Skip to main content

Home/ Socialism and the End of the American Dream/ Group items tagged campaign-ad

Rss Feed Group items tagged

Filter: All | Bookmarks | Topics Simple Middle
9More

Violence in Israel and the Palestinian territories - the Guardian briefing | News | The... - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...-territories-guardian-briefing war & peace Israel Palestine escalating-violence
shared by Paul Merrell on 09 Oct 15 - No Cached
  • Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories have been convulsed by a wave of escalating violence in recent days. The lethal tensions ratcheted up sharply last Thursday when a married couple, Jewish settlers from Neria in the northern West Bank, were shot and killed in a car in front of their four children near Beit Furik, allegedly by members of a five-man Hamas cell who were subsequently arrested. Two more Israelis were stabbed and killed in Jerusalem’s Old City on Saturday by a Palestinian youth, who was shot dead at the scene. On Sunday, an 18-year-old Palestinian was shot dead by Israeli forces in clashes near the West Bank town of Tulkarem. The mounting friction has seen attacks by settlers on Palestinians, clashes between Palestinians and Israeli security forces and attempted attacks continue. On Wednesday. there were incidents in Jerusalem, where a Palestinian woman stabbed an Israeli man who then shot and seriously wounded her in the Old City, the southern Israeli city of Kiryat Gat, where a Palestinian was killed after reportedly trying to seize a gun from a soldier and stabbing him, and when a female Israeli settler’s car was stoned near Beit Sahour, which adjoins Bethlehem, in an incident in which it appears other settlers fired on Palestinians, seriously injuring a youth.
  • On the Palestinian side, anger escalated earlier this week after a 13-year-old boy in Bethlehem’s Aida refugee camp was shot and killed by an Israeli sniper in an incident the Israeli military has claimed was “unintentional” as soldiers were aiming at another individual.
  • Jerusalem has remained tense now for almost a year. Most analysts blame the recent heightened tension on several factors. Key among them has been the issue of the religious site in Jerusalem known to Muslims as al-Haram al-Sharif, or the Noble Sanctuary, and Jews as the Temple Mount. A long-running campaign by some fundamentalist Jews and their supporters for expanding their rights to worship in the Al-Aqsa mosque compound on the Temple Mount, supported by rightwing members of Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s own cabinet, has raised the suspicion – despite repeated Israeli denials – that Israel intends to change the precarious status quo for the site, which has been governed under the auspices of the Jordanian monarchy since 1967.
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • Recent Israeli police actions at the site scandalised the Muslim world and raised tensions. Israel has also banned two volunteer Islamic watch groups – male and female – accusing them of harassing Jews during the hours they are allowed to visit. That has combined with the lack of a peace process and growing resentment and frustration in Palestinian society aimed at both Israel and the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, and the Palestinian Authority. Israel has complained in recent weeks of an increase in stone throwing and molotov cocktail attacks on West Bank roads and in areas adjoining mainly Palestinian areas of Jerusalem, where an elderly motorist died after crashing his car during an alleged stoning attack. In response, Netanyahu and his cabinet have loosened live-fire regulations over the use of .22 calibre bullets on Palestinian demonstrators. Although described by Israel as “less lethal”, it is this type of ammunition that killed 13-year-old Abdul Rahman Shadi on Monday.
  • Part of the problem is the leadership on both sides. Netanyahu leads a rightwing/far-right coalition with the smallest of majorities. Several cabinet ministers support the settler movement and have publicly criticised him for not cracking down harder on Palestinian protest. Netanyahu’s weakness is reflected on the Palestinian side, where the ageing Abbas is seen as isolated, frustrated and increasingly out of step with other members of the Palestinian leadership, who would like a tougher line against Israel over continued settlement building and the absence of any peace process.
  • In his recent speech to the UN general assembly, Abbas went further than he had ever done before in threatening to end what he claims is Palestine’s unilateral adherence to the Oslo accords, which he said Israel refuses to honour. “We cannot continue to be bound by these signed agreements with Israel and Israel must assume fully its responsibilities of an occupying power,” he said. Abbas, however, stopped short of ending security cooperation between Israel and Palestinian security forces – mainly aimed at Hamas on the West Bank – and asked the UN for international protection. His speech at the United Nations has been seen as a move to placate growing discontents in Palestinian society. Both Abbas and Netanyahu are now both engaged in a delicate balancing act, trying to avoid further escalation that would be detrimental to both while trying not to lose the support of key constituencies. On Abbas’s side, that has meant ordering Palestinian factions and security forces to desist from joining the conflict, while on Netanyahu’s side it has seen numerous warnings of harsh measures – many of which have been repeatedly announced.
  • Nentanyahu does not want to risk a position where Abbas ends security cooperation and in the local jargon “hands back the keys” – in other words revokes the Oslo accords and insists on Israel once again taking full responsibility for administering the occupied territories. For his part, Abbas is said to see a limited popular uprising as useful because of the message it delivers to both Israel and the international community of the mounting risks of a moribund peace process and how serious things could become if security cooperation were to end.
  • At the end of the last round of the peace process last year, US diplomats warned about this potential outcome and Washington has largely withdrawn from a guiding role, exhausted by the lack of progress and frustrated with Netanyahu. Despite the Palestinian desire for a new multilateral international approach, it has failed to materialise as have any US guarantees to Abbas that they intend to advance the peace process. While Syria, migration and Russia are preoccupying western governments, Israel and Palestine have been largely left to their own devices.
  • Flare-ups of violence have a habit of coming and going but hopes that this one is coming to an end appear premature for now. However, the likelihood of the current violence fading away still remains the strongest bet. The biggest risk is a miscalculation by either side, which is out of the hands of either leader, that would alter the dynamics. Individuals on both sides have led some of the worst attacks: Jewish extremists in the summer burning three members of a Palestinian family to death, and “lone wolf attacks” launched by Palestinians angry about al-Aqsa and other issues. With neither side having a clear exit strategy, there is a risk is that Netanyahu and Abbas are being led by events rather than leading.
5More

Google will 'de-rank' RT articles to make them harder to find - Eric Schmidt - RT World... - 0 views

www.rt.com/...0444-google-alphabet-derank-rt Russia-Gate censorship Google RT Sputnik litigation
shared by Paul Merrell on 21 Nov 17 - No Cached
  • Eric Schmidt, the Executive Chairman of Google’s parent company Alphabet, says the company will “engineer” specific algorithms for RT and Sputnik to make their articles less prominent on the search engine’s news delivery services. “We are working on detecting and de-ranking those kinds of sites – it’s basically RT and Sputnik,” Schmidt said during a Q & A session at the Halifax International Security Forum in Canada on Saturday, when asked about whether Google facilitates “Russian propaganda.”
  • “We are well of aware of it, and we are trying to engineer the systems to prevent that [the content being delivered to wide audiences]. But we don’t want to ban the sites – that’s not how we operate.”The discussion focused on the company’s popular Google News service, which clusters the news by stories, then ranks the various media outlets depending on their reach, article length and veracity, and Google Alerts, which proactively informs subscribers of new publications.
  • The Alphabet chief, who has been referred to by Hillary Clinton as a “longtime friend,” added that the experience of “the last year” showed that audiences could not be trusted to distinguish fake and real news for themselves.“We started with the default American view that ‘bad’ speech would be replaced with ‘good’ speech, but the problem found in the last year is that this may not be true in certain situations, especially when you have a well-funded opponent who is trying to actively spread this information,” he told the audience.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • RT America registered under FARA earlier this month, after being threatened by the US Department of Justice with arrests and confiscations of property if it failed to comply. The broadcaster is fighting the order in court.
  • Paul Merrell on 21 Nov 17
     
    " HomeWorld News Google will 'de-rank' RT articles to make them harder to find - Eric Schmidt Published time: 20 Nov, 2017 19:58 Edited time: 21 Nov, 2017 03:41 Get short URL   © Global Look Press Eric Schmidt, the Executive Chairman of Google's parent company Alphabet, says the company will "engineer" specific algorithms for RT and Sputnik to make their articles less prominent on the search engine's news delivery services. "We are working on detecting and de-ranking those kinds of sites - it's basically RT and Sputnik," Schmidt said during a Q & A session at the Halifax International Security Forum in Canada on Saturday, when asked about whether Google facilitates "Russian propaganda." Schmidt appearance begins at 1:07:00 mark, relevant question at 1:33:00 "We are well of aware of it, and we are trying to engineer the systems to prevent that [the content being delivered to wide audiences]. But we don't want to ban the sites - that's not how we operate." The discussion focused on the company's popular Google News service, which clusters the news by stories, then ranks the various media outlets depending on their reach, article length and veracity, and Google Alerts, which proactively informs subscribers of new publications. Read more 'Slap at the First Amendment' - RT America forced to register as foreign agent RT has criticized the proposed move - whose timescale has not been publicized - as arbitrary and a form of censorship. "Good to have Google on record as defying all logic and reason: facts aren't allowed if they come from RT, 'because Russia' - even if we have Google on Congressional record saying they've found no manipulation of their platform or policy violations by RT," Sputnik and RT Editor-in-Chief Margarita Simonyan said in a statement. During the discussion, Schmidt claimed that he was "very strongly not in favor of censorship," but said that he has faith in "ranking" without ackno
6More

Eric Cantor's Opponent Beat Him By Calling Out GOP Corruption | - 0 views

www.republicreport.org/...dave-brat-cantor U.S. banksters Brat Cantor corruption
shared by Paul Merrell on 13 Jun 14 - No Cached
  • “All of the investment banks, up in New York and D.C., they should have gone to jail.” That isn’t a quote from an Occupy Wall Street protester or Senator Elizabeth Warren. That’s a common campaign slogan repeated by Dave Brat, the Virginia college professor who scored one of the biggest political upsets in over a century by defeating Majority Leader Eric Cantor in the Republican primary last night. The national media is buzzing about Brat’s victory, but for all of the wrong reasons.
  • Did the Tea Party swoop in and help Brat, as many in the Democratic Party are suggesting? Actually, the Wall Street Journal reports no major Tea Party or anti-establishment GOP group spent funds to defeat Cantor. Did Cantor, the only Jewish Republican in Congress, lose because of his religion, as some have suggested? There’s no evidence so far of anti-Semitism during the campaign. Was Cantor caught flatfooted? Nope; Cantor’s campaign spent close to $1 million on the race and several outside advocacy groups, including the National Rifle Association, the National Realtors Association and the American Chemistry Council (a chemical industry lobbying association) came in and poured money into the district to defeat Brat. The New York Times claims that Brat focused his campaign primarily on immigration reform. Brat certainly made immigration a visible topic in his race, but Republic Report listened to several hours of Brat stump speeches and radio appearances, and that issue came up far less than what Brat called the main problem in government: corruption and cronyism. Brat told Internet radio host Flint Engelman that the “number one plank” in his campaign is “free markets.” Brat went on to explain, “Eric Cantor and the Republican leadership do not know what a free market is at all, and the clearest evidence of that is the financial crisis … When I say free markets, I mean no favoritism to K Street lobbyists.” Banks like Goldman Sachs were not fined for their role in the financial crisis — rather, they were rewarded with bailouts, Brat has said.
  • rat, who has identified with maverick GOP lawmakers like Representative Justin Amash of Michigan, spent much of the campaign slamming both parties for being in the pocket of “Wall Street crooks” and D.C. insiders. The folks who caused the financial crisis, Brat says, “went onto Obama’s rolodex, the Republican leadership, Eric’s rolodex.” During several campaign appearances, Brat says what upset him the most about Cantor was his role in gutting the last attempt at congressional ethics reform. “If you want to find out the smoking gun in this campaign,” Brat told Engelman, “just go Google and type the STOCK Act and CNN and Eric Cantor.” (On Twitter, Brat has praised the conservative author Peter Schweizer, whose work on congressional corruption forced lawmakers into action on the STOCK Act.) The STOCK Act, a bill to crack down on insider trading, was significantly watered down by Cantor in early 2012. The lawmaker took out provisions that would have forced Wall Street “political intelligence” firms to register as traditional lobbyists would, and removed a section of the bill to empower prosecutors to go after public officials who illegally trade on insider knowledge. And Brat may be right to charge that Cantor’s moves on the STOCK Act were motivated by self interest. Cantor played a leading role in blocking legislation to fix the foreclosure crisis while his wife and his stock portfolio were deeply invested in mortgage banks.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • Most self-described Tea Party Republicans, including Rand Paul and Ted Cruz, have railed against Washington in a general sense without calling out the powerful – often Republican-leaning — groups that wield the most power. Not Brat. “Eric is running on Chamber of Commerce and Business Roundtable principles,” Brat told a town hall audience, later clarifying that he meant the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the largest lobbying trade group in the country. He also called out the American Chemistry Council for funding ads in his race with Cantor, telling a radio host that his opponent had asked his “crony capitalist friends to run more ads.” Brat repeats his mantra: “I’m not against business. I’m against big business in bed with big government.” Indeed, Cantor has been a close ally to top lobbyists and the financial industry. “Many lobbyists on K Street whose clients include major financial institutions consider Cantor a go to member in leadership on policy debates, including overhauling the mortgage finance market, extending the government backstop for terrorism insurance, how Wall Street should be taxed and flood insurance,” noted Politico following Cantor’s loss last night. In 2011, Cantor was caught on video promising a group of commodity speculators that he would roll back regulations on their industry. 
  • There are many lessons to be learned from the Cantor-Brat race. For one, it’s worth reflecting on the fact that not only did Cantor easily out raise and outspend Brat by over $5 million to around $200,000 in campaign funds, but burned through a significant amount on lavish travel and entertainment instead of election advocacy. Federal Election Commission records show Cantor’s PAC spent at least $168,637 on steakhouses, $116,668 on luxury hotels (including a $17,903 charge to the Beverly Hills Hotel & Bungalows) and nearly a quarter million on airfare (with about $140,000 in chartered flights) — just in the last year and a half! But on the policy issues and political ramifications of this race, it’s not easy to box Brat into a neat caricature of an anti-immigration zealot or Tea Party demagogue, or, in TIME’s hasty reporting, a “shopworn conservative boilerplate.” If Brat ascends to Congress, which is quite likely given the Republican-leaning district that he’ll run in as the GOP nominee, he may actually continue taking on powerful elites in Washington.  
  • Paul Merrell on 13 Jun 14
     
    The Cantor defeat was not a Tea Party upset victory as claimed by MSM, according to this article. Instead, Brat's stump speeches were about crony capitalism, bankster corruption of Congress, and libertarian principles. So if this article is correct, then MSM would rather claim that Cantor was a victim of the Tea Party than acknowledge the issues that Brat actually raised, Congressional corruption and big government/big corporation cronyism.  Very interesting food for thought.
9More

Comey has Long History of Cases Ending Favorable to Clintons - Tea Party News - 0 views

www.teaparty.org/ding-favorable-clintons-174947 Clinton Hillary
shared by Gary Edwards on 09 Jul 16 - No Cached
  • Messages found stored on Clinton’s private email server show that Berger – a convicted thief of classified documents – had been advising Clinton while she served as secretary of state and had access to emails containing classified information. For example, in an email dated Sept. 22, 2009, Berger advised Clinton advised how she could leverage information to make Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu more cooperative in discussions with the Obama administration over a settlement freeze.
  • Law firm ties Berger, Lynch, Mills Berger worked as a partner in the Washington law firm Hogan & Hartson from 1973 to 1977, before taking a position as the deputy director of policy planning at the State Department in the Carter administration. When Carter lost his re-election bid, Berger returned to Hogan & Hartson, where he worked until he took leave in 1988 to act as foreign policy adviser in Gov. Michael Dukakis’ presidential campaign. When Dukakis was defeated, Berger returned to Hogan & Hartson until he became foreign policy adviser for Bill Clinton’s presidential campaign in 1992. On March 28, WND reported Lynch was a litigation partner for eight years at Hogan & Hartson, from March 2002 through April 2010. Mills also worked at Hogan & Hartson, for two years, starting in 1990, before she joined then President-elect Bill Clinton’s transition team, on her way to securing a position as White House deputy counsel in the Clinton administration. According to documents Hillary Clinton’s first presidential campaign made public in 2008, Hogan & Hartson’s New York-based partner Howard Topaz was the tax lawyer who filed income tax returns for Bill and Hillary Clinton beginning in 2004. In addition, Hogan & Hartson in Virginia filed a patent trademark request on May 19, 2004, for Denver-based MX Logic Inc., the computer software firm that developed the email encryption system used to manage Clinton’s private email server beginning in July 2013. A tech expert has observed that employees of MX Logic could have had access to all the emails that went through her account.
  • In 1999, President Bill Clinton nominated Lynch for the first of her two terms as U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York, a position she held until she joined Hogan & Hartson in March 2002 to become a partner in the firm’s Litigation Practice Group. She left Hogan & Hartson in 2010, after being nominated by President Obama for her second term as U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York, a position she held until Obama nominated her to serve in her current position as attorney general. A report published April 8, 2008, by The American Lawyer noted Hogan & Hartson was among Hillary Clinton’s biggest financial supporters in the legal industry during her first presidential campaign. “Firm lawyers and staff have donated nearly $123,400 to her campaign so far, according to campaign contribution data from the Center for Responsive Politics,” Nate Raymond observed in The American Lawyer article. “Christine Varney, a partner in Hogan’s Washington, D.C., office, served as chief counsel to the Clinton-Gore Campaign in 1992.” While there is no evidence that Lynch played a direct role either in the tax work done by the firm for the Clintons or in linking Hillary’s private email server to MX Logic, the ethics of the legal profession hold all partners jointly liable for the actions of other partners in a business. “If Hogan and Hartson previously represented the Clintons on tax matters, it is incumbent upon U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch to [disclose] what, if any, role she had in such tax matters,” said Tom Fitton, president of Washington-based Judicial Watch.
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • HSBC link When Lynch’s nomination as attorney general was considered by the Senate one year ago, as WND reported, the Senate Judiciary Committee examined her role in the Obama administration’s decision not to prosecute the banking giant HSBC for laundering funds for Mexican drug cartels and Middle Eastern terrorists. WND was first to report in a series of articles beginning in 2012 money-laundering charges brought by John Cruz, a former HSBC vice president and relationship manager, based on his more than 1,000 pages of evidence and secret audio recordings. The staff of the Senate Judiciary Committee focused on Cruz’s allegations that Lynch, acting then in her capacity as the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York, engaged in a Department of Justice cover-up. Obama’s attorney general nominee allowed HSBC in December 2011 to enter into a “deferred prosecution” settlement in which the bank agreed to pay a $1.9 billion fine and admit “willful criminal conduct” in exchange for dropping criminal investigations and prosecutions of HSBC directors or employees. Cruz called the $1.92 billion fine the U.S. government imposed on HSBC “a joke” and filed a $10 million lawsuit for “retaliation and wrongful termination.” From 2002 to 2003, Comey held the position of U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, the same position held by Lynch. On March 4, 2013, he joined the HSBC board of directors, agreeing to serve as an independent non-executive director and a member of the bank’s Financial System Vulnerabilities Committee, positions he held until he resigned on Aug. 3, 2013, to become head of the FBI.
  • Comey, Fitzgerald and Valerie Plame On Jan. 1, 2004, the Washington Post reported that after Attorney General John Aschroft recused himself and his staff from any involvement in the investigation of who leaked the name of CIA employee Valerie Plame after journalist Robert Novak named her in print as a CIA operative, Comey assumed the role of acting attorney general for the purposes of the investigation. Comey appointed Patrick J. Fitzgerald, a U.S. attorney in Chicago, to act as special counsel in conducting the inquiry into what became known as “Plamegate.” At the time Comey made the appointment, Fitzgerald was already godfather to one of Comey’s children. On April 13, 2015, co-authoring a USA Today op-ed piece, Plame and her husband, retired ambassador Joseph Wilson, made public their support for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign, openly acknowledging their political closeness to both Hillary and Bill Clinton. The first two paragraphs of the editorial read: We have known Hillary Clinton both professionally and personally for close to 20 years, dating back to before President Bill Clinton’s first trip to Africa in 1998 — a trip that they both acknowledge changed their lives, and gave considerable meaning to their post-White House years and to the activities of the Clinton Foundation. Joe, serving as the National Security Council Senior Director for African Affairs, was instrumental in arranging that historic visit. Our history became entwined with Hillary further after Valerie’s identity as a CIA officer was deliberately exposed. That criminal act was taken in retribution for Joe’s article in The New York Times in which he explained he had discovered no basis for the Bush administration’s justification for the Iraq War that Saddam Hussein was seeking yellowcake uranium to develop a nuclear weapon.
  • In January 2016, Chuck Ross in the Daily Caller reported that Hillary Clinton emails made public made clear that one of her “most frequent favor-seekers when she was secretary of state was former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, a longtime Clinton friend, an endorser of Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign, and an Africa expert with deep business ties on the continent.” Ross noted that Wilson emailed Clinton on Dec. 22, 2009, seeking help for Symbion Power, an American engineering contractor for whom Wilson consulted, in the company’s bid to pursue a U.S. Agency of International Development contract for work in Afghanistan. In the case of the Afghanistan project, Ross noted, Clinton vouched for Wilson and Symbion as she forwarded the request to Jack Lew, who served then as deputy secretary of state for management and resources. Ross further reported Wilson’s request might also have been discussed with President Obama, as one email indicates. In 2005, Fitzgerald prosecuted Libby, a prominent adviser to then Vice President Dick Cheney, in the Plame investigation, charging him with two counts of perjury, two counts of making false statements to federal prosecutors and one count of obstruction of justice. On March 6, 2007, Libby was convicted of four of the five counts, and on June 5, 2007, was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton to two and a half years in federal prison. On April 6, 2015, the Wall Street Journal reported the publication of New York Times reporter Judith Miller’s memoir “The Story: A Reporter’s Journey” exposed “unscrupulous conduct” by Fitzgerald in the 2007 trial of Libby.
  • WSJ reporter Peter Berkowitz noted Miller “writes that Mr. Fitzgerald induced her to give what she now realizes was false testimony.” “By withholding critical information and manipulating her memory as he prepared her to testify, Ms. Miller relates, Mr. Fitzgerald ‘steered’ her ‘in the wrong direction.’” http://www.wnd.com/2016/07/comey-has-long-history-of-clinton-related-cases/
  • Gary Edwards on 09 Jul 16
     
    Bend over and grab your ankles. The rats nest of Clinton operatives in Washington DC is far deeper than anyone ever imagined. "FBI Director James Comey has a long history of involvement in Department of Justice actions that arguably ended up favorable to the Clintons. In 2004, Comey, then serving as a deputy attorney general in the Justice Department, apparently limited the scope of the criminal investigation of Sandy Berger, which left out former Clinton administration officials who may have coordinated with Berger in his removal and destruction of classified records from the National Archives. The documents were relevant to accusations that the Clinton administration was negligent in the build-up to the 9/11 terrorist attack. On Tuesday, Comey announced that despite evidence of "extreme negligence by Hillary Clinton and her top aides regarding the handling of classified information through a private email server, the FBI would not refer criminal charges to Attorney General Loretta Lynch and the Justice Department. Curiously, Berger, Lynch and Cheryl Mills all worked as partners in the Washington law firm Hogan & Hartson, which prepared tax returns for the Clintons and did patent work for a software firm that played a role in the private email server Hillary Clinton used when she was secretary of state. Lynch and Comey both served as U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York. They crossed paths in the investigation of HSBC bank, which avoided criminal charges in a massive money-laundering scandal for which the bank paid a $1.9 billion fine. After Attorney General John Aschroft recused himself in the Valerie Plame affair in 2004, Comey appointed as special counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald, who ended up convicting "Scooter" Libby, a top aide to then Vice President Dick Cheney, of perjury and obstruction of justice. The charge affirmed the accusations of Plame and her former ambassador husband, Joe Wilson - both partisan supporters of Bill and
  • Paul Merrell on 10 Jul 16
     
    The "ethical" situation is far worse than described. Attorney disciplinary rules require that a lawyer, including all lawyers in the same firm, owe a lifetime duty of loyalty to a client, a duty that does not end with representation in a particular matter. Accordingly, Lynch had what the disciplinary rules refer to as an "actual conflict of interest" between her duties of loyalty to both Hillary and the U.S. government that required her withdrawal from representing either in the decision whether to prosecute Hillary. Saying that she would rubber stamp what Comey recommended was not the required withdrawal. Comey is an investigator, not a prosecutor. This was a situation for appointment of a special counsel to represent the Department of Justice in the decision whether to prosecute, not satisfied by rubber stamping Comey's recomendation,.
6More

Iraq's Attack Against ISIS Catches U.S. 'By Surprise' - The Daily Beast - 0 views

www.thedailybeast.com/...s-catches-u-s-by-surprise.html war & peace Iraq Iran ISIL Tikrit U.S.-foreign-policy rift
shared by Paul Merrell on 03 Mar 15 - No Cached
  • The Iraqi military launched a major campaign to take back a key city from the self-proclaimed Islamic State over the weekend—a move that caught the U.S. “by surprise,” in the words of one American government official.The U.S.-led coalition forces that have conducted seven months of airstrikes on Iraq’s behalf did not participate in the attack, defense officials told The Daily Beast, and the American military has no plans to chip in.Instead, embedded Iranian advisers and Iranian-backed Shiite militias are taking part in the offensive on the largely Sunni town, raising the prospect that the fight to beat back ISIS could become a sectarian war. The news is the latest indication that not all is well with the American effort against the terror group. On Friday, U.S. defense officials told The Daily Beast that a planned offensive against the ISIS stronghold of Mosul had been indefinitely postponed. Over the weekend, an American-backed rebel group in Syria announced that it was dissolving, and joining an Islamist faction.
  • Then there was the unexpected battle for Tikrit. Over the weekend, a reported 30,000 troops and militiamen—mostly Shiites —stormed the Sunni dominated city of Tikrit, former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s hometown and the symbolic birthplace of his three decades of repressive practices against the majority Shiite population.U.S. officials were largely left in the dark of the planning and timing of the operation, defense officials said. The Pentagon said Monday it was not conducting airstrikes in support of the Tikrit offensive because the Iraqi government did not ask for such help.The U.S. had seen the prospect of strikes in Tikrit for a while but the timing and nature of the attack “caught us by surprise,” one government official explained to The Daily Beast.
  • The depth of Iranian involvement and the dearth of U.S. engagement in the battle for Tikrit suggested the coalition-led campaign did little to weaken Iranian influence on Iraqi security. Two U.S. defense officials told The Daily Beast that Iranian troops were firing Iranian artillery  “in the vicinity of” the Iraqi military campaign. And there were several reports that Major General Qassem Soleimani, the shadowy commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard’s overseas operation arm, is also on the ground near Tikrit. The Iraqi decision to cut out the U.S.-led coalition turned the war against ISIS in Iraq into a dual track approach—one carried out by the U.S.-led coalition another directed by the Iranians. Each has its own military strategy.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • But the Iranian-led approach the clearing of Tikrit is largely sectarian—with Shiite militias reviled and feared by Sunni residents. Rather than a deliberate military campaign, the forces appear prepared to pound Tikrit, hard. And perhaps because of that, there is no need for an air campaign.There are already fears that the Iraqi effort, backed by their Iranian supporters, will decimate parts of the city, defense officials said. Such actions would have great symbolic effect and make increasingly unlikely the mending of sectarian tensions between the minority Sunnis and their Shiite-dominated government.
  • An adviser to the U.S. government tasked with monitoring and engaging with Iraqi officials told The Daily Beast, “I think there is a great deal of joy about going into the city that fought Iran for a decade,” referring to Tikrit’s role in the seven-year war against Iran. “Imagine Qassem Soleimani is in Tikrit directing Iraqi forces in the destruction of the symbol of the former regime and the Sunni resistance,” the adviser added. Because of that, Pentagon officials are watching carefully how the Iraqi forces carry out their campaign to rid Tikrit of ISIS, though they concede the signs are not promising.“This is a real bellwether,” said a second defense official. “If this becomes a sectarian battle, we will shift to simply counter terrorism, and away from training Iraqi forces. And the coalition will come apart.”
  • Paul Merrell on 03 Mar 15
     
    Iran and Iraq attack the U.S. covert ISIL army, without tellling the U.S. It's almost as though the Iranian and Iraqi military commanders do not trust the U.S. Why might that be?
2More

Techdirt: "Microsoft Looked Through Reporter's Hotmail And MSN Chat Accounts To Identif... - 1 views

www.techdirt.com/blog Microsoft
shared by Gary Edwards on 20 Mar 14 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 20 Mar 14
     
    "Microsoft Looked Through Reporter's Hotmail And MSN Chat Accounts To Identify Windows 8 Leaker from the scroogled? dept Apparently, Microsoft's desire to track down someone who leaked screenshots of Windows 8 is so strong that it's willing to violate its own privacy guidelines and promises to the public -- even if it means undermining Microsoft's main promotional campaign for email services. A few weeks ago, Microsoft promoted Mark Penn to chief strategy officer. Penn is most famous as a PR man and political pollster who was the driving force behind Hillary Clinton's failed campaign for President in 2008. He's known for his negative attack ads and his claims to do everything based on data -- though, people who have explored some of his techniques say it's a lot more flimflam than actual statistical analysis. His main contribution to Microsoft over the past few years seems to be its ridiculous "Scroogled" campaign, in which Microsoft -- a company not at all known for its privacy protections -- attempts to portray Google as being bad on privacy. The campaign has been a colossal and expensive flop according to most. "
  • Paul Merrell on 21 Mar 14
5More

Aleksej Gubarev, of Russia's Webzilla, says hacking charges false | McClatchy DC - 0 views

www.mcclatchydc.com/...article125910774.html Trump 35-pages Gubarev
shared by Paul Merrell on 13 Jan 17 - No Cached
  • A Russian venture capitalist and tech expert whose name and company are mentioned in the now-notorious document alleging connections between the Donald Trump campaign and Russian hackers says no intelligence officers have ever contacted him about the accusations, which he says are false.A report compiled by a former Western intelligence official as opposition research against Trump was made public Tuesday when BuzzFeed posted its 35 pages. The document included unsubstantiated claims of collusion between the Trump campaign team and the Kremlin.
  • It also alleged that global tech firm XBT Holding, with operations in Dallas, was instrumental in the hack of leaked Democratic Party emails that embarrassed Hillary Clinton and fellow Democrats.XBT, owner of Dallas-based enterprise-hosting company Webzilla, is run by a successful Russian tech startup expert, Aleksej Gubarev. In a phone interview from Cyprus, where he said he’d lived since 2002, Gubarev said he was surprised to see his name in the report.“I don’t know why I was there,” Gubarev said, adding that perhaps a competitor sought to discredit him. “I still don’t understand the true reason for this report.”The salacious innuendoes in the periodic reports about Trump’s personal life dominated social media headlines. The mention of Webzilla and Gubarev was among the more specific allegations: that XBT and affiliates “had been using botnets and porn traffic to transmit viruses, plant bugs, steal data and conduct ‘altering operations’ against the Democratic Party leadership.” Gubarev said he operated 75,000 servers across the globe and got real-time information if there had been hacking or illicit activity tied to his businesses. There is no evidence of that, he said, adding that no one has contacted him.“I have a physical office in Dallas. Nobody contacted me,” said Gubarev, adding that 40 percent of his business is handled over the servers it runs in Dallas and the United States accounts for about 27 percent of his global business.
  • McClatchy has reported that Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., gave the bulk of the report to FBI Director James Comey on Dec. 9. The final pages of the report are dated Dec. 11. McClatchy had the report earlier but couldn’t verify any of its allegations. A federal law enforcement source told McClatchy that the document was being examined as part of a broader FBI inquiry into Russia’s influence on the U.S. election but wouldn’t characterize its credibility. A source familiar with the former Western intelligence expert who compiled the dossier told McClatchy that the ex-spy has extensive experience in tracking activities in the Kremlin.The report alleges that Gubarev and another hacking expert were recruited under duress by the FSB, the Russian intelligence-agency successor to the KGB. Gubarev said he had not been threatened or blackmailed, nor had his mother, who lives in Russia.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • XBT offers an array of tech services, from dedicated hosting of servers and cloud-based storage to developing apps for mobile phones and offering virtual private servers. His company advertises specialized services to software developers, advertisers, gaming companies and electronic-commerce enterprises. It also operates data centers in Russia, Asia, Europe and Dallas.
  • If law enforcement wants to talk with him, Gubarev said, his door is open.“I’m ready for any investigation. I’m ready to cooperate with everybody, he said.
2More

Bibi Using Congressional Address In New Campaign Ad, Just As Critics Warned - 0 views

www.huffingtonpost.com/...ibi-campaign-ad_n_6856826.html war & peace Netanyahu Congress speech Israel election-2015 campaign-ad
shared by Paul Merrell on 15 Mar 15 - No Cached
  • When House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) announced he had invited Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to address a joint session of Congress just a few weeks ahead of an Israeli election, he was criticized for giving Netanyahu a platform to boost his campaign.The United States has a policy of not meeting with foreign leaders in advance of elections, so as not to appear to be tilting the electoral balance. But Netanyahu insisted that his motivations had nothing to do with the election, and that the timing of the speech was demanded by the urgency of the Iran nuclear negotiations. There was simply no time to waste.Already, however, Netanyahu is using his speech as a prop in a campaign commercial back in Israel, where the prime minister is shown basking in the applause of members of Congress who did not boycott his speech.
  • With five days left until the Israeli elections, Netanyahu launched the 80-second campaign ad above, featuring his controversial address along with footage of rockets being launched.
3More

Israel election: Binyamin Netanyahu rules out Palestinian state if he wins | World news... - 1 views

www.theguardian.com/...opinion-polls-as-voting-begins war & peace Palestine Israel Netanyahu 2-state-solution
shared by Paul Merrell on 17 Mar 15 - No Cached
  • Israel’s prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu has unequivocally ruled out the establishment of a Palestinian state as he vowed to strengthen construction of settlements in occupied east Jerusalem should he be re-elected on Tuesday. Netanyahu’s comments reinforced his hardening message of recent days and confirmed his final abandonment of his at best tepid commitment to a two-state solution designed to see the creation of an independent Palestinian state. His remarks were made in an interview with a website owned by US casino magnate Sheldon Adelson - Netanyahu’s biggest backer - and were being viewed by his political opponents as a last-ditch effort to sway voters away from the rival far-right Jewish Home party of Naftali Bennett.
  • “I think that anyone who moves to establish a Palestinian state and evacuate territory gives territory away to radical Islamist attacks against Israel,” Netanyahu said. “The left has buried its head in the sand time and after time and ignores this, but we are realistic and understand.” When asked if that meant a Palestinian state would not be established if he is elected, Netanyahu replied: “Indeed.” While his remarks will be seen in large part as election rhetoric designed to cement his standing with his country’s hard right at a time when Netanyahu has been struggling in his campaign, they will further strain relations with the US and other key allies should he win a third consecutive term.
  • Paul Merrell on 17 Mar 15
     
    We probably won't know for a few days because the vote is so close in early returns, but there's broad agreement nonetheless that Netanyahu's Likud Party is in the best position to form the new ruling coalition. So most likely, Netanyahu continues as Israel's PM. If he remains as PM, I see no way that Obama and the U.N. Security Council can duck making a response that is more than a wrist slap and fairly swiftly. This will set the Muslim world afire and ramp up the Boycott, Sanctions, and Divestment movement enormously both in the E.U. and the U.S. I'd guess that unless Obama decides to get out ahead of the global reaction, the first action will be taken by individual European nations imposing labeling on all imports originating from Israeli settlements and very conceivably economic sanctions againt Israeli imports. That's likely to mushroom fairly quickly to E.U. action. Netanyahu's statements also robs the Israel Lobby in the U.S. of its "negotiated solution" script that has been their bedrock sound-bite since the 1970s. I've linked The Guardian article because it includes the most outrageous quotes, but this has broken into mainsream U.S. media. You can watch the video (with English subtitles) at The New York Times. . I'll add some more in a comment.   I've b  Barring a blunt repudiation of his promise that there would be no two-state solution (which Netanyahu will not do without a gun aimed at his head) neither Israel nor the U.S. will be able to maintain the fig leaf of a negotiated agreement between Israel and the Palestine LIberation Authority establishing a Palestinian state. 
3More

Campaign to End NSA Warrantless Surveillance Surges Past 500,000 Signers | Electronic F... - 0 views

www.eff.org/...nce-surges-past-500000-signers surveillance state NSA NSA-blowback
shared by Paul Merrell on 03 Jul 13 - No Cached
  • Over five hundred thousand people have signed onto the Stop Watching Us campaign, a nonpartisan, grassroots campaign opposing the dragnet surveillance programs of the National Security Agency (NSA).  Galvanized by newly surfaced evidence confirming the NSA’s surveillance of the phone records and Internet activity of individuals in the United States and abroad, the Stop Watching Us coalition is seeking public accountability and tangible reform to rein in unconstitutional surveillance. 
  • Yesterday, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web, also added his support to the campaign.  He was joined by internationally renowned artist Ai Weiwei. Other prominent supporters include Icelandic Parliamentarian Birgitta Jónsdóttir, author Cory Doctorow, Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg, and actor John Cusack.
  • "This campaign has been lightening-fast. Hundreds of thousands of people have now called on Congress to provide a full accounting of the National Security Agency’s powerful and frankly unsettling spying practices," said EFF Staff Attorney Mark Rumold, "Now all eyes are turned on Congress to see if they’ll do the right thing and be responsive to the will of the people." Every time a person signs onto the stopwatching.us site, emails opposing dragnet surveillance are sent to that individual’s elected officials or to the president. These emails call for a full investigation and public accounting of the National Security Agency’s spying practices, reform to the law to prevent such surveillance, and holding public officials accountable for the role they played. In addition to signing onto Stop Watching Us, individuals who oppose NSA spying can call their members of Congress using the dedicated call line 1-STOP-323-NSA (1-786-732-3672). Read more about contacting Congress, including more privacy-friendly ways of calling Congress. You can also visit stopwatching.us to add your name to the campaign.
3More

New Israeli legal campaign accuses Abbas of 'terrorism' | Maan News Agency - 0 views

www.maannews.net/...ViewDetails.aspx war & peace Israel Palestine war crimes ICC chutzpah
shared by Paul Merrell on 14 Apr 14 - No Cached
  • Right-wing Israeli political parties have begun a campaign to sue president Abbas for "war crimes" at the International Criminal Court in response to the Palestinian Authority's recent decision to join international conventions and treaties.The campaign comes amid a near breakdown in ongoing peace negotiations between Israel and the PLO, and seeks to file legal procedures against Abbas accusing him of supporting "terrorism" and aiding to terrorist organizations.Beginning on Friday, Israeli newspapers and websites have published advertisements calling on Israeli lawyers to join the campaign led by the Israel Law Center to sue Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas on charges of supporting terrorist organizations.
  • Right-wing Israeli political parties have begun a campaign to sue president Abbas for "war crimes" at the International Criminal Court in response to the Palestinian Authority's recent decision to join international conventions and treaties.The campaign comes amid a near breakdown in ongoing peace negotiations between Israel and the PLO, and seeks to file legal procedures against Abbas accusing him of supporting "terrorism" and aiding to terrorist organizations.Beginning on Friday, Israeli newspapers and websites have published advertisements calling on Israeli lawyers to join the campaign led by the Israel Law Center to sue Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas on charges of supporting terrorist organizations.
  • Palestinian minister of justice Ali Muhanna told Ma'an that the Israeli government had "lost balance both politically and legally." Their response, he said, reflects the degree of rage in Israel towards the PA for attempting to join international conventions. Muhanna confirmed that Israel "cannot engage in any legal action at the ICC because Israel is not a signatory to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court." "Such legal proceedings are submitted through the ICC's Attorney General or through the UN Security Council.""Abbas' move isn't a war crime. But the ongoing Israeli settlement construction, confiscation of Palestinian money, killing and detention of children are war crimes," he added.
4More

"Campaign Finance Reform" - That'll Shut 'Em Up | Move to Amend - 0 views

movetoamend.org/-finance-reform-thatll-shut-em U.S. Constitution amendments legislation Move-to-Amend
shared by Paul Merrell on 14 Jul 14 - No Cached
  • Remember in 2009, when the way our elections were financed was perfect, corporate power was reined in by Congress, and everything was A-OK and hunky-dory? Me neither. Liberals have been rejoicing over the introduction and recent committee passage of SJR-19, a proposed constitutional amendment to reverse the Supreme Court’s Citizens United vs. FEC and McCutcheon vs. FEC decisions. In essence, the amendment says states have the power to regulate campaign spending, and Congress has the power to regulate outside spending in elections. Sounds good, right? Wrong. Senator Mark Udall’s (D-NM) proposed constitutional amendment is an election-year bone thrown at the masses, who are in a populist rage over the corruption of our government by corporate power and big moneyed interests. In introducing this amendment and passing it in committee, DC politicians are saying that they hear us, understand we’re upset, and are hoping that we’ll be satisfied with a half-measure that any corporate lawyer worth his salt can find his way around.
  • Udall and the 40-plus Democrats who have co-sponsored the legislation are aiming to placate us with an amendment that takes us back to 2009. Even before Citizens United emerged and significantly changed the financing of campaigns, McCain-Feingold, the last significant campaign finance reform bill, which was already riddled with loopholes, had been mostly gutted by the Bush administration’s chief justice of the Supreme Court in 2007. Celebrating SJR-19 as the be-all, end-all constitutional amendment that will make our government accountable to the people again is laughable. It’s akin to the captain of the Titanic applying chewed-up bubble gum on the hole in the ship and calling it good. So how do we fix the gushing head-wound that is our democracy? Udall has it half-right with a constitutional amendment, but his doesn’t go nearly far enough. Instead, we need a constitutional amendment that explicitly defines human beings as people, and corporations as artificial entities not deserving of constitutional rights. And it needs to state that money is not political speech. Any amendment that doesn’t make these two points is a waste of an amendment. You only get one shot with a constitutional amendment, so if you’re going to do it, go all the way or don’t do it at all.
  • A constitutional amendment abolishing constitutional rights for corporations would overturn not only Citizens United vs. FEC, but also Buckley vs. Valeo and Union Pacific Railroad vs. Santa Clara County, which originally established the concept of corporate personhood. It would also, by default, abolish all subsequent Supreme Court cases based on the constitutional rights of corporations, likeBurwell vs. Hobby Lobby, for instance. And abolishing the concept of money as political speech would strip outside interests of the ability to spend unlimited amounts of money on despicable TV ads that perpetuate falsehoods about candidates. Not only would we have clean elections, but we would finally be able to say that fictitious entities like corporations no longer have the right to walk all over people in the name of profit. Luckily, there’s already wide grassroots support for such an amendment. Through Move to Amend’s efforts, 478 local, county, and state government entities have passed resolutions calling for a constitutional amendment to end corporate personhood and money as speech. State legislatures in Delaware, Illinois, and Vermont have all called for such an amendment. Voters in Montana approved a statewide ballot initiative to do the same. The Minnesota and West Virginia Senates both passed resolutions. Resolutions are currently in progress at the Minnesota and Arizona House, the California Senate, and in both the House and Senate in Texas. The people aren’t waiting on Cong! ress to do what needs to be done.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • Congress should take its lead from the people, who have already made it very clear in both red and blue states that a constitutional amendment is needed, and that campaign finance reform is only scratching the surface. Such an amendment has already been introduced in Congress by Representative Rick Nolan (DFL-Minn.) in February of 2013. Udall and his co-sponsors should take their cues from HJR-29, or the “We the People Amendment,” if they’re serious about representing the people’s interests. Anything else is an election-year bone not to be taken seriously.
5More

SodaStream to close illegal settlement factory in response growing boycott campaign | B... - 0 views

www.bdsmovement.net/...growing-boycott-campaign-12782 war & peace Israel Palestine BDS Sodastream
shared by Paul Merrell on 09 Nov 14 - No Cached
  • Palestinian boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) activists have welcomed the news that SodaStream has announced it is to close its factory in the illegal Israeli settlement of Mishor Adumim following a high profile boycott campaign against the company. “SodaStream’s announcement today shows that the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement is increasingly capable of holding corporate criminals to account for their participation in Israeli apartheid and colonialism,” said Rafeef Ziadah, a spokesperson for the Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions National Committee (BNC), the broad coalition of Palestinian civil society organisations that leads and supports the BDS movement. “BDS campaign pressure has forced retailers across Europe and North America to drop SodaStream, and the company’s share price has tumbled in recent months as our movement has caused increasing reputational damage to the SodaStream brand,” she added. The news of this major success against a company famed for its role in illegal Israeli settlements broke amidst intensifying demonstrations against Israel’s policies of colonisation in Jerusalem. Grassroots boycott activism saw SodaStream dropped by major retailers across North America and Europe including Macy’s in the US and John Lewis in the UK.
  • SodaStream’s participation in Israel’s forced displacement of Palestinians gained international notoriety when A-list celebrity Scarlett Johansson signed up to be a brand ambassador for the company. Following an international campaign urging Oxfam end its relationship with Johansson for endorsing SodaStream, the actor decided to quit Oxfam. SodaStream has also come under fire for its treatment of Palestinian workers in its West Bank factory, as Ziadah explains: “Any suggestion that SodaStream is employing Palestinians in an illegal Israeli settlement on stolen Palestinian land out of the kindness of its heart is ludicrous.” “Palestinian workers are paid far less than their Israeli counterparts and SodaStream recently fired 60 Palestinians following a dispute over food for the breaking of the Ramadan fast. Workers have previously said they are treated ‘like slaves’”. “Palestinians are forced to work inside settlements in sub-standard conditions because of Israel’s deliberate destruction of the Palestinian economy. There’s an urgent need for the creation of decent and dignified jobs within the Palestinian economy.”
  • SodaStream was forced to close its flagship store in Brighton in the UK as a result of regular pickets of the store. Soros Fund Management, the family office of the billionaire investor George Soros, sold its stake in SodaStream following BDS pressure. SodaStream’s share price fell dramatically in recent months as sales dried up, particularly in North America. After reaching a high of $64 per share in October 2013, the stock fell to around $20 per share this month. SodaStream has estimated its third quarter revenue will be $125 million, down almost 14 percent from the same period last year. But Ziadah warned that SodaStream will still remain actively complicit in the displacement of Palestinians in the Naqab and will remain a focus of boycott campaigning. “Even if this announced closure goes ahead, SodaStream will remain implicated in the displacement of Palestinians. Its new Lehavim factory is close to Rahat, a planned township in the Naqab (Negev) desert, where Palestinian Bedouins are being forcefully transferred against their will. Sodastream, as a beneficiary of this plan, is complicit with this violation of human rights,” she said.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • SodaStream have said all workers will be offered jobs at its new plant, although Israel’s apartheid wall and severe restrictions on movement will make the commute to the new plant difficult for its Palestinian workers. All of the main Palestinian trade unions have called for boycott and are members of the Palestinian BDS National Committee, the civil society coalition that leads the BDS movement and helped to initiate the campaign against SodaStream.
  • Paul Merrell on 09 Nov 14
     
    The Palestine BDS Movement drew economic blood According to the NYT, SodaStream's revenues fell so far that its books needed red ink and the Israeli government chipped in $20 million to move SodaStream out of the Occupied Territories. 
4More

Facebook blasted by US and UK lawmakers - nsnbc international | nsnbc international - 1 views

nsnbc.me/...blasted-by-us-and-uk-lawmakers Facebook security Cambridge-Analytics
shared by Paul Merrell on 19 Mar 18 - No Cached
  • Lawmakers in the United States and the United Kingdom are calling on Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg to explain how the names, preferences and other information from tens of millions of users ended up in the hands of the Cambridge Analytica data analysis firm.
  • After Facebook cited data privacy policies violations and announced that it was suspending the Cambridge Analytica data analytics firm also tied to the Trump campaign, new revelations have emerged. On Saturday, reports revealed that Cambridge Analytica, used a feature once available to Facebook app developers to collect information on some 270,000 people. In the process, the company, which was, at the time, handling U.S. President Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, gained access to data on tens of millions of their Facebook “friends” and that it wasn’t clear at all if any of these people had given explicit permission for this kind of sharing. Facebook’s Deputy General Counsel Paul Grewal said in a statement, “We will take legal action if necessary to hold them responsible and accountable for any unlawful behavior.”
  • The social media giant also added that it was continuing to investigate the claims. According to reports, Cambridge Analytica worked for the failed presidential campaign of U.S. Senator Ted Cruz and then for the presidential campaign of Donald Trump. Federal Election Commission records reportedly show that Trump’s campaign hired Cambridge Analytica in June 2016 and paid it more than $6.2 million. On its website, the company says that it “provided the Donald J. Trump for President campaign with the expertise and insights that helped win the White House.” Cambridge Analytica also mentions that it uses “behavioral microtargeting,” or combining analysis of people’s personalities with demographics, to predict and influence mass behavior.  According to the company, it has data on 220 million Americans, two thirds of the U.S. population. Cambridge Analytica says it has worked on other campaigns in the United States and other countries, and it is funded by Robert Mercer, a prominent supporter of politically conservative groups.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • Facebook stated that it suspended Cambridge Analytica and its parent group Strategic Communication Laboratories (SCL) after receiving reports that they did not delete information about Facebook users that had been inappropriately shared. For months now, both the companies have been embroiled in investigations in Washington and London but the recent demands made by lawmakers focused explicitly on Zuckerberg, who has not testified publicly on these matters in either nation.
4More

11,000 Icelanders Offer To House Syrian Refugees - 0 views

theantimedia.org/offer-to-house-syrian-refugees war & peace refugees Europe Iceland Syria
shared by Paul Merrell on 05 Sep 15 - No Cached
  • The Icelandic government is reconsidering its national refugee quota after a social media campaign resulted in over 11,000 Icelanders offering up a room in their homes to refugees. As Europe struggles to cope with unprecedented levels of those seeking shelter, residents of the sparsely populated Nordic island country resorted to direct action to pressure their leaders. Iceland was recently awarded the title of “most peaceful country” in the Global Peace Index, with Syria ranking the least peaceful. With a population of 330,000 — less than many European cities — the country’s government had previously stated it could only take in 50 people this year. Taking matters into their own hands, over 16,000 Icelanders joined a Facebook page created on Sunday to pressurize the Icelandic government into accepting more refugees. In addition to offering rooms in homes, people have pledged financial support with air fares, language teaching, clothing, food, and toys, and the page has been inundated with messages of gratitude from Syrians, some of whom are writing from refugee camps. As a result of the outpouring of support, Icelandic Prime Minister Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson announced that a committee is being formed to re-assess the country’s current policy.
  • Undoubtedly, thousands of people across the globe are equally horrified. Inspired by Iceland’s example, social media campaigns have sprung up and united those who are dismayed by the pitiful humanitarian response to the crisis. As distressing images and stories of the hurdles and barriers faced at every turn by those seeking sanctuary saturate the European press, similar schemes have snowballed throughout Europe. In Britain, more and more people are condemning the government’s shameful response to the crisis — a response particularly ironic considering most refugees are fleeing conflicts that the U.K.’s imperialist interventions have directly contributed to. .BottomResponsiveBanner { width: 300px; height: 250px; } @media (min-width:420px) { .BottomResponsiveBanner { width: 336px; height: 280px; } } @media (min-width:1300px) { .BottomResponsiveBanner { width: 728px; height: 90px; } } Not prepared to sit back, groups like Citizens UK are pressuring U.K. leaders to step up to the plate. More than 250,000 Brits have signed a petition calling for Britain to take its fair share of Syrian refugees. Ireland’s ”Pledge a Bed” campaign was overwhelmed with thousands of offers of spare rooms within hours of its launch while hundreds of Germans have offered to share their homes on the Refugees Welcome website.
  • Swiftly following suit and not to be outdone, offers of support haven’t stopped at Europe’s shores. A U.S. group called Open Homes, Open Hearts US – for Syrian refugees launched earlier this week. With no easy answers and no end in sight, the political firestorm will continue, as will the global outrage at the humanitarian tragedy. The only thing clear is that if the West were prepared to accept more refugees, desperate families wouldn’t be forced to rely on smugglers or to climb into perilous boats and refrigeration lorries.
  • Paul Merrell on 05 Sep 15
     
    Many reports in the last couple of weeks show that a wave of sympathy for war refugees is sweeping Europe in reaction to government efforts to prevent refugees from reaching Europe and forcing those already there into guarded camps. And the connection of those refugees to European foreign policy and participation in wars in the Mideast is being made. The propaganda paint of NATO nations waging "humanitarian" wars in the Mideast is definitely chipping off. 
4More

Investigating Donald Trump, F.B.I. Sees No Clear Link to Russia - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...sia-election-donald-trump.html Auction 2016 Trump FBI Russian-ties
shared by Paul Merrell on 02 Nov 16 - No Cached
  • For much of the summer, the F.B.I. pursued a widening investigation into a Russian role in the American presidential campaign. Agents scrutinized advisers close to Donald J. Trump, looked for financial connections with Russian financial figures, searched for those involved in hacking the computers of Democrats, and even chased a lead — which they ultimately came to doubt — about a possible secret channel of email communication from the Trump Organization to a Russian bank.Law enforcement officials say that none of the investigations so far have found any conclusive or direct link between Mr. Trump and the Russian government. And even the hacking into Democratic emails, F.B.I. and intelligence officials now believe, was aimed at disrupting the presidential election rather than electing Mr. Trump.Hillary Clinton’s supporters, angry over what they regard as a lack of scrutiny of Mr. Trump by law enforcement officials, pushed for these investigations. In recent days they have also demanded that James B. Comey, the director of the F.B.I., discuss them publicly, as he did last week when he announced that a new batch of emails possibly connected to Mrs. Clinton had been discovered.
  • Supporters of Mrs. Clinton have argued that Mr. Trump’s evident affinity for Russia’s president, Vladimir V. Putin — Mr. Trump has called him a great leader and echoed his policies toward NATO, Ukraine and the war in Syria — and the hacks of leading Democrats like John D. Podesta, the chairman of the Clinton campaign, are clear indications that Russia has taken sides in the presidential race and that voters should know what the F.B.I. has found. Continue reading the main story Related Coverage 3 U.S. States Turn Down Russian Requests to Monitor Elections OCT. 21, 2016 Donald Trump Says He Might Meet With Putin Before Inauguration OCT. 17, 2016 Advertisement Continue reading the main story The F.B.I.’s inquiries into Russia’s possible role continue, as does the investigation into the emails involving Mrs. Clinton’s top aide, Huma Abedin, on a computer she shared with her estranged husband, Anthony D. Weiner. Mrs. Clinton’s supporters argue that voters have as much right to know what the F.B.I. has found in Mr. Trump’s case, even if the findings are not yet conclusive.
  • Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the minority leader, responded angrily on Sunday with a letter accusing the F.B.I. of not being forthcoming about Mr. Trump’s alleged ties with Moscow.“It has become clear that you possess explosive information about close ties and coordination between Donald Trump, his top advisers, and the Russian government — a foreign interest openly hostile to the United States, which Trump praises at every opportunity,” Mr. Reid wrote. “The public has a right to know this information.”F.B.I. officials declined to comment on Monday. Intelligence officials have said in interviews over the last six weeks that apparent connections between some of Mr. Trump’s aides and Moscow originally compelled them to open a broad investigation into possible links between the Russian government and the Republican presidential candidate. Still, they have said that Mr. Trump himself has not become a target. And no evidence has emerged that would link him or anyone else in his business or political circle directly to Russia’s election operations.
  • Paul Merrell on 02 Nov 16
     
    The same story is running on CNN. There is another story moving on MSM that the FBI has found no evidence of Russian attempts to sway the election between the two candidates, instead being aimed at spreading chaos. Combined with FBI Director Comey's announcement last week that the Hillary email criminal investigation has been reopened, at least three temtative conclusions are suggested: [i] Comey and the FBI have mounted a three-pronged attack on Hillary's election run, on the email front, deFUDding Hillary's claim that Trump has ties with Vladimir Putin, and defanging the Hillary claim that Russia is attempting to elect Donald Trump; [ii] MSM is covering those stories; and [iii[ by implication, those who have real power over the U.S. government have decided they don't want Hillary do win the election. All good news for Trump and bad news for the Clintons.
7More

Arnold Ahlert: Russia Would Love a Third Obama Term - The Patriot Post - 0 views

patriotpost.us/43984 Hillary
shared by Gary Edwards on 09 Aug 16 - No Cached
  • New York Post columnist John Crudele obliterates the despicable word-parsing. “Clinton was so careless when using her BlackBerry that the Russians stole her password,” he writes. “All Russian President Vladimir Putin’s gang had to do was log into Clinton’s account and read whatever they wanted.” When it comes to the DNC hack, “The Russians did it” is the theme-du-jour. Clinton campaign manager, Robby Mook stated Sunday that “experts are telling us that Russian state actors broke into the DNC, stole these emails, [and are] releasing these emails for the purpose of helping Donald Trump.” The campaign itself echoed that assertion. “This is further evidence the Russian government is trying to influence the outcome of the election.”
  • The reliably leftist Politico — so far left that reporter Ken Vogel remains employed there despite sending a story to the DNC before he sent it to his own editor — is quite comfortable advancing that agenda, using it as a vehicle to buff up Clinton’s tenure as secretary of state. “Former U.S. officials who worked on Russia policy with Clinton say that Putin was personally stung by Clinton’s December 2011 condemnation of Russia’s parliamentary elections, and had his anger communicated directly to President Barack Obama,” Politico reports. “They say Putin and his advisers are also keenly aware that, even as she executed Obama’s ‘reset’ policy with Russia, Clinton took a harder line toward Moscow than others in the administration. And they say Putin sees Clinton as a forceful proponent of ‘regime change’ policies that the Russian leader considers a grave threat to his own survival.” Yet even Politico is forced to admit the payback angle is “speculation,” and that some experts remain “unconvinced that Putin’s government engineered the DNC email hack or that it was meant to influence the election in Trump’s favor as opposed to embarrassing DNC officials for any number of reasons.”
  • Americans would also be wise to remain highly skeptical of this claim for any number of reasons. WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange asserts there is “there is no proof whatsoever” Russia is behind the hack and that “this is a diversion that’s being pushed by the Hillary Clinton campaign.” To be fair, Assange is a Russian sympathizer, and leftists aren’t the only ones attributing the hack to the Russians. The same FBI that gave Clinton a pass will be investigating the DNC hack, and at some point the bureau will reach a conclusion. In the meantime, it might be worth considering that this smacks of a carefully orchestrated disinformation campaign similar to the one Clinton and several other Obama administration officials engineered with regard to Benghazi. While Clinton was never held personally or legally accountable for the deaths of four Americans, it is beyond dispute that she lied unabashedly about a video causing the attack, while sending her daughter a damning email at 11:12 p.m. on Sept. 11, 2012, admitting the administration knew “the attack had nothing to do with the film. It was a planned attack, not a protest.” The theme of this coordinated narrative? Clinton campaign chair John Podesta referred Monday night to “a kind of bromance going on” between Putin and Trump. Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook echoed that assertion, insisting the email dump comes on the heels of “changes to the Republican platform to make it more pro-Russian.”
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • The Leftmedia were equally obliging. “The theory that Moscow orchestrated the leaks to help Trump … is fast gaining currency within the Obama administration because of the timing of the leaks and Trump’s own connections to the Russian government,” reports the Daily Beast. Other Leftmedia examples abound. “Until Friday, that charge, with its eerie suggestion of a Kremlin conspiracy to aid Donald J. Trump, has been only whispered,” shouted the New York Times. “Because the leaks are widely suspected of being the result of a Russian hacking operation, they can be used to reinforce the narrative that Russian President Vladimir Putin is rooting for Trump and that Trump, in turn, would be too accommodating to Moscow,” adds the Los Angeles Times. “Why would Russian President Vladimir Putin want to help Donald Trump win the White House?” asks NPR. “If you want to indulge in a bit of conspiracy theory, remember that Russian President Vladimir Putin has praised candidate Trump as recently as June,” states the Burlington Free Press.
  • Ultimately, here’s the question: If the Russians could access the DNC server, they could certainly access Clinton’s unsecure server. And if they could access Clinton’s server, including the 33,000 emails she deleted (maybe some were about how the Clintons profited from selling American uranium to Russia), ask yourself who they’d rather have in the Oval Office: Donald Trump, who professed admiration for Putin but remains a highly unpredictable individual — or Hillary Clinton, who could be subjected to blackmail for as long as eight years? Russia’s clear objective would be to have the weakest American leadership they can get. Blackmail aside, what would be weaker than an extension of Obama’s presidency?
  • Moreover, it is just as likely a number of the so-called “experts” as well as Clinton’s useful idiot media apparatchiks have considered the blackmail possibility and are trying to divert attention from it with a phony Trump connection story. Democrats can theorize, complain and blame to their hearts' content, but none of it obscures the reality that the DNC — and by extension Hillary Clinton and the entire Democrat Party — are a conglomeration of morally bereft, utterly incompetent individuals wholly ill-equipped to handle internal security, much less national security. And they are aided and abetted by an equally corrupt media, more than willing to abide that potentially catastrophic reality as long as it gets a Democrat in the Oval Office. WikiLeaks has promised additional dumps with be forthcoming. How much deeper Democrats sink is anyone’s guess.
  • Gary Edwards on 09 Aug 16
     
    "If one lives by the vulnerable server, one dies by the vulnerable server. As the week unfolds, America is witnessing the ultimate unmasking of the Democrat Party, an entity whose self-aggrandizing claims of unity, fairness and intellectual honesty have been revealed as utterly fraudulent by a flood of DNC emails released by WikiLeaks. Moreover, a stunning level of hypocrisy attends the entire exposure, as DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz is sent packing for this breach of confidential party information, while Hillary Clinton, whose equally accessible private server contained far more critical top-secret information, officially became the party's standard-bearer. But not to worry, assured FBI Director James Comey, who insisted there was no direct evidence that Clinton's server had been hacked by hostile actors - before adding it was possible that hostile actors "gained access" to Clinton's accounts. Clinton was equally adept at making semantical distinctions. "If you go by the evidence, there is no evidence that the system was breached or hacked successfully," Clinton said. "And I think that what's important here is follow the evidence. And there is no evidence. And that can't be said about a lot of other systems, including government systems.""
6More

A Clinton Fan Manufactured Fake News That MSNBC Personalities Spread to Discredit WikiL... - 0 views

theintercept.com/...ad-to-discredit-wikileaks-docs Auction 2016 Hillary fake-news-propaganda Wikileaks Podesta-emails
shared by Paul Merrell on 10 Dec 16 - No Cached
  • The phrase “Fake News” has exploded in usage since the election, but the term is similar to other malleable political labels such as “terrorism” and “hate speech”; because the phrase lacks any clear definition, it is essentially useless except as an instrument of propaganda and censorship. The most important fact to realize about this new term: those who most loudly denounce Fake News are typically those most aggressively disseminating it. One of the most egregious examples was the recent Washington Post article hyping a new anonymous group and its disgusting blacklist of supposedly pro-Russia news outlets – a shameful article mindlessly spread by countless journalists who love to decry Fake News, despite the Post article itself being centrally based on Fake News. (The Post this week finally added a lame editor’s note acknowledging these critiques; the Post editors absurdly claimed that they did not mean to “vouch for the validity” of the blacklist even though the article’s key claims were based on doing exactly that). Now we have an even more compelling example. Back in October, when WikiLeaks was releasing emails from the John Podesta archive, Clinton campaign officials and their media spokespeople adopted a strategy of outright lying to the public, claiming – with no basis whatsoever – that the emails were doctored or fabricated and thus should be ignored. That lie – and that is what it was: a claim made with knowledge of its falsity or reckless disregard for its truth – was most aggressively amplified by MSNBC personalities such as Joy Ann Reid and Malcolm Nance, The Atlantic’s David Frum, and Newsweek’s Kurt Eichenwald.
  • The phrase “Fake News” has exploded in usage since the election, but the term is similar to other malleable political labels such as “terrorism” and “hate speech”; because the phrase lacks any clear definition, it is essentially useless except as an instrument of propaganda and censorship. The most important fact to realize about this new term: Those who most loudly denounce Fake News are typically those most aggressively disseminating it. One of the most egregious examples was the recent Washington Post article hyping a new anonymous group and its disgusting blacklist of supposedly pro-Russia news outlets — a shameful article mindlessly spread by countless journalists who love to decry Fake News, despite the Post article itself being centrally based on Fake News. (The Post this week finally added a lame editor’s note acknowledging these critiques; the Post editors absurdly claimed that they did not mean to “vouch for the validity” of the blacklist even though the article’s key claims were based on doing exactly that). Now we have an even more compelling example. Back in October, when WikiLeaks was releasing emails from the John Podesta archive, Clinton campaign officials and their media spokespeople adopted a strategy of outright lying to the public, claiming — with no basis whatsoever — that the emails were doctored or fabricated and thus should be ignored. That lie — and that is what it was: a claim made with knowledge of its falsity or reckless disregard for its truth — was most aggressively amplified by MSNBC personalities such as Joy Ann Reid and Malcolm Nance, The Atlantic’s David Frum, and Newsweek’s Kurt Eichenwald.
  • That the emails in the Wikileaks archive were doctored or faked — and thus should be disregarded — was classic Fake News, spread not by Macedonian teenagers or Kremlin operatives but by established news outlets such as MSNBC, The Atlantic, and Newsweek. And, by design, this Fake News spread like wildfire all over the internet, hungrily clicked and shared by tens of thousands of people eager to believe it was true. As a result of this deliberate disinformation campaign, anyone reporting on the contents of the emails was instantly met with claims that the documents in the archive had been proven fake. The most damaging such claim came from MSNBC’s intelligence analyst Malcolm Nance. As I documented on October 11, he tweeted what he — for some bizarre reason — labeled an “Official Warning.” It decreed: “#PodestaEmails are already proving to be riddled with obvious forgeries & #blackpropaganda not even professionally done.” That tweet was re-tweeted by more than 4,000 people. It was vested with added credibility by Clinton-supporting journalists like Reid and Frum (“expert to take seriously”).
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • From the start, it was obvious that it was this accusation from Clinton supporters — not the WikiLeaks documents — that was a complete fraud, perpetrated on the public as deliberate disinformation. With regard to the claim about the Podesta emails, now we know exactly who created it in the first instance: a hard-core Clinton fanatic.
  • All of that, in turn, led to an article in something called the “Daily News Bin” with the headline: “MSNBC intelligence expert: WikiLeaks is releasing falsified emails not really from Hillary Clinton.” This classic fake news product — citing Nance and Reid among others — was shared more than 40,000 times on Facebook alone.
  • Sadly for Chacon, however, the people who ended up getting fooled by his Fake News items were the nation’s most prominent Clinton supporters, including supposed experts and journalists from MSNBC who used his obvious fakes to try to convince the world that the WikiLeaks archive had been compromised and thus should be ignored.
10More

U.S. Embassy in Ankara Headquarter for ISIS War on Iraq - Hariri Insider | nsnbc intern... - 0 views

nsnbc.me/...sis-war-on-iraq-hariri-insider war & peace U.S.-foreign-policy ISIL Syria ISIL-Iraq-invasion
shared by Paul Merrell on 23 Feb 15 - No Cached
  • The green light for the use of ISIS brigades to carve up Iraq, widen the Syria conflict into a greater Middle East war and to throw Iran off-balance was given behind closed doors at the Atlantic Council meeting in Turkey, in November 2013, told a source close to Saudi – Lebanese billionaire Saad Hariri, adding that the U.S. Embassy in Ankara is the operation’s headquarter.
  • A “trusted source” close to the Saudi – Lebanese multi-billionaire and former Lebanese P.M. Saad Hariri told on condition of anonymity, that the final green light for the war on Iraq with ISIS or ISIL brigades was given behind closed doors, at the sidelines of the Atlantic Council’s Energy Summit in Istanbul, Turkey, on November 22 – 23, 2013. The Atlantic Council is one of the most influential U.S. think tanks with regard to U.S. and NATO foreign policy and geopolitics.
  • “Had Baghdad been more cooperative about the Syrian oil fields at Deir-Ez-Zor in early 2013 and about autonomy for the North [Iraq’s northern, predominantly Kurdish region] they would possibly not have turned against al-Maliki; Or he would have been given more time”, said the Hariri insider during the almost two-hour-long conversation.
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • In March 2013, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry demanded that Iraq “stops the arms flow to Syria”, while U.S. weapons were flowing to ISIS via Saudi Arabia into Iraq and Jordan. On Monday, April 22, 2013, 27 of the 28 E.U. foreign ministers agreed to lift the ban on the import of Syrian oil from opposition-held territories to allow the “opposition” to finance part of its campaign. “ISIS that was supposed to control [the region around] Deir Ez-Zor. [Turkish Energy Minister Taner] Yildiz and [Kurdish] Energy Minister Ashti] Hawrami were to make sure the oil could flow via the Kirkuk – Ceyhan [pipeline];… Ankara put al-Maliki under a lot of pressure about the Kurdish autonomy and oil, too much pressure, too early, if you’d ask me”, the source said. He added that the pressure backfired.
  • Previous reports confirmed that Baghdad started intercepting weapons and insurgents along the Saudi – Iraqi border, cutting off important supply lines for ISIS brigades around Deir Ez-Zor, and that Al-Maliki began complaining about a Saudi – Qatari-backed attempt to subvert the Iraqi State since late 2012. Noting my remark he replied: “That is right, but the heavy increase in attacks came in May – June 2013, after al-Maliki ordered the military to al-Anbar “. A previous article in nsnbc explains how Baghdad’s blockade caused problems in Jordan, because many of the transports of weapons, fighters and munitions had to be rerouted via Jordan. The Hariri insider added that the oil fields should have been under ISIS control by August 2013, but that the plan failed for two reasons. The UK withdrew its support for the bombing of Syria. That in turn enabled the Syrian army to dislodge both ISIS and Jabhat al-Nusrah from Deir Ez-Zor in August.
  • “The situation was a disaster because in June Hariri, Yidiz, Hawrami, Scowcroft, and everybody was ready to talk about how to share the oil between the U.S., Turkey and E.U.. The Summit in November should have dealt with a fait accompli”, the Hariri source stressed, adding that Washington put a gun to al-Maliki’s head when he was invited to the White House.
  • “Certain circles in Washington put a hell of a lot of pressure on Obama to put a gun to al-Maliki’s head”, said the Hariri source, adding that “time was running out and Obama was hesitant”. Asked what he meant with “time was running out” and if he could specify who it was that pushed Obama, he said: “Barzani was losing his grip in the North (Kurdish Iraq); the election [in September] was a setback. All plans for distributing Iraqi oil via Turkey and for sidelining Baghdad were set between Kirkuk and Ankara in early November… “Who exactly pressured Obama? I don’t know who delivered the message to Obama. I suspect Kerry had a word. It’s more important from where the message came, Kissinger, Scowcroft, Nuland and the Keagan clan, Stavridis, Petreaus, Riccardione, and the neo-con crowd at the [Atlantic] Council. … As far as I know ´someone` told Obama that he’d better pressure al-Maliki to go along with Kurdish autonomy by November or else. Who exactly ´advised` Obama is not as important as the fact that those people let him know that they would go ahead, with, or without him”.
  • Asked whether he knew details, how the final green light for the ISIS campaign was given, he said: ” Behind closed doors, in the presence of both Scowcroft, Hariri, and a couple of other people”. To my question “if he could be more specific” he replied “I could; I want to stay alive you know; Riccardione was tasked with the operation that day”. Noting that a prominent member of Saudi Arabia’s royal family, Prince Abdul Rachman al-Faisal has been named as the one being “in command” of the ISIS brigades, and if he could either confirm or deny, he nodded, adding that “the Prince” is responsible for financing the operation and for part of the command structure, but that the operations headquarter is the U.S. Embassy in Ankara Turkey. “As far as I know, nothing moves without Ambassador Riccardione”, he added.
  • The green light for the use of ISIS brigades to carve up Iraq, widen the Syria conflict into a greater Middle East war and to throw Iran off-balance was given behind closed doors at the Atlantic Council meeting in Turkey, in November 2013, told a source close to Saudi – Lebanese billionaire Saad Hariri, adding that the U.S. Embassy in Ankara is the operation’s headquarter.
  • Paul Merrell on 23 Feb 15
     
    From June 2014, an important one I forgot to bookmark before. 
4More

Netanyahu Promises More Settler Homes in Jerusalem If Elected | nsnbc international - 0 views

nsnbc.me/...-homes-in-jerusalem-if-elected war & peace Israel Palestine Jerusalem Netanyahu
shared by Paul Merrell on 17 Mar 15 - No Cached
  • Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed Monday that, if reelected, he will build thousands of settler homes in occupied East Jerusalem to prevent future concessions to Palestinians. Speaking ahead of Tuesday’s general election on a whistle-stop tour of Har Homa, a contentious settlement neighborhood of annexed East Jerusalem, the PM vowed that he would never allow Palestinians to establish a capital in the city’s eastern sector.
  • “I won’t let that happen. My friends and I in Likud will preserve the unity of Jerusalem,” he said of his ruling right-wing party, according to AFP, vowing to prevent any future division of the city by building thousands of new settler homes. “We will continue to build in Jerusalem, we will add thousands of housing units, and in the face of all the (international) pressure, we will persist and continue to develop our eternal capital,” he added. During the 2013 negotiations, Israeli officials announced, and, eventually, carried out in full force, plans to build thousands of additional homes in illegal settlements across the occupied West Bank, while continuing to further seize lands, demolish homes and agricultural resources and, thus, leaving scores of Palestinian families severely disenfranchised and without so much as a roof over their heads to shelter them from inclement weather. Gazans were already surviving on a mere 8 hours per day of electricity when the Palestinian negotiating team finally resigned in protest, in mid-November. Israel, soon after, made quite clear its position on securing peace with Palestinians when Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu, during a meeting with young Likud Party supporters, boasted: “I was threatened in Washington: ‘not one brick’ [of settlement construction] … after five years, we built a little more than one brick…”
  • Asked about “peace talks with the Palestinians”, the PM reportedly replied, according to +972 online Israeli magazine: “about the – what?” to which his audience responded with a round of chuckling. Critics of Israel’s aggressively right-wing regime assert that such peace negotiations are simply used as a front for continued settlement expansion and military occupation, noting that settlement activity clearly increases during negotiations, while daily acts of violence against Palestinians, by both Israeli civilians and soldiers alike, remains as of yet unchallenged by the powers that be. Israel seized East Jerusalem in the 1967 Six-Day War and later annexed it in a move never recognized by the international community. Israel refers to both halves of the city as its “united, undivided capital” and does not see construction in the eastern sector as settlement building. Successive Israeli leaders have vowed that Jerusalem will never again be divided — in war or peace.
  • Paul Merrell on 17 Mar 15
     
    Israel's election is in the morning, although it will take a bit longer to learn who will become the Prime Minister. (Much depends on which party gets the nod from the Israeli President to try to form a ruling coalition; then it takes time tio form one.)  But this campaign promise deserves more credibility than most campaign promises in the U.S.: It's a promiose to do more of what Netanyahu has been doing since he came to power.  Multiple U.N. Security Council regulations have demanded that Israel return to its pre-1967 borders. And the U.N. General Council Resolution that is Israel's claim to legitimacy (although further action that never happened was required to become effective never happened) specifically provided that its allocation of territory to the Israeli government was conditioned on the existing rights of Palestinian within that territory be preserved. Moreover, Israel took Jerusalem (and other lands) during its 1967 Six-Day War. Under the 4th Geneva Convention, Israel was required to withdraw from all occupied territories and to permit all refugees to return to their homes "immediately upon cessation of hostilities." So Obama's campaign promise is a promise to commit a war crime and crime against humanity.  The truly disgusting parts are that: [i] the majority of Israeli Jews support that position; and [ii] the U.S. government even though it routinely calls the eviction of Palestinians in Jerusalem and the West Bank to construct Israeli homes and settlements "illegal", routinely vetoes U.N. Security Council resolutions to bring Israel into compliance with the older S.C. resolutions and international law.   
1 - 20 of 196 Next › Last »
Showing 20▼ items per page