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Quenelle

Best of the Web: How Trump bucked Israeli pressure to keep US in Syria

Gareth Porter
The American Conservative
Mon, 14 Jan 2019 16:10 UTC
Benjamin Netanyahu
© EPA-EFE/RONEN ZVULUN / POOLIsraeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
The Pentagon was not the only party pressing Donald Trump to keep troops in Syria last year. It turns out the Israeli government and its supporters in Washington were working very hard to get the Trump administration to use America's military presence there to support an Israeli campaign of airstrikes aimed at threatening war with Iran.

The Israeli strategy was aimed at dividing Russia from Iran and thus putting pressure on Tehran to withdraw its military personnel from Syria. A campaign by a pro-Israel think tank actually succeeded in getting such a policy ready for Trump's approval last fall - although it was not supported by some Pentagon officials.

The story of the Israel lobby's latest attempt to capture American policy, recounted here for the first time, reveals just how far Israel was able to reach into the Trump administration before the president personally intervened.

Israel's Strategy of Provocation in Syria

In early 2018, Israel had stepped up the pace of its airstrikes against Iran-related targets in Syria. The original rationale for the strikes had been to prevent Iran from transporting advanced, highly accurate missiles through Syria to Hezbollah in Lebanon (although Israeli military intelligence had admitted nearly a decade ago that Hezbollah had already received hundreds of such weapons). But by 2018, the IDF had added another reason for the attacks: to force Iran to give up its military presence in Syria altogether. This despite the fact that Israel had failed to cite any evidence of any permanent Iranian bases there.
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Snowflake

Best of the Web: ENORMOUS 'spinning ice disk' appears on river in Maine - Largest one yet?


wwlp.com
Wed, 16 Jan 2019 11:45 UTC
maine ice disk
A very unusual and impressive sight took shape in Maine this week, a nearly perfect disc of ice -- forming in the Presumpscot River.

The massive ice disc drew curious onlookers to the banks of the river. It's not clear how or exactly when it formed.

According to an official with the city of Westbrook, the disc is roughly 100 yards across and is spinning in a counter clockwise direction.

That same official captured this breathtaking drone footage of the amazing sight.


Comment: That thing's almost 100m across!!!

It is an unusual sight, and so why are these ice disks, and a number of other out of the ordinary but related phenomena, suddenly occurring all over the globe?

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Light Saber

Best of the Web: Five Reasons Tulsi Gabbard's Candidacy is Something to be Excited About

Caitlin Johnstone
caitlinjohnstone.com
Wed, 16 Jan 2019 08:42 UTC
tulsi gabbard
© CNN
Hawaii Representative Tulsi Gabbard has announced her intent to campaign for President of the United States, and the entire political spectrum is shitting bricks about it. Mainstream liberals and neocons are calling her a Putin puppet and Assad's BFF, leftists and progressives are criticizing her associations with right-wing factions in India and anti-LGBT comments she made in the early 2000s, conspiracy analysts are criticizing her Council on Foreign Relations membership, and the Zionist elements of Trump's base are openly promising to destroy her candidacy. A lot of others, myself included, got a lot more interested in the 2020 elections when she threw her hat in.

I'm not interested in defending Gabbard from the criticisms that have been leveled at her at this time; many articles have been written toward that end already, and if she's going to run for the most powerful elected office on the planet it's fair to scrutinize and question what kind of person she is. I'm also not interested in endorsing anyone for the presidency. What I am interested in is the way Gabbard's presence in the Democratic presidential primary race is already in January 2019 upsetting the standard establishment script and forcing foreign policy debates that need to happen.

Comment: Tulsi has shown a refreshing consistency in her policy stances. The MSM smear machine will be going into high gear if her candidacy shows real promise.

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NPC

Best of the Web: Bill Maher gets NPC'd as billboard targeted by conservative street artists

Paul Bond
The Hollywood Reporter
Sun, 13 Jan 2019 12:39 UTC
bill maher billboard truthified
© The Faction
The artwork is courtesy of The Faction, conservatives who previously peppered the Hollywood Walk of Fame with dozens of Donald Trump stars.

Bill Maher on Sunday was attacked on a giant billboard that accuses him of not being "real" or "politically incorrect," but a liberal apparatchik of prevailing wisdom ahead of the return of his HBO show, Real Time, on Friday.

The billboard, at the corner of La Cienega Boulevard and Holloway Drive in West Hollywood, is the work of a group of conservative street artists known as The Faction, who previously peppered the Hollywood Walk of Fame with dozens of faux Donald Trump stars to make up for the real one that the president's detractors have destroyed on multiple occasions.

Comment: Comparing Bill Maher to an NPC seems pretty accurate from these seats! He may deviate on a few issues, but overall he's little more than a liberal mouthpiece with an attitude, just another late night talk show host clone. Same opinions. Same 'edgy' content. Same script.

See also:

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Eiffel Tower

Best of the Web: Yellow Vest Movement in France: Reviving Democracy

Diana Johnstone
The Unz Review
Fri, 11 Jan 2019 13:27 UTC
france yellow vests
"Don't leave our country in the hands of bankers"
Paris, France, 9 January 2019

French Democracy dead or alive? Or perhaps one should say, buried or revived? Because for the mass of ordinary people, far from the political, financial, media centers of power in Paris, democracy is already moribund, and their movement is an effort to save it. Ever since Margaret Thatcher decreed that "there is no alternative", Western economic policy is made by technocrats for the benefit of financial markets, claiming that such benefits will trickle down to the populace. The trickle has largely dried up, and people are tired of having their needs and wishes totally ignored by an elite who "know best".

President Emmanuel Macron's New Year's Eve address to the nation made it perfectly clear that after one unconvincing stab at throwing a few crumbs to the Gilets Jaunes (Yellow Vests) protest movement, he has determined to get tough

France is entering a period of turmoil. The situation is very complex, but here are a few points to help grasp what this is all about.

Comment: See also: NewsReal: Yellow Vest Protests, Brexit Farce - Revolutionary Climate in Western Europe?

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Vader

Best of the Web: Foreign Affairs comes right out and says it - Attacks on Russia are because Putin challenges the Western Empire

Peter Harrell
Foreign Affairs
Thu, 03 Jan 2019 17:46 UTC
putin
Russia's 2014 annexation of Crimea, its war in eastern Ukraine, its interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, and other aggressive acts against the United States and its allies demand a strong Western response.


Comment: There was no Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election, the Russian military is not actively involved in any war in E. Ukraine (although the gov't is helping Donbass with its needs), and Russia only came to the aid of Crimea after the people of Crimea voted in a referendum for self-determination to join Russia. The UN has in the past accepted the self-determination of other nation-states. Only sock puppets for the Western Empire call what happened in Crimea "Russian aggression".


For the past four years, that response has been dominated by sanctions and other coercive economic measures. U.S. and European officials have hoped that the economic measures would not only exact a cost for such actions but also deter the Kremlin from escalating its assault on American and European interests.


Comment: Those efforts have been mostly futile. The Western Empire's influence is fading.


The economic pressure has certainly had an effect. The IMF estimated that the sanctions linked to the 2014 invasion of Ukraine cost Russia 1 to 1.5 percent of its GDP by mid-2015. The sanctions also hurt the Russian treasury's bottom line, since Russia had to make up for lost Western capital by spending billions of dollars to prop up large companies that depended on Western funds. The more recent sanctions announced in April 2018 in response to Russia's interference in the U.S. election rattled Russian financial markets and put pressure on the value of the ruble. Specific people and companies have also felt the squeeze: the net worth of Oleg Deripaska, the pro-Putin oligarch, for example, has tumbled because of U.S. sanctions.
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Black Magic

Best of the Web: Damning: US Justice Dept. fired chief medical expert after he privately told their lawyers vaccines can cause autism

Sharyl Attkisson
Full Measure
Sun, 06 Jan 2019 00:00 UTC
Dr Andrew Zimmermann
© Screen shot from Full MeasureDr Andrew Zimmermann
Today we investigate one of the biggest medical controversies of our time: vaccines. There's little dispute about this much-- vaccines save many lives, and rarely, they injure or kill. A special federal vaccine court has paid out billions for injuries from brain damage to death. But not for the form of brain injury we call autism. Now-we have remarkable new information: a respected pro-vaccine medical expert used by the federal government to debunk the vaccine-autism link, says vaccines can cause autism after all. He claims he told that to government officials long ago, but they kept it secret.

Yates Hazlehurst was born February 11, 2000. Everything was normal, according to his medical records, until he suffered a severe reaction to vaccinations. Rolf Hazlehurst is Yates' dad.

Rolf Hazlehurst: And at first, I didn't believe it. I did not think that, I did not believe that vaccines could cause autism. I didn't believe it.

But there's a hard reality for Yates. The trademark brain disease, pain and inability to communicate that's common with severe autism.

In 2007, Yates' father sued over his son's injuries in the little known Federal Vaccine court. It was one of more than 5000 vaccine autism claims.


Comment: Another nail in the coffin for Big Pharma's vaccine industry? We can only hope. See also:

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Gold Seal

Best of the Web: Summing up the Official Claims in the Salisbury Poisonings: Weighed in the Balances and Found Wanting

Rob Slane
The Blogmire
Wed, 09 Jan 2019 17:28 UTC
lady justice
As promised, I want to round off my pieces on the Salisbury case by looking at what I consider to be the major issues and flaws with the case presented to the public by the British Government and the Metropolitan Police, as well as the role played by the mainstream media. I have chosen 10 major points (not in any particular order), although there are many more issues than these.

This is a necessarily lengthy piece and I wouldn't blame you if you gave up half way through to go and do something more profitable with your time, such as reading a decent book, cooking a good meal, or horsing around with your children. But on the offchance that you are of a mind to stick it out to the end (or even to split it up in between slices of something more profitable), consider this my attempt to show why any person endowed with powers of reason, logic and a commitment to facts and truth should not believe the case that has been put to the general public as to what happened in Salisbury on 4th March, 2018.

1. Verdict First; Investigation Afterwards

I was bound to be interested in this case from the off, since it took place in the city where I reside, just a few hundred yards from my home. But what really sparked my interest into writing about the case for so long, was the response of the British Government. Within 48 hours of the incident, before the investigation had properly begun, and before any of the facts of the matter had been established, certain Government ministers were already pointing the finger of blame at the Russian state. Too quick. Something's up.

Then on 12th and 14th March, little more than a week after the incident, and still with almost no facts of what actually happened having been established by investigators, the British Prime Minister, Theresa May, not only formally accused the Russian Government in the House of Commons, but also announced a series of responsive measures. Much too quick. Something's definitely up.
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Attention

Best of the Web: Inside Integrity Initiative's desperate attempt to sabotage Russian-German relations

Kit Klarenberg
Sputnik
Mon, 07 Jan 2019 16:51 UTC
germany
© AFP 2018 / CHRISTOF STACHE
On the afternoon of January 4 I was putting the finishing touches to a series of articles about the Integrity Initiative's activities in Germany, when hacking syndicate Anonymous released another tranche of files plucked from the organization's internal servers. The content was so explosive I was forced to put the multi-part project on hold.

The new trove included several highly incriminating files related to the poisoning of Sergei Skripal in March 2018, which raised a number of extremely serious questions about the shadowy British state and NATO-funded 'think tank' and its connections with the affair.

A few hours after publishing an article based on a precursory investigation of the documents, I received a curious email from political scientist Hannes Adomeit - the subject line 'Criminal Charges against Kit Klarenberg' - which made me somewhat glad I'd postponed my German series.

Comment: More on Integrity Initiative's blatant disinformation campaign:

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No Entry

Best of the Web: Beyond Kafka: How Youtube & Facebook Keep Purging Speeches of Hassan Nasrallah

Sayed Hasan
Resistance News
Wed, 09 Jan 2019 20:08 UTC
Hassan Nasrallah is persona non grata on Social Networks, where Anti-Zionism is the ultimate thoughtcrime

With a comment from Norman Finkelstein
nasrallah
Hassan Nasrallah, leader of Lebanese anti-US-Israel resistance group Hezbollah
The guillotine's blade fell again, one year later. On December 2017 already, my 5-years-old Youtube channel Sayed Hasan, mainly translating speeches from Hezbollah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah, was completely removed by Youtube, along with its 10,000 subscribers, +6 millions views and +400 subtitled videos of anti-Zionist & anti-Imperialist content. I then denounced this censorship in detail in my article Kafka 2.0: How Youtube's Political Censorship is Exercised. And just around New Year's Eve 2019, the +6000 Subscribed Facebook Page Resistance News Unfiltered, along with all its similar content, got deleted without explanation. The only thing left online is a cache view of the page dating back from this summer, in French.
resistance news facebook
I had created this Page at the beginning of 2018, since no other place can compete with Youtube and its near-monopoly on video content, in order to reach a broader audience. But it was deleted without explanation by Facebook short of its first anniversary. I can't even know the precise date of termination. Youtube did at least bother to send emails notifying of the removal of a video or of a whole channel, but Facebook has only internal notifications for posts removals. Here is how it happened.
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