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Netanyahu in 2001: 'America is a thing you can move very easily'


Huffington Post
Fri, 16 Jul 2010 03:33 UTC
Neti
© Unknown
Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu
A newly released video of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu could add some additional strain to the sometimes tense relationship between him and President Obama. In the video, which is from 2001, Netanyahu — who reportedly did not know his speech was being recorded — speaks frankly in Hebrew about relations with the Clinton White House and the peace process.

As noted in Haaretz, Netanyahu seems to boast of his knowledge of the US by saying, "I know what America is. America is a thing you can move very easily, move it in the right direction. They won't get in their way."

He also boasts of manipulating the U.S. in the ongoing peace process, as the Washington Post points out:
"They asked me before the election if I'd honor [the Oslo accords]. I said I would, but ... I'm going to interpret the accords in such a way that would allow me to put an end to this galloping forward to the '67 borders. How did we do it? Nobody said what defined military zones were. Defined military zones are security zones; as far as I'm concerned, the entire Jordan Valley is a defined military zone. Go argue."

Comment: Hard to imagine much has changed...it worked so well then.

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Arrow Up

Syrian President Bashar Assad wins re-election as Western powers denounce outcome, close embassies, deter voting


RT
Thu, 27 May 2021 20:36 UTC
Bashar al-Assad
© Louai Beshara/AFP
Syrians in Damascus wave national flags and carry a portrait of President Bashar al-Assad on May 27, 2021
President Bashar Assad has been reelected to a fourth term with over 95% of the votes cast, defeating two challengers - including a former senior official of a rebel coalition, Syrian authorities have announced.

Turnout in Wednesday's election was 78%, with Assad winning over 13 million votes, according to Hammouda Sabbagh, speaker of the Syrian legislature.

Mahmoud Ahmad Marei, who previously served as secretary-general of the rebel coalition National Front for the Liberation of Syria, received some 470,276 votes, or 3.1%, while Abdullah Sallum Abdullah of the Socialist Unionist Party came in third with about 213,968 votes, or 1.5%.

The total number of eligible voters was 14,239,140 out of the 18,107,000 Syrians currently inside or outside the country, according to Interior Minister Muhammad al-Rahmoun.

Comment: Glimpses into the Syrian election process and public reaction:
Head of Parliament Hammouda Sabbagh announced the result at a news conference on Thursday, saying voter turnout was around 78%.
Sabbagh
© Reuters
Head of Parliament Hammouda Sabbagh announced the result at a news conference on Thursday, saying voter turnout was around 78%.
The vote was boycotted by the US-backed Kurdish-led forces who administer an autonomous oil-rich region in the northeast and in northwestern Idlib region, the last existing rebel enclave, where people denounced the election in large demonstrations on Wednesday.

The win delivers Assad, 55, seven more years in power and lengthens his family's rule to nearly six decades. His father, Hafez al-Assad, led Syria for 30 years until his death in 2000.
Though Assad's win was not in doubt, his re-election is likely to deepen the rift with the West and closer to Russia, Iran and China.
Poll workers
© Reuters
Poll workers count ballots after polls close during presidential election in Damascus, Syria
May 27, 2021
Damascus erupted in celebrations, with gunfire and fireworks lighting the night sky. Thousands gathered in major squares in Damascus, and the coastal city of Tartus, dancing while waving flags and pictures of Assad. They chanted: "With our soul, blood, we defend you Bashar," and "We only choose three: God, Syria and Bashar."

Assad Supporters
© AP/Hassan Ammar
Assad supporters in Omayyad Square, Damascus
See also: Syria's Assad wins 4th term with 95% of vote

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Star of David

Why everyone is wrong about Israel-Palestine - Israel's greed for Gaza's huge gas reserves and money is what drives the conflict

Darius Shahtahmasebi
RT
Fri, 28 May 2021 17:32 UTC
gaza bombed houses 2021
© Reuters
A Palestinian flag flies as the ruins of houses, which were destroyed by Israeli air strikes during the Israeli-Palestinian fighting
There are trillions of tonnes of recoverable gas lying underneath the disputed waters off Gaza, Israel, Syria and Lebanon. And the Israelis want to make sure they alone control and profit from it.

Few topics rile people up on both sides of the political aisle more than the Israel-Palestine question. It is without doubt one of the most - if not the most - explosively divisive issues on the planet.

For example, when I have criticised Saudi Arabia's criminal bombardment of Yemen, I have never once even contemplated fearing a backlash of people accusing me of being anti-Islamic or labelling me an Islamophobe. (Sure, Saudi nationals critical of its government's actions may have to avoid entering into their local Saudi consulate upon invitation, but that's for a different reason.)

Comment: Israel, of course, not above stealing from its other neighbors either:

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Eye 1

Anti-establishment? Dominic Cummings' contradictory testimony only enforces the global elite's pro-lockdown narrative

Neil Clark
RT
Thu, 27 May 2021 16:15 UTC
dominic cummings
© Sky News
In insisting Britain should have locked down earlier and harder in March 2020, Boris Johnson's former chief adviser has gone from zero to hero in the eyes of those who hated him. But where's the evidence it'd have saved lives?

It's been quite a turnaround. Dominic Cummings was loathed by pro-Remainers and 'centrists' for his role in 'getting Brexit done' but now he's being toasted as the 'insider' who spilled the beans in public on how incompetently PM Johnson and his health secretary handled Covid-19. All of a sudden 'Bad Boy Dom' is not so bad. He's a credible, reliable source we should all be listening to.

Yet, while we can all probably agree about his verdict on the awful Matt Hancock (the late comedian Tony Hancock would probably have made a better health secretary - and he's been dead for 53 years), Cummings' testimony on Wednesday to the House of Commons Health and Science Select Committees was highly contradictory. As Leo McKinstry pointed out in the Daily Express, he had a scattergun approach, but no smoking gun. The core thrust of his critique - that Boris Johnson didn't take the novel coronavirus seriously enough, was mistakenly pursuing a policy of 'herd immunity', and should have locked the country down earlier and harder - is itself based on false assumptions, or, more precisely, ludicrously over-the-top modelling, which was disproved by real-life events in countries that didn't lock down.
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X

Fauci facing calls for resignation after shifting positions on probe of Wuhan lab

Mark Moore
New York Post
Wed, 26 May 2021 10:41 UTC
dr anthony fauci
© Drew Angerer/Getty Images
Anthony Fauci listens during a briefing on the coronavirus pandemic in the press briefing room of the White House.
Republican lawmakers are calling for Dr. Anthony Fauci to be fired, amid his litany of shifting opinions on the coronavirus, its origin and his stance on an investigation into the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

Fauci is coming under fire from congressional Republicans who point to his admission that the NIH earmarked $600,000 for the Wuhan Institute of Virology to study the possibility that bat coronaviruses could be transmitted to humans.

He told members of a House Appropriations subcommittee on Tuesday that the money was provided to the lab through the nonprofit EcoHealth Alliance and funded a "modest collaboration with very respectable Chinese scientists who were world experts on coronavirus."

Comment: See also:

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Dollar

EU leaders agree to close skies & airports to Belarus over Ryanair incident, freeze €3bn investment until Minsk turns 'democratic'


RT
Tue, 25 May 2021 00:21 UTC
belavia plane fence
© Sputnik/Andrei Aleksandrov
A plane belonging to the Belarus national carrier Belavia at the Minsk national airport.
The leaders of 27 European Union countries have called for a ban on Belarus-based airlines landing in the bloc and told EU-based carriers to avoid the country's airspace, after the diversion of a Ryanair flight to Minsk on Sunday.

The plane was brought to the Belarusian capital, under the pretence of a bomb scare, in order to arrest a wanted activist on board, Roman Protasevich.

Meeting in Brussels on Monday, the European Council - heads of state or government of all EU members - issued a memo demanding the "immediate release" of Protasevich and his girlfriend, Sofia Sapega, a Russian citizen. It also called on the International Civil Aviation Organization to investigate Sunday's incident, which it described as "unprecedented and unacceptable."

Comment: And this response from the UK - when in doubt, blame Russia! From RT:
A leading British parliamentarian has called for the blocking of the Russian-German Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline project, in response to the arrest of a Belarusian opposition activist on a plane diverted to Minsk on Sunday evening.

Tom Tugendhat, a Tory MP and chair of the foreign affairs committee in Westminster, also said the existing "Yamato" (sic) energy pipeline "must be frozen" in response to the arrest of Roman Protasevich in Minsk over the weekend. The most likely autocorrected name was a reference to the Yamal-Europe pipeline, which supplies Germany and Austria with natural gas from Russia, via Belarus and Poland.


Tugendhat was agreeing to and amplifying a suggestion by Polish MEP and former foreign minister Radek Sikorski - now a Harvard fellow - that stopping Nord Stream 2 "would be [the] simplest and best" move to sanction Russia, which he blamed for the incident.

Nord Stream 2 is a pipeline, under construction, running through the Baltic Sea from Russia to Germany, bypassing Poland and Ukraine. It is nearly complete, despite a years-long campaign of sanctions, obstruction and intimidation led by the US. Yamal-Europe passes through Belarus and Poland. It began operations in 1997, and reached its rated annual capacity in 2005.

Tugendhat argued that the pipeline is "where the money comes from that supports this tyrannous regime," according to British media.

UK Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab, Tugendhat's fellow Tory, responded that the government of Prime Minister Boris Johnson will "consider and consult" with partners on the question of Nord Stream 2.


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Better Earth

Syria's Assad wins 4th term with 95% of vote


Deutsche Welle
Thu, 27 May 2021 07:49 UTC
Assad has won another seven-year term with a vote share of 95.1%. The rather predictable official results are unlikely to quell criticism from the West.

Syrian President Bashar Assad

The official tally gave Assad 95.1% of the vote
Syrian President Bashar Assad won a fourth term in office with 95.1% of votes, the country's parliament speaker announced in a live conference on Thursday.

Hammoud Sabbagh also said voter turnout was 78.66%.

The Syrian government's official Twitter account posted: "The Syrians had their say. Bashar al-Assad wins the presidential elections of the Syrian Arab Republic after obtaining 95.1% of the votes inside and outside Syria."

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Whistle

Engdahl: Alarming casualty rates for mRNA vaccines warrant urgent action

F. William Engdahl
New Eastern Outlook
Wed, 19 May 2021 12:00 UTC
Εμβόλια mRNA
As official government data is emerging in Europe and the USA on the alarming numbers of deaths and permanent paralysis as well as other severe side effects from the experimental mRNA vaccines, it is becoming clear that we are being asked to be human guinea pigs in an experiment that could alter the human gene structure and far worse. While mainstream media ignores alarming data including death of countless healthy young victims, the politics of the corona vaccine is being advanced by Washington and Brussels along with WHO and the Vaccine Cartel with all the compassion of a mafia "offer you can't refuse."

Comment: See also: And check out SOTT radio's:

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NPC

Western media ignore AstraZeneca's call for more data on Covid-19 vaccine safety, cry 'Russian meddling' instead

Nebojsa Malic
RT
Wed, 26 May 2021 21:54 UTC
astrazeneca
© REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration
While breathlessly claiming a PR effort that "could be linked" to Russia, major Western outlets are turning a blind eye to the very real report, authored by AstraZeneca, asking for better standards of data about vaccine safety.

According to the French outlet Numerama, a "mystery agency" named Fazze has reached out to French social media influencers and offered them talking points to "denigrate" the Pfizer vaccine. However, Numerama stops short of accusing Russia of anything, saying merely that a LinkedIn search for Fazze found "only one employee, who claims to have done internships for Russian companies before," and that the campaign "echoes most of the arguments that the official Sputnik V vaccine account shares on Twitter."

Comment: See also: The Inanity of RNA Vaccines For COVID-19

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Rocket

The 'Missile Intifada' brings an era crashing down

Alastair Crooke
Strategic Culture Foundation
Mon, 24 May 2021 00:00 UTC
Iron dome streaks
© Fatima Shbair/Getty Images
Streaks through the sky left by Iron Dome system
The acclaimed novel Birdsong tells a story from inside the grueling trench warfare of 1914-18. The trenches - mere mud, and rain-soaked corridors - were separated from the German lines, by the desolate hell of 'no man's land' - an indescribable flat wilderness of mud, mud and more mud, littered with broken bits of what once were men, whose remains no one dared retrieve, and the surreal black art of coiled razor wire twisted out into every imaginable shape and angle.

Across this Hieronymus Bosch landscape, the Germans laid down rolling wave after wave of intense high explosive artillery shells sending plumes of earth high up into the sky. Yet, in counterpoint to this dark and demonic backdrop, Birdsong unfolds a story of human struggle, near death and deep compassion for injured friends. But at the core, it is a story about tunnels - those who dug them; those buried in them, as they fell in; and those who sprung out from them - as earth-worms rising - to surprise and kill the enemy.

Tunnels were the secret weapon of WW1. They were the answer to the merciless aerial bombardment unleashed by the crushing mass of a superior military machine. Battalions would enter the trenches 800 strong, and emerge after the barrage, with a mere 100-200 living men. Yet on they went - volunteers digging tunnels through the mud to rise, like ghosts, upon a sleeping enemy.

Comment: Israel must now face two new realities: Hamas has for a good measure outwitted the Israeli machine and the tide of here-to fore complacency around the world is awakening.

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