© Politico
SOTT
SIGNS
OF THE
TIMES
OF THE
TIMES
Welcome to Sott.net
The World for People who Think
Puppet MastersS
© MondoweissDemonstration in Support of the Right to Boycott and BDS, Albany N.Y. June 15, 2016
The first is that old standby, that anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism. This claim is meant to intimidate; the intent is to prevent the root of the problem from being discussed. One starts off privileging the Zionist position as unassailably correct and then one can discuss to what extent Palestinians have rights that can be granted after negotiation.
The second claim is closely related: Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) unfairly singles out Israel and therefore (you guessed it) is anti-Semitic.
It is possible and maybe even useful to write long detailed rebuttals of both these charges, but it would probably be more useful to keep them short. A long rebuttal to a blunt one-sentence false accusation might actually make it seem like it had merit. So here are the short ones.
Is anti-Zionism a form of anti-Semitism? If it were, then that would mean all Palestinians were morally obligated to endorse their own ethnic cleansing. That is the only logical conclusion. Not only are Palestinians being asked to accept that they can never go back to their homes and villages, but they are implicitly being asked to bless the ideology that justified their ethnic cleansing- or else they are anti-semites. That is nakedly racist.
You can go on from there and go into whatever details you want, but that is all the argument you need.
© YouTubeNoam Chomsky, being interviewed by Douglas Richardson of the Association of American Geographers, in April 2017 in Boston.
BDS campaigners create false hope because return will never happen, Chomsky said; Israel would would use nuclear weapons to prevent the return of the Palestinian refugees, if it came to it:
"If there ever were serious support [for the right of return], Israel would go all out- using nuclear weapons, anything else- to prevent it. So it's not going to happen."We are continually told that Iran and North Korea cannot be trusted with the bomb. What does it say about Israeli leadership and political beliefs that the most prominent leftwing scholar in the U.S. says they would deploy nuclear weapons to defy global pressure re return of refugees?
© European Press Agency'The enemy of your enemy may also be your enemy,' says Henry Kissinger EPA
Henry Kissinger has warned that destroying Isis could lead to an "Iranian radical empire".
The former diplomat has suggested that once Isis is defeated, if Iran occupies the free territory, the result could lead to the emergence of a new empire.
The 94-year-old, who was the Secretary of State under President Richard Nixon, also spoke about the complications of taking sides in Middle Eastern conflicts.
Comment: What the evil old geezer doesn't mention is that a 'radical Iranian empire' would spell the end of the Saudis, the petrodollar and Murika. Is that such a bad thing? Most of the Middle East wouldn't think so, excepting the Zio-nazis.
Is it even a realistic expectation? Iran has shown no more inclination to empire building than Russia. A more likely scenario is that sovereign countries would align with Iran politically and economically as the ASEAN group has with Russia, in pursuit of a common good. That's a long way from an 'Iranian radical empire'. But to non-reality-based Western eyes, it amounts to the same thing.
© Marco Bello / ReutersDemonstrators prepare a roadblock at a rally during a strike called to protest against Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro's government in Caracas, Venezuela July 27, 2017
It was replaced by a new form which proved to be more destructive and immeasurably more dishonest than what went before.
At least the British Empire - which at its peak covered almost a quarter of the world's land surface, acknowledged it was an Empire.
Today's more shadowy Empire of Globalized Monopoly Finance-Capital does no such thing. Entire countries, such as Yugoslavia, Libya, and Iraq, are destroyed for not toeing the line, while those which continue to defy the neocon/neoliberal elites, such as Venezuela, are under a state of permanent siege.
Comment: Trump's bluster over N. Korea is just that, designed to drum up some business for defense contractors at the expense of the American taxpayer. Trump's recent statements about N. Korea were therefore made while he was wearing his 'marketing manager for Lockheed Martin' hat.
The Pentagon's top weapons supplier, Lockheed Martin, says that customers' requests for missile defense systems are rising, and North Korea's continued threats as well as the US reaction may be responsible.
Acquiring missile defense systems is at the top of some countries' to-do list, as interest has risen over the last 12 to 18 months, the vice president of Lockheed's Air and Missile Defense business, Tim Cahill, told Reuters.
© AFP/GettyMichael Kadar, 18, has been charged in Israel with making hoax bomb threats against mainly Jewish institutions in the US. His mother said in his defense that he "is both autistic and has a brain tumor."
Michael Ron David Kadar, 19, was arrested in Mar ch and later charged in Israel with 28 counts of threatening calls and false information. Israeli prosecutors said he was behind more than 100 bomb threats to JCCs and more than 2,000 threatening calls to schools, airports, police stations, malls and other targets over a span of two years.
According to a newly unsealed search warrant, Israeli National Police found a 128GB thumb drive attached to Kadar's computer in his room that allegedly contained "files indicating Kadar's knowledge of and involvement in the threatening email and telephone call scheme."
Along with recordings of threatening phone calls and screenshots of threatening emails, police found a text file copied from a vendor listing page, where Kadar allegedly made a business of making bomb threats on the dark web.
Comment: Who might have had an interest in hiring him to do this? Did he come up with this idea by himself? Or was he encouraged to do it?
Wasserman Schultz, who was the leader of the Democratic National Committee at the time, intervened in the loan process to help guarantee Imran Awan and wife Hina Alvi a $165,000 loan which the couple quickly wired to Pakistan far from the reach of US regulators, FBI sources confirm. Imran was arrested on bank fraud charges in July while attempting to flee to Pakistan. His wife fled the country to Pakistan in March after the FBI caught her at Dulles International Airport with undocumented cash. She was suspected of bank fraud by the FBI who allowed her to leave the country anyway.
Awan, until his arrest, was employed as the IT specialist for Wasserman Schultz and dozens of other congressional Democrats since 2004. His wife was also on the congressional payroll. The Congressional Federal Credit Union is not open to the public but is normally reserved for Congress and members of their staffs.
The former Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili - on the run from the Georgian authorities on charges relating to his forcible dispersal of anti-government protest in Tbilisi in 2007 and his seizure of the Imedi television station and the other assets of the deceased Georgian oligarch Badri Patarkatsishvili - and stripped of his Ukrainian citizenship by a decree of Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko dated 26th July 2017 - continues to thumb his nose at the Ukrainian authorities by traveling around eastern Europe on his now illegally retained Ukrainian passport.
Following a short trip to Poland latest reports place Saakashvili in Lithuania.
It seems that the authorities in Poland and Lithuania - two of the Ukrainian Maidan government's staunchest allies in its conflict with Russia - are happy to side with Saakashvili against Ukraine, though they are almost alone amongst NATO/EU governments in doing so.
© AFP 2017/ FABRICE COFFRINI
On Monday, special investigator Carla del Ponte, a member of the UN Independent Commission of Inquiry on Syria, announced her decision to quit the body.
"We have had absolutely no success. We've been faced with brick walls for five years," del Ponte told Blick, blaming the commission's ineffectiveness on a lack of support from the UN Security Council.
"I cannot be a member of this commission, which does not do anything." She described her role as an "alibi investigator without political support."
"I give up, the States of the Security Council do not want justice," del Ponte complained.
Comment: Well, hmmmm! Was Hannity or was Hannity not a victim of unmasking?