is being constructed, but the White House recently accelerated the process, reportedly under pressure from Jewish billionaire GOP donor Sheldon Adelson, and will open a temporary facility in May to coincide with the 70 th anniversary of Israel's founding. Netanyahu has asked Trump to appear at the embassy opening ceremony and also to assist in the celebration of the founding.

Israel has also benefited from a Trump Middle East team that is all Jewish and committed to Israel. It is headed by his son-in-law Jared Kushner and includes former bankruptcy attorney Ambassador David Friedman, who has financially supported Israel's illegal settlements, and Jason Greenblatt, the Trump Organization corporate lawyer, as Special Representative for International Negotiations. In addition, Kushner is reportedly personally advised by a group of Orthodox Jews that he knows from his Synagogue and through his business interests.

The outcome deriving from the all-Jewish team determining Middle Eastern policy combined with a benign White House is predictable, and it just as clearly does not include any benefits for the United States. Israel has been able to dramatically expand its settlements on stolen Palestinian land and is instigating several new wars in its region without any pushback coming from Washington. Quite the contrary as the United States has proven to be an enabler for new conflicts with Syria, Lebanon and Iran. Several Senators who have recently returned from Israel claim that an invasion of Lebanon is coming because of allegations that Hezbollah is constructing an Iranian-supplied factory to build sophisticated missiles, yet another phony narrative depicting Israel as the perpetual victim of its brutal and threatening neighbors when in reality the reverse is true. This animosity towards Iran and its allies is particularly dangerous as it could produce a new war that might spin dangerously out of control as third countries like Russia and China get involved to protect their own interests.

The reality is that it is a military dominant Israel that has been regularly bombing targets alleged to be Iranian or Hezbollah in Syria as well as Syrian military installations. It has threatened to bomb Lebanon back into the "stone age," which leads one to ask what have those nations done to provoke the wrath of Zion? Close to nothing. An alleged Iranian drone reportedly launched from Syria wandered into the airspace over the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights before being shot down. How many Israeli drones have flown over Lebanon and Syria? Hundreds if not thousands.

And when Israeli planes flew deep into Syria to bomb what was claimed to be the base that the drone flew from, one was shot down by a Syrian air defense missile. Israel then launched a major bombing campaign against Syrian military targets and was only dissuaded from doing far, far worse by Vladimir Putin, who warned Netanyahu against broadening the conflict. Note that it was Russia that made Bibi back down, not Washington. The United States was meanwhile busy in trying to justify its continued presence in Syria, also at the urging of Israel and AIPAC.

Every American president has to bow before Jewish power in the United State and you better believe that both AIPAC and the hundreds of other Jewish and Christian-Zionist organizations that exist at least in part to nurture and protect Israel know it. Even Barack Obama, who had an openly frosty relationship with Netanyahu knew the score and gave the Jewish state $38 billion. He opposed the Israel's expansion into the formerly Palestinian West Bank but never did one thing to stop it until the end of his final term in office when he had the U.S. abstain on a U.N. vote condemning the illegal settlements, a pointless gesture.

Demands that AIPAC, an echo chamber for Israeli interests, should be required to register under the Foreign Agents Registration Act of 1938 have been ignored by various Attorneys General since the time of John F. Kennedy, who tried to get AIPAC's predecessor organization the American Zionist Council to comply. He was killed soon after, though I am not necessarily trying to imply anything even though Jack Ruby does come to mind.

Here at home "The Lobby" has also been successful in 2017, with 23 states having now passed laws making it illegal to boycott Israel if one wishes to have dealings with the local or state government. Three months ago, the Anti-Semitism Awareness Act was approved by the House of Representatives with 402 affirmative votes and only two libertarian-leaning congressmen voting "no." The Israel Anti-Boycott Act that is also currently making its way through a Senate committee would set a new standard for deference to Israeli interests on the part of the national government. It would criminalize any U.S. citizen "engaged in interstate or foreign commerce" who supports a boycott of Israel or who even goes about "requesting the furnishing of information" regarding it, with penalties enforced through amendments of two existing laws, the Export Administration Act of 1979 and the Export-Import Act of 1945, that include potential fines of between $250,000 and $1 million and up to 20 years in prison. According to the Jewish Telegraph Agency, the Senate bill was drafted with the assistance of AIPAC.

And there's lots more to come in 2018. Lindsey Graham and Chris Coons were two of the senators who have just returned from the taxpayer funded "fact finding" trip to Israel and warned about a new war breaking out. And beyond that, what other "fact" did they find? Apparently that Israel needs more money from the U.S. taxpayer. Here is what was reported:

" they


chris , March 6, 2018 at 6:13 am GMT

If you start from the 'adage' that politics is 'acting for ugly people,' it doesn't take much to see the AIPAC (really, IPAC far America) extravaganza as the Oscars in Hollywood-East, with all the politicians in the roles of whores fighting for their place on AIPAC's casting couches.

We're still a couple of wars away from a corresponding #metoo movement and the well deserved pillorying of Harvey Weinstein, who might as well be the poster child of this house of whores as well.

Mark James , March 6, 2018 at 6:25 am GMT
This is always an unpleasant week. Made more so because I heard Bibi was staying at Blair House (hope not). Let him chill at the Isl embassy.

VP Pence has allegedly said that Trump is the best friend Israel has ever had "in the WH." That dubious honor would probably go to Harry Truman after George Marshall threatened to quit the administration if Truman continued his backing of Israel in '48.
Truman who was undoubtedly heavily lobbied even then , came through. The rest is history. Eisenhower was not having it though as the Suez crisis showed. Perhaps our last President to stand up and say no.

But maybe Pence was referring to the Kushner/Friedman factor? Yes that is a formidable duo. Did Jared really affect the Qatar blockade because they told him no on additional financing of his holdings? Let's find that out and act accordingly!

Obama, who had an openly frosty relationship with Netanyahu knew the score and gave the Jewish state $38 billion

All we can do is work towards the current LOU –Letter of Understanding– being the final one. I am not against helping Israel (on an ad hoc basis). This is not the kind of help they need or should be receiving. We should all be efforting the diminution of AIPAC.

Justsaying , March 6, 2018 at 6:28 am GMT
Wow! Is there any other country, large or small, powerful or weak, whose foreign policy for the ME is so completely controlled by a lobby group that puts the interests of a foreign country ahead of and contrary to its own national interests? Is there any other country where a single ethno-religious group exercises so much power in advancing the interests of a foreign nation ahead of its own? Which other country can claim that 1.4% of its citizens (Jewish, and not all support Zionist Israel) exert complete control of ME foreign policy when ethnic groups that represent >20-fold higher numbers of citizens (African American + Latino + Asian) have been coerced into silence in the matter and have no influence in policies related to their own ancestral lands? Is there any other country so completely owned in the manner described here and still has the gall to aggressively push for more "freedoms" and "human rights" in countries it deems in need of such freedoms and rights? Which other countries that pride in its free press has its mainstream media sources all singing the same tune when it comes to ME policies? Finally, is there any other country wherein the principle of might is right -- and on a global scale -- is more ably demonstrated than the US? Just asking.
Lot , March 6, 2018 at 7:02 am GMT
"Israel has been able to dramatically expand its settlements on stolen Palestinian "

You mean "justly and legally conquered." Just like my California home!

Lot , March 6, 2018 at 7:16 am GMT
"Note that it was Russia that made Bibi back down, not Washington."

Back down? You mean like "you can drop 877 bombs on our sole middle east ally, whose territory you indefinitely occupy, but not a single bomb more than that!"

Israel will crush Syria and Iran if seriously provoked, which is why they are wise enough to never let their provocations go beyond a drone teasing a couple miles into her airspace. Just a little bread and circuses to destract their inbred and servile populations from their poverty and backwardness.

Anon Disclaimer , March 6, 2018 at 8:00 am GMT
We should send all the taxpayer money to Israel and let them decide how much of our own money they want us to have for expenses such as roads, schools etc.
Robert Dunn , Website March 6, 2018 at 8:47 am GMT
You know, that Adolf Hitler guy is starting to look better and better with each passing day.
mcohen , March 6, 2018 at 9:19 am GMT
P.giraldi whining about "the israelis".and the lobby.and 9/11 dancing israelis,and.

Never mind off the map .how about off the planet.

LondonBob , March 6, 2018 at 9:21 am GMT
The Israel Anti-Boycott Act really sets an unprecedented low, potential fines of between $250,000 and $1 million and up to 20 years in prison!

We have seen similar moves in Britain, obviously given this is all coordinated globally. Than again not sure a judge or jury, a jury even more so, would uphold these new 'laws'. My friend's father was certainly creative when he presided over an Israeli related case, he was born in Palestine during the British mandate, so he has a stronger interest than most.

https://www.theguardian.com/law/2010/sep/23/law-expert-view-gaza-war

mark green , March 6, 2018 at 10:18 am GMT
Mr. Giraldi always writes clearly and explosively on a topic that is clouded by corrupt government action, financial malfeasance, and thoroughly biased news and entertainment.

America has been captured, gelded, rearrangd, and re-imagined. It's a brilliant accomplishment. And a malignant one.

Few understand How or Why. They just sense that something is wrong. Terribly wrong.

America may be powerful, advanced, democratic and 'free'. But it is also occupied.

US wars are now fought for the benefit of a foreign power. Speech restrictions are crafted to protect the same. Speak out against this phenomena and you are branded an 'anti-Semite'.

Americans live in a gilded, glass box. Quiet please.

Better turn to ESPN. Who won the game?

The gatekeepers are watching, monitoring. Facebook is clamping down. Google too. The techno-noose is tightening. This surprises you?

Stop the hate. Impeach Trump!

So how can we, as a people, fight terrorism? Such a good question.

Send in the drones? Must.

The Zionist 'consensus' is complete. And absolute. Stop terror. Fortify Israel. It's a new, multi-faceted, top-down all-American value. Just say 'NO' to terror and fascism!

Thus, any attempt to separate US interests from Israeli interests is OFF LIMITS. And any attempt to make such a distinction puts one in the No-Fly-Zone of political discourse. Why risk it?

As our leaders in Washington say: the 'special relationship' is unshakable.

And unconditional.

Those who challenge this dictum tend to disappear from public life. Bye bye.

Deference and sensitivity towards all 'matters of concern' to the Jewish community have therefore become sacrosanct. Consequently:

Arab 'terrorism'?

Crush it.

Anti-semitism?

Monitor and eradicate it.

Hate speech?

Denounce and criminalize it.

Thou shall respect and love the Jewish people. Israel, too.

Stop racism! Stop fascism!

Opposition is wrong. Opposition is taboo. Disagree?

What made you a white supremacist?

The important thing is the safety and security of the 'survivors'. Never forget.

Meanwhile, Israel's vast meddling and interference in American life goes officially unnoticed. What? There's simply no such thing.

Israel is a democratic ally. These are US citizens!

It's 'Russiagate'. Pay attention.

The deadly, pathetic charade continues.

Greg Bacon , Website March 6, 2018 at 12:03 pm GMT

From an April 2003 Haaretz article:

The war in Iraq was conceived by 25 neoconservative intellectuals, most of them Jewish, who are pushing President Bush to change the course of history. Two of them, journalists William Kristol and Charles Krauthammer, say it's possible.

This is a war of an elite. [Tom] Friedman laughs: I could give you the names of 25 people (all of whom are at this moment within a five-block radius of this office) who, if you had exiled them to a desert island a year and a half ago, the Iraq war would not have happened.

http://www.haaretz.com/news/features/white-man-s-burden-1.14110

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d7tUEqjmIWE

I hope Israel's next choice for POTUS, 'Nutty' Nikki Hale, brings her well-worn knee pads to the AIPAC conjuring.

Any politician that attends AIPAC and sings the praises of Israel and thumps for more wars for the glory of Apartheid Israel, is a traitor.

jilles dykstra , March 6, 2018 at 12:33 pm GMT
Which democracy ?
I, for a very long time did not understand the difference between Democrats and Republicans.
A USA friend enlightened me 'Democrats is new money, Republicans old money'.
This is in the tradition of the American continent, seen from over the Atlantic as one, comprising north and south.
In most S American countries the same, two groups of wealthy people struggling for power.
Bolivia the exception, and Venezuala maybe, until the oil price collapsed.
How the USA sees sovereignty was demonstrated when the plane of the Bolivian president, en route from Moscow to Bolivia, was forced to land in Austria, to see if Snowden was on board.
jilles dykstra , March 6, 2018 at 12:37 pm GMT
@Vojkan

In the terrible Netherlands, more and more mothers choose abortion, when a serious birth defect is diagnosed in an early stage of pregnancy.
These tests have become routine.
Those with the Huntingdon gene are advised not to have children.

Vojkan , March 6, 2018 at 2:14 pm GMT
@Lot

Or is it maybe because reasonable Russians know that they're dealing with a gang of neurasthenic mythomaniac psychopaths and calculate fallout vs benefit of burning the unholy wart that is Israel.

Ger , March 6, 2018 at 2:38 pm GMT
@mark green

Un-registered Foreign Agents have indeed destroyed America's 'independence' and it isn't the Russians.

EliteCommInc. , March 6, 2018 at 6:06 pm GMT
Clearly, regardless of where one stands on the issue of Jews, Israel, Palestine or AIPAC, no one should be applauding laws that make free speech, expression (even by boycott), illegal. That is just bizarre. I would think that the Citizens United case -- which I find a bit dubious -- would roundly prevent even a suggestion that one could not choose to do business based on whatever standard or philosophy they have as citizens.

One need not hate Israel to see that such legislation violates in every way, constitutional protections to expression – oddly enough, most importantly political expression of a foreign state.

[Feb 24, 2018] Michael Savage says Trump should arrest George Soros for meddling in elections (Video) by Alex Christoforou

Feb 24, 2018 | theduran.com

Michael Savage says Trump should arrest George Soros for meddling in elections (Video) Lock him up!

by Alex Christoforou February 24, 2018, 14:33 918 Views

[Jan 20, 2018] Will Steve Bannon s Testimony Bring Down Jared by Abigail Tracy

A more interesting question is how those testimonies might affect Bannon -- he is in a very hot water now. If he thought that the meeting was so incriminating why he did not contact FBI and just decided to feed juicy gossip to Wolff?
Also he was not present at the meeting and was not a member of Trump team until two months later. From who he got all this information ? Was is just a slander by disgruntled employee?
Notable quotes:
"... To reiterate, those comments were not aimed at Don Jr. ..."
"... Bannon has denied that the Trump campaign colluded with the Russian government during the election ..."
"... Wolff also quotes the former White House strategist as saying, "This is all about money laundering. [Robert] Mueller chose [senior prosecutor Andrew] Weissmann first and he is a money-laundering guy. Their path to fucking Trump goes right through Paul Manafort, Don Jr., and Jared Kushner . . . It's as plain as a hair on your face." ..."
"... Bannon then zeroed in on Kushner specifically, adding that "[i]t goes through Deutsche Bank and all the Kushner shit. The Kushner shit is greasy. They're going to go right through that. They're going to roll those two guys up and say play me or trade me." ..."
Jan 16, 2018 | www.vanityfair.com

"The three senior guys in the campaign thought it was a good idea to meet with a foreign government inside Trump Tower in the conference room on the 25th floor -- with no lawyers. They didn't have any lawyers," Bannon is quoted as saying in Fire and Fury. "Even if you thought that this was not treasonous, or unpatriotic, or bad shit, and I happen to think it's all of that, you should have called the F.B.I. immediately." Bannon reportedly speculated that the chance the eldest Trump son did not involve his father in the meeting "is zero."

When Bannon's comments became public, Trump excoriated his former strategist, whom he accused of having "lost his mind." But while Bannon has since apologized for the remarks and sought to walk back a number of the quotes, he's stopped short of denying that he viewed the Trump Tower meeting as treasonous. Instead, he's merely shifted the blame away from Trump Jr. and onto Manafort. "My comments were aimed at Paul Manafort, a seasoned campaign professional with experience and knowledge of how the Russians operate. He should have known they are duplicitous, cunning, and not our friends. To reiterate, those comments were not aimed at Don Jr. ," Bannon said in a statement to Axios. ( Bannon has denied that the Trump campaign colluded with the Russian government during the election .)

... ... ...

Though the Trump Tower meeting took place before Bannon joined the Trump campaign, Adam Schiff, the ranking Democrat on the House panel, told CNN last week that he plans to question Bannon about "why this meeting at Trump Tower represented his treason and certainly unpatriotic at a minimum."

Jared Kushner's "greasy shit"

Wolff also quotes the former White House strategist as saying, "This is all about money laundering. [Robert] Mueller chose [senior prosecutor Andrew] Weissmann first and he is a money-laundering guy. Their path to fucking Trump goes right through Paul Manafort, Don Jr., and Jared Kushner . . . It's as plain as a hair on your face." (Trump Jr., Kushner, and Manafort have all denied wrongdoing.) Bannon then zeroed in on Kushner specifically, adding that "[i]t goes through Deutsche Bank and all the Kushner shit. The Kushner shit is greasy. They're going to go right through that. They're going to roll those two guys up and say play me or trade me."

He and Trump's son-in-law have never seen eye to eye; their White House feuds were a poorly kept secret, and following his ouster, Bannon has given numerous interviews knocking Kushner, including one to my colleague Gabriel Sherman in which he questioned Kushner's maturity level. If Bannon has dirt on Kushner, he will likely get his chance to reveal it; Schiff also declared his intent to question Bannon on "the basis of his concern over money laundering."

[Dec 25, 2017] The Israel-gate Side of Russia-gate Consortiumnews

Notable quotes:
"... In this case, what Flynn and Kushner were doing was going directly against US foreign policy, because Obama wanted the resolution to pass; He just didn't want to vote for it because that would cross the Israel lobby in the United States. The US finally ended up abstaining on the resolution and it passed 14-0. ..."
"... But before that happened, Flynn went to the Russians and to Egypt, both members of the Security Council, and tried to get the resolution delayed. But all of Israel's machinations to derail this resolution failed and that is what Mueller was investigating, the intervention and disruption of American foreign policy by private citizens who had no official role. ..."
"... While I think Bibi is an idiot, I also think the Logan Act is overinvoked, overstated, probably of dubious legal value and also of dubious constitutional value. ..."
"... In short, especially because Trump had been elected, though not yet inaugurated, I think he is not at all guilty of a Logan Act violation. This is nothing close to Spiro Agnew calling Anna Chenault from the airplane in August 1968. ..."
"... Probably true, although evidence of extreme collusion with Israel eliminates any case against Russia, with whom we have far more reasons for amity. Bringing out the Israel collusion greatly improves public understanding of political corruption. Perhaps it will awaken some to the Agnew-Chennault betrayal of the people of the US. ..."
"... It's ironic that Russia-gate is turning out to be Israel's effort to distract attention from its complete control over the Democratic party in 2016. From Israeli billionaires behind the scenes to Debbie Wasserman-Schultz at the helm. ..."
"... "Whether we like it or not, the former and current administration view Russia is as an enemy state." So that is how it works, the White House says it is an enemy state and therefore it is. The so called declaration is the hammer used for trying to make contact with Russia a criminal offense. We are not at war with Russia although we see our leaders doing their best to provoke Russia into one. ..."
"... The Israel connection disclosed by the malpracticer hack Mueller in the recent Flynn-flam just made Trump bullet-proof (so to speak). ..."
"... So Mueller caught Kushner and Flynn red-handed, sabotaging the Obama administration? What of it? He can't use that evidence, because it would inculpate the Zionist neocons that are orchestrating his farcical, Stalinist witchhunt. And Mueller, being an efficient terminator bot, knows that his target is Russia, not Israel. ..."
"... So Mueller will just have to continue swamp-fishing for potential perjurers ahem witnesses, for the upcoming show trials (to further inflame public opinion against Russia and Russia sympathizers). And continue he will, because (as we all know from Schwarzenegger's flicks), the only way to stop the terminator is to terminate him/it first. ..."
"... Trump and Kushner have nothing to worry about, even if a smoking gun is found that proves their collusion with Israel. That's because the entire political and media establishment will simply ignore the Israeli connection. ..."
"... Journalists and politicians will even continue to present Mike Flynn's contacts as evidence of collusion with Russia. They'll keep on repeating that "Flynn lied about his phone call to the Russian ambassador". But there will be no mention of the fact that the purpose of this contact was to support Israel and not any alleged Russian interference. ..."
"... I think you have it right Brendan. The MSM, Intelligence Community, and Mueller would never go down any path that popularized undue Israeli influence on US foreign policy. "Nothing to see here folks, move along." ..."
"... The Nice Zionists responsible for the thefts and murders for the past 69 years along with the "Jewish Community" in the rest of the world will resolve the matter so as to be fair to both parties. This is mind-boggling fantasy. ..."
"... FFS, Netanyahu aired a political commercial in Florida for Romney saying vote for this guy (against Obama)! I mean, it doesn't get any more overtly manipulative than that. Period. End of story. ..."
"... God, I hate to go all "Israel controls the media" but there it is. Not even a discussion. Just a fact. ..."
"... I also have to point out that he "fist pumped" Hillary Clinton at Mohammed Ali's eulogy. If he's as astute as he purports to be, he has to know that Hillary would have invaded Syria and killed a few hundred thousand more Syrians for the simple act of defiantly preserving their country. By almost any read of Ali's history, he would have been adamantly ("killing brown people") against that. But there was Silverstein using the platform to promote, arguably, perpetual war. ..."
"... Yeah I found a couple of Silverstein's statements to be closer to neocon propaganda than reality: "Because this is Israel and because we have a conflicted relationship with the Israel lobby . . ." "Instead of going directly to the Obama administration, with which they had terrible relations, they went to Trump instead." My impression was that the whole "terrible relationship between Obama and Netanyahu" was manufactured by the Israel lobby to bully Obama. However these are small blips within an otherwise solid critique of the Israel lobby's influence. ..."
Dec 25, 2017 | consortiumnews.com

The Israel-gate Side of Russia-gate December 23, 2017

While unproven claims of Russian meddling in U.S. politics have whipped Official Washington into a frenzy, much less attention has been paid to real evidence of Israeli interference in U.S. politics, as Dennis J Bernstein describes.

By Dennis J Bernstein

In investigating Russia's alleged meddling in U.S. politics, special prosecutor Robert Mueller uncovered evidence that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pressured the Trump transition team to undermine President Obama's plans to permit the United Nations to censure Israel over its illegal settlement building on the Palestinian West Bank, a discovery referenced in the plea deal with President Trump's first National Security Adviser Michael Flynn.

President Donald J. Trump and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel at the United Nations General Assembly (Official White House Photo by Shealah Craighead)

At Netanyahu's behest, Flynn and President Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner reportedly took the lead in the lobbying to derail the U.N. resolution, which Flynn discussed in a phone call with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak (in which the Russian diplomat rebuffed Flynn's appeal to block the resolution).

I spoke on Dec, 18 with independent journalist and blogger Richard Silverstein, who writes on national security and other issues for a number of blogs at Tikun Olam .

Dennis Bernstein: A part of Michael Flynn's plea had to do with some actions he took before coming to power regarding Israel and the United Nations. Please explain.

Richard Silverstein:

The Obama administration was negotiating in the [UN] Security Council just before he left office about a resolution that would condemn Israeli settlements. Obviously, the Israeli government did not want this resolution to be passed. Instead of going directly to the Obama administration, with which they had terrible relations, they went to Trump instead. They approached Michael Flynn and Jared Kushner became involved in this. While they were in the transition and before having any official capacity, they negotiated with various members of the Security Council to try to quash the settlement resolution.

One of the issues here which is little known is the Logan Act, which was passed at the foundation of our republic and was designed to prevent private citizens from usurping the foreign policy prerogatives of the executive. It criminalized any private citizen who attempted to negotiate with an enemy country over any foreign policy issue.

In this case, what Flynn and Kushner were doing was going directly against US foreign policy, because Obama wanted the resolution to pass; He just didn't want to vote for it because that would cross the Israel lobby in the United States. The US finally ended up abstaining on the resolution and it passed 14-0.

But before that happened, Flynn went to the Russians and to Egypt, both members of the Security Council, and tried to get the resolution delayed. But all of Israel's machinations to derail this resolution failed and that is what Mueller was investigating, the intervention and disruption of American foreign policy by private citizens who had no official role.

This speaks to the power of the Israel lobby and of Israel itself to disrupt our foreign policy. Very few people have ever been charged with committing an illegal act by advocating on behalf of Israel. That is one of the reasons why this is such an important development. Until now, the lobby has really ruled supreme on the issue of Israel and Palestine in US foreign policy. Now it is possible that a private citizen will actually be made to pay a price for that.

This is an important development because the lobby till now has run roughshod over our foreign policy in this area and this may act as a restraining order against blatant disruption of US foreign policy by people like this.

Bernstein: So this information is a part of Michael Flynn's plea. Anyone studying this would learn something about Michael Flynn and it would be part of the prosecution's investigation.

Silverstein:

That's absolutely right. One thing to note here is that it is reporters who have raised the issue of the Logan Act, not Mueller or Flynn's people or anyone in the Trump administration. But I do think that Logan is a very important part of this plea deal, even if it is not mentioned explicitly.

Bernstein: If the special prosecutor had smoking-gun information that the Trump administration colluded with Russia, in the way they colluded with Israel before coming to power, this would be a huge revelation. But it is definitely collusion when it comes to Israel.

Silverstein: Absolutely. If this were Russia, it would be on the front page of every major newspaper in the United States and the leading story on the TV news. Because this is Israel and because we have a conflicted relationship with the Israel lobby and they have so much influence on US policy concerning Israel, it has managed to stay on the back burner. Only two or three media outlets besides mine have raised this issue of Logan and collusion. Kushner and Flynn may be the first American citizens charged under the Logan Act for interfering on behalf of Israel in our foreign policy. This is a huge issue and it has hardly been raised at all.

Bernstein: As you know, Rachel Maddow of MSNBC has made a career out of investigating the Russia-gate charges. She says that she has read all this material carefully, so she must have read about Flynn and Israel, but I haven't heard her on this issue at all.

Silverstein:

Even progressive journalists, who you'd think would be going after this with a vengeance, are frightened off by the fact the lobby really bites back. So, aside from outlets like the Intercept and the Electronic Intifada, there is a lot of hesitation about going after the Israel lobby. People are afraid because they know that there is a high price to be paid. It goes from being purely journalism to being a personal and political vendetta when they get you in their sights. In fact, one of the reasons I feel my blog is so important is that what I do is challenge Israeli policy and Israeli intervention in places where it doesn't belong.

Bernstein: Jared Kushner is the point man for the Trump administration on Israel. He has talked about having a "vision for peace." Do you think it is a problem that this is someone with a long, close relationship with the prime minister of Israel and, in fact, runs a foundation that invests in the building of illegal Israeli settlements? Might this be problematic?

Silverstein:

It is quite nefarious, actually. When Jared Kushner was a teenager, Netanyahu used to stay at the Kushner family home when he visited the United States. This relationship with one of the most extreme right political figures in Israel goes back decades. And it is not just Kushner himself, but all the administration personnel dealing with these so-called peace negotiations, including Jason Greenblatt and David Friedman, the ambassador. These are all orthodox Jews who tend to have very nationalist views when it comes to Israel. They all support settlements financially through foundations. These are not honest brokers.

We could talk at length about the history of US personnel who have been negotiators for Middle East peace. All of them have been favorable to Israel and answerable to the Israel lobby, including Dennis Ross and Makovsky, who served in the last administration. These people are dyed-in-the-wool ultra-nationalist supporters of [Israeli] settlements. They have no business playing any role in negotiating a peace deal.

My prediction all along has been that these peace negotiations will come to naught, even though they seem to have bought the cooperation of Saudi Arabia, which is something new in the process. The Palestinians can never accept a deal that has been negotiated by Kushner and company because it will be far too favorable to Israel and it will totally neglect the interests of the Palestinians.

Bernstein: It has been revealed that Kushner supports the building of settlements in the West Bank. Most people don't understand the politics of what is going on there, but it appears to be part of an ethnic cleansing.

Silverstein:

The settlements have always been a violation of international law, ever since Israel conquered the West Bank in 1967. The Geneva Conventions direct an occupying power to withdraw from territory that was not its own. In 1967 Israel invaded Arab states and conquered the West Bank and Gaza but this has never been recognized or accepted by any nation until now.

The fact that Kushner and his family are intimately involved in supporting settlements–as are David Friedman and Jason Greenblatt–is completely outrageous. No member of any previous US administration would have been allowed to participate with these kinds of financial investments in support of settlements. Of course, Trump doesn't understand the concept of conflict of interest because he is heavily involved in such conflicts himself. But no party in the Middle East except Israel is going to consider the US an honest broker and acceptable as a mediator.

When they announce this deal next January, no one in the Arab World is going to accept it, with the possible exception of Saudi Arabia because they have other fish to fry in terms of Iran. The next three years are going to be interesting, supposing Trump lasts out his term. My prediction is that the peace plan will fail and that it will lead to greater violence in the Middle East. It will not simply lead to a vacuum, it will lead to a deterioration in conditions there.

Bernstein: The Trump transition team was actually approached directly by the Israeli government to try to intercede at the United Nations.

Silverstein:

I'm assuming it was Netanyahu who went directly to Kushner and Trump. Now, we haven't yet found out that Trump directly knew about this but it is very hard to believe that Trump didn't endorse this. Now that we know that Mueller has access to all of the emails of the transition team, there is little doubt that they have been able to find their smoking gun. Flynn's plea meant that they basically had him dead to rights. It remains to be seen what will happen with Kushner but I would think that this would play some role in either the prosecution of Kushner or some plea deal.

Bernstein: The other big story, of course, is the decision by the Trump administration to move the US embassy from Tel-Aviv to Jerusalem. Was there any pre-election collusion in that regard and what are the implications?

Silverstein:

Well, it's a terrible decision which goes against forty to fifty years of US foreign policy. It also breaches all international understanding. All of our allies in the European Union and elsewhere are aghast at this development. There is now a campaign in the United Nations Security Council to pass a resolution condemning the announcement, which we will veto, but the next step will be to go to the General Assembly, where such a resolution will pass easily.

The question is how much anger, violence and disruption this is going to cause around the world, especially in the Arab and Muslim world. This is a slow-burning fuse. It is not going to explode right now. The issue of Jerusalem is so vital that this is not something that is simply going to go away. This is going to be a festering sore in the Muslim world and among Palestinians. We have already seen attacks on Israeli soldiers and citizens and there will be many more.

As to collusion in all of this, since Trump always said during the campaign that this was what he was going to do, it might be difficult to treat this in the same way as the UN resolution. The UN resolution was never on anybody's radar and nobody knew the role that Trump was playing behind the scenes with that–as opposed to Trump saying right from the get-go that Jerusalem was going to be recognized as the capital of Jerusalem.

By doing that, they have completely abrogated any Palestinian interest in Jerusalem. This is a catastrophic decision that really excludes the United States from being an honest broker here and shows our true colors in terms of how pro-Israel we are.

Dennis J Bernstein is a host of "Flashpoints" on the Pacifica radio network and the author of Special Ed: Voices from a Hidden Classroom . You can access the audio archives at www.flashpoints.net .

Drew Hunkins , December 23, 2017 at 5:37 pm

As most regular readers of CN already know, some dynamite books on the inordinate amount of influence pro-Israel zealots have on Washington:

1.) 'The Host and the Parasite' by Greg Felton
2.) 'Power of Israel in the United States' by James Petras
3.) 'They Dare to Speak Out' by Paul Findley
4.) 'The Israel Lobby' by Mearsheimer and Walt
5.) 'Zionism, Militarism and the Decline of U.S. Power' by James Petras

I suggest that anyone relatively knew to this neglected topic peruse a few of the aforementioned titles. An inevitable backlash by the citizens of the United States is eventually forthcoming against the Zionist Power Configuration. It's crucial that this impending backlash remain democratic, non-violent, eschews anti-Semitism, and travels in a progressive in direction.

Annie , December 23, 2017 at 5:47 pm

Which one would you suggest? I already read "The Israel Lobby."

Sam F , December 23, 2017 at 8:38 pm

Findley and Mearsheimer are certainly worthwhile. I will look for Petras.

Larry Larsen , December 24, 2017 at 6:38 pm

If you haven't already read them, the end/footnotes in "The Israel Lobby" are more illuminating.

SocraticGadfly , December 23, 2017 at 6:10 pm

That influence is also shown, of course, by the fact that Obama waited until the midnight hours of his tenure and after the 2016 election to even start working on this resolution.

SocraticGadfly , December 23, 2017 at 6:05 pm

While I think Bibi is an idiot, I also think the Logan Act is overinvoked, overstated, probably of dubious legal value and also of dubious constitutional value.

In short, especially because Trump had been elected, though not yet inaugurated, I think he is not at all guilty of a Logan Act violation. This is nothing close to Spiro Agnew calling Anna Chenault from the airplane in August 1968.

Sam F , December 23, 2017 at 8:41 pm

Probably true, although evidence of extreme collusion with Israel eliminates any case against Russia, with whom we have far more reasons for amity. Bringing out the Israel collusion greatly improves public understanding of political corruption. Perhaps it will awaken some to the Agnew-Chennault betrayal of the people of the US.

JWalters , December 24, 2017 at 3:32 am

It's ironic that Russia-gate is turning out to be Israel's effort to distract attention from its complete control over the Democratic party in 2016. From Israeli billionaires behind the scenes to Debbie Wasserman-Schultz at the helm.

The leaked emails showed the corruption plainly, and based on the ACTUAL evidence (recorded download time), most likely came from a highly disgruntled insider. The picture was starting to spill into public view. I'd estimate the real huge worry was that if this stuff came out, it could bring out other Israeli secrets, like their involvement in 9/11. That would mean actual jail time. Might be hard to buy your way out of that no matter how much money you have.

Annie , December 23, 2017 at 10:48 pm

The Logan act states that anyone who negotiates with an enemy of the US, and Israel is not defined as an enemy.

Annie , December 23, 2017 at 6:59 pm

The Logan act would not apply here, although I wish it would. I don't think anyone has been convicted based on this act, and they were part of a transition team not to mention the Logan act clearly states a private citizen who attempts to negotiate with an enemy state, and that certainly doesn't apply to Israel. In this administration their bias is so blatant that they can install Kushner as an honest broker in the Israeli-Palestine peace process while his family has a close relationship with Netanyahu, and he runs a foundation that invests in the building of illegal settlements which goes against the Geneva conventions. Hopefully Trump's blatant siding with Israel will receive a lot of backlash as did his plan to make Jerusalem the capital of Israel.

I also found that so called progressive internet sites don't cover this the way they should.

Al Pinto , December 24, 2017 at 9:16 am

@Annie

"The Logan act would not apply here, although I wish it would."

You and me both .

From the point of starting to read this article, it has been in my mind that the Logan act would not apply here. After reading most of the comments, it became clear that not many people viewed this as such. Yes, Joe Tedesky did as well

The UN is the "clearing house" for international politics, where countries freely contact each other's for getting support for their cause behind the scene. The support sought after could be voting for or against the resolution on hand. At times, as Israel did, countries reach out to perceived enemies as well, if they could not secure sufficient support for their cause. This is the normal activity of the UN diplomacy.

Knowing that the outgoing administration would not support its cause, Israel reached out to the incoming administration to delay the vote on the UN resolution. I fail to see anything wrong with Israel's action even in this case; Israel is not an enemy state to the US. As such, there has been no violation of any acts by the incoming administration, even if they tried to secure veto vote for Israel. I do not like it, but no action by Mueller in this case is correct.

People, just like the article in itself, implying that the Logan Act applies in this case are just plain wrong. Not just wrong, but their anti-Israel bias is in plain view.

Whether we like it or not, the former and current administration view Russia is as an enemy state. Even then, Russia contacting the incoming administration is not a violation of the Logan Act. That is just normal diplomacy in the background between countries. What would be a violation is that the contacted official acted on the behalf of Russia and tried to influence the outgoing administration's decision. That is what the Mueller investigation tries to prove hopelessly

Herman , December 24, 2017 at 10:54 am

"Whether we like it or not, the former and current administration view Russia is as an enemy state." So that is how it works, the White House says it is an enemy state and therefore it is. The so called declaration is the hammer used for trying to make contact with Russia a criminal offense. We are not at war with Russia although we see our leaders doing their best to provoke Russia into one.

Annie , December 24, 2017 at 1:55 pm

Thanks for your reply. When I read the article and it referenced the Logan Act, which I am familiar with in that I've read about it before, I was surprised that Bernstein and Silverstein even brought it up because it so obviously does not apply in this case, since Israel is not considered an enemy state. Many have even referenced it as flimsy when it comes to convictions against those in Trump's transition team who had contacts with Russia. No one has ever been convicted under the Logan Act.

Larry Larsen , December 24, 2017 at 6:41 pm

The Logan Act either should apply equally, or not apply at all. This "Russia-gate" hype seems to apply it selectively.

mrtmbrnmn , December 23, 2017 at 7:36 pm

You guys are blinded by the light. The Israel connection disclosed by the malpracticer hack Mueller in the recent Flynn-flam just made Trump bullet-proof (so to speak).

There is no doubt that Trump is Bibi's and the Saudi's ventriloquist dummy and Jared has been an Israel agent of influence since he was 12.

But half the Dementedcrat Sore Loser Brigade will withdraw from the field of battle (not to mention most of the GOP living dead too) if publically and noisily tying Israel to Trump's tail becomes the only route to his removal. Which it would have to be, as there is no there there regarding the yearlong trumped-up PutinPutinPutin waterboarding of Trump.

Immediately (if not sooner) the mighty (pro-Israel) Donor Bank of Singer (Paul), Saban (Haim), Sachs (Goldman) & Adelson (Sheldon), would change their passwords and leave these politicians/beggars with empty begging bowls. End of $ordid $tory.

alley cat , December 23, 2017 at 7:45 pm

So Mueller caught Kushner and Flynn red-handed, sabotaging the Obama administration? What of it? He can't use that evidence, because it would inculpate the Zionist neocons that are orchestrating his farcical, Stalinist witchhunt. And Mueller, being an efficient terminator bot, knows that his target is Russia, not Israel.

Mueller can use that evidence of sabotage and/or obstruction of justice to try to coerce false confessions from Kushner and Flynn. But what are the chances of that, barring short stayovers for them at some CIA black site?

So Mueller will just have to continue swamp-fishing for potential perjurers ahem witnesses, for the upcoming show trials (to further inflame public opinion against Russia and Russia sympathizers). And continue he will, because (as we all know from Schwarzenegger's flicks), the only way to stop the terminator is to terminate him/it first.

Leslie F. , December 23, 2017 at 8:28 pm

He used it, along with other info, to turn flip Flynn and possibly can use it the same way again Kusher. Not all evidence has end up in court to be useful.

JWalters , December 23, 2017 at 8:40 pm

This is an extremely important story, excellently reported. All the main "facts" Americans think they know about Israel are, amazingly, flat-out lies.

1. Israel was NOT victimized by powerful Arab armies. Israel overpowered and victimized a defenseless, civilian Arab population. Military analysts knew the Arab armies were in poor shape and would not be able to resist the zionist army.

2. Muslim "citizens" of Israel do NOT have all the same rights as Jews.

3. Israelis are NOT under threat from the indigineous Palestinians, but Palestinians are under constant threats of theft and death from the Israelis.

4. Israel does NOT share America's most fundamental values, which rest on the principle of equal human rights for all.

Maintaining such a blanket of major lies for decades requires immense power. And this power would have to be exercised "under the radar" to be effective. That requires even more power. Both Congress and the press have to be controlled. How much power does it take to turn "Progressive Rachel" into "Tel Aviv Rachel"? To turn "It Takes a Village" Hillary into "Slaughter a Village" Hillary? It takes immense power AND ruthlessness.

War profiteers have exactly this combination of immense war profits and the ruthlessness to victimize millions of people.
"War Profiteers and the Roots of the War on Terror"
http://warprofiteerstory.blogspot.com

Vast war profits easily afford to buy the mainstream media. And controlling campaign contributions for members of Congress is amazingly cheap in the big picture. Such a squalid sale of souls.

And when simple bribery is not enough, they ruin a person's life through blackmail or false character assassination. And if those don't work they use death threats, including to family members, and finally murder. Their ruthlessness is unrestrained. John Perkins has described these tactics in "Confessions of an Economic Hit Man".

For readers who haven't seen it, here is an excellent riff on the absurdly overwhelming evidence for Israel's influence compared to that of Russia, at a highly professional news and analysis website run by Jewish anti-Zionists.
"Let's talk about Russian influence"
http://mondoweiss.net/2016/08/about-russian-influence/

mike k , December 23, 2017 at 8:44 pm

Hitler and Mussolini, Trump and Netanyahoo – matches made in Hell. These characters are so obviously, blatantly evil that it is deeply disturbing that people fail to see that, and instead go to great lengths to find some complicated flaws in these monsters.

mike k , December 23, 2017 at 8:49 pm

Keep it simple folks. No need for complex analyses. Just remember that these characters as simply as evil as it gets, and proceed from there. These asinine shows that portray mobsters as complex human beings are dangerously deluding. If you want to be victimized by these types, this kind of overthinking is just the way to go.

Sam F , December 23, 2017 at 9:00 pm

There is a modern theory of fiction that insists upon the portrayal of inconsistency in characters, both among the good guys and the bad guys. It is useful to show how those who do wrongs have made specific kinds of errors that make them abnormal, and that those who do right are not perfect but nonetheless did the right thing. Instead it is used by commercial writers to argue that the good are really bad, and the bad are really good, which is of course the philosophy of oligarchy-controlled mass publishers.

Sam F , December 23, 2017 at 8:54 pm

A very important article by Dennis Bernstein, and it is very appropriate that non-zionist Jews are active against the extreme zionist corruption of our federal government. I am sure that they are reviled by the zionists for interfering with the false denunciations of racism against the opponents of zionism. Indeed critics face a very nearly totalitarian power of zionism, which in league with MIC/WallSt opportunism has displaced democracy altogether in the US.

backwardsevolution , December 23, 2017 at 9:18 pm

A nice little set-up by the Obama administration. Perhaps it was entrapment? Who set it up? Flynn and Kushner should have known better to fall for it. So at the end of his Presidency, Obama suddenly gets balls and wants to slap down Israel? Yeah, right.

Nice to have leverage over people, though, isn't it? If you're lucky and play your cards right, you might even be lucky enough to land an impeachment.

Of course, I'm just being cynical. No one would want to overturn democracy, would they?

Certainly people like Comey, Brenner, Clinton, Clapper, Mueller, Rosenstein wouldn't want that, would they?

Joe Tedesky , December 23, 2017 at 10:33 pm

I just can't see any special prosecutor investigating Israel-Gate. Between what the Zionist donors donate to these creepy politicians, too what goods they have on these same mischievous politicians, I just can't see any investigation into Israel's collusion with the Trump Administration going anywhere. Netanyahu isn't Putin, and Russia isn't Israel. Plus, Israel is considered a U.S. ally, while Russia is being marked as a Washington rival. Sorry, this news regarding Israel isn't going to be ranted on about for the next 18 months, like the MSM has done with Russia, because our dear old Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East, or so they tell us. So, don't get your hopes up.

JWalters , December 24, 2017 at 3:33 am

It's true the Israelis have America's politicians by the ears and the balls. But as this story gets better known, politicians will start getting questions at their town meetings. Increasingly the politicians will gag on what Israel is force-feeding them, until finally they reach a critical mass of vomit in Congress.

Joe Tedesky , December 24, 2017 at 11:12 am

I hope you are right JWalters. Although relying on a Zionist controlled MSM doesn't give hope for the news getting out properly. Again I hope you are right JWalters. Joe

Jeff Blankfort , December 24, 2017 at 12:18 am

Actually, Netanyahu was so desperate to have the resolution pulled and not voted on that he reached out to any country that might help him after the foreign minister of New Zealand, one of its co-sponsors refused to pull the plug after a testy phone exchange with the Israeli PM ending up threatening an Israeli boycott oturnef the KIwis.

He then turned to his buddy, Vladimir Putin, who owed him a favor for having Israel's UN delegate absent himself for the UNGA vote on sanctioning Russia after its annexation of Crimea.

Putin then called Russia's UN Ambassador, Vitaly Churkin, since deceased, and asked him to get the other UNSC ambassadors to postpone the vote until Trump took over the White House but the other ambassadors weren't buying it. Given Russia's historic public position regarding the settlements, Churkin had no choice to vote Yes with the others.

This story was reported in detail in the Israeli press but blacked out in the US which, due to Zionist influence on the media, does not want the American public to know about the close ties between Putin and Netanyahu which has led to the Israeli PM making five state visits there in the last year and a half.

Had Clinton won the White House we can assume that there would have been no US veto. That Netanyahu apparently knew in advance that the US planned to veto the resolution was, I suspect, leaked to the Israelis by US delegate Samantha Power, who was clearly unhappy at having to abstain.

Abe , December 24, 2017 at 12:39 am

The Israeli Prime Minister made five state visits to Russia in the last year and a half to make sure the Russians don't accidentally on purpose blast Israeli warplanes from the sky over Syria (like they oughtta). Putin tries not to snicker when Netanyahu bloviates ad nauseum about the purported "threat" posed by Iran.

argos , December 24, 2017 at 7:00 am

He thinks Putin is a RATS ASS like the yankee government

JWalters , December 24, 2017 at 3:34 am

"This story was reported in detail in the Israeli press but blacked out in the US"

We've just had a whole cluster of big stories involving Israel that have all been essentially blacked out in the US press. e.g.
"Dionne and Shields ignore the Adelson in the room"
http://mondoweiss.net/2017/12/jerusalem-israels-capital

This is not due to chance. There is no doubt that the US mainstream media is wholly controlled by the Israelis.

alley cat , December 24, 2017 at 4:49 am

"He [Netanyahu] then turned to his buddy, Vladimir Putin "

Jeff, that characterization of Putin and Netanyahu's relationship makes no sense, since the Russians have consistently opposed Zionism and Putin has been no exception, having spoiled Zionist plans for the destruction of Syria.

"Had Clinton won the White House we can assume that there would have been no US veto."

Not sure where you're going with that, since the US vote was up to Obama, who wanted to get some payback for all of Bibi's efforts to sabotage Obama's treaty with Iran.

For the record, Zionism has had no more rabid supporter than the Dragon Lady. If we're going to make assumptions, we could start by assuming that if she had won the White House we'd all be dead by now, thanks to her obsession (at the instigation of her Zionist/neocon sponsors) with declaring no-fly zones in Syria.

Brendan , December 24, 2017 at 6:18 am

Trump and Kushner have nothing to worry about, even if a smoking gun is found that proves their collusion with Israel. That's because the entire political and media establishment will simply ignore the Israeli connection.

Journalists and politicians will even continue to present Mike Flynn's contacts as evidence of collusion with Russia. They'll keep on repeating that "Flynn lied about his phone call to the Russian ambassador". But there will be no mention of the fact that the purpose of this contact was to support Israel and not any alleged Russian interference.

Skip Scott , December 24, 2017 at 7:59 am

I think you have it right Brendan. The MSM, Intelligence Community, and Mueller would never go down any path that popularized undue Israeli influence on US foreign policy. "Nothing to see here folks, move along."

argos , December 24, 2017 at 6:57 am

The zionist will stop at nothing to control the middle east with American taxpayers money/military equiptment its a win win for the zionist they control America lock stock and barrel a pity though it is a great country to be led by a jewish entity.

Herman , December 24, 2017 at 10:47 am

What will Israel-Palestine look like twenty years from now? Will it remain an apartheid regime, a regime without any Palestinians, or something different. The Trump decision, which the world rejects, brings the issue of "final" settlement to the fore. In a way we can go back to the thirties and the British Mandate. Jewish were fleeing Europe, many coming to Palestine. The British, on behalf of the Zionists, were delaying declaring Palestine a state with control of its own affairs. Seeing the mass immigration and chafing at British foot dragging, the Arabs rebelled, What happened then was that the British, responding to numerous pressures notably war with Germany, acted by granting independence and granting Palestine control of its borders.

With American pressure and the mass exodus of Jews from Europe, Jews defied the British resulting in Jewish resistance. What followed then was a UN plan to divide the land with a Jerusalem an international city administered by the UN. The Arabs rebelled and lost much of what the UN plan provided and Jerusalem as an international city was scrapped.

Will there be a second serious attempt to settle the issue of the land and the status of Jerusalem? Will there be a serious move toward a single state? How will the matter of Jerusalem be resolved. The two state solution has always been a fantasy and acquiescence of Palestinians to engage in this charade exposes their leaders to charges of posturing for perks. Imagined options could go on and on but will there be serious options placed before the world community or will the boots on the ground Israeli policies continue?

As I have commented before, it will most probably be the Jewish community in Israel and the world that shapes the future and if the matter is to be resolved that is fair to both parties, it will be they that starts the ball rolling.

Zachary Smith , December 24, 2017 at 1:34 pm

As I have commented before, it will most probably be the Jewish community in Israel and the world that shapes the future and if the matter is to be resolved that is fair to both parties, it will be they that starts the ball rolling.

The Nice Zionists responsible for the thefts and murders for the past 69 years along with the "Jewish Community" in the rest of the world will resolve the matter so as to be fair to both parties. This is mind-boggling fantasy.

Larry Larsen , December 24, 2017 at 5:56 pm

Truly mind-boggling. Ahistorical, and as you say, fantasy.

Larry Larsen , December 24, 2017 at 5:48 pm

FFS, Netanyahu aired a political commercial in Florida for Romney saying vote for this guy (against Obama)! I mean, it doesn't get any more overtly manipulative than that. Period. End of story.

$50K of Facebook ads about puppies pales in comparison to that blatant, prima facia, public manipulation. God, I hate to go all "Israel controls the media" but there it is. Not even a discussion. Just a fact.

Larry Larsen , December 24, 2017 at 6:11 pm

Just for the record, Richard Silverstein blocked me on Twitter because I pointed out that he slammed someone who was suggesting that the Assad government was fighting for its (Syria's) life by fighting terrorists. Actually, more specifically, because of that he read my "Free Palestine" bio on Twitter and called me a Hamas supporter (no Hamas mentioned) and a "moron" for some seeming contradiction.

I also have to point out that he "fist pumped" Hillary Clinton at Mohammed Ali's eulogy. If he's as astute as he purports to be, he has to know that Hillary would have invaded Syria and killed a few hundred thousand more Syrians for the simple act of defiantly preserving their country. By almost any read of Ali's history, he would have been adamantly ("killing brown people") against that. But there was Silverstein using the platform to promote, arguably, perpetual war.

Silverstein is probably not a good (ie. consistent) arbiter of Israeli impact on US politics. Just sayin'.

I wish it were otherwise.

Taras 77 , December 24, 2017 at 6:35 pm

https://www.therussophile.org/virus-found-inside-dnc-server-is-linked-to-a-company-based-in-pakistan.html/

This may be a tad ot but it relates to the alleged hacking of the DNC, the role debbie wasserman schultz plays in the spy ring (awan bros) in house of rep servers: I have long suspected that mossad has their fingers in this entire mess. FWIW

Good site, BTW.

Zachary Smith , December 24, 2017 at 7:35 pm

I can't recall why I removed the Tikun Olam site from my bookmarks – it happened quite a while back. Generally I do that when I feel the blogger crossed some kind of personal red line. Something Mr. Silverstein wrote put him over that line with me.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/06/us/06leak.html?hp

In the course of a search I found that at the neocon NYT. Mr. Silverstein claims several things I find unbelievable, and from that alone I wonder about his ultimate motives. I may be excessively touchy about this, but that's how it is.

Larry Larsen , December 24, 2017 at 8:51 pm

Yeah Zachary, "wondering about ultimate motives" is probably a good way to put it/his views. He's obviously conflicted, if not deferential in some aspects of Israeli policy. He really was a hero of mine, but now I just don't get whether what he says is masking something or a true belief. He says some good stuff, but, but, but .

P. Michael Garber , December 24, 2017 at 11:54 pm

Yeah I found a couple of Silverstein's statements to be closer to neocon propaganda than reality: "Because this is Israel and because we have a conflicted relationship with the Israel lobby . . ." "Instead of going directly to the Obama administration, with which they had terrible relations, they went to Trump instead." My impression was that the whole "terrible relationship between Obama and Netanyahu" was manufactured by the Israel lobby to bully Obama. However these are small blips within an otherwise solid critique of the Israel lobby's influence.

[Dec 23, 2017] Israel lobby in the United States

Dec 23, 2017 | en.wikipedia.org

The formal component of the Israel lobby consists of organized lobby groups , political action committees (PACs), think tanks and media watchdog groups . The Center for Responsive Politics , which tracks all lobbies and PACs, describes the 'background' of those 'Pro-Israel' as, "A nationwide network of local political action committees, generally named after the region their donors come from, supplies much of the pro-Israel money in US politics . Additional funds also come from individuals who bundle contributions to candidates favored by the PACs. The donors' unified goal is to build stronger US-Israel relations and to support Israel in its negotiations and armed conflicts with its Arab neighbors." [24]

According to Mitchell Bard, there are, three key formal lobbying groups:

... ... ...

A summary of pro-Israel campaign donations for the period of 1990–2008 collected by Center for Responsive Politics indicates current totals and a general increase in proportional donations to the US Republican party since 1996. [46] The Center for Responsive Politics' 1990–2006 data shows that "pro-Israel interests have contributed $56.8 million in individual, group and soft money donations to federal candidates and party committees since 1990." [47] In contrast, Arab-Americans and Muslim PACs contributed slightly less than $800,000 during the same (1990–2006) period. [48] In 2006, 60% of the Democratic Party 's fundraising and 25% of that for the Republican Party's fundraising came from Jewish-funded PACs. According to a Washington Post estimate, Democratic presidential candidates depend on Jewish sources for as much as 60% of money raised from private sources. [49]

... ... ...

AIPAC does not give donations directly to candidates, but those who donate to AIPAC are often important political contributors in their own right. In addition, AIPAC helps connect donors with candidates, especially to the network of pro-Israel political action committees. AIPAC president Howard Friedman says "AIPAC meets with every candidate running for Congress. These candidates receive in-depth briefings to help them completely understand the complexities of Israel's predicament and that of the Middle East as a whole. We even ask each candidate to author a 'position paper' on their views of the US-Israel relationship – so it's clear where they stand on the subject."[43]

.... ... ...

Mearsheimer and Walt state that "pro-Israel figures have established a commanding presence at the American Enterprise Institute, the Center for Security Policy, the Foreign Policy Research Institute, the Heritage Foundation, the Hudson Institute, the Institute for Foreign Policy Analysis, and the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA). These think tanks are all decidedly pro-Israel and include few, if any, critics of US support for the Jewish state."[50]

... ... ...

In 2006 former U.N. weapons inspector in Iraq Scott Ritter published "Target Iran: The Truth About the White House's Plans for Regime Change" ( ISBN 978-1-56025-936-7 ). In his book he stated that certain Israelis and pro-Israel elements in the United States were trying to push the Bush administration into war with Iran. [124] He also accuses the U.S. pro-Israel lobby of dual loyalty and outright espionage (see Lawrence Franklin espionage scandal ). [125]

[Dec 09, 2017] What World Leaders Think of Jerusalem as Israel's Capital - YouTube

Dec 09, 2017 | www.youtube.com

dulsen20113 days ago

Here is a list of officials in the US Government who hold Dual Citizenship, as well as just how much influence Israel had and still have on our government..

1. Attorney General - Michael Mukasey
2. Head of Homeland Security - Michael Chertoff
3. Chairman Pentagon's Defense Policy Board - Richard Perle
4. Deputy Defense Secretary (Former) - Paul Wolfowitz
5. Under Secretary of Defense - Douglas Feith
6. National Security Council Advisor - Elliott Abrams
7. Vice President #$%$ Cheney's Chief of Staff (Former) - "Scooter" Libby
8. White House Deputy Chief of Staff - Joshua Bolten
9. Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs - Marc Grossman
10. Director of Policy Planning at the State Department - Richard Haass
11. U.S. Trade Representative (Cabinet-level Position) - Robert Zoellick
12. Pentagon's Defense Policy Board - James Schlesinger
13. UN Representative (Former) - John Bolton
14. Under Secretary for Arms Control - David Wurmser
15. Pentagon's Defense Policy Board - Eliot Cohen
16. Senior Advisor to the President - Steve Goldsmith
17. Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary - Christopher Gersten
18. Assistant Secretary of State - Lincoln Bloomfield
19. Deputy Assistant to the President - Jay Lefkowitz
20. White House Political Director - Ken Melman
21. National Security Study Group - Edward Luttwak
22. Pentagon's Defense Policy Board - Kenneth Adelman
23. Defense Intelligence Agency Analyst (Former) - Lawrence (Larry) Franklin
24. National Security Council Advisor - Robert Satloff
25. President Export-Import Bank U.S. - Mel Sembler
26. Deputy Assistant Secretary, Administration for Children and Families - Christopher Gersten
27. Assistant Secretary of Housing and Urban Development for Public Affairs - Mark Weinberger
28. White House Speechwriter - David Frum
29. White House Spokesman (Former) - Ari Fleischer
30. Pentagon's Defense Policy Board - Henry Kissinger
31. Deputy Secretary of Commerce - Samuel Bodman
32. Under Secretary of State for Management - Bonnie Cohen
33. Director of Foreign Service Institute - Ruth Davis

Senate:

Senator Dianne Feinstein (California)
Senator Barbara Boxer (California)
Senator Benjamin Cardin (Maryland)
Senator Russ Feingold (Wisconsin)
Senator Al Franken (Minnesota)
Senator Herb Kohl (Wisconsin)
Senator Frank Lautenberg (New Jersey)
Senator Joe Lieberman (Connecticut) (Independent)
Senator Carl Levin (Michigan)
Senator Bernard Sanders (Vermont) (Independent)
Senator Charles Schumer (New York)
Senator Ron Wyden (Oregon)

House of Representatives:

Representative Howard Berman (California)
Representative Susan Davis (California)
Representative Bob Filner (California)
Representative Jane Harman (California)
Representative Adam Schiff (California)
Representative Henry Waxman (California)
Representative Brad Sherman (California)
Representative Gary Ackerman (New York)
Representative John H. Adler (New Jersey)
Representative Shelley Berkley (Nevada)
Representative Steve Cohen (Tennessee)
Representative Eliot Engel (New York)
Representative Barney Frank (Massachusetts)
Representative Gabrielle Giffords (Arizona)
Representative Alan Grayson (Florida)
Representative Paul Hodes (New Hampshire)
Representative Steve Israel (New York)
Representative Steve Kagen (Wisconsin)
Representative Ronald Klein (Florida)
Representative Sander Levin (Michigan)
Representative Nita Lowey (New York)
Representative Jerry Nadler (New York)
Representative Jared Polis (Colorado)
Representative Steve Rothman (New Jersey)
Representative Jan Schakowsky (Illinois)
Representative Allyson Schwartz (Pennsylvania)
Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz (Florida)
Representative Anthony Weiner (New York)
Representative John Yarmuth (Kentucky)

Last and not the least influential Zionist lobby in America is the Christian Zionists Movement backed by American senators and politicians, bragging a million plus members

America is the only country in the world that has this many citizens of another country in its congress??? 

And 4 billions every year to israel ?? Why ?? 

No wonder israel AIPAC is running a muck


[Dec 07, 2017] Is trying to make this artificial entity strong, not only will end up badly anyway, but simply is not even in the US national interest?

Dec 07, 2017 | www.unz.com

renfro , December 7, 2017 at 2:37 am GMT

@CanSpeccy

It would surely be in the US interest if fewer Jews felt the need to put the interests of Israel before those of their own country, the USA. Moreover, if Israel were truly independent and secure, or as secure as is possible for any small country to be, would that not encourage America's Israel Firsters to go and live in Israel, thus loosening the grip that the Israeli lobby has on the US Government

Afraid not.

First and foremost Israel has to have enough Jews in the US to talk it up to politicians as a voting block for them.

Another First is that Israel is not self supporting and never will be –they don't the land water or resources to be self sufficient -- hence the stealing of Palestine and the constant money grubbing from other states.

Second..They also have to have Jews here to ensure the politicians keep giving Israel billions of our tax money every year. And Israel really has to have the Uber Jews in the US stay here to fund and sway both parties and elections, threaten politicians, form their lobby and keep an eye on their Israel voting.

Also important, Israel must have all the 100s of US Jewish agencies, clubs, org and etc to propagandize and to use Congress to get special grants and favors for hundreds of Jewish charities.

Jews also make 100 phone calls for Israel and Jewish programs to their congresspeople for every one call a non Jew makes to their rep on some issue.
Another point, Israel must have enough Jews in the US to get a lot of them educated -- the average IQ of Jews in Israel is 85, Jews have only succeeded and excelled when exposed to non Jewish education.

If there were no Jews in the US it is unlikely US tech giants and others would set up plants in Israel when they could find cheaper and just as skilled and more educated workers in Asia and elsewhere or that Israel would get special trade favors from the US.

If there were no Jews in the US Israel wouldn't be able to sell a billion dollars worth of bonds to US unions and pension funds every year.

If there were no Jews in the US, Jews couldn't send 2 billion of money made in the US to Israel every year -- that money would have been in non Jewish pockets and stayed and circulated in the US economy.

If there were no Jews in the US then the 90% of Dept of Homeland Security funds might go to improving school security and preventing school shootings in the US instead of to Jewish temples and office buildings for Jewish security.

If there were no Jews in the US then they couldn't clog up American courts to sue every other country and corporation in the world for more money for the Jews.

If there were no Jews in the US our constitutional free speech rights wouldn't be under assault by the uber Jews.

If there were no Jews in the US congress wouldn't even think of trying to criminalize citizens rights to boycott whoever he wishes.

If there were no Jews there wouldn't be Jews who go into small towns around the country looking for some town or county that opens their business meetings with a Christian prayer so they can sue them under separation of church and state because it hurts their feeling and saying Jesus makes them uncomfortable- -yea they did that in my state and took it all the way to the supreme court –and lost thankfully.

Last but not least if there were no Jews in the US Israel probably would never have existed or would have failed shortly after it started because there would have been no diaspora Jews to lobby the countries they lived in to help Israel .

I getting tired but will list more sometime
Meanwhile -- If you go to the presidential libraries starting with Truman, in all their papers and discussions on Israel you will see the phase .. "domestic political considerations " ..over and over and over by every president meaning the pressure and money that the tribe exerts for or against a politician according to their Israel policy.

[Nov 22, 2017] Here is an analysis of how much Israel spent to influence USA elections

Nov 22, 2017 | turcopolier.typepad.com

outthere , 22 November 2017 at 03:24 PM

Here is an analysis of how much Israel spent to influence USA elections
Washington - Which Nation is Really Interfering in the Electoral Process?
http://viableopposition.blogspot.ru/2017/07/washington-which-nation-is-really.html

[Oct 17, 2017] The Lobby British Style by Philip M. Giraldi

Maybe, instead of Russia-Gate, we have is Israel-Gate. This time Netanyahu discreetly interfering in US Presidential Election ..Chilling thought though!
Notable quotes:
"... casus belli ..."
"... To be sure, my observations are neither new nor unique. Former Congressmen Paul Findley indicted the careful crafting of a pro-Israel narrative by American Jews in his seminal book They Dare to Speak Out: People and Institutions Confront Israel's Lobby , written in 1989. Professors John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt's groundbreaking book The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy said much the same thing nine years ago and discussions of Jewish power do emerge occasionally, even in the mainstream media. In the Jewish media Jewish power is openly discussed and is generally applauded as a well-deserved reward bestowed both by God and by mankind due to the significant accomplishments attributed to Jews throughout history. ..."
"... That many groups and well-positioned individuals work hand-in-hand with the Israeli government to advance Israeli interests should not be in dispute after all these years of watching it in action. Several high level Jewish officials, including Richard Perle , associated with the George W. Bush Pentagon, had questionable relationships with Israeli Embassy officials and were only able to receive security clearances after political pressure was applied to "godfather" approvals for them. Former Congressman Tom Lantos and Senator Frank Lautenberg were, respectively, referred to as Israel's Congressman and Senator, while current Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer has described himself as Israel's "shomer" or guardian in the U.S. Senate. ..."
"... The documentary reveals that local Jewish groups, particularly at universities and within the political parties, do indeed work closely with the Israeli Embassy to promote policies supported by the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. ..."
"... That's the money shot, Phil. I'm okay with Jews, okay with the existence of Israel, all that, but I think we were massively had by Iraq II. When Valerie Plame spoke in my area, she talked disgustedly about a plan to establish American military power throughout the Middle East. She used the euphemism "neocons" for the plan's authors, and seemed about to burst with anger. ..."
"... I recall the basic idea was for the U. S. to do Israel's dirty work at U. S. expense and without a U. S. benefit, and I think there was the usual "God talk" cover in it about "democratization", "development", blah-blah. ..."
"... I'd also add Adlai E. Stevenson III and John Glenn. Stevenson was crucial in getting compensation -- paltry sum though it was– payed to "Liberty" families for their loss. The Israelis had been holding out. Something for which the Il Senator was never forgiven (especially by The Lobby). ..."
"... Netanyahu should not have been allowed to address the joint session. No foreign leader should be speaking in opposition to any sitting President (in this case Obama). It only showed the power of "The Lobby." Netanyahu who knew that Iran didn't have the weapons the Bush Adm. had claimed, was treated like a trusted ally. He shouldn't have been. ..."
"... Maybe, instead of Russia-Gate, we have is Israel-Gate. This time Netanyahu discreetly interfering in US Presidential Election ..Chilling thought though! ..."
"... And Israeli interference in U.S. government and elections is also a given. Endorsement of Mitt Romney in the 2012 presidential election by the Netanyahu government was more-or-less carried out in the open. ..."
"... All embassies try to further their national interest through political machinations and all people in politics tend to use hyperbolic language to describe what they are doing. I don't know if your shock is just for show or you are just a bit dim. The same applies to Buzzfeed's 'expose' of Bannon and the gasps the article let out at his use of terms like #War. ..."
"... The British government attitude was that everything was fine because the Israeli government "apologised" and the "rogue individual" responsible was taken out of the country, and the British media mostly ignored the story after an initial brief scandal. Indeed the main substantive response was the Ofcom fishing expedition against Al Jazeera looking for ways to use the disclosure of these uncomfortable truths as a pretext for shutting that company's operations down. ..."
"... The supreme irony behind all this is that Trump has been prevented by his own personal and family/adviser bias from using the one certain way of removing all the laughably vague "Russian influence" nonsense that has been used against him so persistently. All he had to do was to, at every opportunity, tie criticism and investigation of Russian "influence" to criticism and investigation of Israel Lobby influence under the general rubric of "foreign influence", and almost all of the high level backing for the charges would in due course have quietly evaporated. ..."
"... WASP culture has always been philo-Semitic. That cannot be stated too much. WASP culture is inherently philo-Semtic. WASP culture was born of Anglo-Saxon Puritanism, which was a Judaizing heresy. ..."
"... You cannot solve 'the Jewish problem' unless you also solve 'the WASP problem.' ..."
"... The Israeli lobby is more powerful throughout the Anglosphere than the Saudi/Arabic lobby, but the Saudi lobby is equally detestable and probably even a more grave threat to the very existence of Western man. ..."
"... That the intelligence services of many countries engage in such conduct is not really news. Indeed, you could say that it's part of their normal job. They usually don't get caught and when accused of anything they shout "no evidence!" (now, where have I heard that recently?) Of course, if the Israelis engage in such conduct, then, logically, other countries' services do so too. ..."
"... Not surprising that the Jewish public gets gamed by Israeli political elites, just as the American public keeps getting gamed by our own cabal of bought politicians. Trying to fool enough of the people, enough of the time, contra Lincoln (who was not exactly a friend of critical dissent against war either .) ..."
Oct 17, 2017 | www.unz.com

One month ago, I initiated here at Unz.com a discussion of the role of American Jews in the crafting of United States foreign policy. I observed that a politically powerful and well-funded cabal consisting of both Jewish individuals and organizations has been effective at engaging the U.S. in a series of wars in the Middle East and North Africa that benefit only Israel and are, in fact, damaging to actual American interests. This misdirection of policy has not taken place because of some misguided belief that Israeli and U.S. national security interests are identical, which is a canard that is frequently floated in the mainstream media. It is instead a deliberate program that studiously misrepresents facts-on-the ground relating to Israel and its neighbors and creates casus belli involving the United States even when no threat to American vital interests exists. It punishes critics by damaging both their careers and reputations while its cynical manipulation of the media and gross corruption of the national political process has already produced the disastrous war against Iraq, the destruction of Libya and the ongoing chaos in Syria. It now threatens to initiate a catastrophic war with Iran.

To be sure, my observations are neither new nor unique. Former Congressmen Paul Findley indicted the careful crafting of a pro-Israel narrative by American Jews in his seminal book They Dare to Speak Out: People and Institutions Confront Israel's Lobby , written in 1989. Professors John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt's groundbreaking book The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy said much the same thing nine years ago and discussions of Jewish power do emerge occasionally, even in the mainstream media. In the Jewish media Jewish power is openly discussed and is generally applauded as a well-deserved reward bestowed both by God and by mankind due to the significant accomplishments attributed to Jews throughout history.

There is undeniably a complicated web of relationships and networks that define Israel's friends. The expression "Israel Lobby" itself has considerable currency, so much so that the expression "The Lobby" is widely used and understood to represent the most powerful foreign policy advocacy group in Washington without needing to include the "Israel" part. That the monstrous Benjamin Netanyahu receives 26 standing ovations from Congress and a wealthy Israel has a guaranteed income from the U.S. Treasury derives directly from the power and money of an easily identifiable cluster of groups and oligarchs – Paul Singer, Sheldon Adelson, Bernard Marcus, Haim Saban – who in turn fund a plethora of foundations and institutes whose principal function is to keep the cash and political support flowing in Israel's direction. No American national interest, apart from the completely phony contention that Israel is some kind of valuable ally, would justify the taxpayers' largesse. In reality, Israel is a liability to the United States and always has been.

And I do understand at the same time that a clear majority of American Jews, leaning strongly towards the liberal side of the political spectrum, are supportive of the nuclear agreement with Iran and do not favor a new Middle Eastern war involving that country. I also believe that many American Jews are likely appalled by Israeli behavior, but, unfortunately, there is a tendency on their part to look the other way and neither protest such actions nor support groups like Jewish Voice for Peace that are themselves openly critical of Israel. This de facto gives Israel a free pass and validates its assertion that it represents all Jews since no one important in the diaspora community apart from minority groups which can safely be ignored is pushing back against that claim.

That many groups and well-positioned individuals work hand-in-hand with the Israeli government to advance Israeli interests should not be in dispute after all these years of watching it in action. Several high level Jewish officials, including Richard Perle , associated with the George W. Bush Pentagon, had questionable relationships with Israeli Embassy officials and were only able to receive security clearances after political pressure was applied to "godfather" approvals for them. Former Congressman Tom Lantos and Senator Frank Lautenberg were, respectively, referred to as Israel's Congressman and Senator, while current Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer has described himself as Israel's "shomer" or guardian in the U.S. Senate.

A recent regulatory decision from the United Kingdom relates to a bit of investigative journalism that sought to reveal precisely how the promotion of Israel by some local diaspora Jews operates, to include how critics are targeted and criticized as well as what is done to destroy their careers and reputations.

Last year, al-Jazeera Media Network used an undercover reporter to infiltrate some U.K. pro-Israel groups that were working closely with the Israeli Embassy to counter criticisms coming from British citizens regarding the treatment of the Palestinians. In particular, the Embassy and its friends were seeking to counter the growing Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement (BDS), which has become increasingly effective in Europe. The four-part documentary released late in 2016 that al-Jazeera produced is well worth watching as it consists mostly of secretly filmed meetings and discussions.

The documentary reveals that local Jewish groups, particularly at universities and within the political parties, do indeed work closely with the Israeli Embassy to promote policies supported by the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. It also confirms that tagging someone as an anti-Semite has become the principal offensive weapon used to stifle any discussion, particularly in a country like Britain which embraces concepts like the criminalization of "hate speech." At one point, two British Jews discussed whether "being made to feel uncomfortable" by people asking what Israel intends to do with the Palestinians is anti-Semitic. They agreed that it might be.

The documentary also describes how the Embassy and local groups working together targeted government officials who were not considered to be friendly to Israel to "be taken down," removed from office or otherwise discredited. One government official in particular who was to be attacked was Foreign Office Minister Sir Alan Duncan.

Britain, unlike the U.S., has a powerful regulatory agency that oversees communications, to include the media. It is referred to as Ofcom. When the al-Jazeera documentary was broadcast, Israeli Embassy political officer Shai Masot, who reportedly was a Ministry of Strategic Affairs official working under cover, was forced to resign and the Israeli Ambassador offered an apology. Masot was filmed discussing British politicians who might be "taken down" before speaking with a government official who plotted a "a little scandal" to bring about the downfall of Duncan. Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn, who is the first head of a political party in Britain to express pro-Palestinian views, had called for an investigation of Masot after the recording of the "take down" demand relating to Duncan was revealed. Several Jewish groups (the Jewish Labour Movement, the Union of Jewish Students and We Believe in Israel) then counterattacked with a complaint that the documentary had violated British broadcast regulations, including the specific charge that the undercover investigation was anti-Semitic in nature.

On October 9 th , Ofcom ruled in favor of al-Jazeera, stating that its investigation had done nothing improper, but it should be noted that the media outlet had to jump through numerous hoops to arrive at the successful conclusion. It had to turn over all its raw footage and communications to the investigators, undergoing what one source described as an "editorial colonoscopy," to prove that its documentary was "factually accurate" and that it had not "unfairly edited" or "with bias" prepared its story. One of plaintiffs, who had called for critics of Israel to "die in a hole" and had personally offered to "take down" a Labour Party official, responded bitterly. She said that the Ofcom judgment would serve as a "precedent for the infringement of privacy of any Jewish person involved in public life."

The United States does not yet have a government agency to regulate news stories, though that may be coming, but the British tale has an interesting post script. Al-Jazeera also had a second undercover reporter inserted in the Israel Lobby in the United States, apparently a British intern named James Anthony Kleinfeld, who had volunteered his services to The Israel Project, which is involved in promoting Israel's global image. He also had contact with at least ten other Jewish organizations and with officials at the Israeli Embassy,

Now that the British account of "The Lobby" has cleared a regulatory hurdle the American version will reportedly soon be released. Al-Jazeera's head of investigative reporting Clayton Swisher commented "With this U.K. verdict and vindication past us, we can soon reveal how the Israel lobby in America works through the eyes of an undercover reporter. I hear the U.S. is having problems with foreign interference these days, so I see no reason why the U.S. establishment won't take our findings in America as seriously as the British did, unless of course Israel is somehow off limits from that debate."

Americans who follow such matters already know that groups like the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) swarm over Capitol Hill and have accomplices in nearly every media outlet. Back in 2005-6 AIPAC Officials Steve Rosen and Keith Weissman were actually tried under the Espionage Act of 1918 in a case involving obtaining classified intelligence from government official Lawrence Franklin to pass on to the Israeli Embassy. Rosen had once boasted that, representing AIPAC and Israel, he could get the signatures of 70 senators on a napkin agreeing to anything if he sought to do so. The charges against the two men were, unfortunately, eventually dropped "because court rulings had made the case unwinnable and the trial would disclose classified information."

And Israeli interference in U.S. government and elections is also a given. Endorsement of Mitt Romney in the 2012 presidential election by the Netanyahu government was more-or-less carried out in the open. And ask Congressmen like Paul Findley, Pete McCloskey, William Fulbright, Charles Percy and, most recently, Cynthia McKinney, what happens to your career when you appear to be critical of Israel. And the point is that while Israel calls the shots in terms of what it wants, it is a cabal of diaspora American Jews who actually pull the trigger. With that in mind, it will be very interesting to watch the al-Jazeera documentary on The Lobby in America.

Rurik , October 17, 2017 at 4:29 am GMT

Philip Giraldi is a rare American treasure. A voice of integrity and character in a sea of moral cowardice and corruption. If there is any hope for this nation, it will be due specifically to the integrity of men like Mr. Giraldi to keep speaking truth to power.
googlecensors , October 17, 2017 at 5:00 am GMT
One is unable to open the documentary – all 4 parts – on YouTube suggesting that google/YouTube are censoring it and have caved into the Jewish Lobby
Malla , October 17, 2017 at 5:03 am GMT
When the Jewish Messiah comes, all of us goyim (Black, White, Yellow, brown or Red) will be living like today's Palestinians. Our slave descendant will be scurrying around in their ghettos afraid of the Greater Israeli Army military andriod drones in the sky.

But if I was a Westerner, I would support Israel any day. Because if the Israeli state were to be ever dismantled, all of them Israelis would go to the West. Why would you want that?

Frankie P , October 17, 2017 at 5:42 am GMT
@Rurik

He has been set free by the truth, proving the old maxim.

wayfarer , October 17, 2017 at 5:43 am GMT
Understand a Spoiled Child, and You Will Understand Israel. source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spoiled_child

Discipline the Spoiled Child, and Boycott Israel. source: https://bdsmovement.net/

Israel Anti-Boycott Act – An Attack on Free Speech?

Dan Hayes , October 17, 2017 at 5:48 am GMT
Philip,

My admittedly subjective impression is that your UR reports are becoming more open/unbounded after your release from the constraints of the American Conservative . In other word, you're now being enabled to let it all hang out. In my book that's all to the good.

Of course your work and those of the other UR writers are enabled by the beneficence of its patron, Ron!

Uebersetzer , October 17, 2017 at 6:14 am GMT
There may be limits to their power in Britain. Jeremy Corbyn is hated by them, and stories are regularly run in the MSM, in Britain and also (of course!) in the New York Times claiming that under Corbyn Labour is a haven of anti-Semitism. Corbyn actually gained millions of votes in the last election. Perhaps they will nail him somewhere down the road but they have failed so far.
JackOH , October 17, 2017 at 6:59 am GMT
" . . . [W]ars in the Middle East and North Africa that benefit only Israel and are, in fact, damaging to actual American interests (emphases mine).

That's the money shot, Phil. I'm okay with Jews, okay with the existence of Israel, all that, but I think we were massively had by Iraq II. When Valerie Plame spoke in my area, she talked disgustedly about a plan to establish American military power throughout the Middle East. She used the euphemism "neocons" for the plan's authors, and seemed about to burst with anger. I looked up the plan, but don't recall the catch phrase for it.

I recall the basic idea was for the U. S. to do Israel's dirty work at U. S. expense and without a U. S. benefit, and I think there was the usual "God talk" cover in it about "democratization", "development", blah-blah.

Cloak And Dagger , October 17, 2017 at 7:43 am GMT
I remain skeptical that the Al-Jazeera undercover story in the US will be able to be viewed. I anticipate a hoard of Israel-firster congress critters to crawl out from under their respective rocks and deem Al-Jazeera to be antisemitic and call for it being banned as a foreign propaganda apparatus, much as is being done with RT and Sputnik.

I fear that we are long past the point of being redeemed as a nation. We can only watch with sorrow as this great nation crumbles under the might of Jewish power – impotent in our ability to arrest its fall.

Mark James , October 17, 2017 at 9:32 am GMT
ask Congressmen like Paul Findley, Pete McCloskey, William Fulbright, Charles Percy

I'd also add Adlai E. Stevenson III and John Glenn. Stevenson was crucial in getting compensation -- paltry sum though it was– payed to "Liberty" families for their loss. The Israelis had been holding out. Something for which the Il Senator was never forgiven (especially by The Lobby).

Netanyahu should not have been allowed to address the joint session. No foreign leader should be speaking in opposition to any sitting President (in this case Obama). It only showed the power of "The Lobby." Netanyahu who knew that Iran didn't have the weapons the Bush Adm. had claimed, was treated like a trusted ally. He shouldn't have been.

Kevin , October 17, 2017 at 9:37 am GMT
And the point is that while Israel calls the shots in terms of what it wants, it is a cabal of diaspora American Jews who actually pull the trigger. With that in mind, it will be very interesting to watch the al-Jazeera documentary on The Lobby in America.

Maybe, instead of Russia-Gate, we have is Israel-Gate. This time Netanyahu discreetly interfering in US Presidential Election ..Chilling thought though!

Tyrion , October 17, 2017 at 9:53 am GMT

And Israeli interference in U.S. government and elections is also a given. Endorsement of Mitt Romney in the 2012 presidential election by the Netanyahu government was more-or-less carried out in the open.

London's Mayor, Sadiq Khan, actually went to America to campaign for Hillary. Numerous European leaders endorsed her, while practically all denounced Trump. Exactly the same can be said of the Muslim world, only more so.

The problem with criticism of Israel is not that it lacks basis in truth. It is that it is removed from the context of the rest of the world. Israel's actions do not make Israel an outlier. Israel fits very much within the norm. Even with the recording this is the case.

All embassies try to further their national interest through political machinations and all people in politics tend to use hyperbolic language to describe what they are doing. I don't know if your shock is just for show or you are just a bit dim. The same applies to Buzzfeed's 'expose' of Bannon and the gasps the article let out at his use of terms like #War.

Unfortunately, contemporary idiots of all stripes seem to specialise in removing context so that they can further their specious arguments.

Randal , October 17, 2017 at 9:58 am GMT

"so I see no reason why the U.S. establishment won't take our findings in America as seriously as the British did"

Sadly, Clayton Swisher is probably correct that the US establishment will take their findings in America just as "seriously" as the British media and political establishment, and government, did.

The British government attitude was that everything was fine because the Israeli government "apologised" and the "rogue individual" responsible was taken out of the country, and the British media mostly ignored the story after an initial brief scandal. Indeed the main substantive response was the Ofcom fishing expedition against Al Jazeera looking for ways to use the disclosure of these uncomfortable truths as a pretext for shutting that company's operations down.

But there's no "undue influence" or bias involved, and if you say there might be then you are an anti-Semite and a hater.

The supreme irony behind all this is that Trump has been prevented by his own personal and family/adviser bias from using the one certain way of removing all the laughably vague "Russian influence" nonsense that has been used against him so persistently. All he had to do was to, at every opportunity, tie criticism and investigation of Russian "influence" to criticism and investigation of Israel Lobby influence under the general rubric of "foreign influence", and almost all of the high level backing for the charges would in due course have quietly evaporated.

geokat62 , October 17, 2017 at 9:59 am GMT
@Rurik

Philip Giraldi is a rare American treasure.

Rare, indeed, Rurik.

And in this rare company I would place former congressman, Ron Paul.

Here's an excerpt from his latest article, President Trump Beats War Drums for Iran :

Let's be clear here: President Trump did not just announce that he was "de-certifying" Iran's compliance with the nuclear deal. He announced that Iran was from now on going to be in the bullseye of the US military. Will Americans allow themselves to be lied into another Middle East war?

http://ronpaulinstitute.org/archives/featured-articles/2017/october/16/president-trump-beats-war-drums-for-iran/

animalogic , October 17, 2017 at 10:54 am GMT
This state of affairs, where the Zionist tail wags -- thrashes -- the US dog is bizarre to the point of laughter. Absent familiarity with the facts, who could believe it all? Is there a historical parallel ? I can't think of one that approaches the sheer profundity of the toxic embrace the Zionists have cover the US & west generally.
The Alarmist , October 17, 2017 at 11:01 am GMT
So how is using money we give them as foreign aid (it's fungible by any definition of the US Treasury and Justice Department) to lobby our legislators not a form of money laundering? Somebody ought to tell Mnuchin to get FINCEN on this yeah, I know, it sounded naive as I typed it. FINCEN is only there to harass little people like you and me.
Bardon Kaldian , October 17, 2017 at 11:05 am GMT
@googlecensors

Not true.

jacques sheete , October 17, 2017 at 11:15 am GMT
@Malla

Abby Martin is amazingly sharp. Many of the things she says can be confirmed by Uri Avnery, both his books and articles.

Here's a link to his weekly columns.

http://zope.gush-shalom.org/home/en/channels/avnery

Incredible stuff there; thanks for posting it.

jacques sheete , October 17, 2017 at 11:21 am GMT
@Malla

Our slave descendant will be scurrying around in their ghettos afraid of the Greater Israeli Army military andriod drones in the sky.

According to the first vid, those drones will be built by the goyim.

Maybe there's a message there for us.

jacques sheete , October 17, 2017 at 11:32 am GMT
@Cloak And Dagger

I fear that we are long past the point of being redeemed as a nation. We can only watch with sorrow as this great nation crumbles

We are long past that point.

I myself am watching with joy, because this supposedly "great nation" was corrupt to the core from its inception.

For evidence, all one has to do is read the arguments of the anti-federalists who opposed the ratification of the constitution* such as Patrick Henry, Robert Yates and Luther Martin. Their predictions about the results have come true. Even the labels, "federalist" and "anti-federalist" are misleading and no doubt intentionally so.

Those who spoke out against the formation of the federal reserve bank* scheme were also correct.

The only thing great about the US in a moral sense are the high sounding pretenses upon which it was built. As a nation we have never adhered to them.

*Please note that I intentionally refrain from capitalizing those words since I refuse to show even that much deference to those instruments of corruption.

ISmellBagels , October 17, 2017 at 11:45 am GMT
Philip, glad to see you undaunted after the recent attacks on you. We can maybe take solace in the fact that their desire for MORE will finally pass a critical point, and dumbass Americans will finally wake up.
jacques sheete , October 17, 2017 at 11:47 am GMT

"She said that the Ofcom judgment would serve as a "precedent for the infringement of privacy of any Jewish person involved in public life."

I have news for that twister of words.

In my opinion, if you choose to put yourself in the limelight, you have no private life. That is especially true for those who think they're entitled to a position of power.

In other words, if you think you're special, then you get judged by stricter standards than the rest of us.

It's called accountability.

BTW, speaking of Netanyahu, why do we hear so little about the scandal involving the theft of nuclear triggers from the US?

"The Israeli press is picking up Grant Smith's revelation from FBI documents that Benjamin Netanyahu was part of an Israeli smuggling ring that spirited nuclear triggers out of the U.S. in the 80s and 90s."

http://mondoweiss.net/2012/07/netanyahu-implicated-in-nuclear-smuggling-from-u-s-big-story-in-israel.html

jacques sheete , October 17, 2017 at 11:58 am GMT
Thank you Mr Giraldi. You covered an amazing number of issues in such a well written and compact article.

Thanks also to Mr Unz for publishing these sorts of things.

ISmellBagels , October 17, 2017 at 12:30 pm GMT
@jacques sheete

What she really meant by that was HOLOCAUST ALERT HOLOCAUST ALERT!!

Anon , Disclaimer October 17, 2017 at 12:42 pm GMT
@Malla

When you listen to Abby Martin describe her experience regarding this brutal apartheid system in Israel and the genocide of the Palestinian people, remember, Jeffrey Goldberg, editor-in-chief of The Atlantic , was a prison guard in the Israeli Defense Forces guarding the West Bank death camp. And David Brooks, political and cultural commentator for The New York Times and former op-ed editor for The Wall Street Journal , has a son in the Israel Defense Forces helping to perpetuate this holocaust of the Palestinian people. I hope I live to see the day when some Palestinian Simon Wiesenthal hunts these monsters down and brings them to trial in The Hague.

iffen , October 17, 2017 at 12:47 pm GMT
NPR Morning Edition 10/17/17

Rachel Martin talks to Vahil Ali, the communications director for the Kurdish president.

In which she tries to steer him into calling for armed American intervention in Kurdistan to resist the Iranian sponsored militia.

LondonBob , October 17, 2017 at 12:58 pm GMT
The lobby is not as powerful in Britain as it is the US, we can talk about it and someone like Peter Oborne is still a prominent journalist, but I don't see that it makes that much difference. We seem to end up in the same places the US does.
Sherman , October 17, 2017 at 1:15 pm GMT
I had my meeting with the Rothschilds, Goldman Sachs and the Israeli Department of Hasbara last week and we discussed how our plan to suppress both the US and British governments is progressing.

Apparently we are meeting our targets and everything is going according to plan.

Thanks for update Phil!

ChuckOrloski , October 17, 2017 at 1:25 pm GMT
@geokat62

Hey geokat62,

Speaking about how greatly rare a treasure are the P.G.'s words, below is linked a deliberately rare letter written by Congressman Donald Rumsfeld on behalf of the AZC.

http://www.israellobby.org/azcdoj/congress/defaultZAC .

Also, re, "Will Americans allow themselves to be lied into another M.E. war?"

(Sigh)

History shows that, in order for ZUSA to start M.E. wars, Americans are routinely fed Executive Branch / Corporate Media-sauteed lies. Such deceit is par-for-the-course.

At present, it would be foolish for me to not realize there is a False Flag Pentagon plan "on the table" & ready for a war with Iran.

Jake , October 17, 2017 at 1:27 pm GMT
What is playing out in the UK, and is in early stages in America, is the fight between the two side of Victorian WASP pro-Semtiism.

WASP culture has always been philo-Semitic. That cannot be stated too much. WASP culture is inherently philo-Semtic. WASP culture was born of Anglo-Saxon Puritanism, which was a Judaizing heresy. Judaizing heresy naturally and inevitably produces pro-Jewish culture. No less than Oliver Cromwell made the deal to get Jewish money so he could wage culture war to destroy British Isles natives were not WASPs.

WASP culture has always been allied with Jews to destroy white Christians who are not WASPs. You cannot solve 'the Jewish problem' unless you also solve 'the WASP problem.'

By the beginning of the Victorian era, virtually all WASP Elites in the Empire – who then had a truly globalist perspective – were divided into two pro-Semitic camps. The larger one was pro-Jewish. It would give the world the Balfour Declaration and the state of Israel.

The smaller and growing one was pro-Arabic and pro-Islamic. It would give the world the people who backed Lawrence of Arabia and came to prop up the House of Saud.

Each of these philo-Semitic WASP Elites groups was more than happy to keep the foot on the pedal to destroy non-WASP European cultures while spending fortunes propping up its favorite group of Semites.

And while each of those camps was thrilled to ally to keep up the war against historic Christendom and the peoples who naturally would gravitate to any hope of a revival of Christendom, they also squabbled endlessly. Each wished, and always will wish, to be the A-#1 pro-Semitic son of daddy WASP. Each will play any dirty trick, make any deal with the Devil himself, to get what he wants.

The Israeli lobby is more powerful throughout the Anglosphere than the Saudi/Arabic lobby, but the Saudi lobby is equally detestable and probably even a more grave threat to the very existence of Western man.

It is impossible to take care of a serious problem without knowing its source and acting to sanitize and/or cauterize and/or cut out that source. The source of this problem is WASP culture.

Michael Kenny , October 17, 2017 at 1:31 pm GMT
That the intelligence services of many countries engage in such conduct is not really news. Indeed, you could say that it's part of their normal job. They usually don't get caught and when accused of anything they shout "no evidence!" (now, where have I heard that recently?) Of course, if the Israelis engage in such conduct, then, logically, other countries' services do so too.

Thus, Mr Giraldi's argument lends credibility to the claims that Russia interfered in the US election and to the proposition that US intelligence agents are seeking to undermine the EU.

Since those two operations are part of the same transaction, i.e. maintain US global hegemony by breaking the EU up into its constituent Member States or even into the regional components of the larger Member States, using Putin as a battering ram and a bogeyman to frighten the resulting plethora of small and largely defenseless statelets back under cold war-era American protection, could it be that US and Russian intelligence services collaborated to manipulate Trump into the White House? If that were true, it would be quite a scandal! Overthrowing foreign governments is one thing, collaborating with a foreign power to manipulate your own country's politics is quite another! But of course, there's "no evidence"

Fran Macadam , Website October 17, 2017 at 1:32 pm GMT
Not surprising that the Jewish public gets gamed by Israeli political elites, just as the American public keeps getting gamed by our own cabal of bought politicians. Trying to fool enough of the people, enough of the time, contra Lincoln (who was not exactly a friend of critical dissent against war either .)
Anon , Disclaimer October 17, 2017 at 1:53 pm GMT
@wayfarer

Daphne Caruana Galizia exposed both local thieves and the CIA-Azerbaijan cooperation in supplying ISIS with arms:

https://www.rt.com/news/406963-assange-reward-caruana-galizia-death/ https://www.newsbud.com/2017/10/16/breaking-gladio-b-assassinates-journalist-with-car-bomb/

"Azerbaijan considers Malta to be "one of its provinces": https://daphnecaruanagalizia.com/2017/09/azerbaijan-considers-malta-one-provinces/
The Middle Eastern wars have repercussion .

[Oct 11, 2017] An Al Jazeera Reporter Went Undercover with the Pro-Israel Lobby In Washington

Oct 11, 2017 | theintercept.com

Swisher wouldn't confirm or deny the identity of the American operative, but he said that with the American political class focused on foreign intervention in the affairs of the United States, now is an appropriate time to run the follow-up investigation. "I hear the U.S. is having problems with foreign interference these days, so I see no reason why the U.S. establishment won't take our findings in America as seriously as the British did, unless of course Israel is somehow off limits from that debate," he said.

[Oct 11, 2017] A documentary focused on Israeli influence in the US, the existence of which has previously been suspected but had yet to be made public.

Notable quotes:
"... Is not all this noise about Rooskies has one and only one goal – to divert attention from the "gorilla" and her "struggle for survival" in the Middle East and in the US Congress? https://theintercept.com/2017/10/09/an-al-jazeera-reporter-went-undercover-with-the-pro-israel-lobby-in-washington/ ..."
Oct 11, 2017 | www.unz.com

Anon , Disclaimer October 11, 2017 at 4:33 pm GMT

@Johnny F. Ive

They need Russia to be an enemy to justify their actions and the Europeans want to use the US to threaten Russia. Its a shame this can't be generalized against all foreign agents of influence. The US Mainstream Media is basically an arm of the Hasbara. Their guest from think tanks are foreign agents of influence. Its not fun watching a bunch of foreigners and their domestic owned Americans run the US Empire into the ground.

Is not all this noise about Rooskies has one and only one goal – to divert attention from the "gorilla" and her "struggle for survival" in the Middle East and in the US Congress? https://theintercept.com/2017/10/09/an-al-jazeera-reporter-went-undercover-with-the-pro-israel-lobby-in-washington/

" a documentary focused on Israeli influence in the U.S., the existence of which has previously been suspected but had yet to be made public. The four-part series, "The Lobby," dug into the Israeli embassy in London, as well as several other pro-Israel lobby groups, and their campaign to "take down" British Foreign Office Minister Sir Alan Duncan.

The investigation led to the resignation of a top Israeli official in London, as well as a high-profile complaint that Al Jazeera had broken broadcasting regulations in the United Kingdom. One of the complaints charged the investigation with anti-Semitism, but the government board ruled that imputing such a motive to a film critical of Israel would be akin to calling a series on gang violence racist.

Ofcom received complaints about the series from pro-Israel British activists and a former Israel embassy employee. It dismissed all charges, which included anti-Semitism, bias, unfair editing, and the infringement of privacy. It ruled that as per the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance's guidance: "It did not consider that such a critical analysis of the actions of a foreign state constituted anti-Semitism, particularly as the overall focus of the programme was to examine whether the State of Israel was acting in a manner that would be expected of other democratic nations."

[Oct 10, 2017] DECAMERON NEO-CON RESET

Oct 10, 2017 | turcopolier.typepad.com

Last week saw the Senate Intelligence Committee going after Russia's influence in the "free market places of ideas": Twitter, Facebook, etc. Senators fulminated over Twitter's failure to appreciate the magnitude of the danger of Russia's interference in free elections. Cartoonists lampooned Russia with caricatures of the famous Russian military parades showing the Facebook and Twitter logos as displays in the parade along with tanks and missiles.

Suddenly the Senate was all atwitter over, well, Twitter. Who's feeding this sudden awareness?

The recently created Alliance for Securing Democracy, housed (at least for now) at the German Marshall Fund--USA is one of the core anti-Putin, anti-Russia operations that merits keeping an eye on, especially as it impacts Congressional hearings, resolutions, and media. It's an alliance of hard core neo-cons who were in the thick of promoting the 2003 Iraq war and the "axis of evil" attacks on Iran-Iraq-North Korea during Bush 43 administration, with the hillary-cons.

They're determined to turn up the heat against Moscow, not just in the United States, but to spread the Cold War mania to Europe through its GMF network.

For now, the Alliance's money seems to be limited, but it is a clear move to migrate the "Never Trump" Republicans into alliance with the Democratic Party, even further polluting and destroying that party on the foreign policy front.

With a network of some 2 dozen operatives in the USA and Europe (including former Assistant Secretary of Defense under Obama, Derek Chollet) the Alliance for Securing Democray blog is churning out steady stream of articles about Russian interference in elections (including big focus on the latest German elections) and demanding that Congress take action to further investigate/stop Russian interference in said elections. They claim to be monitoring 600 Russian twitter accounts that they think are threatening democracy.

A significant part of the apparatus comes from the group, Foreign Policy Initiative which went belly up in August, 2017, when it ceased operations. According to The Nation, FPI's demise was largely due to the dropping off of funds in 2017 after the Trump election. The FPI was led by William Kristol and Robert Kagan. These "never Trump'ers" were apparently an albatross after the 2016 elections for some Republican and conservative deep pockets who always want to keep a path open to the White House, no matter who they preferred.

Now Kristol has a new home on the Advisory Board of the Alliance for Securing Democracy along with Michael Chertoff, and the anti-Putin ex-Ambassador to Russia, Michael McFaul. Also on the Board is Jake Sullivan, a top Hillary operative at the State Dept. Chertoff recently landed a Wall Street Journal article on September 6 th , headlined, Congress Can Help Prevent Election Hacking. I expect there will be a lot of Congressional action on this front if the "Alliance for Securing Democracy" has its way.

Securing democracy? The crowd that brought us Iraq in 2003, Libya in 2011?

Investigative journalist Glenn Greenwald did an impressive first expose of this outfit in July of this year, identifying the alliance between the war party neo-cons and the Democratic Party, but there's a lot more to watch in its continuing operations to promote its Cold War agenda, especially in Congress.

james , 08 October 2017 at 07:13 PM

these neo con bloodsuckers are becoming irrelevant.. sure, they continue to suck on the blood of a number of countries, but it is going to come to an end. if fact, it looks like the end is in motion at present.. they want their war where-ever, and the corporations are all in tow on this.. meanwhile ordinary people can see it for what it is..

i saw an article in fox news from kagan.. what was interesting were the comments in response to his drivel... it gave me hope that people who are crazy enough to even read something on fox news, can see bullshit when they see it and are willing to call it as such.. people aren't beholden to the western msm as much as some would like to think..

tpcelt , 08 October 2017 at 09:40 PM
How can ordinary people, like me, be informed and make sound decisions? Common sense with a strong bu****t meter helps. But there's so much going on and cross currents.
1664RM , 08 October 2017 at 10:03 PM
Are sure you have the title correct? 'Reset'

- Personally I don't think there has ever been a 'reset'.

It's the same as it ever was - they are still there operating in plain sight & pulling the strings & levers of power in both the US Senate & Congress, of course the influence of the AIPAC 'bloc' cannot be overlooked.

HRC was their candidate, as was BHO, as was Bush the younger, as was WJC et al.

PNAC is alive & well, the plan is still to destroy any nation which can independently produce/supply hydrocarbons outside of the control of the US/Saudi hydrocarbon cartel, or act as a third party transit corridor to China or Europe.

These nations typically fall foul of 'coloured revolutions', or ethinc minorities within them - normally Sunni Muslims suddenly become the victims of 'ethnic cleansing' by State Govt forces, no proof of this (pictures, moving images etc is ever provided by the MSM). The issue is presented to the world as an 'uman rights issue. Often local Sunni extremists (sometime in neighbouring states) then wage 'Jihad' & thus the state in question is totally destroyed & 'Balkanised in the process.

Coupled with this is the ongoing operation to isolate Russian geopolitical & economic influence over Festung Europa whilst drawing an ever more 'Balkanized 'Europa' into more reliance on US influenced sources of hydrocarbons.

Simultaneous to this is the encirclement of Russia on 3 sides with THAAD style weapons & conventional military forces to create a preemptive Nuclear/Conventional Strike Scenario a reality.

In the Asia Pacific region its also a similar plan directed against China.

All of this is directly linked to maintaining the economic hegemony of the US 'Empire' into the 21st Century.

Its not that simple to work out or follow.

Just my vacant ramblings this fine Monday morning 'downunder' feel free to rip it apart as you wish.

Linda , 08 October 2017 at 11:08 PM
And now Possibly Iran in 2017
1664RM -> Linda... , 09 October 2017 at 10:16 AM
Myanmar - shaping up to become a new hydrocarbon overland transit route from the Gulf for China (avoiding the Malacca Straights maritime chokepoint) in exchange for an invitation into the OBOR Project - Well it was until -

All of a sudden the Royhingas have been murdered en masse & driven into exile into neighbouring Bangladesh (incidentally has anybody actually seen ANY pictorial moving footage evidence of ANY of this?)

Bangladesh ... where the 'jihad' to avenge the Royhinga pogrom will be launched into Myanmar ... has just 'accepted' an offer from the Kingdom of Saudi to construct hundreds of new Mosques & Madrassas ... the perfect breeding ground to hatch a new generation of Jihadis in SE Asia. Bangladesh will be in a perfect geographic position to threaten neighbouring Indian provinces too. India has the largest Muslim population outside of the Muslim world. There several million Bangladeshi migrant workers inside The Gulf states working for a pittance ... who knows what some of them are up too.

Catlonia ... is/was setting itself up as a major LNG entry point into the EU from North Africa ... primarily Algeria, since the predicted US 'Shale Boom' has not actually materialised in sufficient volume to 'wean' the EU away from Russian Gas supplies.

Syria & now the likely formation of this quasi Kurdish state straddling the Shia Crescent ... it really IS all about the Gas ... how can the Syrian state access its hydrocarbons & move them abroad to the foreign market if somebody else has been encouraged to create a quasi state right on top of them?

The Phillipines ... the southern half of the Island chain is predominantly Muslim & since Duterte began making friendly overtures to regional players i.e. China they now have a full blown 'insurgency' in the south despite plenty of US Military hardware in the very local region (or is id direcly BECAUSE of the proximity of US Military forces?).

The Ukraine ... I could go on ....

Pacifica Advocate -> 1664RM ... , 09 October 2017 at 12:36 PM
>>>The Ukraine ... I could go on ....

Nah. You couldn't've, because you were running on empty why you started your screed.

>>>The Phillipines ... the southern half of the Island chain is predominantly Muslim & since Duterte began making friendly overtures to regional players i.e. China they now have a full blown 'insurgency' in the south ...

A) Mindanao is the locus of the insurgency, and it has been that way ever since Spain annexed it into its "The Philippines" administrative region.

B) The Muslim population of Mindanao is hardly the "southern half" of the Philippines; at best, they are the "Southern sixteenth."

C) The Muslim portion of the "Southern Half of the Island Chain" makes up a total of about 6% of the total population of the Philippines. How you jump from there to "the southern half of the Island chain is predominantly Muslim" is beyond me. That's simply factually false.

D) Duterte's overtures towards China have been overwhelmingly supported by the local population, a vast number of whom have relatives who are overseas laborers working in Shanghai, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Canton/Guangdong, etc. In fact, the local Muslims in Mindanao were trained by the US, and those currently financed by the Saudis (and, in the 70s, trained by the U.S.) are staunchly opposed to Duterte's campaign to open up the Philippines to Chinese investment.

Long-story-short: you're wrong on pretty much everything I am in a position to criticize you on, and I suspect the rest of your screed can be similarly debunked.

Serge -> Pacifica Advocate... , 09 October 2017 at 11:15 PM

Pacifica Advocate,

Yep, the usual economic determinism mumbo jumbo from this guy, an epidemic in amateur and professional poli sci circles conducting analysis on US geopolitical actions since 2003. Cast aside the wide scope of history into the dustbin and focus on the US as some omnipotent robot machine that runs on plundered oil. If the Colonel is reading this, what got me hooked on SST was a comment of his back in 2014 in which he shot down that economic determinism crap as it related to Iraq

Tim B. , 08 October 2017 at 11:24 PM
This is a great read from the left wing Nation magazine. https://www.thenation.com/article/russiagate-is-more-fiction-than-fact/
The Porkchop Express , 09 October 2017 at 01:00 AM
It is just beyond belief that the majority of these clowns continue to be treated as if they have a shred of credibility left or that their ideas carry ANY weight when it comes to their outrageously incompetent foreign policy decisions/actions. That their ideological ideas have any value at all, particularly when there has been no admission of a mistake or a reorientation of their ideas, is just astounding. To be wrong so repeatedly and so publicly should have engendered a least some, however small, sense of shame or humility.

On the other hand, it says something about our polity, too, that we continue to tolerate this bullshit.

semiconscious -> The Porkchop Express... , 09 October 2017 at 09:20 AM
'On the other hand, it says something about our polity, too, that we continue to tolerate this bullshit.'

absolutely. that these clowns, along with the various members of the pundit class (friedman, krugman) who, after being repeatedly wrong about any number of things, continue to be provided their bully pulpits tells you all you really need to know...

Yeah, Right , 09 October 2017 at 06:50 AM
Every time I read about William Kristol's latest career move I am reminded of those old Hammer Horror movies with Christopher Lee.

The dude comes to a grisly end in every movie, yet there he is in the next one, back from the grave and - inevitably - none the wiser for the experience.

Ol' Dracula never once stops to think: Ya' know what, these always end badly. Maybe I should sit this one out?

Neither does Kristol, apparently.

LeaNder , 09 October 2017 at 08:57 AM
Good article by Glenn, he is one of the best.
Matthew , 09 October 2017 at 09:42 AM
I just finished Simon Montefiore's two books on Stalin (Young Stalin and The Court of the Red Czar).

With every passing day, the Neo-Cons and their fellow travelers are introducing the Soviet method into American politics: Denunciations, Conspiracies, and the Never-Ending Search for Wreckers.

LeaNder , 09 October 2017 at 11:37 AM
Jacob Heilbrunn, via, I know, I know, the NYT. But, Heilbrunn, JULY 5, 2014

WASHINGTON -- AFTER nearly a decade in the political wilderness, the neoconservative movement is back, using the turmoil in Iraq and Ukraine to claim that it is President Obama, not the movement's interventionist foreign policy that dominated early George W. Bush-era Washington, that bears responsibility for the current round of global crises.

Does anyone remember the curious renaissance of the neocons? Quite a time before the election officially started or heated up?

Iraq, looked at in hindsight with the appropriate and needed distance in time, may not have been that wrong after all? At least once there was someone else to blame? The appropriate public period of repentance seemed to be over. New servants available, that might escape the probling public eye?

Now the Americans may not have chosen the right "cherry blossom king" (Tyler) in their opinion, or backed the right horse in the race. But does that matter? Strictly, hadn't the winner delivered the new meme variant quite dutifully?

One has to keep open to twists of fate, seize the day, I would assume Trump knows that too. Let's see. ...

******

Yes, now I remember a tale in Boccaccio's The Decameron, Sixth Day, Tenth Tale, Friar Cipolla and a Feather of the Angel Gabriel. Which might fit. One of my favorites really.

http://sites.fas.harvard.edu/~chaucer/special/authors/boccaccio/boc-6-10.html

SmoothieX12 , 09 October 2017 at 04:29 PM
I just finished Simon Montefiore's two books on Stalin (Young Stalin and The Court of the Red Czar).

Judging by the "level" of Western historic narrative (granted with some notable exceptions) on Russian/Soviet history of the 20th Century, I would be very cautious when reading anything from Great Britain, especially from people with Montefiore's background. Not to mention people who praise him--from WSJ, NYT etc. Western awareness of actual, real Russian history is extremely low.

Joseph Moroco , 09 October 2017 at 05:43 PM
This is the first I've heard of the German Marshall Fund other than on The Ministry of Information, I mean NPR, they are occasionally mentioned as providing money for some of the propaganda uh, programming. I thought it was a fund to thank us for lending Les Boches a helping hand after we were done bombing them to smithereens.

Here is a link to Der Spiegel that is a tribute to the founder, but is also a history of the GMF. http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/founder-of-german-marshall-fund-guido-goldman-retires-a-834696.html

It appears to be Neocon safe space. Can there be too many.

Virginia Slim , 09 October 2017 at 05:43 PM
Forgive me, but "Alliance for Securing Democracy" sounds like a Münzenberg-era front organization.

[Sep 26, 2017] More on Imran Awan by Philip Giraldi

Notable quotes:
"... There are many questions regarding the Awan case. One might reasonably ask how foreign-born IT specialists are selected and vetted prior to being significantly overpaid and allowed to work on computers in congressional offices. And the ability of those same individuals to keep working even after the relevant congressmen have been warned that their employee was under investigation has to be explained beyond Wasserman-Schultz's comment that Awan had not committed any crime, which may have been true but one would expect congressmen to err on the side of caution over an issue that could easily have national security ramifications. And how does a recently bankrupt and unemployed Imran Awan wind up with a high-priced Clinton-connected lawyer to defend himself? ..."
"... As the story involves possible espionage, fraud and even something new to consider regarding the theft of information from the DNC server, one might have expected the Fourth Estate to wake from its slumber and take notice. But perhaps not surprisingly there has been astonishingly little follow-up in the mainstream media about the Awan family, possibly because it involves some leading Democrats, though the Daily Caller ..."
"... In a surprise development, investigative journalists have also determined that Imran Awan retained as of the end of August a still-active secret, numeric email account on the House of Representatives server. E-mail accounts in Congress normally are labeled using the holder's name, so all active accounts are identity-linked as a security measure. In this case the numeric account was linked to the actual account of a House staffer who works on national security issues for Andre Carson, a Democrat from Indiana. Imran Awan clearly has been using the anonymous House of Representatives address as it was cited in a suit filed by a landlord seeking unpaid rent on an apartment rented for his second wife in Alexandria. ..."
"... The most significant recent development in the Awan case is, however, the decision made by Imran's wife Alvi to return to the United States at the end of this month. She has been charged as a co-conspirator relating to the bank fraud that her husband was also involved in, which potentially could result in some jail time. There are, however, reports that she has been interviewed several times in Pakistan by FBI agents and has apparently agreed to a plea bargain to tell all she knows about what went on with the Awan family. Some on Capitol Hill believe that what she knows could prove to be explosive, not only regarding the lax security practices in Congress but also in terms of Debbie Wasserman-Schultz's negligence in providing access to the DNC server. The actual whereabouts of the large quantity of stolen government documents might also be resolved. ..."
"... Something about this is strange. It is as if Imran Awan and his group were not really hired for IT purposes.It is perhaps noteworthy that Pakistani spooks have been intertwined with American events for years. For example, there was a Pakistani connection to 9/11. ..."
"... how can one leverage content in this day and age if there is no thorough knowledge of the tools behind any information system. Put congressmen and women to the test, how many have questions as use of data protocol, firewall, ports, delegated to "specialist", and loyal (the accent on loyal) collaborators without a notion of what they even delegate. If living in an area of specialization, the notion of minimal knowledge and comprehension might be at least a thorough understanding of man – machine correlations. ..."
"... Hillarious Hillary neither, did have a notion of any technicalities of tools applied to bid her interests. ..."
"... The phenomenon will worsen, the glue will thicken into further layers of ignorance. The Moore law? The more complex society, the bigger the ignorance of the elites. ..."
"... This is big. I would like to know, what are Awans credentials that qualified him for the IT position and who hired him? Someone had to vouchsafe for Awan and who is that person? Who approved his salary and why was there no review or audit? Apparently, someone, or some organization wanted to control a large block of the Congress. ..."
"... Audacity and chutzpah of Imran Awan's operation right away made me think of post-military service Israeli youth running various scams and intelligence gathering errands all over the world. ..."
Sep 26, 2017 | www.unz.com

I wrote an article on the strange case of Imran Awan about two months ago. To summarize it briefly, Awan, his two brothers and wife, naturalized U.S. citizens born in Pakistan living in the Washington DC area, found employment as IT administrators in the House of Representatives working for as many as 80 Democratic Party congressmen . Even though they may have had little actual training in IT, they insinuated themselves into the system and were paid in excess of $5 million over the course of ten years, chief-of-staff level pay, while frequently not even showing up for work. They even brought into the arrangement a frequent no-show Pakistani friend whose prior work history consisted of getting recently fired by McDonald's .

Along the way, their security files were never reviewed. They were involved in bankruptcies, bank fraud and other criminal activity, but their troublesome behavior was never noticed. They were on bad terms with their father and step-mother, which including forging a document to cheat their step-mother of an insurance payment and even holding her "captive" so she could not see their dying father. Their father even changed his last name to dissociate himself from them.

Imran Awan, the leader of the group, worked particularly for Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, who was, at the time, also the Chairman of the Democratic National Committee. Though he had no clearance and was not supposed to work with classified material, he and his family obtained password access to congressional files and Imran himself was able to enter Wasserman-Schultz's own personal iPad computer which linked to the server used by the Democratic National Committee.

As of February 2016, the Awans came under suspicion by the Capitol Hill Police for having set up an operation involving double billing as well as the possible theft and reselling of government owned computer equipment. It was also believed that they had somehow obtained entry to much of the House of Representatives' computer network as well as to other information in the individual offices' separate computer systems that they were in theory not allowed to access. It was also believed that Imran sent "massive" quantities of stolen government files to a remote personal server . It may have been located in his former residence in Lorton, Virginia. The police began an investigation and quietly alerted the congressmen involved that there might be a problem. Most stopped employing the Awan family members and associates, but Wasserman-Schultz kept Imran on the payroll until the day after he was actually arrested.

Imran was arrested on July 25 th at Dulles Airport as he was flying to Pakistan to join his wife Alvi, who had left the country with their children and many of their possessions in March. In January, they had also wired to Pakistan $283,000 that they had obtained fraudulently from the Congressional credit union. After his arrest, Imran was defended by lawyer Chris Gowen , a high-priced $1,000 an hour Washington attorney who has worked for the Clintons personally, the Clinton Foundation and the Clinton Global Initiative.

There are many questions regarding the Awan case. One might reasonably ask how foreign-born IT specialists are selected and vetted prior to being significantly overpaid and allowed to work on computers in congressional offices. And the ability of those same individuals to keep working even after the relevant congressmen have been warned that their employee was under investigation has to be explained beyond Wasserman-Schultz's comment that Awan had not committed any crime, which may have been true but one would expect congressmen to err on the side of caution over an issue that could easily have national security ramifications. And how does a recently bankrupt and unemployed Imran Awan wind up with a high-priced Clinton-connected lawyer to defend himself?

As the story involves possible espionage, fraud and even something new to consider regarding the theft of information from the DNC server, one might have expected the Fourth Estate to wake from its slumber and take notice. But perhaps not surprisingly there has been astonishingly little follow-up in the mainstream media about the Awan family, possibly because it involves some leading Democrats, though the Daily Caller and some other conservative sites have stayed on top of developments.

Since his arrest Imran Awan has had his passports confiscated by the court and has been released on bail on condition that he wear an ankle monitor at all times and not travel more than 50 miles from the Virginia home where he is staying with a relative. In early September, he sought to have the monitor removed and his passports returned so he could travel to Pakistan and visit his children. His plea was rejected. He is not yet scheduled for trial on the allegations of bank fraud and is apparently still under investigation by the Bureau relating to other possible charges, including possible espionage. His four accomplices are also still under investigation but have not been charged. They are on a watch list and will not be allowed to leave the United States while the inquiry is continuing.

It has also been learned that Imran had been on the receiving end of complaints filed with the Fairfax County Virginia police in 2015-6 by two women who resided in separate apartments in Alexandria that are reportedly paid for by Imran Awan. Both of the women complained of abuse and one is believed to be a "second wife" for Imran Awan, legal in Pakistan but illegal in the United States. Imran reportedly divorced his second wife shortly after his arrest.

In a surprise development, investigative journalists have also determined that Imran Awan retained as of the end of August a still-active secret, numeric email account on the House of Representatives server. E-mail accounts in Congress normally are labeled using the holder's name, so all active accounts are identity-linked as a security measure. In this case the numeric account was linked to the actual account of a House staffer who works on national security issues for Andre Carson, a Democrat from Indiana. Imran Awan clearly has been using the anonymous House of Representatives address as it was cited in a suit filed by a landlord seeking unpaid rent on an apartment rented for his second wife in Alexandria.

The most significant recent development in the Awan case is, however, the decision made by Imran's wife Alvi to return to the United States at the end of this month. She has been charged as a co-conspirator relating to the bank fraud that her husband was also involved in, which potentially could result in some jail time. There are, however, reports that she has been interviewed several times in Pakistan by FBI agents and has apparently agreed to a plea bargain to tell all she knows about what went on with the Awan family. Some on Capitol Hill believe that what she knows could prove to be explosive, not only regarding the lax security practices in Congress but also in terms of Debbie Wasserman-Schultz's negligence in providing access to the DNC server. The actual whereabouts of the large quantity of stolen government documents might also be resolved.

This story, which is still unfolding, continues to have the potential to blow wide open the complacent culture on Capitol Hill and it also might ruin the reputations of a number of leading Democrats. Stay tuned!

Buzz Mohawk > , September 26, 2017 at 5:35 am GMT

Something about this is strange. It is as if Imran Awan and his group were not really hired for IT purposes.It is perhaps noteworthy that Pakistani spooks have been intertwined with American events for years. For example, there was a Pakistani connection to 9/11.

There is a Pakistani connection to CIA and related sorts of things. One wonders what kind of work these Pakistanis were really doing for Wasserman-Schultz and others involved ! and what kind of things Debbie and the Americans she is connected to are involved in.

Ludwig Watzal > , Website September 26, 2017 at 8:48 am GMT

Of course, it could have the potential of a massive scandal, but If the inner circles of the Dems, especially the criminal machinations of the Clintons and their stooges are concerned, the mainstream media will keep mum. So far, they have always covered up their dubious and dirty tricks. The American political system within the Beltway is so rotten and corrupt that everybody will be affected if the slightest connection comes to the fore. Take the so-called Russian hacking as a case in point. It's all bogus, but the investigation continues by the Clinton stooge named Robert Mueller.

The Alarmist > , September 26, 2017 at 11:01 am GMT

@Ludwig Watzal

Mueller is not a Clinton stooge He's the stooge of the Clintons' puppet master.

Kiza > , September 26, 2017 at 1:01 pm GMT

The US establishment reminds me of a poorly knitted jumper with many threads sticking out. So it desperately prevents, using the intelligence services, the police and the media it controls, any investigation because if one would pull one thread successfully the whole thing would unravel in its full perverted glory of deprevity (the whole Demopublican establishment that is).

m___ > , September 26, 2017 at 7:54 am GMT

No surprises, the quality of politicians worldwide is embedded in the system. The question asked: how can a meritocracy apply extended family, friend and sex-mates, to the selection system consequently. Another, how can one leverage content in this day and age if there is no thorough knowledge of the tools behind any information system. Put congressmen and women to the test, how many have questions as use of data protocol, firewall, ports, delegated to "specialist", and loyal (the accent on loyal) collaborators without a notion of what they even delegate. If living in an area of specialization, the notion of minimal knowledge and comprehension might be at least a thorough understanding of man – machine correlations.

Hillarious Hillary neither, did have a notion of any technicalities of tools applied to bid her interests. "Boom", "Boom", "oBama", was using computers to play "drone of doom".

Politicians dress, groom, prepare and travel to public moments of extroversion, and that's it. Very busy critters, highly un-focused beyond anything deeper then egocentric looks and sway of an actor. It works, there is a public, "deplorable", "gens de rien" ignorance carrying them, complicit media and scientists, sustaining them. The phenomenon will worsen, the glue will thicken into further layers of ignorance. The Moore law? The more complex society, the bigger the ignorance of the elites.

A suggestive test: time employment over years in office would uproot the sterling conclusion that politicians, administrators of public affairs have simply no time and energy left to analyze anything beyond their public person's direct interests. Systemic, in all branches, our elites are simply not up to par. And that "works", in occurrence the state of affairs worldwide, in the long term, in depth.

Anon > , Disclaimer September 26, 2017 at 6:16 pm GMT

For those who are unfamiliar with US involvement in South Asia: Pakistan's military and intelligences services are funded by America (just as Egypt's are). Pakistani intelligence and army has long been a CIA stooge and that goes since the 80s and even before that. It was Pakistanis who were training the mujahideen to fight Russia in Afghanistan during the cold war. So no one is surprised when Pakistani ISI chief is here in US during the execution of 9/11. Throughout much of the world, 9/11 is seen as a plot of American government.

By the way, do you seriously think Pakistani army which survives on American funding would bite the hand that feeds it by secretly giving refuge to Osama Bin Laden? If that was truly the case, as government said during their s0-called raid in Pakistan that supposedly killed Osama, would the US government still be giving billions to Pakistan's army? Pakistan's army, like Egypt's army and Turkey's army, are supported by America as a way of subverting democracy in those countries. Unfotunately American public's general knowledge of what America funds and how it conducts itself with other countries is so low that it is impossible for the majority to have any kind of reality based understanding of what their taxes are paying for and how it does not support "freedom" but the opposite of it throughout the world

Boris M Garsky > , September 26, 2017 at 7:11 pm GMT

This is big. I would like to know, what are Awans credentials that qualified him for the IT position and who hired him? Someone had to vouchsafe for Awan and who is that person? Who approved his salary and why was there no review or audit? Apparently, someone, or some organization wanted to control a large block of the Congress. Was it Clinton, was it Intelligence, the Mossad, Rothschilds, Russia?

I would imagine that her calls were being monitored and her involvement known.

utu > , September 26, 2017 at 9:09 pm GMT

Audacity and chutzpah of Imran Awan's operation right away made me think of post-military service Israeli youth running various scams and intelligence gathering errands all over the world. Only people with a strong awareness of being the untouchable sacred cows and/or somebody with a strong back up of security services can behave like this.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidyin/2013/12/19/out-of-israel-into-the-world/#247ca203367d

Each year, 75,000 soldiers are discharged from the Israel Defense Force. A third of them then travel across Asia and South America, supporting businesses at home and abroad.

There are recruitment offices in Israel and job placement websites specifically for that. A lot of them."

[Sep 26, 2017] Neocons and Hollywood Liberals Go to War on Russia

Notable quotes:
"... Anyway, the whole Russiagate thing will either explode into nothing or drift off into nothing. Why? Because there's no "there" there. ALL just fabricated hype. Too many people fall prey to surmises and suggestions and baseless conclusions. ..."
"... Read Robert Parry, and, please, interview him and others from consortiumnews.com , my best go to source for truth. Thanks for this interview with Max, a man I greatly admire. ..."
"... Fabricated hype yes, but for what reason? The last thing the 'elites' want is Trump making friends with Russia, they are scared it would expose their NATO scam. No enemies = no money for MIC! ..."
"... Neocons make military war while neoliberals make economic war. Neither group makes any sense and both groups are destroying the human race with synthetic ideologies based on nothing but greed, fear, hatred and greed. Both groups represent extreme wealth and the project to enslave and impoverish the whole world. It's them or us and so far we're clueless ..."
"... Right on, and well said Max! Now then, we know who the neocons are, nastiness is embedded in their DNA and makeup. I could go and on to an eternity, using a plethora of adjectives to describe their repugnant ideas and beliefs; but I won't. ..."
"... SCAM is the correct word. Now after failing to get a Russian "hack" dismissed by former CIA & NSA experts and Wikileaks (Never lied yet to my knowledge) NOW we get Russian FB accounts ( most of which have nothing to do with clinton). ..."
Sep 22, 2017 | therealnews.com

The promotional video of the Committee to Investigate Russia features actor Morgan Freeman in what is 'probably his worst role since Driving Miss Daisy,' says AlterNet's Max Blumenthal

Outside the government, there's a lot of going on, too. Media outlets and liberal organizations have devoted extensive time and energy to Russiagate. This week, a new group joined the fray. It's called the Committee to Investigate Russia. Its board includes Rob Reiner, the well-known actor, producer, and liberal activist, and several right-wing pundits, including David Frum, the man who coined George W. Bush's infamous phrase, the 'axis of evil.'

The committee's kickoff video features the actor Morgan Freeman.

MORGAN FREEMAN: We have been attacked. We are at war. We need our president to speak directly to us and tell us the truth. We need him to sit behind the desk in the Oval Office and say, "My fellow Americans, during this past election, we came under attack by the Russian government. I've called on the Congress and our intelligence community to use every resource available to conduct a thorough investigation to determine exactly how this happened. The free world is counting on us for leadership. For 241 years, our democracy has been a shining example to the world of what we can all aspire to, and we owe it to the brave people who have fought and died to protect this great nation and save democracy, and we owe it to our future generations, to continue the fight."

VOICEOVER: Join the Committee to Investigate Russia. Join the fight.

AARON MATE: Joining me is Max Blumenthal, bestselling author, journalist, senior editor of AlterNet's Grayzone Project, and cohost of the new podcast Moderate Rebels. Max, welcome. I'm going to predict that you're not joining this fight.

MAX BLUMENTHAL: This is sad. It's sad for Morgan Freeman, and I think whatever you think about Russia, you can agree with me that this is probably his worst role since Driving Miss Daisy. Now he's driving, basically, the PNAC train, Project for a New American Century, driving the neocons. This is highly unusual for me, maybe I'm wrong here, to hear a black American say that America has been a shining example of democracy for 241 years. It sounds like something a neocon would write in a script and put for Morgan Freeman in a teleprompter. 200 years ago, or longer, he would have been scrubbing Thomas Jefferson's chamberpot, so this is just deeply disturbing American exceptionalism.

Beyond that, Morgan Freeman has basically been brought into this by Rob Reiner, who's been brought in by a cast of neocons, not just unindicted Iraq War criminal David Frum, who crafted the axis of evil phrase, which has helped spread instability and death around the world, but Max Boot, the neoconservative pundit and self-styled historian who's never met a war he didn't like. We also have James Clapper, the former Director of National Intelligence and NSA director affiliated with this group, the Committee to Investigate Russia. Max Boot is a fellow at the Institute for the Study of War, which is run by Kimberly Kagan, who's part of the neoconservative Kagan dynasty. The Institute for the Study of War is funded primarily by the arms industry and surveillance industry, and their job is basically to gin up wars and consult for generals, and make a windfall profit in the process.

That's what the Committee to Investigate Russia is about. It brings this Hollywood element to it. Rob Reiner's involvement helps get David Frum on CNN and a host of radio and MSNBC programs. It almost makes a neocon like him seem likable, although he and Max Boot were welcomed with open arms by the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign, so in many ways we're experiencing still the toxic alluvia of the Clinton camp with this bizarre initiative.

We have to first ask, what is the Committee to Investigate Russia? It reminds me of the Committee on the Present Danger, which was a Cold War collection of neoconservatives, as well as the Project for a New American Century, which was a larger conglomeration of neoconservatives looking to take advantage of the post-Cold War atmosphere to gin up a war on terror. What they said in their initial document was that, "Short of a catalyzing event, we won't be able to realize our goals." Three years later, 9/11 happened, and that was the catalyzing event.

They are attempting to manufacture a catalyzing event through the narrative of Trump-Russia collusion in order to ramp up hostilities with Russia, not just in Russia's near abroad in Ukraine, but also in Syria and across the world. This is an incredibly dangerous prospect.

AARON MATE: There was a piece today in the Daily Beast picking up on this Facebook story, which you and I haven't discussed yet on the Real News, but it's gotten a lot of attention. A few weeks ago, Facebook disclosed that some $100,000 was spent on Facebook ads by suspected Russian accounts that may be tied to the Kremlin. It was a bit ambiguous. Most of the ads were in 2015, a year before the election, and most of the ads, Facebook said, were not even directly to do with the election but about divisive social issues. This was taken as another new level of Russian influence in the U.S.

Just today, on the Daily Beast, which has been all over this story, there's an exclusive story written by four reporters. A team of four reporters writes, "Exclusive. Russians appear to use Facebook to push Trump rallies in 17 U.S. cities." Subheading is, "Being Patriotic, a Facebook group uncovered by the Daily Beast, is the first evidence of suspected Russian provocateurs explicitly mobilizing Trump supporters in real life."

MAX BLUMENTHAL: Maybe it's true. Maybe these four reporters found something that might be true, but if you read into the ninth paragraph of that article, like so many articles about Russiagate, these four reporters, the finest minds of the Daily Beast, including Spencer Ackerman, who wrote the foreword to Russiagate huckster Malcolm Nance's book on how the election was stolen, and I think his book might have come out before the election was decided, if you read into the ninth paragraph that the story is not confirmed, that Facebook explicitly states that it cannot confirm that any of these accounts are Russian accounts. Throughout the article, the authors are forced to refer to them as suspected Russian accounts. I don't know how this got past an editor, except that there is so much zeal at the Daily Beast to keep up the Trump-Russia collusion narrative that generates clicks.

That's the same, I would assume, mentality that prevails among the producers among Rachel Maddow's show, which you wrote about really clearly and effectively. I think it's not just the narrative that's driven by political zeal but also the desire for ratings and clicks. At no point in this piece do they ever establish that these are Russian accounts. It is possible that this Facebook accounting question, was a Facebook account turned to a Russian bot farm, that's what a lot of accounts do. They pay some bot farm to boost their profile on Facebook. One of the things that bot farms do is they'll direct users to political ads, political hot button issues, because that's what gets people engaged.

Again, there's no evidence here. What I found really interesting about this article, and this is true for the previous Daily Beast article that Spencer Ackerman published about Facebook suspected, alleged, possible Russian bots, is that he turns to a fake Russia expert named Clint Watts, who's a former FBI agent. If you actually look at Clint Watts's work, and you're just remotely informed about politics in the U.S., I think you'll realize that character is a complete crank. If we actually lived in an actual meritocracy that relied on real experts, he would be out with a metal detector looking for loose change on the beach or in some public park, but instead, he was testifying before Congress.

He testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee, Clint Watts, that the chaos of Black Lives Matter was spawned by RT and Sputnik. He links to an RT article about Black Lives Matter as his evidence. Along with the Bundy ranch chaos. This too was a Russian active measure. Yeah, the Bundy ranch. Russia had a huge hand in that. This is someone testifying before the Senate Intelligence Committee.

Even worse, he goes on to talk about an article he wrote with Will McCants and Mike Doran, who are these Beltway think tankers presented as terror experts. He wrote it in Foreign Affairs, which is the journal of the Council on Foreign Relations. It was an article lobbying the U.S. government, the Obama administration, to send arms to Ahrar Al-Sham, which is a Salafi jihadist rebel group in Syria. The teaser of this article, it's unbelievable, is, "An Al Qaeda-linked group we can be friends with."

The article comes out. Clinton Watts gets mocked heavily on Twitter. I think I might have been among the people mocking him, but again, I'm a Russian bot. [Inaudible]. I'm malfunctioning right now. No, actually, real people mocked Clint Watts on Twitter justifiably. He was calling for supporting an Al Qaeda alliance in Syria. He goes before the Senate and says that, "This is when I noticed that there were Russian active measures and an influence campaign, because I was being mocked on Twitter for this article." He doesn't say what the article is. He covers up the content.

This testimony elucidates the kind of Russia experts that are being relied on to prove that there's this vast information warfare campaign, this Gerasimov doctrine, employed by Russia. Clint Watts is part of a larger initiative spun out of the failed Clinton campaign. It includes people like Laura Rosenberger, who was a former policy advisor of Hillary Clinton. This should scare anyone. Consider that these people would have been involved in foreign policy decisions. Andrew Weisberg I think is another, and then there's J.M. Berger, who's part of the terror jihadology industry. He never really established himself as much of a major expert there, but now the hype is all around Russia, so he's rebranded himself as a Russia expert.

They have an initiative called the Alliance for Securing Democracy. If you go on the Alliance for Securing Democracy's website, it's almost as entertaining as the Committee to Investigate Russia. They have a chart that shows the Russia information threat matrix. They're addressing all of the different websites, including the National Review, maybe they'll name the Real News today, that are echoing Kremlin propaganda. How do they determine what the Kremlin's propaganda is? They not only look at RT and Sputnik, they have a list that they've refused to release of 600 Russian bots or Russian-controlled social media accounts. As I said, they refuse to name what these social media accounts are.

Scott Shane, the New York Times reporter, he published another one of these exposes that exposes nothing, and by the ninth paragraph, you realize the whole thing is unconfirmed and it's based on suspicions and speculation. He determined that a lot of these supposed Russian bots he was supposed to be looking at were actually real people, one you can look it is Marcel Sardo, real people who just simply don't believe in a unipolar world, and they support Russia as a counterhegemonic force. I know this is impossible for Beltway insiders and coastal elites to believe, but there are people who actually think that way and are on Twitter.

You're basically looking at a gigantic scam. Scams are bad as they are. Amway's bad. It rips a lot of people off and makes money for right-wingers. This is a pro-war scam that has effectively deep-sixed diplomacy with Russia, which could have been effective in establishing stability in certain areas. 1.4 million people are displaced in Ukraine. Syria's a complete mess. The U.S. has to work with Russia there to defeat ISIS. This is just dangerous on a global scale, and so it's important to call out these scam initiatives and to completely scrutinize and hound the fraudmeisters and neocons behind it.

AARON MATE: All right, that's going to wrap part one of this discussion with Max Blumenthal. Stay tuned for part two.

Max Blumenthal is a senior editor of the Grayzone Project at AlterNet, and the award-winning author of Goliath, Republican Gomorrah, and The 51 Day War. He is the co-host of the podcast, Moderate Rebels. Follow him on Twitter at @MaxBlumenthal.

Rob Roy 4 days ago

Why isn't Max Blumenthal's great book, "The 51 Day War," listed above? Its omission seems odd and deliberate. Also, "Driving Miss Daisy" was not a bad role for Morgan. It was an excellent snap shot of the south at the time and the reduction of two representatives of that era into real people. Never mind.

Anyway, the whole Russiagate thing will either explode into nothing or drift off into nothing. Why? Because there's no "there" there. ALL just fabricated hype. Too many people fall prey to surmises and suggestions and baseless conclusions.

Read Robert Parry, and, please, interview him and others from consortiumnews.com , my best go to source for truth. Thanks for this interview with Max, a man I greatly admire. see more

kober Rob Roy 7 hours ago

Agreement on Parry, a bit verbose but cuts Reagan and GHW Bush to bite size pieces over Iran gate! see more

ollo10 Rob Roy 3 days ago

Fabricated hype yes, but for what reason? The last thing the 'elites' want is Trump making friends with Russia, they are scared it would expose their NATO scam. No enemies = no money for MIC!

Now the dollar is starting to collapse, note each nation America are at loggerheads with, have all stopped using or want to stop using the dollar. So, yes, they fabricated the hype and move onto N Korea, because Russia wouldn't play ball and fire the first shot!

Perhaps Kim Jung-Un can be tricked into this move? It also throws a spanner in the works against the Chinese One Belt One Road [Eurasian Union] that also threatens American hegemony & dollar. see more

Palimpsestuous 4 days ago

Neocons make military war while neoliberals make economic war. Neither group makes any sense and both groups are destroying the human race with synthetic ideologies based on nothing but greed, fear, hatred and greed. Both groups represent extreme wealth and the project to enslave and impoverish the whole world. It's them or us and so far we're clueless.

Maria M Cummings 4 days ago

Right on, and well said Max! Now then, we know who the neocons are, nastiness is embedded in their DNA and makeup. I could go and on to an eternity, using a plethora of adjectives to describe their repugnant ideas and beliefs; but I won't.

On the other hand, here we have the "liberals" of the West coast. Bad losers! Alas, Hillary, "the queen of chaos" lost, and the Hollywood crowd "lost their mind."
And regarding Morgan Freeman, highly disappointing and utterly pathetic.

truthynesslover 4 days ago

Democrats and Neo-CONs want WW3...

Seer 4 days ago

Morgan is a "natural character actor"- while I enjoy some of his movies, he could easily be "Morgan Freeman" in each role. I understand his desire to work and perhaps make more money-he is a paid spokesman I presume. Morgan possesses mo particular geopolitical or economic expertise that I am aware of: enough about Morgan.

SCAM is the correct word. Now after failing to get a Russian "hack" dismissed by former CIA & NSA experts and Wikileaks (Never lied yet to my knowledge) NOW we get Russian FB accounts ( most of which have nothing to do with clinton).

Why won't Clinton go away?- she is just Not personable enough to get elected against someone more personable. This is why Trump and Obama won.

I believe she could have beat Jeb and some other GOP hopefuls who also are not as personable. This DEM meme is all about trying to set itself up for 2018 elections and perhaps to try to bring Trump down before he does some AWFUL things such as: Open up a truly independent 911 investigation; release the JFK files "unclassified" (The CIA would probably not comply)

Incidentally the CIA was never Congressionally approved -- Trump could eliminate them with an executive order; of course then we would see direct evidence of the shadow governments power. What concerns me is that we do not see: Bill Binney, Ray McGovern, Kevin Shipp, Robert Steele, Stephen Cohen in RN interviews? Is RN reporting its funding sources on its site?

Donatella • 4 days ago

A sign of the Democrat party's desperation is its embrace of the always-wrong warmongering neocons. Hillary embraced them during her campaign assuming that it would bring her Republican votes as Chuck Schumer seemed to think. Max Boot is part of this joint Democrat/Neocon propaganda "Committee to Investigate Russia", there is an excellent interview of him at the link below.

https://www.youtube.com/wat...

[Aug 16, 2017] Neocons Leverage Trump-Hate for More Wars Defend Democracy Press by Robert Parry

Notable quotes:
"... For his part, Putin compounded his offense to the neocons by facilitating Obama's negotiations with Iran that imposed strict constraints on Iran's actions toward development of a nuclear bomb and took U.S. war against Iran off the table. The neocons, Israel and Saudi Arabia wanted the U.S. military to lead a bombing campaign against Iran with the hope of crippling their regional adversary and possibly even achieving "regime change" in Tehran. ..."
"... Many U.S. pundits and journalists – in the conservative, centrist and liberal media – were swept up by the various hysterias over Syria, Iran and Russia – much as they had been a decade earlier around the Iraq-WMD frenzy and the "responsibility to protect" (or R2P) argument for the violent "regime change" in Libya in 2011. In all these cases, the public debate was saturated with U.S. government and neocon propaganda, much of it false. ..."
"... But it worked. For instance, the neocons and their liberal-interventionist sidekicks achieved extraordinary success in seducing many American "peace activists" to support the "regime change" war in Syria by sending sympathetic victims of the Syrian government on speaking tours. ..."
"... Still, whenever the White Helmets or other "activists" accused the Syrian government of some unlikely chemical attack, the information was treated as gospel . When United Nations investigators, who were under enormous pressure to confirm the propaganda tales beloved in the West, uncovered evidence that one of the alleged chlorine attacks was staged by the jihadists, the mainstream U.S. media politely looked the other way and continued to treat the chemical-weapons stories as credible. ..."
"... "Coverage of the Syrian war will be remembered as one of the most shameful episodes in the history of the American press." ..."
"... The evidence that Russia had "hacked our democracy" was very thin – some private outfit called Crowdstrike found Cyrillic lettering and a reference to the founder of the Soviet KGB in some of the metadata – but that "incriminating evidence" contradicted Crowdstrike's own notion of a crack Russian hacking operation that was almost impossible to trace. ..."
"... According to Clapper's later congressional testimony, the analysts for this job were "hand-picked" from the CIA, FBI and National Security Agency and assigned to produce an "assessment" before Obama left office. Their Jan. 6 report was remarkable in its lack of evidence and the analysts themselves admitted that it fell far short of establishing anything as fact. It amounted to a continuation of the "trust us" approach that had dominated the anti-Russia themes for years. ..."
"... "When all right-thinking people in the nation's capital seem to agree on something – as has been the case recently with legislation imposing new sanctions on Russia – that may be a warning that the debate has veered into an unthinking herd mentality," Ignatius wrote as he questioned the wisdom of overusing sanctions and tying the President's hands on when to remove sanctions. ..."
"... But Ignatius failed to follow his own logic when it came to the core groupthink about Russia "meddling" in the U.S. election. Despite the thinness of the evidence, the certainty about Russia's guilt is now shared by "all right-thinking people" in Washington, who agree that this point is beyond dispute despite the denials from both WikiLeaks, which published the purloined Democratic emails, and the Russian government. ..."
"... Yet, the neocons have achieved perhaps their greatest success by merging Cold War Russo-phobia with the Trump Derangement Syndrome to enlist liberals and even progressives into the neocon drive for more "regime change" wars. ..."
"... Even relative Kremlin moderates such as Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev , are citing Trump's tail-between-his-legs signing of the sanctions bill as proof that the U.S. establishment has blocked any hope for a détente between Washington and Moscow. ..."
"... In other words, the prospects for advancing the neocon agenda of more "regime change" wars and coups have grown – and the neocons can claim as their allies virtually the entire Democratic Party hierarchy which is so eager to appease its angry #Resistance base that even the heightened risk of nuclear war is being ignored. ..."
5 August 2017 | www.defenddemocracy.press

The original source of this article is Consortiumnews Copyright © Robert Parry , Consortiumnews , 2017

A savvy Washington observer once told me that the political reality about the neoconservatives is that they alone couldn't win you a single precinct in the United States. But both Republicans and Democrats still line up to gain neocon support or at least neocon acceptance. Part of the reason for this paradox is the degree of dominance that the neoconservatives have established in the national news media – as op-ed writers and TV commentators – and the neocon ties to the Israel Lobby that is famous for showering contributions on favored politicians and on the opponents of those not favored.

Since the neocons' emergence as big-time foreign policy players in the Reagan administration , they also have demonstrated extraordinary resilience, receiving a steady flow of money often through U.S. government-funded grants from organizations such as the National Endowment for Democracy and through donations from military contractors to hawkish neocon think tanks .

But neocons' most astonishing success over the past year may have been how they have pulled liberals and even some progressives into the neocon strategies for war and more war, largely by exploiting the Left's disgust with President Trump

People who would normally favor international cooperation toward peaceful resolution of conflicts have joined the neocons in ratcheting up global tensions and making progress toward peace far more difficult.

The provocative "Countering America's Adversaries Through Sanctions Act," which imposes sanctions on Russia, Iran and North Korea while tying President Trump's hands in removing those penalties, passed the Congress without a single Democrat voting no.

The only dissenting votes came from three Republican House members – Justin Amash of Michigan, Jimmy Duncan of Tennessee, and Thomas Massie of Kentucky – and from Republican Rand Paul of Kentucky and Independent Bernie Sanders of Vermont in the Senate.

In other words, every Democrat present for the vote adopted the neocon position of escalating tensions with Russia and Iran. The new sanctions appear to close off hopes for a détente with Russia and may torpedo the nuclear agreement with Iran, which would put the bomb-bomb-bomb option back on the table just where the neocons want it.

The Putin Obstacle

As for Russia, the neocons have viewed President Vladimir Putin as a major obstacle to their plans at least since 2013 when he helped President Obama come up with a compromise with Syria that averted a U.S. military strike over dubious claims that the Syrian military was responsible for a sarin gas attack outside Damascus on Aug. 21, 2013.

Subsequent evidence indicated that the sarin attack most likely was a provocation by Al Qaeda's Syrian affiliate to trick the U.S. military into entering the war on Al Qaeda's side.

While you might wonder why the U.S. government would even think about taking actions that would benefit Al Qaeda, which lured the U.S. into this Mideast quagmire in the first place by attacking on 9/11, the answer is that Israel and the neocons – along with Saudi Arabia and other Sunni-governed states – favored an Al Qaeda victory if that was what was needed to shatter the so-called "Shiite crescent," anchored in Iran and reaching through Syria to Lebanon.

Many neocons are, in effect, America's Israeli agents and – since Israel is now allied with Saudi Arabia and the Sunni Gulf states versus Iran – the neocons exercise their media/political influence to rationalize U.S. military strikes against Iran's regional allies, i.e., Syria's secular government of Bashar al-Assad

Read also: JFK at 100

For his part, Putin compounded his offense to the neocons by facilitating Obama's negotiations with Iran that imposed strict constraints on Iran's actions toward development of a nuclear bomb and took U.S. war against Iran off the table. The neocons, Israel and Saudi Arabia wanted the U.S. military to lead a bombing campaign against Iran with the hope of crippling their regional adversary and possibly even achieving "regime change" in Tehran.

Punishing Russia

It was in that time frame that NED's neocon President Carl Gershman identified Ukraine as the "biggest prize" and an important step toward the even bigger prize of removing Putin in Russia.

Other U.S. government neocons, including Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Victoria Nuland and Sen. John McCain , delivered the Ukraine "prize" by supporting the Feb. 22, 2014 coup that overthrew the elected government of Ukraine and unleashed anti-Russian nationalists (including neo-Nazis) who began killing ethnic Russians in the south and east near Russia's border.

When Putin responded by allowing Crimeans to vote on secession from Ukraine and reunification with Russia, the West – and especially the neocon-dominated mainstream media – denounced the move as a "Russian invasion." Covertly, the Russians also helped ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine who defied the coup regime in Kiev and faced annihilation from Ukrainian military forces, including the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion, which literally displayed Swastikas and SS symbols. Putin's assistance to these embattled ethnic Russian Ukrainians became "Russian aggression."

Many U.S. pundits and journalists – in the conservative, centrist and liberal media – were swept up by the various hysterias over Syria, Iran and Russia – much as they had been a decade earlier around the Iraq-WMD frenzy and the "responsibility to protect" (or R2P) argument for the violent "regime change" in Libya in 2011. In all these cases, the public debate was saturated with U.S. government and neocon propaganda, much of it false.

But it worked. For instance, the neocons and their liberal-interventionist sidekicks achieved extraordinary success in seducing many American "peace activists" to support the "regime change" war in Syria by sending sympathetic victims of the Syrian government on speaking tours.

Meanwhile, the major U.S. media essentially flacked for "moderate" Syrian rebels who just happened to be fighting alongside Al Qaeda's Syrian affiliate and sharing their powerful U.S.-supplied weapons with the jihadists, all the better to kill Syrian soldiers trying to protect the secular government in Damascus.

Successful Propaganda

As part of this propaganda process, the jihadists' P.R. adjunct, known as the White Helmets , phoned in anti-government atrocity stories to eager and credulous Western journalists who didn't dare visit the Al Qaeda-controlled zones for fear of being beheaded.

Still, whenever the White Helmets or other "activists" accused the Syrian government of some unlikely chemical attack, the information was treated as gospel . When United Nations investigators, who were under enormous pressure to confirm the propaganda tales beloved in the West, uncovered evidence that one of the alleged chlorine attacks was staged by the jihadists, the mainstream U.S. media politely looked the other way and continued to treat the chemical-weapons stories as credible.

Historian and journalist Stephen Kinzer has said ,

"Coverage of the Syrian war will be remembered as one of the most shameful episodes in the history of the American press."

Read also: The future of Sanders' political movement

But all these successes in the neocons' "perception management" operations pale when compared to what the neocons have accomplished since Donald Trump defeated Hillary Clinton last November.

Fueled by the shock and disgust over the egotistical self-proclaimed pussy-grabber ascending to the highest office in the land, many Americans looked for both an excuse for explaining the outcome and a strategy for removing Trump as quickly as possible. The answer to both concerns became: blame Russia.

The evidence that Russia had "hacked our democracy" was very thin – some private outfit called Crowdstrike found Cyrillic lettering and a reference to the founder of the Soviet KGB in some of the metadata – but that "incriminating evidence" contradicted Crowdstrike's own notion of a crack Russian hacking operation that was almost impossible to trace.

So, even though the FBI failed to secure the Democratic National Committee's computers so the government could do its own forensic analysis, President Obama assigned his intelligence chiefs, CIA Director John Brennan and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper , to come up with an assessment that could be used to blame Trump's victory on "Russian meddling." Obama, of course, shared the revulsion over Trump's victory, since the real-estate mogul/reality-TV star had famously launched his own political career by spreading the lie that Obama was born in Kenya.

'Hand-Picked' Analysts

According to Clapper's later congressional testimony, the analysts for this job were "hand-picked" from the CIA, FBI and National Security Agency and assigned to produce an "assessment" before Obama left office. Their Jan. 6 report was remarkable in its lack of evidence and the analysts themselves admitted that it fell far short of establishing anything as fact. It amounted to a continuation of the "trust us" approach that had dominated the anti-Russia themes for years.

Much of the thin report focused on complaints about Russia's RT network for covering the Occupy Wall Street protests and sponsoring a 2012 debate for third-party presidential candidates who had been excluded from the Democratic-Republican debates between President Obama and former Gov. Mitt Romney

The absurdity of citing such examples in which RT contributed to the public debate in America as proof of Russia attacking American democracy should have been apparent to everyone, but the Russia-gate stampede had begun and so instead of ridiculing the Jan. 6 report as an insult to reason, its shaky Russia-did-it conclusions were embraced as unassailable Truth, buttressed by the false claim that the assessment represented the consensus view of all 17 U.S. intelligence agencies.

So, for instance, we get the internal contradictions of a Friday column by Washington Post columnist David Ignatius who starts off by making a legitimate point about Washington groupthink.

"When all right-thinking people in the nation's capital seem to agree on something – as has been the case recently with legislation imposing new sanctions on Russia – that may be a warning that the debate has veered into an unthinking herd mentality," Ignatius wrote as he questioned the wisdom of overusing sanctions and tying the President's hands on when to remove sanctions.

Lost Logic

But Ignatius failed to follow his own logic when it came to the core groupthink about Russia "meddling" in the U.S. election. Despite the thinness of the evidence, the certainty about Russia's guilt is now shared by "all right-thinking people" in Washington, who agree that this point is beyond dispute despite the denials from both WikiLeaks, which published the purloined Democratic emails, and the Russian government.

Read also: Now, only CIA and the military do not lie in USA! But, alone, can they stop the Coup and the War?

Ignatius seemed nervous that his mild deviation from the conventional wisdom about the sanctions bill might risk his standing with the Establishment, so he added:

"Don't misunderstand me. In questioning congressional review of sanctions, I'm not excusing Trump's behavior. His non-response to Russia's well-documented meddling in the 2016 presidential election has been outrageous."

However, as usual for the U.S. mainstream media, Ignatius doesn't cite any of those documents. Presumably, he's referring to the Jan. 6 assessment, which itself contained no real evidence to support its opinion that Russia hacked into Democratic emails and gave them to WikiLeaks for distribution.

Just because a lot of Important People keep repeating the same allegation doesn't make the allegation true or "well-documented." And skepticism should be raised even higher when there is a clear political motive for pushing a falsehood as truth, as we should have learned from President George W. Bush 's Iraq-WMD fallacies and from President Barack Obama's wild exaggerations about the need to intervene in Libya to prevent a massacre of civilians.

But Washington neocons always start with a leg up because of their easy access to the editorial pages of The New York Times and Washington Post as well as their speed-dial relationships with producers at CNN and other cable outlets.

Yet, the neocons have achieved perhaps their greatest success by merging Cold War Russo-phobia with the Trump Derangement Syndrome to enlist liberals and even progressives into the neocon drive for more "regime change" wars.

There can be no doubt that the escalation of sanctions against Russia and Iran will have the effect of escalating geopolitical tensions with those two important countries and making war, even nuclear war, more likely.

In Iran, hardliners are already telling President Hassan Rouhani , "We told you so" that the U.S. government can't be trusted in its promise to remove – not increase – sanctions in compliance with the nuclear agreement.

And, Putin, who is actually one of the more pro-Western leaders in Russia, faces attacks from his own hardliners who view him as naïve in thinking that Russia would ever be accepted by the West.

Even relative Kremlin moderates such as Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev , are citing Trump's tail-between-his-legs signing of the sanctions bill as proof that the U.S. establishment has blocked any hope for a détente between Washington and Moscow.

In other words, the prospects for advancing the neocon agenda of more "regime change" wars and coups have grown – and the neocons can claim as their allies virtually the entire Democratic Party hierarchy which is so eager to appease its angry #Resistance base that even the heightened risk of nuclear war is being ignored.

Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his latest book, America's Stolen Narrative, either in print here or as an e-book (from Amazon and barnesandnoble.com ).

[Jul 25, 2017] Color revolution against Trump was planned in Clinton circles with Soros participation by Michael Sainato

Notable quotes:
"... The Hill ..."
"... Harris also has ties to billionaire Democratic Party donor George Soros, who was one of the two owners of OneWest Bank at the time. Coincidentally, before Harris passed on the opportunity to file action against OneWest Bank, Soros was pouring money into California criminal policy initiatives that Harris was pushing. ..."
"... TheLos Angeles Times ..."
"... Billionaire George Soros held a closed door conference with wealthy donors in November 2016 that addressed how to "take back power" and was attended by House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi. ..."
"... On the weekend of Trump's inauguration, David Brock hosted a retreat for the most prolific Democratic donors to figure out how to "kick Donald Trump's a--." ..."
Jul 18, 2017 | www.msn.com

Harris' meetings with Clinton's donors signal that they are rallying behind her as the 2020 Democratic presidential nominee. Harris has emerged as a leading figure in the Trump Resistance; Politico reported that the hearings regarding Trump's connections to Russia have enabled the Democratic Party to frame her as Trump's most aggressive critic. In response to one of the hearings she was involved in, she launched the slogan "courage not courtesy." However, despite this catchy slogan, Harris has historically lacked the courage to hold her donors accountable when they have broken the law.

The nomination of Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin provoked criticisms over his tenure as CEO of OneWest Bank. In 2013, California prosecutors claimed to have discovered over 1,000 foreclosure law violations, but the California Attorney General's office failed to file any action against the bank. At the time, Kamala Harris was California's attorney general. Many questioned why Harris didn't take any action given the evidence her office uncovered.

"We went and we followed the facts and the evidence, and it's a decision my office made," Harris told The Hill . "We pursued it just like any other case. We go and we take a case wherever the facts lead us."

Harris' vague defense is insufficient. The Democratic Party has branded her as a leader of the Trump Resistance without addressing why Harris avoided a criminal investigation that involved donors to her campaign.

In 2011, Mnuchin's wife at the time, Heather Mnuchin, gave $8,750 to Harris' 2011 campaign. OneWest Bank donated $6,500 to Harris' 2011 election. Heather Mnuchin also donated $850 to Harris' 2014 election for California attorney general.

In 2014, the Center for American Progress graded California's campaign donor recusal laws a "C." The state's lax laws allowed Harris to decide not to recuse herself from deciding whether or not to prosecute OneWest Bank.

Mnuchin donated to multiple Republicans' campaigns in 2016, but Harris was the only Democrat he donated to .

Harris also has ties to billionaire Democratic Party donor George Soros, who was one of the two owners of OneWest Bank at the time. Coincidentally, before Harris passed on the opportunity to file action against OneWest Bank, Soros was pouring money into California criminal policy initiatives that Harris was pushing.

In 2011, Harris' former aide Lenore Anderson was hired as campaign manager for Californians for Safety and Justice, which was financed by Soros' Open Society Foundations. In 2014, TheLos Angeles Times reported, "The organization operates under the umbrella of a San Francisco-based nonprofit clearinghouse, which effectively shields its donor list and financial operations from public view." The report cited that since 2012 Soros had led a four-year, $16 million campaign to change California criminal policy, which Harris was deeply involved in as California attorney general. Lenore Anderson also led Vote Safe, another Soros' funded organization.

In 2014, Soros and hedge fund billionaire John Paulson sold OneWest for $3.4 billion. In 2015, Soros donated the maximum amount to Harris' Senate campaign. Also in 2015, Harris spoke at Soros' 2020 Vision Conference in San Francisco with House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and at Soros' Democracy Alliance Conference .

This background information on Harris' relationship to her donors provides context as to why the Democratic establishment is rallying behind her. However, any politician that doesn't hold corporate and special interests accountable only results in more corruption.

Since Hillary Clinton's unexpected loss to Donald Trump , her donors have strategized with Democratic leadership about how to revive the failing party.

Billionaire George Soros held a closed door conference with wealthy donors in November 2016 that addressed how to "take back power" and was attended by House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi.

On the weekend of Trump's inauguration, David Brock hosted a retreat for the most prolific Democratic donors to figure out how to "kick Donald Trump's a--."

On July 15, Page Six reported that Sen. Kamala Harris, a potential 2020 Democratic presidential candidate, met with top Clinton donors in the Hamptons.

Many figures in Clinton's inner circle attended, including Clinton's 2008 Campaign National Finance co-Chair Michael Kempner, donors Dennis Mehiel and Steven Gambrel, and Democratic National Committeeman Robert Zimmerman. Harris also attended a separate luncheon hosted by one of Clinton's top lobbyist bundlers, Liz Robbins.

[Jun 30, 2017] Russia is uniquely hated by the US neoliberal elite and neocons. The key issue for them is "Putinism" which means 'sovereignty, local nationalism (for everyone), a multi-polar world, respect for the UN' vs the Full Specturm Dominance, 'exporting democracy' (via regime change for countries that put resitiance) and the preeminence of US world hegemony

Notable quotes:
"... As I mentioned earlier, Iran is dismissed as a terrorist state, N. Korea a rogue regime, and China a growing rival. With Russia the Foreign Policy Establishment (FPE) will invest the time to write, scholarly looking articles that make it look like they have thoroughly studied Russia and have reluctantly come to the conclusion that Russia is a basket case of evil. ..."
"... Because I watched Stone's interviews and read Russia insider, I can see why they view Putin as a threat. Contrary to their assertion that 'Russia has no culture or ideology to challenge the west (the U.S. FPE)'. This is an issue for them. Putinism, 'sovereignty, local nationalism (for everyone), a multi-polar world, respect for the UN' vs the FPE, 'exporting U.S. democracy (including regime change) and the preeminence of U.S. world leadership'. ..."
"... You can debate Putinism but not merely dismiss it as thuggery which they invariably do with their tediously long articles. It doesn't look like they actually listen to Russians, it looks like they read each other's papers. ..."
"... Now I can see why Russia has abandoned the information war, they view it as a hopeless waste of resources that they can never match. ..."
"... For example, here is a very clever apology for how we justified not having the OPCW investigate Khan Shaykhun and the Syrian airbase https://tcf.org/content/commentary/havent-chemical-weapons-inspectors-gone-syrias-shayrat-air-base/ ..."
Jun 30, 2017 | www.moonofalabama.org

Christian Chuba | Jun 30, 2017 2:28:05 PM | 3

Russia is uniquely hated, they get boutique articles to show that they are rotten to the core.

https://americanaffairsjournal.org/2017/05/seeing-russia-clearly/

As I mentioned earlier, Iran is dismissed as a terrorist state, N. Korea a rogue regime, and China a growing rival. With Russia the Foreign Policy Establishment (FPE) will invest the time to write, scholarly looking articles that make it look like they have thoroughly studied Russia and have reluctantly come to the conclusion that Russia is a basket case of evil.

These boutique articles will say a lot of condescending things but will tie into, 'Russia never had a liberal democratic tradition so of course they are governed by monsters like Putin'. I don't see the same level of care given to the rest of our enemies list. I read realclearworld.com which gives a sampling of neocon articles so I think I get a broad representation of their production.

Because I watched Stone's interviews and read Russia insider, I can see why they view Putin as a threat. Contrary to their assertion that 'Russia has no culture or ideology to challenge the West (the U.S. FPE)'. This is an issue for them. Putinism, 'sovereignty, local nationalism (for everyone), a multi-polar world, respect for the UN' vs the FPE, 'exporting U.S. democracy (including regime change) and the preeminence of U.S. world leadership'.

You can debate Putinism but not merely dismiss it as thuggery which they invariably do with their tediously long articles. It doesn't look like they actually listen to Russians, it looks like they read each other's papers.

If you take the time to read it, the author is diabolically clever in how he twists Putin's words. He refers to Russians who lost everything and were forced to leave (note, he leaves out the dreaded word 'oligarch', that is reserved for those who staid).

Now I can see why Russia has abandoned the information war, they view it as a hopeless waste of resources that they can never match.

For example, here is a very clever apology for how we justified not having the OPCW investigate Khan Shaykhun and the Syrian airbase https://tcf.org/content/commentary/havent-chemical-weapons-inspectors-gone-syrias-shayrat-air-base/

[Jun 20, 2017] Israel had far more involvement in the US election than Russia

Jun 20, 2017 | nation.foxnews.com
The audience member explained that as Colbert pressed Oscar winner Stone - who was promoting his new Vladimir Putin Showtime series, "The Putin Interviews" - on his apparent sympathy for the Russian president in spite of claims about Russian interference in the US election, Stone, at a disadvantage, tried to shift the talk to Israel.

The source said they "watched from behind [their] hands" as Stone said words to the effect of: "Israel had far more involvement in the US election than Russia."

The "Platoon" director further challenged Colbert by saying, "Why don't you ask me about that?" - but we're told that the host shot back, "I'll ask you about that when you make a documentary about Israel!"

[Jun 20, 2017] Israels Dirty Little Secret

Notable quotes:
"... At a recent panel discussion in Washington, screenwriter, film director and producer Oliver Stone briefly addressed the issue of alleged Russian interference in the recent national election, observing that "Israel interfered in the U.S. election far more than Russia and nobody is investigating them." A few days later, in an interview with Stephen Colbert on the Late Show, Stone returned to the theme, responding to an aggressive claim that Russia had interfered in the election by challenging Colbert with "Israel had far more involvement in the U.S. election than Russia. Why don't you ask me about that?" ..."
"... Don't look for the exchange with Colbert on YouTube. CBS deleted it from its broadcast and website, demonstrating once again that the "I" word cannot be disparaged on national television. ..."
Jun 20, 2017 | www.unz.com

At a recent panel discussion in Washington, screenwriter, film director and producer Oliver Stone briefly addressed the issue of alleged Russian interference in the recent national election, observing that "Israel interfered in the U.S. election far more than Russia and nobody is investigating them." A few days later, in an interview with Stephen Colbert on the Late Show, Stone returned to the theme, responding to an aggressive claim that Russia had interfered in the election by challenging Colbert with "Israel had far more involvement in the U.S. election than Russia. Why don't you ask me about that?"

Don't look for the exchange with Colbert on YouTube. CBS deleted it from its broadcast and website, demonstrating once again that the "I" word cannot be disparaged on national television. Stone was, of course, referring to the fact that the Israel Lobby, most notably acting through its American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), is undeniably a foreign lobby, no less so than anyone representing the presumed interests of Russia or China. It operates with complete impunity on Capitol Hill and also at state and local levels and no one dares to require it to register under the Foreign Agents Registration Act of 1938, which would permit scrutiny of its finances and also end its tax-exempt "educational" status. Nor does Congress or the media see fit to inquire into AIPAC's empowerment of candidates based on their fidelity to Israel, not to mention the direct interference in the American electoral process which surfaced most visibly in its support of candidate Mitt Romney in 2012.

The last president that sought to compel the predecessor organization of AIPAC to register was John F. Kennedy, who also was about to take steps to rein in Israel's secret nuclear weapons program when he was assassinated, which was a lucky break for Israel, particularly as Kennedy was replaced by the passionate Zionist Lyndon Baines Johnson. Funny how things sometimes work out. The Warren Commission looked deeply into a possible Cuban connection in the shooting and came up with nothing but one has to wonder if they also investigated the possible roles of other countries. Likewise, the 9/11 Commission Report failed to examine the possible involvement of Israel in the terrorist attack in spite of a considerable body of evidence suggesting that there were a number of Israeli-sourced covert operations running in the U.S. at that time.

Looking back from the perspective of his more than 40 years of military service, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Thomas Moorer described the consequences of Jewish power vis-à-vis U.S. policy towards Israel, stating that "I've never seen a president – I don't care who he is – stand up to them [the Israelis]. It just boggles your mind. They always get what they want. The Israelis know what is going on all the time. I got to the point where I wasn't writing anything down. If the American people understood what a grip those people have got on our government, they would rise up in arms. Our citizens don't have any idea what goes on."

He also addressed the 1967 Israeli assault on the USS Liberty, saying "Israel attempted to prevent the Liberty's radio operators from sending a call for help by jamming American emergency radio channels. [And that] Israeli torpedo boats machine-gunned lifeboats at close range that had been lowered to rescue the most-seriously wounded." He concluded with "our government put Israel's interests ahead of our own? If so, Why? Does our government continue to subordinate American interests to Israeli interests?"

It is a question that might well be asked today, as the subservience to Israeli interests is, if anything, more pervasive in 2017 Washington than it was in 2002 when Moorer spoke up. And, as in Moorer's day, much of the partiality towards Israel makes its way through congress with little or no media coverage lest anyone begin to wonder whose tail is wagging which dog. To put it succinctly, there is an Israeli hand in much of what the United States does internationally, and the involvement is not intended to do anything good for the American people.

During the past several weeks alone there has been a flurry of legislation backed by Israel and its Lobby. One bill might actually have been written by AIPAC. It is called Senate 722, Countering Iran's Destabilizing Activities Act of 2017. The bill has 63 co-sponsors, most of whom are the usual suspects, but it also included an astonishingly large number of Democrats who describe themselves as progressive, including Corey Booker and Kamila Harris, both of whom are apparently terrified lest they say "no" to Israel. With 63 co-sponsors out of 100 senators the bill was certain to pass overwhelmingly, and it was indeed approved 98 to 2, with only Rand Paul and Bernie Sanders voting "no."

And there's more to S.722 than Iran – it's subtitle is "An act to provide congressional review and to counter Iranian and Russian governments' aggression." Much of it is designed to increase sanctions on both Iran and Russia while also limiting the White House's ability to relieve any sanctions without approval by congress. Regarding Iran, the bill mandates that "Not later than 180 days after the date of the enactment of this Act, and every 2 years thereafter, the Secretary of State, the Secretary of Defense, the Secretary of the Treasury, and the Director of National Intelligence shall jointly develop and submit to the appropriate congressional committees a strategy for deterring conventional and asymmetric Iranian activities and threats that directly threaten the United States and key allies in the Middle East, North Africa, and beyond."

ORDER IT NOW

The premise is of course nonsensical as Iran's ability to threaten anyone, least of all the United States, is limited. It is far outgunned by its neighbors and even more so by the U.S., but it has become the enemy of choice for congress as well as for the former generals who serve as White House advisers. The animus against Iran comes directly from Israel and from the Saudi Arabians, who have managed to sell their version of developments in their part of the world through a completely acquiescent and heavily Jewish influenced western media.

And there's more. A bill has surfaced in the House of Representatives that will require the United States to "consult" with Israel regarding any prospective arms sales to Arab countries in the Middle East. In other words, Israel will have a say, backed up undoubtedly by Congress and the media, over what the United States does in terms of its weapons sales abroad. The sponsors of the bill, one Brad Schneider of Illinois, and Claudia Tenney of New York, want "closer scrutiny of future military arms sales" to maintain the "qualitative military edge" that Israel currently enjoys.

Schneider is, of course, Jewish and a life member of AIPAC, so it is hardly as if he is a disinterested party. Tenny runs for office in New York State, so it is hardly as if she is disinterested either, but the net result of all this is that American jobs and U.S. international security arrangements through weapons sales will be at least in part subject to Israeli veto. And you know that is precisely what will happen as Israel could give a damn what happens to the struggling American entity that it so successfully feeds off of.

And there's still more. Bill HR 672 Combating European Anti-Semitism Act of 2017 was passed unanimously by the House of Representatives on June 14 th . Yes, I said "unanimously." The bill requires the State Department of monitor what European nations and their police forces are doing about anti-Semitism and encourages them to adopt "a uniform definition of anti-Semitism." That means that criticism of Israel must be considered anti-Semitism and will therefore be a hate crime and prosecutable, a status that is already de facto true in Britain and France. If the Europeans don't play ball, there is the possibility of repercussions in trade negotiations. The bill was co-sponsored by Ileana Ros-Lehtinen from Florida and Nita Lowey of New York, both of whom are Jewish.

There is also a Senate companion bill on offer in the Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism Act of 2017. The bill will make the Anti-Semitism Envoy a full American Ambassador and will empower him or her with a full staff and a budget permitting meddling worldwide. The bill is sponsored by Kirsten Gillibrand of New York and Marco Rubio of Florida. Gillibrand is unlikely to miss co-sponsoring anything relating to Israel due to her own self-interest and Rubio wants to be president real bad so he is following the money.

And finally, the U.S. Senate has also approved a resolution celebrating the 50 th anniversary of Israel's conquest of East Jerusalem. Again, the vote was unanimous. The resolution was co-sponsored by Senators Charles Schumer and Mitch McConnell, two reptiles who give snakes a bad name and about whom the less said the better. Schumer is Jewish and has described himself as the "shomer" or guardian of Israel in the Senate. That the resolution opposes long established U.S. government policy that the occupation of East Jerusalem and the West Bank by Israel is in contravention of international law and is an impediment to any peace process with the Palestinians apparently bothered not even one Senator.

I might note in passing that there has been no Senate resolution commemorating the 50 th anniversary of the bravery exhibited by the officers and crew of the USS Liberty as they were being slaughtered by the Israelis at the same time as Jerusalem was being "liberated." There is probably even more to say, to include secret agreements with the Pentagon and intelligence agencies, but I will stop at this point with one final observation. President Donald Trump traveled to the Middle East claiming to be desirous of starting serious negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians, but it was all a sham. Benjamin Netanyahu took him aside and came out with the usual Israeli bullshit about the Palestinians "inciting" violence and hatred of Jews and Trump bought into it. He then went to see Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and shouted at him for being a liar and opposed to peace based on what Netanyahu had told him. That is what passes for even-handed in the U.S. government, no matter who is president. A few days later the Israelis announced the building of the largest bloc of illegal new settlements on the West Bank since 1992, an action that they claim is being coordinated with Washington.

Former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon once boasted about owning the United States. I guess he was right.

[Jun 15, 2017] Neocons are after Trump, managed to appoint special procecutor by subterfuge and Trump now losing...

Jun 15, 2017 | economistsview.typepad.com

Fred C. Dobbs, June 14, 2017 at 08:17 PM

Special-counsel probe is examining whether Trump obstructed justice
https://www.wsj.com/articles/mueller-probe-examining-whether-donald-trump-obstructed-justice-1497490897

WSJ - Del Quentin Wilber, Shane Harris and Paul Sonne - June 14, 2017

WASHINGTON-President Donald Trump's firing of former FBI Director James Comey is now a subject of the federal probe being headed by special counsel Robert Mueller, which has expanded to include whether the president obstructed justice, a person familiar with the matter said.

Mr. Mueller is examining whether the president fired Mr. Comey as part of a broader effort to alter the direction of the Federal Bureau of Investigation's probe into Russia's alleged meddling in the 2016 presidential election and whether associates of Mr. Trump colluded with Moscow, the person said.

Mark Corallo, a spokesman for Mr. Trump's personal lawyer, Marc Kasowitz, denounced the revelation in a statement. "The FBI leak of information regarding the president is outrageous, inexcusable and illegal," Mr. Corallo said.

Peter Carr, a spokesman for Mr. Mueller, declined to comment. The special counsel's pursuit of an obstruction of justice probe was first reported Wednesday by the Washington Post. Mr. Mueller's team is planning to interview Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats and National Security Agency Director Mike Rogers as part of its examination of whether Mr. Trump sought to obstruct justice, the person said. The special counsel also plans to interview Rick Ledgett, who recently retired as the deputy director of the NSA, the person added.

While Mr. Ledgett was still in office, he wrote a memo documenting a phone call that Mr. Rogers had with Mr. Trump, according to people familiar with the matter. During the call, the president questioned the veracity of the intelligence community's judgment that Russia had interfered with the election and tried to persuade Mr. Rogers to say there was no evidence of collusion between his campaign and Russian officials, they said. Russia has denied any government effort to meddle in the U.S. election. Mr. Ledgett declined to comment, and officials at the NSA didn't respond to a request for comment. An aide to Mr. Coats declined to comment.

Mr. Coats and Mr. Rogers told a Senate panel June 7 that they didn't feel pressured by Mr. Trump to intervene with Mr. Comey or push back against allegations of possible collusion between Mr. Trump's campaign and Russia. But the top national security officials declined to say what, if anything, Mr. Trump requested they do in relation to the Russia probe.

"If the special prosecutor called upon me to meet with him to ask his questions, I said I would be willing to do that," Mr. Coats said June 7. Mr. Rogers said he would also be willing to meet with the special counsel's team.

Mr. Comey told a Senate panel on June 8 that Mr. Trump expressed "hope" in a one-on-one Oval Office meeting that the FBI would drop its investigation into former national security adviser Michael Flynn, who resigned under pressure for making false statements about his conversations with a Russian diplomat. Mr. Trump has denied making that request.

Mr. Comey said during the testimony that it was up to Mr. Mueller to decide whether the president's actions amounted to obstruction of justice. The former FBI director also said he had furnished the special counsel with memos he wrote documenting his interactions with the president on the matter.

At a June 13 hearing at a House of Representatives panel, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein declined to say who asked him to write a memo justifying Mr. Comey's firing. The White House initially cited that memo as the reason for the termination, and Mr. Trump later said in an NBC interview that he also was influenced by the Russia investigation. Mr. Rosenstein said he wasn't at liberty to discuss the matter.

"The reason for that is that if it is within the scope of Director Mueller's investigation, and I've been a prosecutor for 27 years, we don't want people talking publicly about the subjects of ongoing investigations," Mr. Rosenstein said.

libezkova - , June 14, 2017 at 09:00 PM
Fred,

"Mr. Comey said during the testimony that it was up to Mr. Mueller to decide whether the president's actions amounted to obstruction of justice."

Comey probably lied. This was probably the plan hatched from the very beginning of this color revolution by Comey and other members of anti-trump conspiracy such as Brennan: to raise Russiagate or anything else to the level which allow to appoint special prosecutor and to sink Trump using this mechanism, because digging by itself produces the necessary result.

Obstruction of justice is the easiest path to remove Trump, a no-brainer so to speak, the charge which can be used to remove any any past and future US president with guaranteed result. The other, more Trump-specific, is of financial deals within the Trump empire. Especially his son-in-law deals. In this sense Trump is now hostage like Clinton previously was. He can fight for survival, by unleashing some war, like Clinton did with Yugoslavia.

Which probably is OK for neocons because war for them is the first, the second and the third solution to any problem. But as a result the US standing in the globe probably will be further damaged.

BTW, in your zeal to republish this neocon propaganda, do you understand that Hillary was a head of one of those 17 intelligence agencies in the past?

The State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR) has ties to the Office of Strategic Services from World War II, but was transferred to State after the war. INR now reports directly to the Secretary of State, harnessing intelligence from all sources and offering independent analysis of global events and real-time insight.

Headquarters : Washington, D.C.

Mission : This agency serves as the Secretary of State's primary advisor on intelligence matters, and gives support to other policymakers, ambassadors, and embassy staff.

Budget : $49 million in 2007, according to documents obtained by FAS.

This all drama makes no sense for me. Trump folded. He proved to be not a fighter. The attempt to bring members of his family close to White house is a huge liability for him now in view of possible digging of the past of his son in law by the special Prosecutor. Who is recruiting the most rabid Hillary hacks for the job ;-).

But the key question is what DemoRats will gain with the current vice president elevated to the new level?

Other then a blowback from the remaining part of Trump supporters. Pat Buchanan was talking about civil war recently, which is probably exaggeration, but the probably direction of reaction is probably right:

http://www.cnsnews.com/commentary/patrick-j-buchanan/are-we-nearing-civil-war

Not that I trust him with such a prediction, but still this is a danger.

EMichael - , June 14, 2017 at 09:26 PM
troll/bot
libezkova - , June 15, 2017 at 05:29 PM
You are a typical retired "frustrated underachiever". Nothing new here and your replies fits the pattern perfectly well.

You probably should not comment things that you have no formal training. I do believe that you are unable to define such terms as "neocon", "Bolshevism", "Trotskyism" and "jingoism" without looking into the dictionary. Judging from your comments this is above your IQ. Of cause, such twerps as you are always lucking in Internet forums, so you are just accepted here as the necessary evil. But you do no belong here. No way. Neither in economic or political discussions.

You can add nothing to the discussion. Actually your political position is the position of a typical neocons and as such is as close to betrayal of American Republic as one can get. If the American people had their way, all our "Neocon overlords" would be in federal prison or Guantanamo Bay, and all their assets seized to pay down the heinous 20 trillion debt their lies and wars have created. Because interests of neocons are not interests of the 300 million of US population. That's why people elected Trump with all his warts.

It is sleazy idiots like you who get us into the current mess. And please tell your daughters that you betrayed them as well -- you endanger them and their children, if they have any. Of course for retired idiots like you nuclear holocaust does not matter. But it does matter for other people. Is it so difficult to understand?

im1dc - , June 15, 2017 at 05:14 AM
Trump/Putin Spin.
JF - , June 15, 2017 at 07:50 AM
Agree, add JohnH and you see a disinformation team. One goal is to undermine the credibility of this blog, so skipping over their entries is what I recommend, unless you want to learn fifth column techniques. Quess that is interesting, but it is trolldpm!
JohnH - , June 15, 2017 at 08:05 AM
The choir of losers continues to sing: 'Putin and Trump colluded' ...just like the right wing sang that Bill Clinton was guilty of all sorts of heinous crimes. And what did they finally get on Bill? Monica.
Christopher H. - , June 15, 2017 at 09:43 AM
They're just lone cranks. If you think they're a disinformation team, you're paranoid. There are a lot of crazy people out there. If you don't understand that fact you need to get out more.

EMichael and PGL love to scold the cranks as much as possible b/c it makes their establishment line sound reasonable. I agree with you. I just ignore them. At least they're keeping busy instead of harassing people offline.

Christopher H. - , June 15, 2017 at 09:54 AM
BTW, now I think Trump is probably going down. He floats idea of firing Mueller. Mueller tells press they're investigating Trump. Meanwhile the Republicans are passing Trumpcare. Trump is moving to replace Yellen. So Mueller will have this list of things Trump and his campaign did. Will Republicans vote to remove Trump? Will it depend upon how the public reacts?
RC AKA Darryl, Ron - , June 15, 2017 at 09:57 AM
Perhaps they are just attempting to hasten the descent of the Democratic Party establishment consensus towards its inevitable rock bottom, the condition at which all addicts must finally arrive before they are forced to admit that they are the authors of their own failure and the only ones capable of their own rescue.
Christopher H. - , June 15, 2017 at 10:53 AM
To my eyes the Democratic Party establishment consensus doesn't really need much in the way of help. It's pushing on an open door.

Their candidate for Virginia's governor voted for George W. Bush twice?

Their candidate for New Jersey governor is a Goldman Sachs guy?

Way to read the room.

RC AKA Darryl, Ron - , June 15, 2017 at 12:59 PM
Exactly! I am in total agreement with you. We are both meaning the same thing, just framing it differently.
libezkova - , June 15, 2017 at 05:30 PM
My God, way too many neocons here.

[Mar 03, 2017] Neocons are trying to re-whip anti-Russian hysteria of McCarthy years but do not find as receptive an audience as they used to

Notable quotes:
"... I think that there's still a lot of resistance in the US to consider seriously the idea that it could be responsible for assassinating it's own popular president (JFK) and also to consider critically our current activities in places like Ukraine, Libya and Syria. ..."
Mar 03, 2017 | www.nakedcapitalism.com
financial matters , February 27, 2017 at 9:15 am

It seems that the last worthwhile president we had was JFK. He started out his presidency as a Cold Warrior but at the end saw the futility of being involved in Vietnam and of the cold war in general.

At the time there was a very strong anti-communist pro-war sentiment in the US which resonated well with the military industrial complex that Kennedy was up against when his views became more conciliatory with Russia. This anti-Russian sentiment is trying to be re-whipped up in the US but isn't finding as receptive an audience.

Kennedy essentially lost control of his presidency. Trump seems to be facing similar pressures but I don't think he's so isolated in his battles. He has strong allies in both the military and industry and there is a different public sentiment.

I think that there's still a lot of resistance in the US to consider seriously the idea that it could be responsible for assassinating it's own popular president (JFK) and also to consider critically our current activities in places like Ukraine, Libya and Syria.

Russia seems to be treating its Arab neighbors with more respect and it would be good if Trump could get on that train. It would also be good to see Trump transition to a more climate friendly attitude such as partnering with China on solar energy.

[Jan 02, 2017] How George Soros Destroyed The Democratic Party

Notable quotes:
"... George Soros saw America in terms of its centers of economic and political power. He didn't care about the vast stretches of small towns and villages, of the more modest cities that he might fly over in his jet but never visit, and the people who lived in them. Like so many globalists who believe that borders shouldn't exist because the luxury hotels and airports they pass through are interchangeable, the parts of America that mattered to him were in the glittering left-wing bubble inhabited by his fellow elitists. ..."
"... Trump's victory, like Brexit, came because the neoliberals had left the white working class behind. Its vision of the future as glamorous multicultural city states was overturned in a single night. The idea that Soros had committed so much power and wealth to was of a struggle between populist nationalists and responsible internationalists. But, in a great irony, Bush was hardly the nationalist that Soros believed. Instead Soros spent a great deal of time and wealth to unintentionally elect a populist nationalist. ..."
"... Soros fed a political polarization while assuming, wrongly, that the centers of power mattered, and their outskirts did not. He was proven wrong in both the United States of America and in the United Kingdom. He had made many gambles that paid off. But his biggest gamble took everything with it. ..."
"... They sold their souls for campaign dollars and look what it got them. lmfao. ..."
"... I wouldn't give Soros that much credit. Sure, he helped, but face it, mainstream corporate media is now the Ministry of Truth. And both the Democrat and Republican elites have been working overtime in the last 16 years to dismantle the Constitution and Bill of Rights. ..."
"... The Deplorables at least understand they have been betrayed by BOTH parties. ..."
"... I'm guessing that even without the billionaire polarizing meddler Soros, the limousine liberal group, made up of the crooked Clintons, Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, Debbie Washerwoman-Schitz, Chuck 'the fuck' Schumer and the Obamas, was more than enough to sink a very divided, primary election-rigged Democrat Party ..."
"... Neoliberal lobbyists have successfully co-opted the policies & talking points of the center-left over the last two decades, and in so doing, poisoned progressive politics with a deep affinity for Wall Street, financialization, and free trade. Under neoliberalism, equality for all took a back seat to representational diversity within Western popular culture, redistribution was repurposed to include corporate welfare programs & taxpayer funded bail-outs for banks, and tolerance became increasingly subdued by identity politics. ..."
"... It was the takeover by neoliberalism that heralded the beginning of the end for Social Democracy. Nothing else. The consequences of this neoliberal-sized myopia, stupidity & hubris include historically low levels of trust in public institutions, and a rapidly rising tide of right-wing populism & ethnic nationalism across the West. Neoliberal policy is responsible for the current state of affairs in our societies; ergo, its advocates & pundits are to be held accountable for such events as Brexit and the election of Donald Trump. This fully includes legally accountable. ..."
"... Neoliberals control by divide and conquer tactics. ..."
"... I make a salient point about the detrimental influence of neoliberal & corporate lobbying on society, and soon after a troll appears to try divert attention away from the class struggle, and channel it right back to identity politics and the scapegoating of ethnic/religious minorities. It brings to mind the following quote, actually: ..."
"... " Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacificsts for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country. " - Hermann Goering ..."
"... It makes one wonder what else neoliberals and the far-right might have in common beyond the mutual adoration for corporate welfare & racial hierarchy. ..."
"... Your corporate & neoliberal sponsors are the inheritors & beneficiaries of these " American legacies". And judging by the events of the 2008 financial crisis, they are far from being done with destroying the lives of people they somehow deem inherently "inferior". ..."
"... And, if you were to give any kind of balance to your comments, you'd refer to "leftists" like Brzezinski, Carter, Rubin, Billary Clinton, Summers and Jay Rockefeller as neoliberals. ..."
"... yep, soros is finishing the job begun by Scoop Jackson and the DLC. "There's not a dime's worth of difference between the Democratic and Republican parties" - G. Wallace 1968. He was right then, even more correct in 2014 ..."
"... Please. He was 14 and a half when the Nazis surrendered in Budapest (where he lived). Soros may be pernicious, but drop this "Nazi collaborator" bullshit. ..."
"... The Dems a party of "radical leftists"?? Are you kidding me? they are a bunch of corrupt liars at every party level that has even a slight real influence on state or national policies, by and large. The same ist true for the republicans. ..."
"... Oh, and Soros is no leftist billionaire either. He is a globalist, elitist NWO world government crook who wants to enslave mankind for his own personal enrichment no matter what. ..."
"... His "open society" and "reflexivity" bullsh!t is just some empty talk and blabbering to fool and deceive people. ..."
"... His only "principle" and "ideology" is "Soros first". he has more money than he can ever spend in his remaining life span, yet he still cannot grab enough $$. Leftist? Not! ..."
"... Soros did a great job helping Oblivio and Hillary obliterate the Democratic Party. ..."
"... And nobody seems to discuss how Putin became Public Enemy Number One in the minds of the Dems after Russia put out a warrant on Soros. Coincidence? ..."
"... Soros was only part of the problem for the democrats, Mostly the blame falls on the ones that let it go into ruin. So blinded by the money, couldn't see the obvious. ..."
"... "They have financed both sides of every war since Napoleon. They own your news, the media, your oil and your government. Yet most of you don't even know who they are. ..."
"... The corrupt avarice of the Clintons and the Chicago Mafia were all that was needed to complete the complete destruction. ..."
"... I can think of no finer display of corrupt pettiness than how they have acted since the election. And to think they almost ended up running this country. It does appear as if the Fortunes shine upon us. Time will tell. ..."
"... Kinda like all the "russian hacking" nonsense. The neoliberals bitches and moans about foreign interference in our election, but their entire national strategy relies upon same. ..."
"... Also funny how the democrat party has allowed itself to become the big money, corporate party. They rely on billionaire money to operate. All that money spend and they still couldn't get killery her crown. I never thought Id say this, but it looks like we all owe old georgie a big thank you for what he did. I doubt the germans would feel the same, but him destroying the neoliberals trying to remake it in his imagine did us a big favor this time around. ..."
"... Destroying political parties is the easiest thing on the world, as they are completely populated by greedy sociopaths. ..."
"... The neoliberals needs demons as they don't have an actual platform that is economically feasible. Unfettered immigrants coming in coupled with jobs leaving isn't sustainable. The old saying "we make it up in volume" applies. ..."
"... The Washington Post is now referred to as Bezos' Blog. Get with the program, man. ..."
"... If Trump is moderately successful in draining the swamp I think that bodes poorly for the neocon warmongering old guard wing of the party. And that is a good thing if it happens. ..."
"... The neocons can easily move over to the Democratic Party. Some of them already are. The Democrats would welcome them. ..."
"... Actually, that is where they came from. Bill Kristol sr., Perle, etc. were democrats until democrats became the anti war party in the 60's of George McGovern, they couldn't abide with that so they moved to the republican party which was historically more isolationist and anti war, because war was bad for business. ..."
"... Funny how you forgot the military-industrial complex, wall street, healthcare scam etc. That's where most of it goes, but they keep the sheeple blaming the poor. ..."
Jan 02, 2017 | www.zerohedge.com
Submitted by Daniel Greenfield via FrontPageMag.com,

It was the end of the big year with three zeroes. The first X-Men movie had broken box office records. You couldn't set foot in a supermarket without listening to Brittney Spears caterwauling, "Oops, I Did It Again." And Republicans and Democrats had total control of both chambers of legislatures in the same amount of states. That was the way it was back in the distant days of the year 2000.

In 2016, Republicans control both legislative chambers in 32 states. That's up from 16 in 2000.

What happened to the big donkey? Among other things, the Democrats decided to sell their base and their soul to a very bad billionaire and they got a very bad deal for both.

... ... ...

Obama's wins concealed the scale and scope of the disaster. Then the party woke up after Obama to realize that it had lost its old bases in the South and the Rust Belt. the neoliberals had hollowed it out and transformed it into a party of coastal urban elites, angry college crybullies and minority coalitions.

Republicans control twice as many state legislative chambers as the Democrats. They boast 25 trifectas , controlling both legislative chambers and the governor's mansion. Trifectas had gone from being something that wasn't seen much outside of a few hard red states like Texas to covering much of the South, the Midwest and the West.

The Democrats have a solid lock on the West Coast and a narrow corridor of the Northeast, and little else. The vast majority of the country's legislatures are in Republican hands. The Democrat Governor's Association has a membership in the teens. In former strongholds like Arkansas, Dems are going extinct. The party has gone from holding national legislative majorities to becoming a marginal movement.

... Much of this disaster had been funded with Soros money. Like many a theatrical villain, the old monster had been undone by his own hubris. Had Soros aided the Democrats without trying to control them, he would have gained a seat at the table in a national party. Instead he spent a fortune destroying the very thing he was trying to control.

George Soros saw America in terms of its centers of economic and political power. He didn't care about the vast stretches of small towns and villages, of the more modest cities that he might fly over in his jet but never visit, and the people who lived in them. Like so many globalists who believe that borders shouldn't exist because the luxury hotels and airports they pass through are interchangeable, the parts of America that mattered to him were in the glittering left-wing bubble inhabited by his fellow elitists.

Trump's victory, like Brexit, came because the neoliberals had left the white working class behind. Its vision of the future as glamorous multicultural city states was overturned in a single night. The idea that Soros had committed so much power and wealth to was of a struggle between populist nationalists and responsible internationalists. But, in a great irony, Bush was hardly the nationalist that Soros believed. Instead Soros spent a great deal of time and wealth to unintentionally elect a populist nationalist.

... ... ...

Soros fed a political polarization while assuming, wrongly, that the centers of power mattered, and their outskirts did not. He was proven wrong in both the United States of America and in the United Kingdom. He had made many gambles that paid off. But his biggest gamble took everything with it.

"I don't believe in standing in the way of an avalanche," Soros complained of the Republican wave in 2010.

But he has been trying to do just that. And failing.

"There should be consequences for the outrageous statements and proposals that we've regularly heard from candidates Trump and Cruz," Soros threatened this time around. He predicted a Hillary landslide.

He was wrong.

... ... ...

The_Juggernaut -> Normalcy Bias , Jan 1, 2017 5:56 PM

They sold their souls for campaign dollars and look what it got them. lmfao.
AlaricBalth -> Croesus , Jan 1, 2017 6:31 PM
Where is the outrage concerning Soros' attempted hack of the 2016 election?
Perimetr -> AlaricBalth , Jan 1, 2017 6:34 PM
I wouldn't give Soros that much credit. Sure, he helped, but face it, mainstream corporate media is now the Ministry of Truth. And both the Democrat and Republican elites have been working overtime in the last 16 years to dismantle the Constitution and Bill of Rights.

The Deplorables at least understand they have been betrayed by BOTH parties.

Paul Kersey -> two hoots , Jan 1, 2017 7:11 PM
I'm guessing that even without the billionaire polarizing meddler Soros, the limousine liberal group, made up of the crooked Clintons, Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, Debbie Washerwoman-Schitz, Chuck 'the fuck' Schumer and the Obamas, was more than enough to sink a very divided, primary election-rigged Democrat Party
tazs -> For Ages We Shall Reign , Jan 1, 2017 9:17 PM
Soros also financed the entire conflict with Russia.

http://biblicisminstitute.wordpress.com/2015/03/17/the-truth-about-the-c...

weburke -> tazs , Jan 1, 2017 9:26 PM
he is under the control of others

also, the clinton group is and has been regular murderers.

cheka -> weburke , Jan 1, 2017 10:04 PM
a few decades ago the dims were viewed as the party of the working man

they ditched the working man to court the various hate groups - nyc skype, gay, black, illegal, globalist warmers, etc

apparently the hate groups don't have the time to vote their dim masters into office

Eirik Magnus Larssen -> cheka , Jan 2, 2017 4:27 AM
" they ditched the working man to court the various hate groups - nyc skype, gay, black, illegal, globalist warmers, etc "

Inclusive politics are not at the root of the crisis which the center-left is now experiencing on both sides of the Atlantic. Neoliberalism is.

Neoliberal lobbyists have successfully co-opted the policies & talking points of the center-left over the last two decades, and in so doing, poisoned progressive politics with a deep affinity for Wall Street, financialization, and free trade. Under neoliberalism, equality for all took a back seat to representational diversity within Western popular culture, redistribution was repurposed to include corporate welfare programs & taxpayer funded bail-outs for banks, and tolerance became increasingly subdued by identity politics.

Today, we witness this phenomenon across all major center-left parties & their associated media pundits. A prominent example would be the vocal support that mainstream neoliberal outlets, such as the Financial Times, Bloomberg, and The Economist, are consistently offering to the Social Democratic parties & candidates. These neoliberal platforms take on a public profile of social radicalism on key social issues, while they relentlessly advocate for unfettered free trade and a form of laissez faire capitalism at the same time.

It was the takeover by neoliberalism that heralded the beginning of the end for Social Democracy. Nothing else. The consequences of this neoliberal-sized myopia, stupidity & hubris include historically low levels of trust in public institutions, and a rapidly rising tide of right-wing populism & ethnic nationalism across the West. Neoliberal policy is responsible for the current state of affairs in our societies; ergo, its advocates & pundits are to be held accountable for such events as Brexit and the election of Donald Trump. This fully includes legally accountable.

Paul Kersey -> Eirik Magnus Larssen , Jan 2, 2017 5:37 AM
Erik, when haven't England and the US been governed by neoliberals? Neoliberals control by divide and conquer tactics. In the US, elections have always been rural vs city, young vs old, white vs non-white. Even when Obama won, he didn't win the white vote, the rural vote or the old vote. Brexit, too, was about young vs old, rural vs city and white vs non-white.

In the big national elections, it comes down to which sides get out the vote. In the case of the Presidential election, the Democrats, who couldn't have picked a more entitled, crooked and repulsive candidate, just couldn't get out enough of their own vote out her. In the case of the Brexit election, it was the fear of the non-urban whites being over run by immigrants, that made the difference.

Eirik Magnus Larssen -> fleur de lis , Jan 2, 2017 8:09 AM
How much do your corporate sponsors pay for each attempt at disrupting public criticism of neoliberalism?
Eirik Magnus Larssen -> fleur de lis , Jan 2, 2017 9:22 AM
I make a salient point about the detrimental influence of neoliberal & corporate lobbying on society, and soon after a troll appears to try divert attention away from the class struggle, and channel it right back to identity politics and the scapegoating of ethnic/religious minorities. It brings to mind the following quote, actually:

" Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacificsts for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country. " - Hermann Goering

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermann_G%C3%B6ring

It makes one wonder what else neoliberals and the far-right might have in common beyond the mutual adoration for corporate welfare & racial hierarchy.

Eirik Magnus Larssen -> fleur de lis , Jan 2, 2017 9:24 AM
The irony is thick:

1) https://www2.stetson.edu/library/green/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/prize_...

2) https://intercontinentalcry.org/colonialism-genocide-and-gender-violence...

Your corporate & neoliberal sponsors are the inheritors & beneficiaries of these " American legacies". And judging by the events of the 2008 financial crisis, they are far from being done with destroying the lives of people they somehow deem inherently "inferior".

Perhaps the legacies of class warfare & racial hierarchy should end.

Paul Kersey -> Eirik Magnus Larssen , Jan 2, 2017 10:10 AM
EML, would it kill you to be a bit more balanced in your comments? You always end up with a rant about the "far-right" and "identity politics". Do you deny that the far left constantly disparages Jews and working class whites, who these leftists refer to as "white trash" and "trailer trash"?

And, if you were to give any kind of balance to your comments, you'd refer to "leftists" like Brzezinski, Carter, Rubin, Billary Clinton, Summers and Jay Rockefeller as neoliberals. Try not being such a polarizing one-trick pony, or at least save yourself time by using the term, 'ditto' for your posts, since most of your posts appear to be redundant pleas for negative attention.

Hermann Goering, please. Now you are resorting to Godwin's Law. How pathetic.

Eirik Magnus Larssen -> shovelhead , Jan 2, 2017 9:40 AM
"I would suggest, rather than a take-over by this shadowy "Neo-Liberals", that the facts are that normal people don't want to be associated with..."

Are these the "normal people" you are referring to?

https://www.desmogblog.com/2016/09/15/dakota-access-pipeline-fake-twitte...

American Gorbachev -> cheka , Jan 2, 2017 8:40 AM
yep, soros is finishing the job begun by Scoop Jackson and the DLC. "There's not a dime's worth of difference between the Democratic and Republican parties" - G. Wallace 1968. He was right then, even more correct in 2014

in 2017 ??? time will tell

JungleCat -> tazs , Jan 2, 2017 9:54 AM
"...former Nazi collaborator" ??

Please. He was 14 and a half when the Nazis surrendered in Budapest (where he lived). Soros may be pernicious, but drop this "Nazi collaborator" bullshit.

fx -> For Ages We Shall Reign , Jan 2, 2017 4:02 AM
The Dems a party of "radical leftists"?? Are you kidding me? they are a bunch of corrupt liars at every party level that has even a slight real influence on state or national policies, by and large. The same ist true for the republicans.

Oh, and Soros is no leftist billionaire either. He is a globalist, elitist NWO world government crook who wants to enslave mankind for his own personal enrichment no matter what.

His "open society" and "reflexivity" bullsh!t is just some empty talk and blabbering to fool and deceive people.

He sold out his fellow jews to the Nazis back in the dark times of the 1930s/1940s; he virtually delivered them to the Nazio slaughterhouse and never ever regretted it. He is doing and always will do the same to everybody else.

His only "principle" and "ideology" is "Soros first". he has more money than he can ever spend in his remaining life span, yet he still cannot grab enough $$. Leftist? Not!

JRobby -> Paul Kersey , Jan 1, 2017 7:31 PM
Soros did a great job helping Oblivio and Hillary obliterate the Democratic Party.

Oblivio - Obliterate - Oblivion

WestVillageIdiot -> JRobby , Jan 1, 2017 7:38 PM
And nobody seems to discuss how Putin became Public Enemy Number One in the minds of the Dems after Russia put out a warrant on Soros. Coincidence?
strannick -> WestVillageIdiot , Jan 1, 2017 7:42 PM
Putin showed the world that you could aspire towards Christian nationhood, and take yourselves out from under the debt enslaved thumb of Zoinist Rothchild Bankers. For that he must be stopped.
cheka -> strannick , Jan 1, 2017 10:05 PM
if Russia would start taking 3rd world 'refugees' they could get back in skype good graces
buttmint -> cheka , Jan 2, 2017 2:21 AM
cheka...good point, you forgot the:

/sarc

strannick -> Paul Kersey , Jan 1, 2017 7:39 PM
Dear Democrats;

Next time, dont sell your soul to a very bad billionaire. Instead, listen to Putins Christmas speech

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-12-26/vladimir-putin%E2%80%99s-christ...

OneEyedJack -> Perimetr , Jan 1, 2017 7:01 PM
Soros was only part of the problem for the democrats, Mostly the blame falls on the ones that let it go into ruin. So blinded by the money, couldn't see the obvious.
Amun -> Blankone , Jan 1, 2017 8:51 PM
"They have financed both sides of every war since Napoleon. They own your news, the media, your oil and your government. Yet most of you don't even know who they are."

http://www.infowars.com/mr-burns-declares-war/

RiverRoad -> OneEyedJack , Jan 1, 2017 8:44 PM
The Clinton Machine took them all down, riding over anything and anyone who got in their way.
Theosebes Goodfellow -> Perimetr , Jan 2, 2017 12:19 AM
~"I wouldn't give Soros that much credit."~

Actually, I find this post to be a very accurate summation of what the 2016 election turned out to be. It is true that it was not Soros alone who created the evil that was done, but he was the money bags behind it.

The corrupt avarice of the Clintons and the Chicago Mafia were all that was needed to complete the complete destruction. What is disturbing is how incapable those whose guilt is writ in this fiasco are of coming to terms with their very own failures. All you see them do is try to blame others for their iniquities.

I can think of no finer display of corrupt pettiness than how they have acted since the election. And to think they almost ended up running this country. It does appear as if the Fortunes shine upon us. Time will tell.

greenskeeper carl -> AlaricBalth , Jan 1, 2017 6:57 PM
Since it came from Soros, Its "good" influence. Its only bad when such things hurt democrats. Kinda like all the "russian hacking" nonsense. The neoliberals bitches and moans about foreign interference in our election, but their entire national strategy relies upon same.

They import millions of foreigners who overwhelmingly vote democrat. They wouldn't stand a chance in a national election without a shitload of non americans voting. How exactly that isn't defined as 'foreign interference in our elections' is beyond me.

Also funny how the democrat party has allowed itself to become the big money, corporate party. They rely on billionaire money to operate. All that money spend and they still couldn't get killery her crown. I never thought Id say this, but it looks like we all owe old georgie a big thank you for what he did. I doubt the germans would feel the same, but him destroying the neoliberals trying to remake it in his imagine did us a big favor this time around.

New World Chaos -> greenskeeper carl , Jan 1, 2017 8:14 PM
Also have to thank Soros for Black Lives Matter. When the revolution comes, there will be a bunch of cops on our side, and most of the angry nutbags who kill random cops will be black, which means there will be even more cops on our side.

Within a few years maybe we will thank Soros for a fascist Europe and the giant enema which will follow. And the Farce will come full circle for this devil who got his start betraying his own people to the Nazis so he could steal their shit.

Amun -> New World Chaos , Jan 1, 2017 9:01 PM
"Zionists Sacrificed Jews to the Holocaust

The word "Holocaust" is a Biblical term for "burnt sacrifice." Why refer to genocide as "a sacrifice"? - See more at: https://www.henrymakow.com/2013/11/Zionists-Sacrificed-Jews-in-Holocaust...

"Excerpts from Perfidy are printed below. We begin with Adolf Eichmann's testimonial to Kastner's activities, which Hecht quoted from "Eichmann's Confessions" published in the November 28 and December 5, 1960 editions of LIFE magazine.

In Hungary my basic orders were to ship all the Jews out of Hungary in as short a time as possible. . . . In obedience to Himmler's directive, I now concentrated on negotiations with the Jewish political officials in Budapest . . . among them Dr. Rudolf Kastner, authorized representative of the Zionist Movement. This Dr. Kastner was a young man about my age, an ice-cold lawyer and a fanatical Zionist. He agreed to help keep the Jews from resisting deportation -- and even keep order in the collection camps -- if I would close my eyes and let a few hundred or a few thousand young Jews emigrate illegally to Palestine.

It was a good bargain. For keeping order in the camps, the price . . . was not too high for me ....We trusted each other perfectly. When he was with me, Kastner smoked cigarets as though he were in a coffeehouse. While we talked he would smoke one aromatic cigaret after another, taking them from a silver case and lighting them with a silver lighter. With his great polish and reserve he would have made an ideal Gestapo officer himself.Dr. Kastner's main concern was to make it possible for a select group of Hungarian Jews to emigrate to Israel. . . .

As a matter of fact, there was a very strong similarity between our attitudes in the S.S. and the viewpoint of these immensely idealistic Zionist leaders . . . . I believe that Kastner would have sacrificed a thousand or a hundred thousand of his blood to achieve his political goal. . . . "You can have the others," he would say, "but let me have this group here." And because Kastner rendered us a great service by helping to keep the deportation camps peaceful, I would let his group escape. After all, I was not concerned with small groups of a thousand or so Jews. . . . That was the "gentleman's agreement" I had with the Jews. (p.261) - See more at: https://www.henrymakow.com/2013/11/Zionists-Sacrificed-Jews-in-Holocaust...

SoDamnMad -> Croesus , Jan 2, 2017 3:18 AM
I would love for him to get "snatched" and dropped into the land of hackers. I am sure he would find the justice he deserves.

I wonder why the Simon Weisenthal Center never went after him.

Dennisen -> Normalcy Bias , Jan 1, 2017 5:57 PM
Sadly, everyone has a price. And he has the checkbook.
Oldwood -> Dennisen , Jan 1, 2017 6:31 PM
And he ain't done yet. The question is...how desperate will they become?
SWRichmond -> Oldwood , Jan 1, 2017 8:06 PM
Everyone, especially politicians. Destroying political parties is the easiest thing on the world, as they are completely populated by greedy sociopaths. As long as they are getting rich they are "winning".
Moe Hamhead -> NoWayJose , Jan 1, 2017 7:25 PM
I think Obama deserves a share of the credit. And Hillary, yes, of course Hillary deserves to take a bow as well.

And...., well Soros certainly was Executive Producer though.

insanelysane -> dogfish , Jan 1, 2017 6:51 PM
The Koch brothers stayed out of the fray as they do not like Trump. The neoliberals tried to make the Kochs a demon but no one was buying the bullshit. The neoliberals needs demons as they don't have an actual platform that is economically feasible. Unfettered immigrants coming in coupled with jobs leaving isn't sustainable. The old saying "we make it up in volume" applies.
dexter_morgan -> VWAndy , Jan 1, 2017 8:05 PM
Not this year really. They were not behind Trump, supported HRC if I am not mistaken, after Trump won the nomination.

Thing about the Krotch brothers that is different from Soros is they try to influence thing to benefit themselves financially, not necessarily to destroy the country, where Soros is flat out anti traditional American values and US constitution. The constitution is the only thing that has kept us from being a full blown totalitarian state run by global government so far, so it has to be destroyed in his mind.

I could be wrong, but don't think the Krotch brothers are out to destroy the constitution, just obscenely enrich themselves bordering on illegally.

WestVillageIdiot -> uncle_disgusting , Jan 1, 2017 7:40 PM
The Washington Post is now referred to as Bezos' Blog. Get with the program, man.
Yog Soggoth -> Midas , Jan 1, 2017 6:49 PM
Russians put the weeds in your lawn ... at night. Soros has always been a major problem for the entire world, and that is why the news will be very interesting this year, because everyone knows. Happy new year.
stant , Jan 1, 2017 5:58 PM
And now the Dems big donors want a audit of the 1.5 bill lost on the election. Looking at the carnage they won't be so generous in the future
Jacksons Ghost , Jan 1, 2017 6:00 PM
Hell has a special spot for this vermin, may he go there soon.
chosen , Jan 1, 2017 6:01 PM
Goodbye, Democratic Party. See you maybe in 16 years, but I doubt it. My guess is a different party will be formed to challenge the Republicans in 2032, and the Democrats will go the way of the Bull Moose Party, as in extinction.
dexter_morgan -> chosen , Jan 1, 2017 7:58 PM
The status of the national part of the Republican party seems a little up in the air to me. If Trump is moderately successful in draining the swamp I think that bodes poorly for the neocon warmongering old guard wing of the party. And that is a good thing if it happens.
chosen -> dexter_morgan , Jan 1, 2017 9:13 PM
The neocons can easily move over to the Democratic Party. Some of them already are. The Democrats would welcome them.
dexter_morgan -> chosen , Jan 1, 2017 11:17 PM
Actually, that is where they came from. Bill Kristol sr., Perle, etc. were democrats until democrats became the anti war party in the 60's of George McGovern, they couldn't abide with that so they moved to the republican party which was historically more isolationist and anti war, because war was bad for business.

Then the self perpetuating MIC that Eisenhower warned of became ascendant and then war was even more of a racket than it always was. Their influence came to the fore with Bush Sr.

Reagan had some in his administration, but he fired many or moved them out of positions of power when it came to his attention they were following their own agenda. And yet, he had enough to convince him of the Iran contra stuff.

red1chief -> ILIKEMITTENS , Jan 1, 2017 7:02 PM
Funny how you forgot the military-industrial complex, wall street, healthcare scam etc. That's where most of it goes, but they keep the sheeple blaming the poor.

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