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Why has HRW teamed with Israeli warmongers?

David Cronin
Electronic Intifada
Mon, 27 Jan 2020 00:00 UTC
Omar Shakir
© Reuters/Ammar Awad
Human Rights Watch representative Omar Shakir (center) has been expelled by Israel.
Logic dictates that Human Rights Watch should call for a boycott of Israel. Israel has, after all, taken a hostile stance toward the organization, even expelling its representative Omar Shakir.

Kenneth Roth, the director of Human Rights Watch, acknowledged a few months ago that Israel is not likely to stop oppressing Palestinians unless it comes under "much greater international pressure." While that message seems to be clear, the position of Human Rights Watch is actually quite muddled.

Human Rights Watch has argued that businesses have a duty to pull out from Israel's settlements in the occupied West Bank and Golan Heights. But the group has also emphasized that it doesn't advocate a boycott of Israel, the state actually building those settlements.

Even worse, Human Rights Watch is in a partnership of sorts with at least one Israeli institution that encourages violence against Palestinians. The Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya (IDC Herzliya) - an Israeli university - is participating in a $5.5 million European Union-funded "rule of law" project called Reconnect. Lotte Leicht, head of the Human Rights Watch office in Brussels, sits on the project's advisory board.

Comment: This appears to be a bonafide conflict of purpose and interest for HRW. Money? Influence? Arm-twisting? Has Israel's propaganda, infiltration and anti-Semitism machine compromised the reputation of yet another target?

For more on Shakir's expulsion see also: Israel expels high-ranking HRW official over past BDS activism

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Footprints

Tehran: Iranian lawmakers file motion to leave Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty


The New Arab
Tue, 28 Jan 2020 00:00 UTC
Rouhani/lawmakers
© Getty Images
President Hassan Rouhani and lawmakers
Iranian lawmakers on Tuesday asked country's parliament to debate a motion for Iran to quit the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). The move appears to be the latest from Tehran to pressure European powers to salvage the more recent nuclear deal of 2015.

A report on the assembly's news site ICANA said a minimum number of MPs had signed a request to parliament's managers to arrange a debate on the motion for Iran to take the far-reaching step of leaving the NPT, which was first ratified in 1968

Last week, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said Iran could withdraw from the NPT if European countries refer the country to the UN Security Council over the 2015 deal.

Lawmakers in the past have sometimes withdrawn their signatures seeking debates on motions about nuclear and other issues.
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X

Syria rejects and strongly condemns 'Deal of the Century', renews support for Palestinians' struggle

Ruaa al-Jazaeri
SANA
Wed, 29 Jan 2020 00:00 UTC
Pal w Key
© claud el khal
A key to a door this Palestinian no longer has.
Syria has affirmed its absolute rejection and condemnation of the so-called "deal of the century" which represents a prescription to surrender to the usurping Israeli occupation, and it renewed its firm standing by the just struggle of the Palestinian people for restoring their legitimate rights.

An official source at the Foreign and Expatriates Ministry said in a statement to SANA that the Syrian Arab Republic expresses its strong condemnation and absolute rejection of the so-called "deal of the century" which represents a prescription to surrender to the usurping Israeli occupation and it comes in the framework of the attempts of the successive U.S. administrations and the Zionist entity to liquidate the Palestinian cause and to ignore the international legitimacy and thwart its resolutions regarding the Arab-Israeli conflict.

The source added that the latest U.S. plan has again clarified the organic link between the U.S. and the Zionist entity in its extreme hostility to the Arab nation and its issues, and that the U.S. policy in the region first and foremost aims to serve "Israel" and its expansionist schemes at the expense of the Arab rights and interests, indicating that the one who has always been a main supporter of the Israeli aggression is not eligible at all to play the role of peace maker.
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Sherlock

Ukraine's ex-president Poroshenko being investigated for embezzlement, allegedly stealing US aid


RT
Wed, 29 Jan 2020 20:17 UTC
poroshenko
© Sputnik
Ukrainian ex-president, Petro Poroshenko.
Ukraine's National Anti-Corruption Bureau has opened a probe against former president, Petro Poroshenko, who is suspected of abuse of power, embezzlement "on a grand scale" and allegedly stealing US aid funds.

The case against the ex-president was opened following a complaint by a group of Ukrainian MPs and the nation's High Anti-Corruption Court demanding the authorities investigate embezzlement and misappropriation of the foreign financial aid at the time of Poroshenko's term in office, a Ukrainian MP Renat Kuzmin said in a Facebook post.

Kuzmin, a member of the Opposition Platform - For Live party, also published the anti-corruption bureau's documents, confirming that the case against Poroshenko had been launched. The papers state that the former president and some "unknown people" from his administration are suspected of embezzling "on a grand scale," subsequent legalization of criminally obtained funds, and abuse of power.

Comment: Embezzlement charges are not all Poroshenko is facing:

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People

The Establishment Doesn't Fear Trump, And it Doesn't Fear Bernie. It Fears You

Caitlin Johnstone
Medium
Mon, 27 Jan 2020 00:01 UTC
People power choice awareness
During the George W Bush administration it was popular in conspiracy circles to speculate that events might be orchestrated which would allow the Bush family to complete a coup against the US Constitution and hold on to power indefinitely.

Such paranoia and suspicion of government power in the wake of the extraordinary post-9/11 advancements in Orwellian surveillance programs and unprecedented military expansionism were perfectly understandable, but predictions that the younger Bush would not cede power at the end of his second term proved incorrect. In today's hysterical Trump-centric political environment we now see mainstream voices in mainstream outlets openly advancing the same conspiratorial speculations about the current administration, and those will prove incorrect as well.

What these paranoid presidential prognostications get wrong is not their extreme suspicion of government, but their assumption that America's real power structures require a certain president to be in place in order to advance depraved totalitarian agendas. As anyone paying attention knows, intense suspicion of the US government is the only sane position that anyone can possibly have; the error is in assuming that there is no mechanism in place to ensure that the same agendas carry forward from one presidential administration to the next.
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Bullseye

Trump: If I Listened to Bolton 'We would be in World War Six by now'


Haaretz
Wed, 29 Jan 2020 19:39 UTC
bolton trump
© Reuters / Leah Millis
John Bolton
U.S. President Donald Trump unleashed his sharpest attack yet on John Bolton after his former national security adviser depicted Trump as playing a central role in a politically motivated pressure campaign on Ukraine, as the U.S. Senate prepared on Wednesday to enter a new phase in the president's impeachment trial.

Trump lashed out at Bolton on Twitter. The president said Bolton "couldn't get approved for the Ambassador to the UN years ago, couldn't get approved for anything since, 'begged' me for a non Senate approved job" and "mistakenly says 'Libyan Model' on T.V. (in reference to how to handle North Korea) - adding that "if I listened to him, we would be in World War Six by now."
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Attention

Rock the Vote - The voting propaganda

James Corbett
Corbett Report
Wed, 29 Jan 2020 17:45 UTC
We all know that the powers-that-shouldn't-be don't put together a decades-long propaganda campaign to condition the public to believe in the plain, simple truth. So why have they spent decades (if not centuries) trying to condition us to believe that voting is important and effective? Today on #PropagandaWatch James explores the propaganda campaign surrounding voting and what it tells us about the statist indoctrination system we live under.
Vote Don't Count
© Reason TV
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Chess

'Goodbye, hello': German FM waives goodbye to Brits, warning they have to follow EU rules to retain single market access


RT
Wed, 29 Jan 2020 17:18 UTC
boris and heiko maas
© Getty Images / Carsten Koall / Stringer
With the protracted Brexit saga coming to an end this week, German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas made a not-so-veiled warning to the UK, saying it still must abide by EU rules if it wants full access to the bloc's single market.

While cheering the fact that the British decision to part ways with the EU is finally getting an orderly implementation, Maas said his nation expects the relationship with the UK "to be as close as possible, even after Brexit".

The minister delved into security and political issues where the two parties can benefit from close cooperation, but also mentioned the most contentious thing, the economy.
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Newspaper

At what cost? Modi says it would take Indian Army 10 days max to 'make Pakistan bite dust'


RT
Wed, 29 Jan 2020 00:00 UTC
Indian army recruits
© REUTERS/Danish Ismail
Indian army recruits
Indian PM Narendra Modi says the Indian military could take down neighboring Pakistan within a week - 10 days at most. Both regional rivals are nuclear-armed powers.

Speaking at the National Cadet Corps Rally in Delhi on Tuesday, Modi lamented the "inaction" of his predecessors who were reluctant to use military force against Pakistan. He said that even when India's top brass "asked for action," the political leadership "would not go ahead," but instead conducted what he called "a proxy war" with Pakistan as a law and order issue, rather than one requiring a military solution. The prime minister said he believes Pakistan would not stand a chance if a military confrontation broke out between the two.

Comment: Thick red line: India and Pakistan may have no peace in 2020, just the seeds of hope

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Monkey Wrench

To rig primary against Bernie, DNC's Tom Perez nominates regime-change agents, Israel lobbyists, and Wall Street consultants

Kevin Gosztola
The Gray Zone
Mon, 27 Jan 2020 00:00 UTC
Tom Perez
With Senator Bernie Sanders surging in the polls, DNC chair Tom Perez has put forward a cartoonishly neoliberal cast of foreign policy hacks and corporate lobbyists to sabotage his nomination.

Democratic National Committee chair Tom Perez has nominated dozens of lobbyists, corporate consultants, think tank board members, and former officials linked to Barack Obama and Bill and Hillary Clinton's presidential campaigns to serve on the Democratic National Convention (DNC) nominating committee this July.

Many of Perez's nominees are vocal opponents of Senator Bernie Sanders and spoke out against his campaign when he challenged Hillary Clinton for the nomination in 2016.

Just as it did in 2016, the DNC appears determined to sabotage a Sanders nomination, foisting a collection of neoliberal and imperialist hacks onto the convention committee to hold back a popular rebellion against the policies of endless war and corporate free trade they have personally presided over.
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