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Zakharova: Polish PM 'killed his own humanity' with op-ed accusing Moscow of 'Holocaust revisionism'


RT
Wed, 22 Jan 2020 03:47 UTC
Moscow cemetary WWII graves
© AFP / Dmitry Kostyukov
An elderly woman visits a military cemetery in Moscow where numerous veterans of World War II are buried.
Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova fired off a caustic rebuttal to Poland's prime minister after he penned an op-ed accusing Moscow of overstating its role in defeating the Nazis during World War II.

In an opinion piece published by Politico on Tuesday, Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki claimed that, far from being the "liberator" of Poland, the Soviet Union was a "facilitator" of the Nazi regime, despite sacrificing tens of millions of citizens in the war to topple fascism.

"The Soviet Union did not 'liberate' Warsaw, as Russian authorities are now claiming," Morawiecki wrote, also arguing that the USSR did not free Auschwitz as early as it could have.

Comment:

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Black Magic

Ex-CIA lawyer says Soleimani hit is a homicide under U.S. criminal law

Vicki Divoll
The Daily Beast
Wed, 22 Jan 2020 20:08 UTC
soleimani mourner
© Anadolu Agency/Getty
A Iranian mourner holds a picture of slain General Soleimani
In bragging that he ordered a successful hit on Iranian Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani, President Trump has admitted to killing a senior government official of a sovereign state, Iran, while he was traveling in another sovereign state, Iraq. On its face, his conduct and intent satisfy the elements of premeditated murder under Section 1116 of Title 18 of the United States Criminal Code, "Murder or manslaughter of foreign officials, official guests, or internationally protected persons."

We can and must debate, and many are, whether the killing was an "assassination" or a violation of "international norms," but neither of those charges has been codified by Congress into the criminal code and thus they have no teeth. The assassination ban is found in an executive order and a president is not bound by it. As for international norms, including the adherence to long-standing principles of the ethics of just war, well, ignoring norms is Trump's calling card, and his supporters love him for it.

Comment:

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Star of David

Because Israel: Retreating US gives billions more in military aid for 'Israel's security'

Ramzy Baroud
Middle East Monitor
Tue, 21 Jan 2020 10:09 UTC
Statof Lib
© Unknown/KJN
Billions of US taxpayers' dollars will continue to be funnelled into Israel in the next fiscal year, and for many years in the foreseeable future. Republican and Democratic Senators have recently ensured just that, passing a Bill aimed at providing Israel with $3.3 billion in aid every year.

The Bill, co-sponsored by Democratic Senator Chris Coons and Republican Senator Marco Rubio, was passed on 9 January, only one day after Iran struck US positions in Iraq. Enthusiasm to push the Bill forward was meant to be an assurance to Tel Aviv from Washington that the US is committed to Israel's security and military superiority in the Middle East.

Despite a palpable sense of war fatigue among all Americans, regardless of their political leaning, their country continues to sink deeper into Middle East conflicts simply because it is unable - or perhaps unwilling — to challenge Israel's benefactors across the US government. "What's good for Israel is good for America" continues to be the supreme maxim within Washington's political elites, despite the fact that such irrational thinking has wrought disasters on the Middle East as a whole, and is finally forcing a hasty and humiliating American retreat.
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Propaganda

US Agency for Global Media: A new propaganda arm serving the Empire

Henry Kamens
New Eastern Outlook
Tue, 21 Jan 2020 00:00 UTC
USIAnewspaper
© USIA
My first reaction to learning about the creation of a new government agency, the US Agency for Global Media, was one of complete surprise and ANGER. Does not the US government already have at its disposal enough purported media - VOA and democracy support groups, NDI, collaborating media and a wide range of related agencies? And now enters a new kid on the block. Not really new, but the same old and well-known bully wearing a new set of clothes, with deep pockets itching to pick fights.

I always liked the quote of Mark Twain about the choices between being informed or misinformed: "If you don't read the newspaper, you are uninformed, if you do, you are misinformed."

There is lasting truth in this quote, and not only in terms of print media but all media outlets. Nowadays there remains only a thin line between media truth and propaganda, fake news and allegations thereof! Even HBO is getting in on the discussion of whether media is to be trusted, in an upcoming documentary.

After Truth: Disinformation and the Cost of Fake News will uncover and bring to light the "rising phenomenon of 'fake news' in the US and the impact that disinformation, conspiracy theories, and false news stories have on the average citizen." But it is not only the US; fake news is often sanctioned and exists on the global level, as we are well reminded by the following catchphrase.
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Star of David

Trump to release his 'great, best ever' Israel-Palestine peace plan before Israeli leaders visit next week - Warns Palestinians 'may react negatively'


RT
Thu, 23 Jan 2020 22:36 UTC

Comment: Oh boy...


Trump and group
© Reuters/Carlos Barria
Only one of these has a significant smirk...
US President Donald Trump will finally unveil his 'great' plan for peace in the Middle East before Israeli leaders visit Washington next week. While the Palestinians may not like it, it will be good for them, Trump said.

Trump has long teased the existence of a plan that would resolve the long-running dispute between Israel and the Palestinians, reportedly developed by his son-in-law Jared Kushner. Its release, however, has been repeatedly delayed.

On the way to an event in Florida on Thursday, Trump told reporters on board Air Force One that he intends to make the plan public ahead of next week's visit to Washington by Israel's caretaker Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his chief rival Benny Gantz.

"It's a great plan," said Trump, "It's a plan that really would work."

Comment: Netanyahu and Gantz are both salivating over this plan, antsy for Trump's big reveal. Is this plan the matchstick that ignites the Palestinian powder keg, giving Israel a quick and 'blameless' victory?

See also: Gantz: Annex Jordan Valley after elections; Netanyahu: Why not now?

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Star of David

Israel's EastMed gas pipeline: Mad geopolitics and escalating tensions

F. William Engdahl
New Eastern Outlook
Sun, 19 Jan 2020 00:00 UTC
Ocean platform
© Unknown
At just a time when the world holds its collective breath over risk of a World War over the US assassination of Iran's leading general and other provocations, Israel has chosen to sign a natural gas pipeline deal with Greece and Cyprus that is the equivalent of tossing a loaded hand grenade into the hyper-tense region.

Until some months ago it was doubtful whether Israel's long-touted EastMed gas pipeline deal with Cyprus and Greece would see the light of day. Despite being backed by the US and the EU as an alternative to Russian gas, the EastMed as it is known, is dubious on many grounds, not the least its high cost compared with alternatives. The January 2 signing by the governments of Israel, Greece and Cyprus is directly connected to provocative moves by Turkey's Erdogan to conspire with Libya to illegally declare almost all of the Eastern Mediterranean waters to be a Turkish and now Libyan Exclusive Economic Zone.

If Mideast tensions were not already at the breaking point, the Israeli move throws a huge monkey wrench into the region's troubled geopolitics.

Comment: See also:
Pipeline politics: One of the motives behind Israel's warmongering in the Middle East

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Arrow Up

Soros pumps $1B into 'university network' to 'fight climate change', 'rescue democracy' from 'dictators Trump, Xi, Modi'


RT
Fri, 24 Jan 2020 02:04 UTC

Comment: The guy turns 90 this year. Just give it up already, old man! You lost, now retire!


ProtesterSoros
© Reuters/Tyrone Siu/Lisi Niesner
Billionaire George Soros and a fundable 'change agent' in action
Billionaire George Soros has unveiled a new ambitious project: creating a global university network that would save the world from climate change and rescue democracy itself from 'dictators' like US President Donald Trump.

The 89-year-old grey eminence of liberal globalism announced "the most important project of my life" on Thursday at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Describing the current state of the world as dire, with the strongest powers "in the hands of would-be or actual dictators," Soros said he would put forth $1 billion towards the creation of the Open Society University Network, revolving around his own Central European University (CEU).
Soros revealed that CEU has already partnered up with Bard College in the US and a network of European social science schools called CIVICA, which includes the London School of Economics and the Paris Institute of Political Studies, also known as Sciences Po. He seeks to expand the network into something "truly global" in the coming years.
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Magnify

UN experts call for probe: MbS allegedly phone hacked Jeff Bezos to silence WaPo's reporting on the kingdom

Dania Akkad
Middle East Eye
Wed, 22 Jan 2020 14:47 UTC
JBezos MbS
© AFP
Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos • Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman
Two UN experts have called for US authorities to conduct an immediate investigation into allegations that Amazon CEO and Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos' phone was hacked by Saudi Arabia's crown prince.

The UN special rapporteurs, Agnes Callamard and David Kaye, said on Wednesday that they had received information suggesting that Mohammed bin Salman had surveilled Bezos "in an effort to influence, if not silence" the Post's reporting on his kingdom.

They said a forensic analysis concluded his phone was probably hacked by a malicious video file sent from a WhatsApp account belonging to the crown prince in May 2018.

Within hours of receiving the video, the rapporteurs said there was "an anomalous and extreme change" in the phone's behaviour, with the level of outgoing data from the phone jumping nearly 30,000 percent - and later to 100,000 percent.

They said experts had advised that the most likely explanation of the phone's behaviour was the use of spyware such as Pegasus, sold to the Saudis by the Israeli NSO Group, or less likely, Galileo, by the Milan-based Hacking Team. The NSO Group has denied that its technology was used to hack Bezos' phone.
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Target

Targeting the Orthodox Church; NATO's eastern crusades revere politics over faith

Stephen Karganovic
Strategic Culture Foundation
Wed, 22 Jan 2020 00:00 UTC
Montenegran Orthodox Church
© Emerging Europe
Montenegrin Orthodox Church
Needless to say, the important and portentous story of the attempted subversion of the Orthodox Church using the intelligence and political instruments still at the disposal of the moribund post-Christian West has gone virtually unreported, uncommented, and uncondemned. It concerns the multi-front offensive currently being unleashed against the most ancient and authentic Christian communion, the Orthodox Church.

The epicenter of this externally induced commotion is at this moment in Montenegro, NATO's latest "catch" in its persistent effort to secure or at least neutralize the Balkan rear, with a view to the projected conflict with Russia. One of the major remaining targets in Montenegro is the country's Metropolitanate of the Serbian Orthodox Church, the institution which according to the latest survey is the most trusted by the country's population. The Orthodox Church, which saw Montenegro through its centuries of confrontation with the Ottoman Empire, is literally the repository of Montenegro's identity and culture. Russia's traditional ally Montenegro - just like the Ukraine, which finds itself similarly targeted - cannot be reconfigured and turned into a compliant instrument of the impending Western crusade unless its identity, shaped by the Church, is first suitably redesigned.
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Footprints

Erdogan: Turkey sending military 'experts' to 'train' UN-backed government forces in Libya


RT
Fri, 24 Jan 2020 14:23 UTC

Comment: Uh-huh, that's "train" in quotes-marks, just as 2,000 Syrian "rebels" were shipped to Libya to "advise the UN-backed govt on how to contain rebels"...


Turk soldier
© AFP
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said that he is sending military personnel to Libya to train the forces loyal to the UN-backed Government of National Accord.

Erdogan announced the move on Friday, days after he apparently backed off on an earlier promise to deploy ground troops to the war-torn African country. The Turkish leader told journalists on Monday that a group of military "advisers" had been sent to Libya in the troops' stead.

The Turkish personnel will train the forces of Fayez al-Sarraj, who heads the Tripoli-based and UN-backed Government of National Accord. The GNA has been engaged in a prolonged conflict with the Tobruk-based Libyan National Army, led by General Khalifa Haftar.

Haftar's forces are in control of most of Libya, and at one point last year threatened to overrun Tripoli. After peace talks in Berlin last weekend, a fragile ceasefire between Haftar and al-Sarraj remains in place, but no lasting agreement has yet been reached.

Though Erdogan has played a central role in peace talks alongside Russia, both in Berlin and earlier in Moscow, he has openly backed al-Sarraj, and vowed earlier this month to teach the "putschist" Haftar "a lesson," should the LNA's offensive on Tripoli continue.
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