Ongelofelijk als je ziet wat de reacties zijn op het rapport van Mueller over de verbintenis tussen Trump en de Russen en daarmee de manipulatie van de presidentsverkiezingen in 2016. Geen rectificaties in de reguliere westerse media, nee men liegt ‘gewoon’ door over de rol van Rusland…..
Het eerste dat men in de reguliere media meldt na het bericht dat Mueller weliswaar geen bewijzen heeft gevonden voor de samenwerking met Rusland, maar dat dit niet zegt dat Trump en Rusland onschuldig zijn…… Gevolgd door de opmerking dat Trump nog steeds wordt verdacht van frauduleus handelen voor en tijdens zijn presidentschap…… Ongelofelijk, terwijl dezelfde media al bijna 2,5 jaar lang, dag in dag uit lieten weten dat Rusland de presidentsverkiezingen heeft gemanipuleerd ten gunste van Trump……
Eén zaak hebben de reguliere westerse massamedia wel voor elkaar gekregen met de Russiagate leugens: de alternatieve media zijn door het hele Russiagate verhaal gebombardeerd tot de brengers van ‘fake news’ (nepnieuws) en desinformatie, waar men deze media steeds meer weert van het internet….. Zo hebben platforms als Twitter en Facebook voor hun site al een aantal van deze alternatieve media geblokkeerd………………
Als de reguliere (massa-) media hun werk als nieuwsbrenger serieus hadden genomen, had men al lang kunnen concluderen dat er geen flinter aan bewijs was voor het kwaadaardige Russiagate sprookje….. Uiteraard was dit niet de bedoeling van de eigenaren van die media, plutocraten die een enorme berg geld hebben geïnvesteerd in het militair-industrieel complex en dus baat hebben bij zoveel mogelijk spanningen over de wereld, het liefst met zoveel mogelijk oorlogsvoering >> goed voor de aandelenkoers en uitgekeerde dividenden…….
De publieke omroepen verdedigen eenvoudig het zieke buitenlandbeleid van de zittende regeringen, zij worden dan ook door deze regeringen betaald….. (neem de publieke omroep hier en in Groot-Brittannië….)
Vanmorgen op BNR de wekelijkse column van Bernard Hammelburg, deze durfde anderen de maat te nemen over de mislukte Russiagate haatcampagne…… Deze enorme hansworst (beter: tot levend gewekte rollade) heeft in zijn programma tot vervelens toe laten weten dat Rusland de VS presidentsverkiezingen van 2016 heeft gemanipuleerd, sterker nog: Hammelburg twijfelde niet eens aan het Russiagate verhaal en bracht het als gepasseerde geschiedenis……
Moet je nagaan: dezelfde Hammelburg durft over zijn programma op BNR, ‘De Wereld’ te zeggen dat dit het beste binnenlandse programma over het buitenland is en dat daar alleen objectief en onpartijdig wordt bericht…… ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! Terugkerende gasten bij Hammelburgs De Wereld: oorlogshitser en leugenaar Rob de Wijk, de uit de politiek verdwenen VVD opperhufter en Rusland vreter ten Broeke, VVD EU grofgraaier en oorlogshitser van Baalen en plork Hubert Smeets, die het tot zijn taak heeft gemaakt Rusland zwart te maken, zelfs als er niets aan de hand is…… Objectief en onpartijdig……
Al de hiervoor genoemde figuren zijn bovendien grootlobbysten van de NAVO, de VS en het militair-industrieel complex….. (er zijn meer van deze figuren, die De Wereld bezoeken met hun valse praatjes waarmee zij de waarheid zwaar geweld aandoen…) Nogmaals: objectief en onpartijdig…..
Morgen heeft Hammelburg een ‘special’ over het 5 jarig jubileum van de annexatie van De Krim door Rusland, ‘objectieve en onpartijdige gasten’: opperhufter en oorlogshitser Hubert Smeets en Irak oorlogsmisdadiger de Hoop Scheffer* van het CDA……
In tegenstelling tot wat deze figuren durven te liegen over De Krim >> een Russische annexatie: heeft dit schiereiland in een door internationale waarnemers eerlijk en goed verlopen referendum massaal gekozen voor aansluiting bij Rusland, ‘niets annexatie…..’
Ter herinnering: één en ander nadat de democratisch gekozen president van Oekraïne, Janoekovytsj werd afgezet, daarvoor in de plaats werd de enorm corrupte neonazi-juntaleider Porosjenko geparachuteerd door de VS…… De neonazi-junta Porosjenko, waartegen de bewoners van De Krim volkomen terecht nee hebben gezegd….. Ofwel: niet Rusland is De Krim binnengevallen om dit schiereiland te annexeren, maar de bewoners, inclusief de overgrote meerderheid van de oorspronkelijke bewoners, kozen voor aansluiting bij Rusland…..
De VS heeft de opstand en coup in Oekraïne georganiseerd en geregisseerd, Hillary Clinton betaalde dit als minister van BuZa onder ‘vredesduif’ Obama, met maar liefst 4 miljard dollar aan belastinggeld……. Het was zelfs de opzet van de VS Rusland te verleiden De Krim binnen te vallen, daar haar belangrijkste marinehavens op De Krim liggen, zo had men Rusland verder kunnen demoniseren…..
Helaas voor de VS, maar een groot deel van de Oekraïense bevolking (ook in het oosten van Oekraïne stemde men massaal op Janoekovytsj), moest niets hebben van de neonazi-junta in Kiev…… Overigens ook de terechte opstand in het oosten van Oekraïne zou door Rusland gesteund worden, een beschuldiging waarvoor tot op heden niet één steekhoudend bewijs werd geleverd……. Wel heeft Rusland een enorm aantal vluchtelingen uit Oekraïne opgenomen, mensen die door het westen werden geweigerd, hoewel de kans levensgroot was (en is) dat deze Oekraïners zouden worden vermoord door de kliek in Kiev met haar paramilitaire neonazi eskaders,……
* CDA opperploert de Hoop Scheffer liet een paar jaar geleden nog weten dat hij geen spijt heeft van het steunen en meedoen aan de VS oorlog tegen Irak in 2003, deze illegale oorlog (immers gebaseerd op doelbewuste leugens) heeft intussen aan meer dan 2 miljoen Irakezen het leven gekost…… Ongelofelijk en onverteerbaar dat de liegende oorlogsmisdadiger de Hoop Scheffer les mag geven aan hoge scholen en universiteiten……
‘Campagne Clinton, smeriger dan gedacht…………‘ (met daarin daarin opgenomen de volgende twee artikelen: ‘Donna Brazile Bombshell: ‘Proof’ Hillary ‘Rigged’ Primary Against Bernie‘ en ‘Democrats in Denial After Donna Brazile Says Primary Was Rigged for Hillary‘)
Amnesty
International heeft onderzoek gedaan in Somalië naar luchtaanvallen
van de VS op het gebied dat in handen is van al-Shabaab. Al
jaren steunt de VS de Somalische regering in de vrijwel onbekende, of
geheime oorlog tegen al-Shabaab….. Sinds Trump in het Witte Huis
zit, is de VS bemoeienis met Somalië een stuk agressiever…..
Niet
vreemd dus dat Amnesty concludeert dat bij de luchtaanvallen van de
VS een groot aantal burgerslachtoffers werd (en wordt) vermoord…… Alweer
zoals gewoonlijk, ontkent de VS dat het burgerslachtoffers
maakt……
Amnesty
dringt aan bij de VS en de Somalische regering op meer onderzoek
naar dergelijke moorden, voorts pleit deze mensenrechtenorganisatie aan op meer transparantie, bovendien zou het
eenvoudig moeten zijn voor gemeenschappen melding te maken van
dergelijke moorden.
Helaas
mensen, je kan er donder op zeggen dat het laatste niet zal gebeuren,
men vindt het allang prima dat de wereldgemeenschap geen of weinig
weet heeft van de VS terreur in Somalië, immers de VS oorlogsmisdaden
liggen wat betreft de Trump administratie al veel te veel onder het ‘wereld vergrootglas…..’
Daarover
gesproken: vorige week dinsdag werd bekend gemaakt dat de VS een aantal
functionarissen van het Internationaal Strafhof (ICC) de toegang tot de VS
heeft ontzegd, daar zij onderzoek doen naar oorlogsmisdaden van de
VS, voorts heeft de VS aangekondigd andere maatregelen te zullen nemen tegen het ICC, als dit Strafhof doorgaat met haar onderzoek naar oorlogsmisdaden door de VS begaan……
Het volgende artikel (dat ik te lang heb laten liggen) komt van Common Dreams en werd door mij overgenomen van Anti-Media, de prent komt van Africa Times:
US
Killing Civilians With ‘Impunity’ in Hidden War on Somalia:
Report
(CD) —
A human rights group is accusing the United States of waging a shadow
air war in Somalia that is killing civilians with abandon.
Amnesty
International issued its findings on the African war Tuesday
evening in a report titled The
Hidden US War in Somalia (pdf).
The
U.S. has been covertly engaging in conflicts in Somalia for decades,
but in April 2017, the Donald Trump administration upped airstrikes
and attacks targeted at the rebel group Al-Shabaab.
The
human rights advocacy group studied five of more than 100 strikes on
Somalia over the past two years and found that 14 civilians were
killed in the attacks. Eight others were injured, the report says.
“These
five incidents were carried out with Reaper drones and manned
aircraft in Lower Shabelle,” Amnesty said in a press release, “a
region largely under Al-Shabaab control outside the Somali capital
Mogadishu.”
The
U.S. military denied to Amnesty that any civilians have been killed
as a result of American operations in Somalia.
However,
Amnesty’s report claims its methodology is sound and that the
evidence is overwhelming.
“The
attacks appear to have violated international humanitarian law,”
the organization said, “and some may amount to war crimes.”
In
comments provided to the media, Brian Castner, the group’s senior
crisis advisor on arms and military operations, claimed that the
continued airstrikes are also a sign of the Trump administration’s
aggressive use of military action across the world.
“The
civilian death toll we’ve uncovered in just a handful of strikes
suggests the shroud of secrecy surrounding the US role in Somalia’s
war is actually a smokescreen for impunity,” Castner said.
Amnesty
is calling for an official government investigation into the killings
and airstrikes and urging people to add their name to a petition to
Congress to force action. Ella Knight, an Amnesty researcher
concentrating on military, security and police, said that pushing for
oversight is key.
“The
U.S. government must ensure investigations into all credible
allegations of civilian casualties are carried out with
accountability for those responsible for violations and reparation
made to the victims and survivors,” said Knight.
The
mission doesn’t end with U.S. and Somali accountability, Knight
added. She argued it’s the responsibility of both governments to
make it easier and safer for communities affected by the war to
publicly acknowledge civilian casualties.
“Both
the US and Somali governments need to put an end the lack of
transparency and must do more to enable affected communities to
self-report civilian casualties,” Knight said. “Without this,
justice is likely to remain elusive.”
Naar
aanleiding van een Twitterbericht dat Tulsi Gabbard de wereld
instuurde en waarin zij stelt dat kortzichtige politici en hun hulp
in de massamedia, de laatste 2 jaar bezig zijn geweest Trump neer te
zetten als een marionet van Putin, schreef Caitlin Johnstone het hieronder opgenomen artikel…..
Van Russiagate is intussen geen spaan meer heel, zoveel is wel duidelijk uit de rapportage van Mueller (die nog steeds niet helemaal openbaar is gemaakt), waar de hysterie over ‘Russische manipulaties’ ervoor hebben gezorgd dat de nieuwe koude oorlog verder is opgetuigd, met de daarmee gepaard gaande
peperdure wapenrace en inperking van de privacy, plus censuur op het internet…… Let wel die censuur en inperking van de privacy werden en worden doorgevoerd in zogenaamde westerse democratieën, terwijl dat soort maatregelen ‘thuishoren’ in een dictatuur…..
Gabbard
voegde aan haar Twitterbericht toe dat Trump er alles aan heeft gedaan niet langer te
worden gezien als marionet van Putin, juist door een veel harder
beleid tegen Rusland te voeren, waarbij hij zelfs de kans op een
kernoorlog niet uit de weg is gegaan en zo’n oorlog nog steeds niet uitsluit……
In het Twitterbericht van Gabbard is ‘geen woord Spaans’ opgenomen, bovendien een
waarheid als een koe! Echter de reacties op dit bericht waren niet
misselijk. Gabbard wordt figuurlijk afgemaakt door die massamedia,
politici en opiniemakers van diverse rechtse denktanks……. (de laatste zijn in de VS altijd rechts, ‘maar goed..’)
Zoals gezegd: Caitlin
Johnstone publiceerde op haar site het hieronder opgenomen artikel en
als conclusie stelt ze dat de welgestelden niet voor niets zoveel
geld steken in het beheren van de media, immers als je de
media beheerst, beheers je en regisseer je het denkbeeld dat bij het volk leeft……
Plutocraten beheersen de westerse: -media, -politici en -denktanks, zij hebben
belang bij de huidige inhumane neoliberale status quo, ja zelfs bij
de nieuwe koude oorlog en alle andere illegale oorlogen die de VS
voert, immers dit geteisem heeft veel aandelen in de wapenindustrie, waaronder ik
ook de fabrikanten reken die rollend, varend en vliegend
oorlogstuig produceren, een industrie die zoals je begrijpt baat heeft bij zoveel mogelijk oorlog en spanningen in de wereld……
Gezien
het voorgaande kan je dan ook stellen dat elke claim vals is die de VS maakt
als het weer een illegale oorlog voert, of als het een opstand dan
wel coup organiseert en regisseert, de claim dat dit is om democratie te
brengen en een bloedige dictator af te zetten…… In werkelijkheid heeft VS schijt aan democratie en bloedige
dictators, zolang het bewuste land maar de hielen van de VS likt, VS bedrijven toelaat en
in de VS grote ‘defensie orders’ plaatst…. Sterker nog: de VS steunt een aantal dictators, niet in de laatste plaats de reli-fascistische dictaturen van het Midden-Oosten…. (Saoedi-Arabië, de Verenigde Arabische Emiraten >> VAE, Egypte en buiten het Midden-Oosten: Marokko)
Intussen is bekend dat Mueller de hele Russiagate leugen heeft afgeschoten, daar er geen bewijs voor is te vinden….. Met Russiagate werd zoals gezegd niet alleen de vrijheid van meningsuiting zwaar geweld aangedaan middels censuur op het internet, maar werd ook de Koude Oorlog 2.0 opgetuigd…..
Aan het voorgaande hebben de reguliere media grote steun verleend, met een enorme berg aan fake news (nepnieuws), waarvoor deze media niet worden gestraft middels de al eerder genoemde censuur, hoewel de bewijzen daarvoor letterlijk voor het oprapen liggen…… Waar sociale media die aantoonbaar echt nieuws brengen, worden afgemaakt in die reguliere westerse media en door de westerse politiek en ze worden geblokkeerd op Facebook en Twitter……..
Last
month I published
an essay about
the importance of understanding the difference between fact and
narrative, and I just want to quickly highlight a perfect
illustration of this importance in a controversy arising from
a recent
Tulsi Gabbard tweet.
The tweet reads as follows:
“Short-sighted
politicians & media pundits who’ve spent last 2 years accusing
Trump as a Putin puppet have brought us the expensive new Cold War &
arms race. How? Because Trump now does everything he can to prove
he’s not Putin’s puppet—even if it brings us closer to nuclear
war.”
Now,
all the facts say that Gabbard’s claim that Trump has been bringing
the world closer to nuclear war with Russia is indisputably true. It
is perhaps possible to dispute the notion that Trump has escalated
tensions with Russia to try and “prove he’s not Putin’s
puppet”; maybe an argument could be made that he’s simply
reckless and violent or that he’s particularly beholden to cold war
profiteers, or that despite all his rhetoric he just really, really
hates Russia for some reason. But it is absolutely not disputable
that Trump has greatly escalated tensions with a nuclear superpower
by implementing a Nuclear Posture
These
facts are all well documented in the mainstream press and are
entirely beyond dispute. The facts say that Donald Trump has
escalated nuclear tensions with Russia more than any other president
since the fall of the Berlin Wall. But if you go
to Gabbard’s tweet and
read the responses right now, you’ll find thousands and thousands of
Democratic
establishment loyalists calling her a liar for saying so.
“Gabbard
staking out a bold ‘Trump is *too* tough on Putin’ lane in the
Democratic primary,” tweeted former
NSA attorney Susan Hennessey of CNN and the Brookings Institution.
“As predictable as it is absurd.”
“Tulsi
Gabbard’s is the only Twitter account other than Trump’s that I
routinely have to check to make sure it’s actually hers, because
the tweet is so absurdly ridiculous,” tweeted #Resistance
pundit John Aravosis. “Now she’s defending Trump on Russia.
Why is she a Democrat? And she’s actually using Kremlin
talking points (nuclear war!). Unbelievable.”
“Tulsi,
you aren’t the first American politician to cozy up to foreign
dictators and to serve as a Putin mouthpiece,” tweeted former
CIA officer Evan McMullin. “While you, Putin and Trump fear
monger about nuclear war, we’ll protect our democracy and hold
corrupted politicians accountable.”
Susan Hennessey ✔@Susan_Hennessey
Tulsi Gabbard ✔@TulsiGabbard
Short-sighted politicians & media pundits who’ve spent last 2 years accusing Trump as a Putin puppet have brought us the expensive new Cold War & arms race. How? Because Trump now does everything he can to prove he’s not Putin’s puppet—even if it brings us closer to nuclear war.
There
are many, many more, but you get the picture. The deluge of responses
to Gabbard’s undeniably true statement about Trump’s dangerous
escalations against a nuclear superpower are largely predicated on
two assumptions: (1) that Trump has not in fact made the escalations
that he has made, and (2) that the danger of nuclear war is not a
real or significant thing. These are both, obviously, bat shit
insane.
The
primary risk of nuclear war is not that one will be planned out and
deliberately started in an attempt to win, but that a warhead will be
deployed amid the chaos of escalating tensions as a result of
miscommunication, misunderstanding or technical failure, as nearly
happened on
more than one occasion during
the last cold war. Once one nuclear weapon has been deployed in an
already tense situation, it’s unlikely that the full arsenals of both
sides won’t be unleashed upon each other. As journalist Glenn
Greenwald pointed
out in
response to the uproar over Gabbard’s tweet, “The Bulletin of
Atomic Scientists’ doomsday clock is at 2
minutes before midnight.
By far its two greatest threats to *humanity’s existence* are climate
change & US/Russia nuclear war. Yes, how crazy and treasonous to
want to avoid ratcheting up tensions.”
The
US and Russia are by
an immensely wide margin the
two biggest nuclear powers on the planet, which makes for a lot of
small, unpredictable moving parts with mounting tensions steadily
increasing the probability of something going catastrophically wrong.
Dismissing
a congresswoman’s attempt to point at this potentially world-ending
risk as a “Kremlin talking point” is about the stupidest,
craziest thing that a human brain could possibly come up with.
Twenty-nine years after the end of the Cold War, the world’s combined stockpiles of nuclear weapons remain at unacceptably high levels.
ploughshares.org
So
what’s up with that? Why is an indisputably true claim about an
indisputably real danger being treated as a lie by Democratic Party
loyalists, even though it attacks the same president they themselves
claim to oppose?
The
answer is because it doesn’t fit the narrative. A consensus has been
built over the last two years that Trump is a Kremlin puppet, so the
indisputable fact that his administration is endangering the life of
every organism on this planet by escalating tensions with Russia
looks like a lie against that backdrop. The facts say one thing, the
narrative says another, and they go with the narrative. For most
people, narrative takes precedence over fact.
And
what’s interesting is that these same facts could have remained
exactly as they are and allowed the exact opposite narrative to be
constructed. If her plutocratic owners had wished it, Rachel Maddow
would have spent every night over the last two years warning everyone
that Donald Trump is taking dangerous actions against Russia that
threaten to wipe all life off the face of the earth, and it would
have worked. If Trump had continued making these escalations in our
hypothetical alternate timeline while the mass media was constantly
selling the “Trump’s going to get us all killed in a nuclear war
with Russia” narrative, all the same blue-checkmarked Twitter
pundits you see yelling at Tulsi Gabbard today would be yelling about
the dangers of nuclear war in our alternate timeline.
Narrative
really is that powerful. You see it in the behavior of social media
users, you see it in the behavior of governments, you see it in
religions, and you see it in abusive relationships which continue
because of the narrative “He’s a good guy underneath it all and
he really loves me” even though the facts say “He beats you
and cheats on you all the time.” If you can control the stories
that people tell themselves about a given situation, then you control
those people on all matters pertaining to that situation. Regardless
of facts.
Which
is why the plutocratic class funnels so much money into buying up
media influence, funding think tanks, and other means of narrative
control: if you can control the narrative, no amount of facts will
deter the mainstream public from going along with your agendas. This
is why the behaviors of governments so consistently move in alignment
with the interests of this same media-buying, think tank-funding,
politician-owning plutocratic class. Whoever controls the narrative
controls the world.
_________________________
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‘Campagne Clinton, smeriger dan gedacht…………‘ (met daarin daarin opgenomen de volgende artikelen: ‘Donna Brazile Bombshell: ‘Proof’ Hillary ‘Rigged’ Primary Against Bernie‘ en ‘Democrats in Denial After Donna Brazile Says Primary Was Rigged for Hillary‘)
Whitney Webb schreef een uitgebreid
artikel over de terreuraanslag in Christchurch, Nieuw-Zeeland. Webb
gaat in op de 74 pagina’s tellende motivatie en ideologie van dader
Tarrant en stelt daarbij dat de westerse politiek, zeker na de komst
van Trump als VS president, taal gebruikt tegen moslims waarmee zij
worden gedemoniseerd……… Terwijl in werkelijkheid regeringen als
die van Trump de ene massamoord na de andere begaan op moslims, zo vermoordde de VS in een aantal illegale oorlogen alleen deze eeuw al meer dan 2,5 miljoen, voornamelijk moslims…… Dan is er nog de samenwerking van de Trump
administratie, de westerse media en het militair-industrieel complex,
tegen moslimlanden die niet braaf doen wat de imperialistische VS van
hen eist….
De westerse reguliere media steunen tegen beter weten in de illegale oorlogen van
de VS en verkopen deze als onvermijdbaar aan
de de westerse bevolkingen, zoals de VS dat in eigen land doet….. Vreemd genoeg geldt die in feite
mobilisatie van westerse bevolkingen tegen moslimstaten niet, als het
gaat om terreurstaten als Saoedi-Arabië en de Verenigde Arabische
Emiraten (VAE), terwijl daar dezelfde zaken ‘mis zijn’ die worden genoemd door die
media en de Trump administratie als het gaat om VS onwelgevallige regeringen, dus dictaturen die
terreurgroepen steunen en het volk onderdrukken, sterker nog: de landen die de VS niet welgevallig zijn worden gedemoniseerd als dergelijke regimes, terwijl daar in de praktijk vaak helemaal geen sprake van is…..
Zie wat betreft het voorgaande Syrië, waarover dit niet eens gezegd kon worden, echter tot op de dag
van vandaag houden de westerse massamedia en het grootste deel van de
westerse politici die leugens hoog…. (vergeet niet dat onder Assad alle geloven hand in hand naast elkaar leefden en het volk gemiddeld een redelijk inkomen had….) Door de acties van de VS, die de opstand op poten zette en regisseerde, waarna deze grootste terreurentiteit op aarde een oorlog ontketende tegen het regime Assad, ligt het land voor een groot deel in puin…… Gelukkig leven de teruggekeerde vluchtelingen, in de door het reguliere Syrische leger bevrijdde gebieden, nu weer hand in hand met buren die een ander geloof aanhangen…….
De reli-fascistische dictatuur Saoedi-Arabië, dat een bloedig beleid voert tegen Saoedische sjiieten en in buurland Jemen een genocide uitvoert op de sjiitische bevolking, wordt nog steeds
gesteund door het westen (Nederland levert zelfs nog steeds
wapenonderdelen aan die reli-fascistische dictatuur)….. Nogmaals: terwijl dat
land een genocide uitvoert in buurland Jemen……
Ook de taal die bij e.e.a. wordt
uitgeslagen heeft ervoor gezorgd dat de westerse bevolkingen achter
de illegale oorlogen van de VS en de NAVO-lidstaten tegen
moslimlanden staan. Moslims worden aangewezen als de terroristen van
de wereld, terwijl er amper of geen aandacht is voor de waanzin van
westerse landen die illegale oorlogen tegen moslimlanden voeren,
waarbij onnoemelijk veel meer moslims werden en worden vermoord, dan die door alle
‘moslimaanslagen’ in het westen bij elkaar opgeteld, sterker nog, dat aantal moorden kan daarbij zelfs niet in de schaduw staan…..* Niet vreemd dus dat die grootschalige westerse terreur, aanslagen uitlokken op de Europese straten……
Voorts wijst Webb op de andere
fascistische aanslagen op moslims en hun gebedshuizen (of andere instellingen van moslims, Ap), immers de aanslag van afgelopen maandag op de 2
moskeeën in Christchurch waren bepaald niet de eerste. (ook in Nederland werden er aanslagen op moskeeën gepleegd, al waren die niet in gebruik ten tijde van de aanslagen)
De motivatie van fascisten die aanslagen plegen zoals die in Christchurch, is
gericht tegen vluchtelingen uit moslimlanden, zonder aandacht te
schenken aan het feit waarom zij zijn gevlucht: grootschalige
westerse terreur o.l.v. de VS, waarbij zoals eerder opgemerkt alleen deze eeuw al meer dan 2,5 miljoen
moslims zijn vermoord…….
Lees het volgende uitstekende artikel
en zegt het voort! (het is de hoogste tijd dat de reguliere media
stoppen met hun leugens, stemmingmakerij, angstzaaien en zelfs
haatzaaien tegen moslimlanden die niet braaf aan de westerse leiband lopen, hetzelfde geldt voor het haatzaaien tegen moslims in westerse landen. Het volgende artikel verscheen eerder op MintPress News en werd door mij overgenomen van Anti-Media (de getoonde foto’s komen van MintPress):
The
Christchurch Shooting and the Normalization of Anti-Muslim Terrorism
(MPN) — What
is without question the worst mass shooting in New Zealand’s
history took place on Friday when shooters, 28-year-old Australian
Brenton Tarrant among them, opened fire at two Christchurch mosques.
Four, including Tarrant, have been arrested for the heinous act,
which claimed at least 49 innocent lives. Tarrant was responsible for
killing more than 40 victims, among them several children, in a
rampage he live-streamed on Facebook, sending chills throughout the
Muslim community, particularly Muslims living in Western countries.
Tarrant’s
motives and ideology, laid bare in a 74-page
manifesto,
show a concern over the fertility rates of non-white groups as well
as the immigration of non-whites to countries like New Zealand and
Australia, which he likened to an “invasion” that threatened the
white majority in those countries. However, Tarrant — in his
ignorance — failed to grasp that many of the Muslim immigrants he
targeted had come to New Zealand after fleeing Western-backed
invasions, occupations, or persecution in their home countries.
Notable
among Tarrant’s views is the fact that he is a clear
ethno-nationalist, promoting his view that different ethnic groups
must be kept “separate, unique, undiluted in [sic] unrestrained in
cultural or ethnic expression and autonomy.” Tarrant also claimed
that he doesn’t necessarily hate Muslims and only targeted those
Muslims {i.e., immigrants) that chose “to invade our lands, live on
our soil and replace our people.”
He
also stated that he chose to target Muslims because “Islamic
nations, in particular, have high birth rates, regardless of race or
ethnicity” and to satiate “a want for revenge against Islam for
the 1,300 years of war and devastation that it has brought upon the
people of the West and other peoples of the world.” His views are
remarkably similar to those of Norwegian terrorist Anders Breivik,
which is unsurprising given that Tarrant named him as an inspiration
for the shooting.
Though
many — in the hours after the shooting — have sought to place
blame and point fingers at notable demagogues like President
Donald Trump or “counter-jihad”
alt-right figures like
Laura Loomer and Jacob Wohl, it is important to place Tarrant’s
motivations in context.
A
body lies on the footpath outside a mosque in central Christchurch,
New Zealand, March 15, 2019, following a mass shooting. Mark Baker |
AP
Indeed,
while Trump’s rise to political power has brought Islamophobic
rhetoric into the public sphere in an undeniable way, it is a symptom
of a much broader effort aimed at propagandizing the people of the
United States and other Western countries to support wars in and
military occupations of Muslim-majority countries. This manufactured
Islamophobia, largely a product of Western governments and a
compliant mass media, has sought to vilify all Muslims by maligning
the religion itself as terrorism, in order to justify the plunder of
their countries and deflect attention from their suffering.
It
is a classic “divide and conquer” scam aimed at keeping
Westerners divided from Muslims in their own countries and abroad.
The horrific shooting in Christchurch is a testament to its
unfortunate success and pervasiveness, as well as a potent reminder
that it must be stopped.
Indeed,
this manufactured Islamophobia has made it so that Muslims in their
home countries are in danger of dying from Western-backed wars and,
if they flee to the “safer” West, they have targets on their
backs painted by the very war propaganda used to justify Western
military adventurism in Muslim-majority nations.
Islam,
the media and “Forever Wars”: Who’s the “real” terrorist?
Since
September 11th and the advent of the “War on Terror,” mass media
reporting increasingly began to conflate Muslims and Muslim-majority
nations with war, terrorism and violence in general. Indeed, 9
out of 10 mainstream
news reports on Muslims, Islam, and Islamic organizations are related
to violence and Muslims who are named on mainstream media are
all-too-frequently warlords or terrorist leaders.
This
near-constant association of Islam and violence has created the false
perception that the religion of Islam, by its very nature, is violent
and that Muslims too must then be violent and thus dangerous. This
media-driven association has had very real and troubling
consequences. For instance, a
2010 study by
the University of Exeter found “empirical evidence to demonstrate
that assailants of Muslims are invariably motivated by a negative
view of Muslims they have acquired from either mainstream or
extremist nationalist reports or commentaries in the media.” In
other words, Islamophobic media reports are directly related to hate
crimes targeting Muslims.
This
is no accident, as such biased reporting on Muslim-majority nations
also began as Western-backed wars in countries like Iraq and
Afghanistan sought to put these countries’ natural resources,
namely their oil and mineral wealth, into the hands of American
corporations. It should be no surprise then that top funders of media
outlets that have routinely promoted Islamophobic narratives are also
those who have
profited considerably
from the “War on Terror” and Western-backed regime-change wars in
other countries.
This
concerted effort to vilify Muslims has had the potent effect, likely
by design, of reducing empathy among Westerners for the largely
Muslim victims of Western military adventurism in Muslim-majority
countries. Indeed, while mainstream news outlets often trumpet the
imminent dangers Americans face from “radical Islamic terror,”
the death toll of innocent people — most of them Muslim — that
have been killed by the U.S.-led “War on Terror” is several
orders of magnitude greater than the number of Americans who have
died from all terror attacks over that same period.
Residents
carry the bodies of several civilians killed in a US air strike in
Mosul, Iraq on March 24, 2017. Felipe Dana | AP
For
instance, from 2001 to 2013, an estimated 3,380
Americans died from
domestic and foreign terrorism, including the September 11 attacks as
well as acts of domestic terrorism carried out by white nationalists
and supremacists. If one excludes the September 11 death toll, the
number of American deaths over that same period stands at around
400, most of
them victims of mass-killers who were not Muslim.
By
comparison, an estimated 8
million innocent people in
Muslim-majority nations died as a result of U.S. policies and wars in
the Middle East and North Africa from 2001 to 2015. Yet, the
magnitude of this loss of life of these “unworthy victims” is
minimized by media and government silence, and the creation of a
climate of Islamophobia in the West has only served to deepen the
ease with which mass murder is accepted by the aggressor countries’
populations.
Beyond
the staggering disparity in the death tolls caused by terror groups
and Western-backed imperialist wars is the fact that many of these
very Western governments that purport to be so concerned with
“radical Islamic terror” have often created and funded the most
notorious terror groups of all. Indeed, the U.S. government helped to
create Al Qaeda and continues
to protect its
Syrian branch — Hayat Tahrir al-Sham — in Syria’s Idlib
province to this day. In addition, the CIA was just recently
revealed to
be helping the Islamic State regroup in Syrian refugee camps.
Furthermore, the U.S. has long turned a blind eye to the funding
of terror groups by
allied states like Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
The
role of Western money, arms and policy in the creation and
maintenance of radical Wahhabi terrorist groups is often entirely
ignored by Western media portrayals of Muslim-majority nations,
thereby creating a false image that such violence is endemic to these
nations when, in fact, it is often imported state-sponsored terror.
These
nuances of the situation are rarely heard in the narratives parroted
out on mainstream media and those who regularly consume mainstream
news sources are more likely than not to support those narratives.
For that reason, it is easy to see how someone like Donald Trump —
who is said to watch television for eight
hours every day,
much of it Fox
News —
has espoused the views that he has. Thanks to the manufacturing of
Islamophobia of mainstream media, racist policies like the so-called
“Muslim ban” have found wide support, as this false narrative has
conflated Islam with violence so often that many have come to believe
that only by banning Islam can violence and terrorism in the U.S. be
reduced.
However,
the recent shooting in Christchurch, as well as the Tree of Life
Synagogue shooting and other recent acts of domestic terrorism,
should alert us to the fact that it is the hate manufactured by this
false narrative that is itself endangering American lives while also
covering up the mass murder that has been perpetrated by the U.S. and
other governments around the world for decades.
Israel’s
leading role in stoking ethnonationalism
While
the realities of post-9/11 America, as well as the rise in visibility
of white ethnonationalism during the Trump Era, have done much to
normalize attacks on immigrants, the country that has done the most
to normalize anti-Muslim terrorism over this same time frame has been
the state of Israel.
Israel,
from its founding days, has long been steeped in neocolonialist
ideology that is remarkably similar to the ideological basis behind
other settler states like the United States, Australia and New
Zealand. This system of beliefs holds that the native inhabitants of
the land — whether the Palestinians, the Sioux or the Maori — are
“primitive” and incompetent and that the land would have remained
“wild” and undeveloped were it not for the “fortunate”
appearance of European settlers. As MintPress noted
in a
previous report on
the subject, such narratives cast these settlers as both superior and
normal while the natives become inferior and abnormal, thus
obfuscating the settler’s status as foreigner and conqueror.
In
Israel’s case, this ideology has promoted the idea that all Arabs
are “sons of the desert” while the desert simultaneously
represents a barbaric obstacle to “progress” and development.
However, the state of Israel, under the lengthy tenure of current
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, has seen these long-standing and
somewhat hidden underpinnings of the Zionist state burst out into the
open.
The
result has been the overt expression of ethnonationalism in such a
way that Israel has become an inspiration to white nationalists in
the United States, like Richard Spencer, and far-right ethno-fascist
leaders like Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro and India’s Narendra Modi.
The inspiration has been mutual, according to reports
and testimonials published
by Jewish newspaper The
Forward.
For
years, through its military occupation of Palestine, Israel’s
government and military have sought to paint all Palestinians,
including children, as “terrorists” or “terrorist
sympathizers.” Take, for example, current Justice Minister Ayelet
Shaked, who
wrote in
2014, “This is a war between two people. Who is the enemy? The
Palestinian people …”
A
more recent example came from former Defense Minister Avigdor
Lieberman, who asserted just
last year that
“no innocent people” live in the Gaza Strip and that every
inhabitant in the enclave is somehow connected to Hamas, even though
nearly half of Gaza’s population are children and teenagers. Such
rhetoric has become par for the course and numerous examples show
that Shaked and Lieberman’s views are increasingly accepted and
“normal” in today’s Israel.
Yet,
the clearest indication of anti-Muslim terror’s normalization in
Israel is the recent rise of Otzma Yehudit, or the “Jewish Power”
Party. This party, founded by devotees of radical American-born Rabbi
Meir Kahane, has
now merged —
at Netanyahu’s urging — with the Jewish Home Party and stands to
become part of Israel’s ruling coalition if Netanyahu manages to
win in the country’s upcoming elections.
With
a portrait of late Rabbi Meir Kahane on the wall, left, a Jewish
settler walks inside a building taken from a Palestinian family in
Hebron, Nov. 16, 2008. Dan Balilty | AP
In
the office of Itamar Ben Gvir, one of Otzma Yehudit’s leaders, is a
framed picture of
Baruch Goldstein. In an act that bears a striking similarity to the
events in Christchurch, Goldstein — a long-time devotee of Kahane —
entered a mosque in the West Bank city of Hebron in 1994 and opened
fire, killing 29 and injuring more than 125 worshippers. After the
act, Kahane’s Kach party — the predecessor of Otzma Yehudit —
was labeled a terrorist organization by the United States and Israel.
Despite
official condemnation, Goldstein’s atrocious act has been the
subject of praise and inspiration for subsequent extremists who,
under Netanyahu’s government, have become increasingly normalized.
Goldstein’s gravestone reads “He gave his life for the people of
Israel, its Torah and land” and continues to be used as a site of
pilgrimage and homage by the very extremists that Netanyahu is openly
courting for political gain.
While
the followers of Kahane are making a comeback in Israel, several
notable Arab political parties have
been banned from
participating Israel’s upcoming elections, with some being accused
of “supporting terrorism” owing to their opposition to Israel’s
decades-long military occupation of Palestine. Yet, by elevating
clear terror supporters among the ranks of the Jewish Power Party (Otzma Yehudit), it
has become increasingly clear that openly supporting and advocating
anti-Muslim terrorism is no bar to legitimacy and political power in
today’s Israel.
No
‘clash of civilizations,’ only manipulation and exploitation of
differences
The
tragic and barbaric shooting in Christchurch, New Zealand is yet
another horrific and glaring reminder that the “divide and conquer”
war propaganda that has sought to promote the so-called “clash of
civilizations” between Christianity and Islam, West and East, has
not only been monstrously effective but continues to be monstrously
destructive to people on both sides.
However,
the media’s manufacture of Islamophobia, in seeking to Wite-out
Muslim suffering and reduce Western empathy for innocent Muslim
civilians, has increasingly placed targets on the back of Muslims
everywhere — in the West and the East — making it increasingly
difficult for practitioners of the Islamic faith to feel safe
regardless of where they live.
With
most Muslim-majority countries now killing fields in Western-backed
wars, ruled by oppressive, Western-backed dictatorships, or under
threat of Western-backed regime change, even those Muslims who have
sought a safer, quieter life in the “civilized” West have now
found themselves targets thanks to the very war propaganda used to
justify the destruction of their home countries.
While
the murderer Tarrant had stated that he hoped his horrific crime
would help stoke “civil war” in Western countries, this tragedy
should and must serve as a wake up call for people everywhere that
the real forces responsible for the destruction of many
Muslim-majority countries and the current chaos present in many
Western countries are not generated by civilian populations or
religions but instead by the global oligarchy that engineers and
profits from this chaos. These oligarchs loot from the people of the
West just as they do from the people of the East and it is time to
recognize that they are the real threats to a more peaceful world —
not regular people praying, whether it be in a church, a synagogue or
a mosque.
Het gore
lef wat sommigen hebben is niet zelden ten hemel schreiend, zoals de
perschef van president Bush (deze oorlogsmisdadiger en top-idioot mag zich president blijven noemen). Ari Fleischer (de perschef) nam het besluit e.e.a. via Twitter de wereld in
te helpen, waarschijnlijk als reactie op de dreigementen van de VS
tegen het Internationaal Strafhof dat men actie zal nemen tegen de
functionarissen, die zich bezig houden met onderzoek naar VS
oorlogsmisdaden…….
Ongelofelijk wat ploert Fleischer durft te zeggen, terwijl de hele wereld weet (of kan weten) dat de
VS heeft gelogen, leugens die meer dan 2 miljoen Irakezen het leven
heeft gekost, ofwel die mensen zijn in feite vermoord door de
VS……
Fleischer
doet net of de geheime diensten van de VS, Israël en nog een paar
landen zeker wisten dat er massavernietigingswapens lagen in Irak,
weliswaar klopte dit niet, maar dat is iets anders dan liegen, aldus de hufter….. ha!
ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha!
Alsof
die geheime diensten ook maar de neiging hebben om de waarheid te vertellen,
jezus!!
De
wapeninspecteurs van de VN, o.l.v. Blix, hebben uit en te na gewezen op
het feit dat Irak (onder Saddam Hoessein) geen
massavernietigingswapens had en deze zelfs niet voor hen verborgen kon
hebben…..
Overigens liet de Hoop Scheffer, oorlogsmisdadiger van het CDA, vorig jaar weten nog steeds achter de illegale oorlog tegen Irak te staan, ondanks het enorme aantal slachtoffers, een land dat voor een groot deel in puin ligt en waar de oorlog nog lang niet is afgelopen…… Irak, een land waarnaar Nederland vluchtelingen deporteert, rechtstreeks de oorlog in, dit op basis van ambtsberichten van Buitenlandse Zaken, terwijl hetzelfde ministerie nog steeds een negatief reisadvies voor Irak afgeeft….
Caitlin
Johnstone schreef op haar site een uiterst scherp artikel over
deze zaak en laat van Fleischer en anderen geen spaan heel, lezen
mensen, het gaat hier om geschiedvervalsing van de eerste orde, ook
de reguliere (massa-) media doen net of hun neus bloedt als het om de
illegale Irak oorlog gaat, terwijl zij deze oorlog op valse feiten
van A tot Z hebben gepropageerd, waar de kennis over het tegendeel voor het oprapen lag…….. (over het brengen van fake news gesproken….)
On
the Anniversary Of The Iraq Invasion, Bush Press Secretary Claims
Bush Didn’t Lie
On
the sixteenth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, as the US
government threatens
punitive action against International
Criminal Court investigators for attempting to look into US war
crimes, former George W Bush administration Press Secretary Ari
Fleischer has decided to publish
a Twitter thread claiming
that Bush did not lie to the world about Iraq.
Here
is a transcript of the full thread by Fleischer:
The
Iraq war began sixteen years ago tomorrow. There is a myth about the
war that I have been meaning to set straight for years. After no WMDs
were found, the left claimed “Bush lied. People died.” This
accusation itself is a lie. It’s time to put it to rest.
The
fact is that President Bush (and I as press secretary) faithfully and
accurately reported to the public what the intelligence community
concluded. The CIA, along with the intelligence services of
Egypt, France, Israel and others concluded that Saddam had WMD. We
all turned out to be wrong. That is very different from lying.
After
the war, a bipartisan group was created to determine what went wrong,
particularly why the intelligence community’s conclusions about Iraq
were so different from what was found on the ground after the
war. The group of experts was named the Robb-Silberman
commission. It’s report was issued in March 2005. It
can be found in full here.
Its key finding was that that a “major intelligence failure”
took place. It also stated that no intelligence service was pressured
by the Bush Administration to conclude that Saddam had WMDs.
Here
are the key quotes from their report:
“Overall
Commission Finding: The Intelligence Community’s performance in
assessing Iraq’s pre-war weapons of mass destruction programs was a
major intelligence failure.
Nuclear
Weapons Summary Finding: The Intelligence Community seriously
misjudged the status of Iraq’s alleged nuclear weapons program in the
2002 NIE* and other pre-Iraq war intelligence products. This
misjudgment stemmed chiefly from the Community’s failure to analyze
correctly Iraq’s reasons for attempting to procure high-strength
aluminum tubes.
Biological
Warfare Summary Finding: The Intelligence Community seriously
misjudged the status of Iraq’s biological weapons program in the 2002
NIE and other pre-war intelligence products. The primary reason
for this misjudgment was the Intelligence Community’s heavy reliance
on a human source–codenamed ‘Curveball’–whose information later
proved to be unreliable.
Chemical
Warfare Summary Finding: The Intelligence Community erred in its 2002
NIE assessment of Iraq’s alleged chemical warfare program. The
Community’s substantial overestimation of Iraq’s chemical warfare
program was due chiefly to flaws in analysis and the paucity of
quality information collected. In the case of Iraq, collectors of
intelligence absorbed the prevailing analytic consensus and tended to
reject or ignore contrary information. The result was ‘tunnel vision’
focusing on the Intelligence Community’s existing assumptions. The
Intelligence Community did not make or change any analytic judgments
in response to political pressure to reach a particular conclusion,
but the pervasive conventional wisdom that Saddam retained WMD
affected the analytic process. The CIA took too long to admit
error in Iraq, and its Weapons Intelligence, Nonproliferation, and
Arms Control Center actively discouraged analysts from investigating
errors.
Finally,
we closely examined the possibility that intelligence analysts were
pressured by policymakers to change their judgments about Iraq’s
nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons programs. The analysts
who worked Iraqi weapons issues universally agreed that in no
instance did political pressure cause them to skew or alter any of
their analytical judgments.”
That
is what the investigators reported, after been given full access to
people throughout the intelligence community. Which leads me to
conclude that there was a liar and his name was Saddam Hussein. He
created an elaborate system of lies to fool western intelligence
services and he succeeded. He wanted us to believe he had WMDs.
The
allegaton that “Bush lied. People died” is a liberal myth
created to politically target President Bush. I understand the anger
that was felt after no WMDs were found. But that doesn’t justify
calling the President a liar. I can only hope that serious historians
and other experts do their homework and resist falling for this myth.
Ari Fleischer ✔@AriFleischer
The Iraq war began sixteen years ago tomorrow. There is a myth about the war that I have been meaning to set straight for years. After no WMDs were found, the left claimed “Bush lied. People died.” This accusation itself is a lie. It’s time to put it to rest.
Ari
Fleischer is lying. It is an absolute proven fact that George W Bush
and his administration lied
extensively about
the degree of certainty in intelligence regarding Saddam Hussein
possessing weapons of mass destruction, having ties to Al Qaeda, and
seeking nuclear weapons, all of which (along with Vice President
Cheney’s claim that the US invaders would be “greeted
as liberators“)
proved false. The Bush administration did not know the things they
claimed to know with any degree of certainty, but they claimed that
they were certain in order to manufacture support for war. Claiming
to know something you do not know is lying, especially when it’s to
advance an ulterior motive.
“Evidence
from intelligence sources, secret communications and statements by
people now in custody reveal that Saddam Hussein aids and protects
terrorists, including members of Al Qaeda,” Bush claimed
in January 2003.
“Secretly, and without fingerprints, he could provide one of his
hiddenweapons
to terrorists, or help them develop their own.”
“Simply
stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass
destruction,” Cheney claimed
in August 2002.
“There is no doubt he is amassing them to use against our
friends, against our allies, and against us.”
“The
United States knows that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction,”
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said
in December 2002.
“Any country on the face of the earth with an active
intelligence program knows that Iraq has weapons of mass
destruction.”
“We
are absolutely sure they have continued to develop weapons of mass
destruction, and we are sure they have in their possession weapons of
mass destruction,” Secretary of State Colin Powell said
in December 2002.
“My
colleagues, every statement I make today is backed up by sources,
solid sources,” Powell told the United Nations Security Council
in his infamous Iraq
presentation in
February 2003. “These are not assertions. What we’re giving
you are facts and conclusions based on solid intelligence.”
“People
will continue to debate this issue, but there is no doubt in my
mind,” Powell said in the same presentation. “These illicit
procurement efforts show that Saddam Hussein is very much focused on
putting in place the key missing piece from his nuclear weapons
program, the ability to produce fissile material.”
Powell was
not nearly as certain as
he claimed to be. None of them were. Facts revealed after the
invasion prove that for all their public claims of complete and total
certainty that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction, was aiding and
abetting Al Qaida, and was developing nuclear weapons, behind the
veil of government secrecy there was nothing like certainty at all.
For
starters, Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi, who was cited in Powell’s
presentation and who Fleischer refers to by the code name “Curveball”
in the above thread, was
known to have been lying about
bioweapons long before the invasion. Despite the confident assertions
made by the Bush administration about Janabi’s claims to the public,
no American personnel were present when he made those claims, and
he told
the Guardianin
2011 that
the BND (the German intelligence agency who interrogated him) had
known he was lying all along.
“The
BND [German intelligence] knew in 2000 that I was lying after they
talked to my former boss, Dr Bassil Latif, who told them there were
no mobile bioweapons factories,” Janabi said. “For 18
months after that they left me alone because they knew I was telling
lies even though I never admitted it.
Believe
me, back then, I thought the whole thing was over for me. Then all of
a sudden [in the run up to the 2003 invasion] they came back to me
and started asking for more details about what I had told them. I
still don’t know why the BND then passed on my information to the CIA
and it ended up in Powell’s speech.”
Colonel
Lawrence Wilkerson was Powell’s chief of staff and helped him prepare
his UN presentation on Iraq. When asked on MSNBC if he believed he
was lied to about Janabi following the 2011 revelation,
Wilkerson told
Cenk Uygur that
“I cannot come to any other conclusion, especially when I have
discovered that no US personnel were present when Curveball was
interrogated by the BND, the German intelligence service. That we
accepted that, that we even had a head of the European division for
the CIA, Tyler Drumheller, who at the last minute during Powell’s
preparation, during my preparation of the secretary, had told both
Tenet and McLaughlin that Curveball might not be reliable. That
information was never relayed to the Secretary of State, or to me. I
have some serious doubts about it now. I think there was some
manipulation of this material, and there was some outright lying.”
When asked
by Uygur who
he thought lied to him, Wilkerson said one of WINPAC’s two WMD
experts at the time may have been answering directly to Dick Cheney’s
office.
A declassified
report from 2002 titled Iraq:
Status of WMD Programs reveals
that while the Bush administration was making its claims of absolute
certainty regarding the dangers posed by the Iraqi government, behind
the scenes it was damn near the opposite. Some choice excerpts:
“Our
assessments rely heavily on analytic assumptions and judgment rather
than hard evidence.
The evidentiary base is particularly sparse for
Iraqi nuclear programs.”
“We
range from 0% to about 75% knowledge on various aspects of their
program.”
“Our
knowledge of the Iraqi (nuclear) weapons program is based
largely—perhaps 90%—on analysis of imprecise intelligence.”
“We
cannot confirm the identity of any Iraqi facilities that produce,
test, fill, or store biological weapons.”
“Our
knowledge of what biological weapons the Iraqis are able to
produce is nearly complete. Our knowledge of how and where they
are produced is nearly 90% incomplete.”
“We
do not know the status of enrichment capabilities. We do not know
with confidence the location of any nuclear-weapon-related
facilities.”
“Please
take a look at this material as to what we don’t know about WMD. It
is big.” (That one was from Rumsfeld.)
“We
don’t know with any precision how much we don’t know.”
This
is not the language of certainty. Yet certainty was presented to the
public to manufacture support for a war which murdered a million
Iraqis.
The
2002 Downing
Street memo,
made public in 2005, reveals a secret meeting between senior
officials of the British government, intelligence and defense
agencies discussing what they knew about America’s plans for war.
The text
of the document contains
an assertion by the head of MI6 that Bush had already determined that
the invasion of Iraq would take place, and it was only a matter of
fixing bits of intelligence around a narrative to make the case.
“Military
action was now seen as inevitable,” the document reads. “Bush
wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the
conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were
being fixed around the policy. The NSC had no patience with the UN
route, and no enthusiasm for publishing material on the Iraqi
regime’s record. There was little discussion in Washington of the
aftermath after military action.”
“It
seemed clear that Bush had made up his mind to take military action,
even if the timing was not yet decided,” the document quotes
Foreign Secretary Jack Straw as saying. “But the case was thin.”
In
a 2008
hearing before the House Judiciary Committee,
attorney and author Vincent Bugliosi pointed out that the fact
that Bush lied about Iraq could be proven by the difference between
the classified 2002 National Intelligence Estimate and its
declassified white paper which was made available to the public.The
classified version contained dissents from the consensus and language
which made it clear that the reader was reading assessments and
opinions by the CIA and other intelligence agencies, whereas the
unclassified version saw these things deleted, presenting the
assessments as absolute fact.
“The
evidence that he lied about weapons of mass destruction, by the way,
which is not the basis for this book, are right in front of
me,” Bugliosi
said.
“I have it right here. Here is the evidence. This document here
is the National Intelligence Estimate. I didn’t name it before. I
talked about a classified report. This is it right here. October 1st,
2002, classified NIE report. It is called Iraq’s ContinuingPrograms
of Weapons of Mass Destruction. In this document right here, the CIA
and 15 other U.S. intelligence agencies use words like this, ‘we
assess that’ or ‘we judge that’ Hussein has weapons of mass
destruction. This document here is the white paper that was given to
you folks here in Congress and the American people. And the words ‘we
assess that’ or ‘we judge that’ were removed, meaning that you folks
here heard a fact, and in fact, it was only an opinion.
“Number
two, on nuclear weapons, this document right here, the classified
report has several important dissents. This document right here, the
white paper that you folks were given and the American people, all of
those dissents were deleted.”
Over
and over and over again we saw the same thing: uncertainty presented
as certainty. Guesses presented as fact. Opinions presented as proof.
That’s a lie. Bush lied. We know this with as much certainty as his
administration was pretending to have in the lead-up to the Iraq
invasion. There was a pre-existing agenda to invade Iraq, and
justifications were advanced to provide an excuse for that invasion
with such extreme aggression that now-National Security Advisor John
Bolton literally threatened
to murder an international official’s children for
making diplomacy work with Saddam.
In
October 2002, Bush said that Saddam Hussein had a “massive
stockpile” of
biological weapons. But as CIA Director
George Tenet noted
in early 2004, the CIA had informed policymakers it had “no
specific information on the types or quantities of weapons agent or
stockpiles at Baghdad’s disposal.” The “massive stockpile”
was just literally made up.
In
December 2002, Bush declared, “We
do not know whether or not [Iraq] has a nuclear weapon.” That
was not what the National Intelligence Estimate said. As Tenet would
later testify, “We said that Saddam did not have a nuclear weapon
and probably would have been unable to make one until 2007 to 2009.”
Bush did know whether or not Iraq had a nuclear weapon — and lied
and said he didn’t know to hype the threat.
On
CNN in September 2002, Condoleezza Rice claimed that aluminum tubes
purchased by Iraq were “only really suited for nuclear weapons
programs.” This was precisely
the opposite of what nuclear experts at the Energy Department were
saying; they argue that not only was it very possible the tubes were
for nonnuclear purposes but that it was very likely they were too.
Even more dire assessments about the tubes from other agencies were
exaggerated by administration officials — and in any case, the
claim that they’re “only really suited” for nuclear weapons is
just false.
In
August 2002, Dick
Cheney declared,
“Simply stated, there’s no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has
weapons of mass destruction.” But as Corn
notes,
at that time there was “no confirmed intelligence at this point
establishing that Saddam had revived a major WMD operation.” Gen.
Anthony Zinni, who had heard the same intelligence and attended
Cheney’s speech, would later
say in a documentary,
“It was a total shock. I couldn’t believe the vice president was
saying this, you know? In doing work with the CIA on Iraq WMD,
through all the briefings I heard at Langley, I never saw one piece
of credible evidence that there was an ongoing program.”
In
2007 General Wesley Clark told Democracy
Now that
he’d actually been informed of the decision to invade Iraq
immediately after 9/11, while the crosshairs were turning on
Afghanistan and well before the public narrative was being amped up
in demand of an invasion of Iraq. His comments read as follows:
About
ten days after 9/11, I went through the Pentagon and I saw Secretary
Rumsfeld and Deputy Secretary Wolfowitz. I went downstairs just to
say hello to some of the people on the Joint Staff who used to work
for me, and one of the generals called me in.
He
said, “Sir, you’ve got to come in and talk to me a second.”
I said, “Well, you’re too busy.” He said, “No, no.”
He says, “We’ve made the decision we’re going to war with Iraq.”
This was on or about the 20th of September. I said, “We’re going
to war with Iraq? Why?” He said, “I don’t know.” He
said, “I guess they don’t know what else to do.” So I said,
“Well, did they find some information connecting Saddam to
al-Qaeda?” He said, “No, no.” He says, “There’s
nothing new that way. They just made the decision to go to war with
Iraq.” He said, “I guess it’s like we don’t know what to do
about terrorists, but we’ve got a good military and we can take down
governments.” And he said, “I guess if the only tool you
have is a hammer, every problem has to look like a nail.”
So
I came back to see him a few weeks later, and by that time we were
bombing in Afghanistan. I said, “Are we still going to war with
Iraq?” And he said, “Oh, it’s worse than that.” He
reached over on his desk. He picked up a piece of paper. And he said,
“I just got this down from upstairs” — meaning the
Secretary of Defense’s office — “today.” And he said,
“This is a memo that describes how we’re going to take out seven
countries in five years, starting with Iraq, and then Syria, Lebanon,
Libya, Somalia, Sudan and, finishing off, Iran.” I said, “Is
it classified?” He said, “Yes, sir.” I said, “Well,
don’t show it to me.” And I saw him a year or so ago, and I
said, “You remember that?” He said, “Sir, I didn’t
show you that memo! I didn’t show it to you!”
Iraq,
Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Iran. If you’ve been
following the behaviors of the US war machine, Iraq won’t be the only
painfully familiar name on that list.
Ari Fleischer ✔@AriFleischer
It remains important to learn what we’ve attacked and where. How widespread?
In addition to military targets, I hope we targeted Assad’s palace in Damascus. Leave him alive but destroy his prestige. Leave him without a home, as Assad has left millions of Syrians w/o theirs.
Iran’s Official Figures Indicate Alarming Unemployment Rate Later This Year
The official unemployment rate has reached 27 percent among young Iranians and over 40 percent among university graduates, says Omid Ali Parsai, chairman of the Iranian Statistical Center.
en.radiofarda.com
Ari
Fleischer is a liar. He was
in the thick of
the Bush administration’s campaign to sell the Iraq war to the
American public, and to this day he continues trying to
sell them
on new
acts of depraved
US interventionism.
He’s just as much a warmongering neocon inside as he was when he was
behind a podium defending Bush’s wars in the press room, so it’s no
wonder he wants to preserve the image of his insatiable death cult.
Fleischer wants to preserve his legacy, yes, but he also wants to
preserve support for the war machine whose feet he worships at, hence
his ham-fisted attempt at narrative manipulation regarding the
unforgivable Iraq invasion.
The
responses to Fleischer’s Twitter thread have been overwhelmingly
negative, though, so it doesn’t look like anyone’s buying it. In our
new political landscape, where the image of George W Bush is
being continually
rehabilitated,
that gives me a bit of hope.
These
monsters lied to start a war which snuffed out a million human lives
and destabilized an entire region, and they did it right in front of
our faces. The fact that they’re now trying to lie about the thing we
all watched them do is as insulting as it is infuriating. Never let
them pull the wool over your eyes, and never forget what they did.
Forgiveness is highly
overrated.
Thanks
for reading! My articles are entirely reader-supported, so if you
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Nation: Psychonautical Adventures With Caitlin Johnstone,
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which will get you an email notification for everything I publish.
Voor meer berichten over de illegale oorlog tegen Irak, klik op het labels Irak, direct onder dit bericht. Let
wel: na een aantal berichten wordt het laatst gelezen bericht telkens
herhaald, dan onder het laatst gelezen bericht even opnieuw op het
gekozen label klikken, enz. enz.
Facebook
heeft bijna met trots verkondigd dat het platform een enorm aantal
video’s over de terreuraanslag in Christchurch heeft weten te
blokkeren. De schrijver van het hieronder opgenomen artikel stelt
volkomen terecht dat de maatschappij geen belang heeft bij censuur op
het beeldmateriaal van dit soort aanslagen, al was het alleen maar om
de vraag te kunnen beantwoorden waarom deze aanslag werd gepleegd
door de daders, hoe heeft het zover kunnen komen en wat burgers moeten doen mochten ze een dergelijke aanslag van redelijk dichtbij meemaken.
Veronderstel
dat na de moord op Kennedy al het filmmateriaal verboden zou zijn
geweest, of dat van de 9/11 aanslagen….. Niet dat we de waarheid
daarmee hebben kunnen achterhalen, maar we weten nu wel dat Kennedy
niet door één persoon is doodgeschoten en dat de ‘dader’ snel de
mond moest worden gesnoerd, zodat men niet zou kunnen denken dat
Oswald allesbehalve de dader was van die moordaanslag, of anders gezegd ‘terreuraanslag’.
Bij de
aanslagen van 9/11 zou het al helemaal een gotspe zijn geweest als de
beelden verboden waren geweest, daar juist aan die beelden is te zien,
dat de gebouwen van het WTC niet door de vliegtuigen, maar
gecontroleerd zijn neergehaald middels explosieven….. Of neem de
leugen dat er een vliegtuig het Pentagon is ingevlogen, terwijl daar
nu juist niet één beeld van is verspreid, tegelijkertijd was het druk genoeg
was op dat tijdstip en die plek….. Trouwens ook de schade aan het gebouw laten zien dat daar geen groot passagiersvliegtuig in werd gevlogen….
Vergeet
niet dat het wat betreft Christchurch niet alleen om de beelden gaat
die de schutter(s) hebben gemaakt, maar juist om beelden van derden…..
Nieuw-Zeeland
zou zelfs een enorme boete of gevangenisstraf op willen leggen als
er nog meer beelden van de aanslag worden verspreid…..
Jason
Ditz de schrijver van het hieronder opgenomen artikel, eerder
gepubliceerd op ANTIWAR en overgenomen van Anti-Media, stelt terecht
dat de totale censuur op beelden, ook de deksel houdt op de ideologie
van de daders, zodat men de aanhangers van de in dit geval
fascistische ideologie niet voor kan houden waar het hen aan
werkelijkheidszin ontbreekt……. Bovendien zouden daarmee bijvoorbeeld fascistische groeperingen worden gedwongen ondergronds te gaan en kan men deze groepen daarna verder niet in de gaten houden……
Juist
door censuur krijgen mensen die al enigszins ontvankelijk zijn
voor dergelijke ideologieën, geen argumenten te horen en te zien die
hun wereldbeeld een ‘wat gezondere’ wending kan geven….. Laten we
niet vergeten dat het fascisme op alle mogelijke manieren
bestreden moet worden gezien de geschiedenis met deze onzalige ideologie en dat gebeurt niet door er niet over te
praten……
Overigens moet ik andermaal op deze plek opmerken, dat de geheime diensten amper aandacht hadden en hebben voor fascisten, niet in de laatste plaats daar deze diensten zelf fascisten, dan wel extreem rechtse figuren onder het personeel hebben en dat zijn bepaald niet de schoonmakers…..’ Nee, men zet bij die diensten het liefst in op linkse groepen, echter daar hebben de moslimterroristen zand in de motor gegooid met hun aanslagen….. Eigenlijk zou je daar de VS voor moeten beschuldigen, die met haar ongebreidelde terreur, vooral uitgeoefend in moslimlanden, terreur heeft gekweekt op de straten van Europa…. (al hebben NAVO lidstaten als Nederland daar ‘voortvarend’ aan meegeholpen…..)
Censorship
at the Center of the Christchurch Terror Attack
(ANTIWAR.COM) —
As the world struggles to come to terms with last week’s terror
attack in Christchurch, New Zealand, heavy-handed censorship has made
it a struggle to figure out what happened, and why, above and beyond
the official narrative.
News
that shooting was ongoing in two mosques in New Zealand was met with
a flurry of curiosity on social media, and just as quickly saw much
of that shut down, with wholesale censorship of the topic and any
specifics or videos related to it blocked out of hand.
Underpinning
this was likely an anticipation from social media outlets like
Facebook that an ideologically driven attack on mosques would have at
least tangential links to social media, and lead to mainstream
outlets blaming them for not being even more heavy-handed in
censoring objectionable views before the attacks happened.
Their
solution, then, was to excessively censor the attack itself, and the
aftermath. A
substantial manifesto from
the main gunmen, and other clearly relevant content on what the
attackers were doing, are all but impossible to find on social media,
and more traditional media outlets are doing a rather thin attempt at
picking up the slack, mostly just echoing what officials say.
While
other attacks of historical import took place in different eras with
different context, this is one of the first such attacks that has
come in the middle of the censorship-happy social media era.
Plausibly violent ideologies have mostly been chased off of the main
social media outlets, undercutting chances to confront such
ideologies directly before the attack. During the attack, social
media imposed what was almost a total media blackout, and in the
aftermath, tried to vindicate their past censorship by keeping a
careful lid on anything too revealing.
This
must raise questions about how the modern system is going to be able
to handle and process such attacks, and how well the world would’ve
been able to manage, say,
9/11 or the Kennedy assassination,
if all video footage of it was just censored at once.
MintPressNews bracht afgelopen vrijdag een artikel van
Ahmed AbdulKareem over de strijd die lokale stammen in Oost-Jemen voeren tegen Saoedi-Arabië, daar dit land samen met de Verenigde Arabische
Emiraten (VAE) bezig is met het inrichten van militaire bases in dat
deel van Jemen (genaamd al-Mahrah….)……
De
stammen blokkeren de invoer van militair materieel en dat is niet de
eerste keer, al wordt de huidige blokkade gevoerd met wapens en niet zoals een eerdere vreedzame sit-in (demonstratie) die Saoedi-Arabië in 2017 bloedig heeft
neergeslagen….. In Jemen woedt een vergeten (illegale) oorlog, een oorlog die is uitgemond in een genocide tegen de sjiitische
bevolking van Jemen, een zaak waarover de reguliere westerse media amper berichten en al helemaal niet in combinatie met het woord ‘genocide…’ Niet vreemd dus dat dit feit, het neerslaan van vreedzame
demonstraties in 2017, al helemaal niet werd gemeld, zelfs niet op de sociale media die wel echt nieuws brengen (althans ik ben die berichten niet tegengekomen)…..
Hoe lang
laat de wereld de Saoedische terreurcoalitie doorgaan met haar
genocide, zonder zelfs maar commentaar te geven??? De hoogste tijd
voor een boycot van Saoedi-Arabië en haar terreurcoalitie, die verder
bestaat uit de VAE, Egypte en Marokko, waar dan meteen een boycot aan vastgeknoopt moet worden tegen de VS en GB, die Saoedi-Arabië blijven voorzien van wapens, munitie, naast training en de levering van rollend, varend en vliegend oorlogstuig.
Waar nog extra moet worden gewezen op de al helemaal kwalijke rol die de VS speelt: tot november vorig jaar voorzag de VS het vliegend oorlogstuig van de Saoedische terreurcoalitie 9.000 keer van (veelal gratis) brandstof in de lucht, deed de coördinatie van de bombardementen en hielp fysiek mee met commando’s op de grond en met de zeeblokkade tegen de sjiitische bevolking van Jemen…..
Voor zover bekend doet de VS nog steeds de coördinatie van de bombardementen (met haar radarvliegtuigen) en helpt het nog steeds mee aan de zeeblokkade, een blokkade die NB de honger in Jemen heeft veroorzaakt….. Ook aan de levering van oorlogstuig is geen eind gekomen, al schijnt het congres nu voor een volledige stop op de hulp aan de Saoedische terreurcoalitie te zijn……
Lees het
volgende artikel van Ahmed AbdulKareem en zegt het voort, de
reguliere media doen er het zwijgen toe als het gaat om de genocide
die de Saoedische terreurcoalitie uitvoert in Jemen, waar diezelfde
media wel volledig de plaat uitgingen over de moord op Khashoggi*, die
het grootste deel van zijn leven de reli-fascistische dictatuur
Saoedi-Arabië heeft verdedigd…….. (waarmee ik niet wil zeggen dat
het niet een enorme schande is dat Khashoggi werd vermoord…)
Dezelfde reguliere media die keer op keer durven te zeggen dat Iran de
Houthi’s** militair steunt, een leugen van enorme
proporties, nooit heeft men deze leugen kunnen bewijzen……..
blijft ook Nederland Saoedi-Arabië steunen met de genocide, door levering van wapenonderdelen aan deze reli-fascistische dictatuur, ook aan deze schandelijke gang van zaken dient onmiddellijk een eind te komen!!
The
latest incident came amidst a precipitous rise in tensions in eastern
Yemen, where local residents have been grappling with an increasingly
brazen military buildup by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates
(UAE).
Al-MAHRAH,
YEMEN — Fierce
clashes have erupted between local tribes and Saudi forces supported
by local mercenary groups in the Haat district of Yemen’s eastern
Mahrah province. The clashes were sparked when local tribal members
prevented Saudi shipping containers containing military equipment and
household appliances from entering the country via al-Shihan border
crossings with Oman, where Saudi Arabia plans to build anew military
base..
Witnesses
told MintPress News that the tribal groups stopped
the trucks and checked them, then forced them to return. In the wake
of this incident, fierce clashes erupted leaving Saudi mercenaries
injured. Saudi warplanes could also be seen circling the skies above
the area.
The
latest incident came amidst a precipitous rise in tensions in eastern
Yemen, where local residents have been grappling with an increasingly
brazen military buildup by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates
(UAE). Just last week, Saudi troops, tanks, and artillery arrived at
the coastal area of Eienah, east of al-Gaydah, without coordinating
with local authorities, a Yemeni official who spoke on condition of
anonymity, told MintPress.
The
attack has dangerous connotations for the region and comes less than
six months after three protesters
were killed by
Saudi forces during a sit-in opposing the Saudi Coalition’s
military buildup in eastern Yemen. Following the attack on the
peaceful protest, local tribes in al-Mahrah vowed to take up arms
against Saudi-led forces in order to prevent the construction of more
checkpoints and military bases in their country.
Al-Mahrah
residents see the build-up
of Saudi troops in
the district as part of a pattern of malign and colonial Saudi
policies in their country. Riyadh has deployed its forces in
al-Mahrah under the guise of reconstruction and counter-smuggling
operations. But Saudi forces have taken control of an increasingly
long list of local government facilities, including the al-Ghaydah
Airport, the Nishtun port, Sarfit, and the Shehn border crossing, as
well as a number of coastal areas.
Last
week, Ali bin Salem al-Huraizy, al-Mahrah’s former deputy governor
said: “The Saudis are determined to militarize the sea and land.
They [Saudis] try to build a Saudi camp [base] every ten kilos.” He
called on the people of al-Mahrah province to prepare to defend their
sovereignty against Saudi Arabia by force of arms if necessary.
The
Deputy Chairman of the Organizing Committee for the peaceful sit-in,
Aboud Qamasit, said that Saudi Arabia and its local allies have not
shown any goodwill — quite the contrary, they increasingly build
military bases in the province. He promised that al-Mahrah’s
residents will continue to hold sit-ins and protests.
The
sit-in committee, which was formed by al-Mahrah residents, said in a
statement on March 12 that Saudi Arabian forces kidnapped two
civilians, taking them to al-Ghaydah Airport prison, a Saudi secret
prison in the region, where dozens of detainees are subjected to
serious abuses and assaults according to the sit-in committee.
Ahmed
Belhaf, a leader in the protest movement, said in a statement on
March 2, that “there are an estimated 24 Saudi camps in the Ghaydah
Airport operating under the supervision of the airport commander and
training hundreds of extremist and terrorist militias.”
Saudi
Arabia launched a brutal military campaign in late 2017 against
al-Mahrah, which borders Oman and has remained largely immune to the
broader war in Yemen, as both the Houthis and other armed groups have
little presence in the province. Saudi Arabia claims that arms
smuggling operations by the Houthis are being carried out from Oman
into Yemen via the al-Mahrah border crossing, though the Saudis have
provided no evidence to back their claim, which Oman has repeatedly
denied.
Saudi
meddling in Mahrah politics
Protesters
in al-Ghaydah demand the expulsion of Saudi forces from the province.
Photo | Ahmed AbdulKareem
A
local Yemeni official who spoke on condition of anonymity said that
Saudi Arabia has begun implementing a plan to eliminate Oman’s
allies in the province, including the Mahri General Council, the
largest opposition party to Saudi policies and plans in al-Mahrah,
which is comprised of political and tribal forces and led by Sultan
Abdullah bin Isa Al Afar, a key ally of Oman.
In
an effort to undermine local opposition to its military expansion in
the region, Saudi Arabia plans to establish a new tribal council,
replacing the Mahri General Council, which is to be led by Rajeh Said
Bakrit. Bakrit was appointed by the Coalition as a governor of al
Mahrah on November 27, 2017, to replace Mohammed Abdullah Kuddah
after Kuddah spoke out against Saudi Arabia’s presence. The first
phase of that plan includes monthly payoffs of 30,000 Saudi riyals
($8000) to 60 tribal elders and influential figures.
Many
strategic analysts see the Saudi plan as a way to apply pressure on
Oman, which enjoys long borders and solid relations with the
residents of al-Mahrah. Much to the dismay of Saudi Arabia and the
UAE, Oman also enjoys cordial relations with Saudi rival Iran, a
relationship that the Coalition is eager to undermine.
In
an effort to stem Saudi influence in the region, residents of
al-Hawf, which lies east of al-Mahrah, announced the formation of a
General Forum to bring area management back into the hands of local
Mahrahi residents and organize civil projects in the area. The
General Forum is being supported by the government of Oman and the
effort is expected to spread to nearby districts.
Saudi
forces in eastern Yemen have recently been accused of planting
monitoring devices into local communications networks — developed
by a foreign engineering team and supported by Bakrit, according to a
local official who spoke on condition of anonymity. The official said
that the devices would allow Saudi forces to monitor and spy on
residents and leaders who oppose the Saudi occupation and undermine
the local opposition identifying and then assassinating or arresting
its leaders.
Infiltration,
assassination
al-Mahrah
residents in the Hwaf district carry slogans rejecting the
militarization of the province, the presence of militias, and Saudi
intervention, Jan, 2019. Photo | Ahmed AbdulKareem
A
Saudi military commander in al-Mahrah allegedly asked Bakrit to
reveal the names of the most prominent leaders who oppose the Saudi
presence in the province, threatening to ‘physically liquidate’
them. On Wednesday, members of a UAE assassination squad arrived in
al-Ghaydah. The same squad is thought to be responsible for
the assassination
of 27 religious leaders in
Yemen who opposed the Saudi-led occupation.
Saudi
Arabia has also launched a campaign to recruit hundreds of
al-Mahrah’s young for a local security force, called the “Mahri
Elite Forces” and modeled around other Coalition-backed mercenary
forces operating in Yemen, including the Hadhrami Elite Forces in
Hadhramaut province, the Shabwani Elite Forces in Shabwa, and the
Pioneer Security Belt Forces (al-Hizam) brigades in Aden.
The
campaign has sparked dismay amongst al-Mahrah’s tribes, who held a
meeting and issued a subsequent statement on Monday saying: “Trying
to copy the bad experience of the security belts in Aden and transfer
them to al-Mahrah would open the way for armed conflicts and
undermine local authorities.” The tribes called on the young
Mahrahis to refuse to join the Saudi forces, saying the creation of
the paramilitary group would create a combustible environment that
threatens to upset the local balance.
Like
many paramilitary forces created by the Saudi-led Coalition in Yemen,
the Mahri Elite Force was formed by recruiting members from specific
tribes, not on the basis of one national army for the country as a
whole. The predictable impact has been to exacerbate tribal
differences, revive the desire for revenge among tribes, and create
the desire for separate states.
Al-Huraizy
said in a statement:
The
UAE seeks through its armed formations to create a new situation that
will enable the UAE to dominate Yemen, control its ports and
capabilities, and rob the national decision, violate its sovereignty
and bring the country into chaos.”
Saudi
Arabia’s policies in eastern Yemen lack a realistic reading of
dangers and consequences, according to Abaad Studies and Research
Center, a Yemeni research center closely aligned with Saudi Coalition
allies in the country. As Saudi Arabia dismantles traditional social
structures, ideological systems, and political parties, militia
alternatives have predictably emerged.
Top
Photo | Mercenaries allied with the Saudi-led coalition are
pictured at the port of Aden in Aden, Yemen, Dec. 12, 2018. Jon
Gambrell | AP
Ahmed
AbdulKareem is
a Yemeni journalist. He covers the war in Yemen for MintPress News as
well as local Yemeni media.
Republish
our stories! MintPress
News is licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 International License.
=================================
* Hetzelfde geldt voor de situatie in Venezuela, ondanks dat de situatie in Venezuela niet is te vergelijken wat betreft doden en verdere ellende in Jemen, doet men of het in Venezuela om veel ernstiger zaken gaat, alweer een leugen van gigantische proporties (terwijl de VS één op één verantwoordelijk is voor de situatie in Venezuela….)……
**De
Houthi’s, de sjiitische rebellen, die eerder IS en Al Qaida met
succes bestreden in Jemen….. De huidige juntaleider van Jemen is
Al-Hadi, die eerder opstapte daar de Houthi’s hem tot aftreden
dwongen. Saoedi-Arabië dwong hem zijn presidentschap weer op te
nemen, zodat hij hen te hulp kon roepen in de strijd tegen de
Houthi’s….. Al-Hadi was de schoft die Al Qaida en IS onderdak gaf
in Jemen, waarna dit geteisem begon met haar strijd tegen de
sjiieten, die zelfs niet veilig waren in hun moskeeën….. Over die
aanvallen was het ook behoorlijk stil in het westen, vergelijk dat
eens met reactie in die media na de terreuraanval op de 2 moskeeën in
Christchurch…..
Nadat de
VS een paar jaar geleden al had laten weten, een preventieve of
eerste aanval met kernwapens niet uit te sluiten, liet de Britse
bloedige oorlogsmisdadiger May in 2017 naarstig weten hetzelfde voor haar
land niet uit te sluiten……
E.e.a.
werd nog net met enige ophef gebracht in de reguliere westerse media,
al was het op pagina 80 en er geen sprake was van zware kritiek…. Terwijl het hier gaat om de
vernietiging van de aarde zoals wij die kennen….
Een paar
maanden later liet ook Rusland weten, dan niet uit te sluiten een preventieve aanval met kernwapens te zullen voeren……. Mensen de
eerste dagen na die aankondiging stonden die westerse massamedia bol
van de hysterische en uiterst hypocriete verontwaardiging…….
Terwijl Rusland echt reden had om e.e.a. als afschrikking te laten
weten, daar de VS en haar oorlogshond en terreurorganisatie NAVO
langs een groot gedeelte van de westgrens van dat land staan….*Bovendien was de VS toen al bezig met de voorbereidingen tot de bouw van een ‘raketschild’ in Polen en Roemenië……..
Het
raketschild in Polen en Roemenië is zogenaamd tegen raketten uit Iran, terwijl dat land
nooit een ander land aanviel sinds de revolutie in 1978 en 1979 (trouwens ook heel ver daaraan voorafgaand niet)…… Het gaat
dan ook om de raketten die deel uitmaken van dit schild. Deze
antiraket-raketten kunnen in een mum van tijd worden veranderd in
aanvalsraketten die met meerdere kernkoppen relatief dicht op de
Russische grens staan…… Deze raketten vallen met hun actieradius dan ook onder het
INF verdrag, vandaar dat de VS stelt dat het
‘antiraket-raketten’ zijn……
Joe Dunford, een hoge
generaal van het VS terreurleger, heeft nog eens laten weten dat hij
achter een eventuele eerste of preventieve aanval met kernwapens
staat……..
Hoe
totaal knettergek moet je zijn om te denken dat je een kerenoorlog
kan winnen…….
Het volgende artikel werd geschreven door Jason Ditz, eerder gepubliceerd op ANTIWAR en door mij overgenomen van Anti-Media:
Top
US General Supports Pre-Emptive Nuclear First Strike
(ANTIWAR.COM) — With
the world’s largest, most destructive arsenal of nuclear weapons,
the United States poses an enormous risk not just to peace, but to
the survival of much of the human race. That’s only a problem, of
course, if the US starts using that arsenal.
Which
is where formal US nuclear doctrine would come in. There have been
debates for decades on whether the US should adopt a “no first use”
policy, officially ruling out the idea that the US would launch a
nuclear attack without first being attacked with a nuclear weapon.
Morally,
this ought to be obvious, but every attempt to adopt such a policy
has been opposed, with Joint Chiefs commander Gen. Joe Dunford
the latest to come out against the idea, saying promising
not to nuke other nations in a first strike would “simplify an
adversary’s decision-making.”
Dunford
went on to argue that there are “a few situations” where he
believes the president should retain the option to launch nuclear
first strikes, though he did not say what those situations were.
Given the potentially disastrous consequences of such a strike, it is
unsurprising that many in Congress are pushing to limit the risk of
the president being able to do that unilaterally.
*Het gestationeerd zijn van de VS en de NAVO langs een groot deel van de Russische westgrens is overigens geheel tegen de afspraken in die de VS, de NAVO landen en Gorbatsjov in 1991 hebben gemaakt (daar zijn inmiddels bewijzen voor)……
(De volgende links en commentaar van eerder bericht:)
Voor degenen die nog in de veronderstelling zijn dat de VS tot de goede staten op onze kleine aarde behoren, hier wat voorbeelden van VS agressie, of beter gezegd terreur (om aan te geven dat de VS werkelijk nergens voor terugdeinst):
Op 3
juli 1988 haalde de VS een passagiersvliegtuig van Iran Air, vlucht 655 neer binnen Iraans luchtruim, daarbij kwamen alle 290 inzittenden om het leven…… Nooit heeft
de VS haar excuses aangeboden voor deze enorme terreurdaad, niet aan
de nabestaanden van de slachtoffers, niet aan Iran en niet aan Dubai (het land van de uiteindelijke bestemming). George H.W. Bush, destijds vice-president, liet weten dat
de VS nooit excuus zal maken voor de door haar aangerichte massamoord en schade……. Wel heeft de VS de nabestaanden van de slachtoffers een schadevergoeding betaald.
Zoals gezegd kwamen 290
mensen om het leven en dat had makkelijk voorkomen kunnen
worden als de legerleiding, de leiding van het VS het marineschip
Vincennes had vervangen. De leiding van het marineschip stond bekend om haar verkeerde
inschatting van radarbeelden en ander klungelig optreden, waar men zelfs de marineleiding waarschuwde voor de onkunde van het personeel op de Vincennes….. Dat de
leiding niet werd vervangen, terwijl collega’s smalend over de
Vincennes spraken als ‘Robocruiser’, is voor velen dan ook het bewijs
dat vlucht 655 met opzet werd neergehaald…….
USS Vincennes
Beste
bezoeker, het neerhalen van vlucht 655 is maar één voorbeeld van de
ongebreidelde VS terreur waar een fiks deel van de wereld onder
zucht…….
Ongelofelijk
dat men in de reguliere westerse media en politiek de VS als de goede
partij blijven zien, terwijl de laatst aan de VS voorgaande duivelse terreurstaat, het
nazibewind in Duitsland was (ook al was de VS al voor WOII bezig met
haar terreur tegen landen die zich niet wilden onderwerpen aan de
doctrine van de imperialistische VS…..)
De VS heeft o.a. de coup tegen de destijds Perzische regering (Perzië is de ‘oude naam’ van Iran) van premier Mosaddegh in 1953 georganiseerd en geregisseerd… Voor en na het neerhalen van vlucht 655 had en heeft de VS een regimewisseling in Iran op het oog, waarbij de VS ook gewelddadige oppositie heeft gesteund met wapens en militaire training (in terreurdaden)…..
En weer is de VS bezig met een regimewissel in Iran, waar een echte aanval op Iran al een paar jaar tot de mogelijkheden behoort, zeker met de grote vriend van de VS, de fascistische apartheidsstaat Israël dat Iran het liefst zou platgooien met kernraketten en keer en keer aandringt op het aanvallen van Iran…..
Intussen is het Iraanse volk al het slachtoffer, dit door de volkomen ten onrechte opgelegde sancties van de VS…… Eén van de smerigste vormen van chantage, zo van: als jullie ontevreden zijn moet je je regering omverwerpen, ofwel als er doden vallen door onze sancties, zijn jullie zelf verantwoordelijk voor de doden die daardoor vallen…… Zoals de VS sancties tegen Irak van eind 90er jaren in de vorige eeuw, waardoor 500.000 kinderen om het leven kwamen……. De verantwoordelijke oorlogsmisdadiger en massamoordenaar Albright, minister van BuZa onder Clinton, liet later weten dat die 500.000 kindslachtoffers (die zij in feite had vermoord) meer dan de moeite waard waren….*
An
Apology for a Different Plane Crash, 30 Years Later
The
tragic Ethiopian Airline plane crash recalls another passenger plane
crash some 30 years ago. The latter, however, was not due to a
mechanical malfunction but to U.S. missiles. And while very few
Americans remember this incident, it still weighs heavy on the hearts
of many Iranians–as we discovered on our recent trip there.
The
tragic downing of the commercial passenger airline, Iran Air Flight
655, happened on July 3, 1988. A U.S. Navy ship called the Vincennes
was stationed in the Persian Gulf to protect oil trade routes. The
plane had just taken off from nearby Bandar Abbas International
Airport in southern Iran when U.S. personnel on the warship fired two
surface-to-air missiles. The flight was still in Iranian airspace,
climbing on its regularly scheduled flight to Dubai, when it was hit.
The plane disintegrated immediately and crashed into the water,
killing all 290 onboard–274 passengers and 16 crew members.
According
to the U.S. government, this was an accident: the crew thought the
Iranian Airbus A300 was an attacking F-14 Tomcat fighter jet.
Most
Iranians, however, believe it was a deliberate war crime. Earlier
that day, the same U.S. ship had sunk two Iranian gunboats in Iranian
waters and damaged a third.
The
Iranian belief that the passenger plane was attacked on purpose was
reinforced when the U.S. government made a series of inaccurate
claims. One claim was that the plane was not on a normal flight path
but was diving toward the ship; the truth is that the plane was
climbing, and was on its correct path. Another was that the plane’s
identification transponder was not working or had been altered; the
truth is that the plane had actually been emitting, by radio, the
standard commercial identifying data.
Months
before the plane was shot down, air traffic controllers and the crews
of other warships in the Persian Gulf had been warning that poorly
trained U.S. crews, especially the gung-ho captain and crew of the
Vincennes (or “Robocruiser,” as other crews had nicknamed it),
were constantly misidentifying civilian aircraft over the Persian
Gulf, making this horrific incident entirely predictable.
The
U.S. Navy added insult to injury when, two years later, it awarded
combat medals to the warship’s captain and crew–never even
mentioning the downing of the plane. The town of Vincennes, Indiana,
for which the ship was named, even launched a fundraising campaign
for a monument to honor the ship and its crew.
Particularly
callous was a statement by then Vice-President George H.W. Bush, who
was campaigning for president at the time. “I will never apologize
for the United States of America. Ever,” he insisted, “I don’t
care what the facts are. I’m not an apologize-for-America kind of
guy.”
While
U.S. officials refused to accept culpability, in 1996 the Iranians
took to the U.S. government to the International Court of Justice.
With all the evidence against the Vincennes, the U.S. government
agreed to a settlement, granting $213,000 per passenger to the
victims’ families. But the government still refused to formally
apologize or acknowledge wrongdoing.
While
most Americans have no memory of this incident, in Iran the date of
the deaths of 290 innocent people at the hands of the U.S. military
is marked every year just as the 9/11 attack is remembered every year
in the United States. To some Iranians, it is just one more example
of the callousness of U.S. policy.
That’s
why our peace delegation that visited Iran in early March decided to
make a special gift to the Peace Museum in Tehran, a museum dedicated
to ending war. It was a hand-crafted commemorative book crafted by
one of our delegates, Barbara Briggs-Letson, who is an 85-year-old
retired American nurse from San Francisco. It contained a letter of
remorse, verses of poetry, the names—in Farsi—of all those who
lost their lives, and individual notes from the 28 members of our
delegation.
The
moving ceremony at the Peace Museum left all of us, Americans and
Iranians, weeping. We made it clear that while our government won’t
apologize for its dirty deeds in Iran—from overthrowing Iran’s
democratically elected government in 1953 to shooting down a
passenger plane in 1988 to unilaterally withdrawing from the nuclear
agreement in 2017—we, the people, will.
Medea
Benjamin is an American political activist, best known for
co-founding Code Pink.
Voor meer berichten over Iran, klik op het label met die naam, direct onder dit bericht. Let
wel: na een aantal berichten wordt het laatst gelezen bericht telkens
herhaald, dan onder het laatst gelezen bericht even opnieuw op het
gekozen label klikken, enz. enz.
Beste bezoeker, dat was het voor deze dag, morgen meer berichten. Maak er als het even mogelijk is, een mooie dag van.
Het is
weer eens zover mensen, de VS vernietigde afgelopen woensdag een
basis van het bevriende Afghaanse leger in Uruzgan……
Tijdens
de strijd van de VS met een ander partner tegen Talibanstrijders,
vergat de VS e.e.a. te coördineren met de Afghaanse basis, een kleine
basis, waar men dacht onder vuur te komen van de Taliban en men begon
te schieten in de richting van de vermeende aanvallers…. Daarop
werd de VS luchtmacht ingeschakeld met het hierboven beschreven
resultaat…… 6 Afghaanse militairen kwamen om bij de aanval…..
Intussen heeft de illegale oorlog van de VS tegen Afghanistan, nu in het 17de
jaar, de VS meer dan 1 biljoen (trillion) dollar gekost, dat
is 45 miljard dollar per jaar…. Het totale bedrag is omgerekend naar de waarde van de
dollar destijds, meer waard dan de Marshallhulp na WOII voor een aantal
Europese landen, waaronder het destijds volledig failliete West-Duitsland, terwijl Afghanistan voor een groot deel in puin ligt en in handen is van de Taliban…..
Vanwege
die waanzinnige kosten eist de VS dat de andere NAVO lidstaten meer uitgeven aan ‘defensie’
(lees: oorlogsvoering), terwijl deze grootste terreurentiteit op aarde, de
ene na de andere illegale oorlog begint…….. (overigens niet in
de laatste plaats om nieuwe wapens van de VS wapenindustrie uit te
proberen in ‘het echt..’)
US
Warplanes Accidentally Obliterate Allied Afghan Military Base
(ZH) — In
the latest bizarre story to come out of the US “endless war”
in Afghanistan, American
warplanes obliterated an allied Afghan military post in
an act of “self defense” on Wednesday.
The
incident took place in the tribal Uruzgan province of
south-central Afghanistan and reportedly began when a joint
convoy of US troops and Afghan Special Forces came under fire by
another unit of Afghan ground troops in what appears
a major instance of accidental friendly fire resulting
in a devastating two
dozen total casualties on
the Afghan side.
US DoD file photo: coalition jets in operation over Afghanistan
The
incident is under investigation, but US mission spokesman Bob
Purtiman appeared to excuse US actions in a
statement on Thursday: “We
are operating in a complex environment where enemy fighters do not
wear uniforms and use stolen military vehicles to attack government
forces,” he said.
American
forces indicate they came under attack by an unknown entity. US
planes flying overhead then destroyed the Afghan army post (described
by the Pentagon as a “checkpoint”), which killed
at least six soldiers and
wounded nine others at the small base which housed a total of 17.
The
US side reported no deaths or injuries, though the Pentagon would
likely not release such information until a full investigation is
concluded.
The
US Department of Defense confirmed the incident on Wednesday, which
it described as a mistaken “example
of the fog of war”.
Pentagon Spokesperson Sgt. First Class Debra Richardson told The
New York Times:
“The U.S. conducted a precision self-defense airstrike on people
who were firing at a partnered U.S.-Afghan force.”
Ironically
US officials described the aerial bombing of the allied Afghan post
as a “precision airstrike,” per the
AP:
The
soldiers were killed by friendly fire Wednesday in what was supposed
to be a precision airstrikeby U.S.
forces supporting Afghan soldiers battling insurgents near the
city of Tarin Kot in Uruzgan province.
It
was the second major incident to cause Afghan casualties following a
prior fight with Taliban: “For the second time in a few days, an
Afghan Army base was destroyed on Wednesday — but this time by
American airstrikes that followed a firefight between the Afghans and
Americans, Afghan officials said,” the NYT
report noted.
Last
year the Pentagon acknowledged that war
in Afghanistan is costing American taxpayers$45
billion per year,
with a number of public studies putting the total figure at over $1
trillion since the US war began nearly two decades go.
The “endless
war” has
become more expensive, in current dollars, than the Marshall Plan,
which was the reconstruction effort to rebuild Europe after World War
II.
Ter zijde: toen de VS Afghanistan aanviel in 2001, lag de papaverteelt op de reet door beleid van de Taliban, na ruim 17 jaar oorlog zijn de papaveroogsten groter dan ooit tevoren…….. (van papaver maakt men opium en heroïne)
Voor nog meer berichten over Afghanistan, klik op dat label, direct onder dit bericht. Let
wel: na een aantal berichten wordt het laatst gelezen bericht telkens
herhaald, dan onder het laatst gelezen bericht even opnieuw op het
gekozen label klikken, enz. enz.
