zaterdag 4 januari 2020

The Crazy Zionist State

Israel wants $150bn 

compensation for Jews 

who left Arab countries

Justice for Jews from Arab Countries claims some 856,000 Jews fled or were expelled from 10 Arab countries during the 1948 Palestinian Nakba

Israel is preparing to claim a total of $150 billion in compensation for the property of Jews who migrated from Arab countries to occupied Palestine, Israel Today has reported.
The process of estimating the property values started in 2002, the newspaper pointed out. It noted that the law to claim compensation for Arab Jews was passed by the Israeli parliament in 2010 as a condition of a regional peace deal; negotiations began with the Arab countries in 2017.
According to media reports, the compensation claimed will include assets from Iraq, Iran, Syria, Yemen, Egypt, Morocco, Tunisia and Libya. In January, Israel was reportedly planning to seek an estimated $250 billion from Arab countries after the government in Tel Aviv quietly conducted some research on the value of property and assets that the Jews left behind.
Justice for Jews from Arab Countries, an international parent group of Jewish organisations, claims that around 856,000 Jews from 10 Arab countries — including Algeria and Lebanon — fled or were expelled during the 1948 Nakba, when 800,000 Palestinians were expelled and 532 villages were destroyed by the creation of the State of Israel.
According to Russian broadcaster RT, former British MP George Galloway denounced the Israeli move for compensation. “Israel bombed and destroyed the nuclear reactors in Iraq some 25-30 years ago. Is Iraq going to be compensated by Israel for that?” the pro-Palestinian Galloway asked. “Israel occupied and has annexed a part of Syria — the Golan Heights — and it is harvesting oil there as we speak. Is Israel going to compensate Syria for that?”
Citing Libya and Iran as examples, he added that some of these countries have got funds frozen in the United Sates. “Israel could seek to claim these funds by going to US courts. The whole thing would be laughable if it were not for this fact.”
In the coming weeks, said Maan News Agency, it is expected that the compensation project will be presented to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Oekraïense Neo Nazi's


Deze week ontstond er in de VS opschudding vanwege de Hitlergroet. Dat was opmerkelijk, want de VS en de EU steunen al jarenlang het door en door corrupte Oekraïne, inclusief zijn neo-nazi-groeperingen, zoals de AZOV-Brigade.


West Virginia Corrections Dept. Will Institute Holocaust Training After Nazi Salute Photo
A spokesman said the Anti-Defamation League will aid in Holocaust-related training after cadets were fired for making a Nazi salute.
headshot
By Ja’han Jones

West Virginia plans to institute Holocaust-related training for its corrections department staff after a photo of cadets making a Nazi salute resulted in dozens of firings, officials told HuffPost.

The photo, first reported by local outlet WCHS-8 on Dec. 5, shows roughly 30 cadets at a corrections training academy making the “Heil Hitler” salute during a class photo. On Monday, West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice (R) approved recommendations that the cadets in the photo be fired, along with some academy staff who knew about it.

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Lawrence Messina, spokesman for the West Virginia Department of Military Affairs and Public Safety, which includes the corrections department, said officials have discussed Holocaust-related training with the regional director of the Anti-Defamation League and that a proposal from the ADL is in development.

Government employees working for West Virginia's Division of Corrections and Rehabilitation make a Nazi salute in a class pho
WCHS-TV/WCHS8
Government employees working for West Virginia’s Division of Corrections and Rehabilitation make a Nazi salute in a class photo that surfaced in December.
Messina did not clarify what the courses will entail, whether the courses will focus on modern-day anti-Semitism in addition to the Holocaust, or whether the training will address other forms of race- and ethnicity-based bigotry.

“He has kindly agreed to draft a proposal for the needed training and coursework, which will include education about the Holocaust,” Messina said of the ADL’s regional director.

Messina did not identify the director by name, but the current regional director of the Cleveland ADL, a branch serving West Virginia, Ohio, Kentucky and Western Pennsylvania, is James Pasch. The Cleveland ADL tweeted a statement from Pasch on Dec. 6 saying the regional office has been in contact with the corrections department “to offer ADL’s educational training and resources.”

The Cleveland ADL did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

aldus The Huffington Post. 


Maar nu de werkelijkheid in onze EU-partner Oekraïne:















Chris Hedges: War With Iran



War With Iran


Mr. Fish / Truthdig
The assassination by the United States of Gen. Qassem Soleimani, the head of Iran’s elite Quds Force, near Baghdad’s airport will ignite widespread retaliatory attacks against U.S. targets from Shiites, who form the majority in Iraq. It will activate Iranian-backed militias and insurgents in Lebanon and Syria and throughout the Middle East. The existing mayhem, violence, failed states and war, the result of nearly two decades of U.S. blunders and miscalculations in the region, will become an even wider and more dangerous conflagration. The consequences are ominous. Not only will the U.S. swiftly find itself under siege in Iraq and perhaps driven out of the country—there is only a paltry force of 5,200 U.S. troops in Iraq, all U.S. citizens in Iraq have been told to leave the country “immediately” and the embassy and consular services have been closed—but the situation could also draw us into a war directly with Iran. The American Empire, it seems, will die not with a whimper but a bang.
The targeting of Soleimani, who was killed by a MQ-9 Reaper drone that fired missiles into his convoy as he was leaving the Baghdad airport, also took the life of Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, the deputy commander of Iran-backed militias in Iraq known as the Popular Mobilization Forces, along with other Iraqi Shiite militia leaders. The strike may temporarily bolster the political fortunes of the two beleaguered architects of the assassination, Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, but it is an act of imperial suicide by the United States. There can be no positive outcome. It opens up the possibility of an Armageddon-type scenario relished by the lunatic fringes of the Christian right.
A war with Iran would see it use its Chinese-supplied anti-ship missiles, mines and coastal artillery to shut down the Strait of Hormuz, which is the corridor for 20% of the world’s oil supply. Oil prices would double, perhaps triple, devastating the global economy. The retaliatory strikes by Iran on Israel, as well as on American military installations in Iraq, would leave hundreds, maybe thousands, of dead. The Shiites in the region, from Saudi Arabia to Pakistan, would see an attack on Iran as a religious war against Shiism. The 2 million Shiites in Saudi Arabia, concentrated in the oil-rich Eastern province, the Shiite majority in Iraq and the Shiite communities in Bahrain, Pakistan and Turkey would turn in fury on us and our dwindling allies. There would be an increase in terrorist attacks, including on American soil, and widespread sabotage of oil production in the Persian Gulf. Hezbollah in southern Lebanon would renew attacks on northern Israel. War with Iran would trigger a long and widening regional conflict that, by the time it was done, would terminate the American Empire and leave in its wake mounds of corpses and smoldering ruins. Let us hope for a miracle to pull us back from this Dr. Strangelove self-immolation.
Iran, which has vowed “harsh retaliation,” is already reeling under the crippling economic sanctions imposed by the Trump administration when it unilaterally withdrew in 2018 from the Iranian nuclear arms deal. Tensions in Iraq between the U.S. and the Shiite majority, at the same time, have been escalating. On Dec. 27 Katyusha rockets were fired at a military base in Kirkuk where U.S. forces are stationed. An American civilian contractor was killed and several U.S. military personnel were wounded. The U.S. responded on Dec. 29 by bombing sites belonging to the Iranian-backed Kataib Hezbollah militia. Two days later Iranian-backed militias attacked the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, vandalizing and destroying parts of the building and causing its closure. But this attack will soon look like child’s play.


Iraq after our 2003 invasion and occupation has been destroyed as a unified country. Its once-modern infrastructure is in ruins. Electrical and water services are, at best, erratic. There is high unemployment and discontent over widespread government corruption that has led to bloody street protests. Warring militias and ethnic factions have carved out competing and antagonistic enclaves. At the same time, the war in Afghanistan is lost, as the Afghanistan Papers published by The Washington Post detail. Libya is a failed state. Yemen after five years of unrelenting Saudi airstrikes and a blockade is enduring one of the world’s worst humanitarian disasters. The “moderate” rebels we funded and armed in Syria at a cost of $500 million, after instigating a lawless reign of terror, have been beaten and driven out of the country. The monetary cost for this military folly, the greatest strategic blunder in American history, is between $5 trillion and $7 trillion.
So why go to war with Iran? Why walk away from a nuclear agreement that Iran did not violate? Why demonize a government that is the mortal enemy of the Taliban, along with other jihadist groups, including al-Qaida and Islamic State? Why shatter the de facto alliance we have with Iran in Iraq and Afghanistan? Why further destabilize a region already dangerously volatile?
The generals and politicians who launched and prosecuted these wars are not about to take the blame for the quagmires they created. They need a scapegoat. It is Iran. The hundreds of thousands of dead and maimed, including at least 200,000 civilians, and the millions driven from their homes into displacement and refugee camps cannot, they insist, be the result of our failed and misguided policies. The proliferation of radical jihadist groups and militias, many of which we initially trained and armed, along with the continued worldwide terrorist attacks, have to be someone else’s fault. The generals, the CIA, the private contractors and weapons manufacturers who have grown rich off these conflicts, the politicians such as George W. Bush, Barack Obama and Donald Trump, along with all the “experts” and celebrity pundits who serve as cheerleaders for endless war, have convinced themselves, and want to convince us, that Iran is responsible for our catastrophe.
The chaos and instability we unleashed in the Middle East, especially in Iraq and Afghanistan, left Iran as the dominant country in the region. Washington empowered its nemesis. It has no idea how to reverse its mistake other than to attack Iran.
Trump and Netanyahu, as well as Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, are mired in scandal. They believe a new war would divert attention from their foreign and domestic crises. But they have no more rational strategy for war with Iran than they did for the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Yemen and Syria. European allies, whom Trump alienated when he walked away from the Iranian nuclear agreement, will not cooperate with Washington if the U.S. goes to war with Iran. The Pentagon lacks the hundreds of thousands of troops it would need to attack and occupy Iran. And the Trump administration’s view that the marginal and discredited Iranian resistance group Mujahedeen-e-Khalq (MEK), which fought alongside Saddam Hussein in the war against Iran and is seen by most Iranians as composed of traitors, is a viable counterforce to the Iranian government is ludicrous.
International law, along with the rights of 80 million people in Iran, is ignored just as the rights of the peoples of Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Yemen and Syria were ignored. The Iranians, whatever they feel about their despotic regime, would not see the United States as allies or liberators. They do not want to be occupied. They would resist.
A war with Iran would be seen throughout the region as a war against Shiism. But these are calculations that the ideologues, who know little about the instrument of war and even less about the cultures or peoples they seek to dominate, cannot fathom. Attacking Iran would be no more successful than the Israeli airstrikes on Lebanon in 2006, which failed to break Hezbollah and united most Lebanese behind that militant group. The Israeli bombing did not pacify 4 million Lebanese. What will happen if we begin to pound a country of 80 million people whose land mass is three times the size of France?
The United States, like Israel, has become a pariah that shreds, violates or absents itself from international law. We launch preemptive wars, which under international law is defined as a “crime of aggression,” based on fabricated evidence. We, as citizens, must hold our government accountable for these crimes. If we do not, we will be complicit in the codification of a new world order, one that would have terrifying consequences. It would be a world without treaties, statutes and laws. It would be a world where any nation, from a rogue nuclear state to a great imperial power, would be able to invoke its domestic laws to annul its obligations to others. Such a new order would undo five decades of international cooperation—largely put in place by the United States—and thrust us into a Hobbesian nightmare. Diplomacy, broad cooperation, treaties and law, all the mechanisms designed to civilize the global community, would be replaced by savagery.
Chris Hedges, an Arabic speaker, is a former Middle East bureau chief for The New York Times. He spent seven years covering the region, including Iran. 

Trump’s unforced error, advantage neocons

Trump’s unforced error, advantage neocons (Video)

The Duran Quick Take: Episode 422.

The Duran’s Alex Christoforou discusses the decision to kill the chief of Iran’s elite Quds Force, Major General Qassem Soleimani, and PMF deputy commander Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis by a US drone at Baghdad’s airport.
Washington said that Soleimani was targeted in order to deter future attacks by Iran against US military personnel and citizens in Iraq and other places abroad. Now that the Trump White House has taken this action against an Iran state official, what happens next, in the escalating conflict between the US and Iran, is anyone’s guess.

The partisan situation in Washington DC has created a scenario where Donald Trump may be forced to do anything to hold on to power, even if that means setting the Middle East – and maybe the entire world – alight.
On Friday morning, the world held its breath as news circulated that the US military had carried out a targeted assassination against senior Iranian military commander Qassem Soleimani on Iraqi soil.
Soleimani was not killed on the battlefield amid a ‘glorious hail’ of gunfire, but was eliminated in a US drone strike as he was traveling in a car to Baghdad International Airport. In other words, yet another extrajudicial killing carried out by the US judge, jury and executioner in a part of the world few Americans could locate on a map.
As to be expected, the Democrats vented their fury at the killing, demanding to know why Trump had failed to seek congressional permission first. Apparently, Trump’s sworn enemies have already forgotten how Barack Obama set that unfortunate precedent back in 2012 when he indiscriminately bombed Libya back to the Stone Age without first consulting lawmakers.
Equally disturbing, however, is that the assassination was ordered by an anti-establishment American leader who had promised on the 2016 campaign trail to withdraw US military forces from hot spots around the globe. Trump sympathizers, however, could argue that an awful lot has happened in the last four years.
The pressure of partisan politics is showing
Would the United States and Iran be staring down the barrel of mutual mass destruction had Donald Trump not been under constant pressure from the Democrats since entering the White House in 2017?
Although it is exceedingly difficult to excuse cold-blooded murder for any reason, the history books hold many examples of desperate men going to desperate lengths in order to maintain their grip on the gold ring of power.
Consider, for example, the sordid story of former US President Bill Clinton, who was also hounded with the threat of impeachment over the Lewinsky affair.
On August 20, 1998, just weeks before Congress was set to vote on articles of impeachment against the philandering Democrat, Clinton ordered a cruise-missile attack on a Sudan factory on the grounds it was producing nerve gas for al-Qaeda. As it turned out, however, the destroyed factory was actually a pharmaceutical plant that employed thousands.
Werner Daum, the former German ambassador to Sudan, estimated that “several tens of thousands” of Sudanese civilians died as a result of a medicine shortage caused by that US military strike.
Ironically, the Hollywood film ‘Wag the Dog,’ which tells the story of a US president caught in a similar situation as Clinton’s, and the lengths he goes to distract public attention from his plight, was released just months before Clinton ordered the attack.
It appears that Donald Trump, no less than Bill Clinton, understands the ‘rally round the flag’ phenomenon, which says that public support increases for leaders during periods of international crisis or war. Not a very comforting thought, considering that the world is littered with weapons of mass destruction.
Presently, the entire globe is being held captive audience by the 2020 showdown, and the ending doesn’t look too promising. In fact, the rivalry may already have cost Qassem Soleimani his life, while exposing the planet to the risk of a global conflagration. Not the best way to kick off the New Year, to say the least.
Clearly, the American empire is experiencing a deep domestic political crisis that not only threatens the security and well-being of millions of Americans; it threatens the stability of the entire planet.


Nederland's Kabinet Wil Wel Deelnemen aan Oorlog tegen Iran

Zonder de volksvertegenwoordiging in Den Haag te hebben geraadpleegd besteedt het VVD/D'66/CDA kabinet miljoenen aan oorlogsvoorbereidingen in dePerzische Golf. De Telegraaf berichtte al eerder:


Ingewijden: we doen mee aan Franse missie

’Nederlands marineschip naar de Perzische Golf’


DEN HAAG - Nederland gaat toch een bijdrage leveren aan een missie om de vaarroutes in de Straat van Hormuz te beschermen. Dat gebeurt onder leiding van Frankrijk, melden ingewijden. Een marineschip gaat voor een periode van zes maanden. De missie moet in januari beginnen.


Het Amerikaanse vliegdekschip USS Abraham Lincoln in de straat van Hormuz, waar spanningen tussen Iran en de VS zijn.
Het Amerikaanse vliegdekschip USS Abraham Lincoln in de straat van Hormuz, waar spanningen tussen Iran en de VS zijn.
Volgens bronnen zal het kabinet vrijdag al het groene licht geven. De missie gaat vooral „waarnemen” en kost 10 tot 15 miljoen euro. Er wordt ook nog gekeken of de Europese Unie op de een of andere manier haar zegen kan geven aan de missie waarvan het hoofdkwartier een Franse marinebasis in Abu Dhabi zal zijn.

Naast Frankrijk en Nederland zou Denemarken ook al toegezegd hebben mee te doen. Tot tien Europese en niet-Europese landen zouden er aan mee kunnen doen, aldus de Fransen. Groot-Brittannië doet niet mee. Die werken al samen met de Amerikanen in dit gebied. De zeestraat is cruciaal voor de toevoer van olie.
In mei en juni werden olietankers in de Straat van Hormuz aangevallen. Volgens de Amerikanen door Iran, maar dat land ontkende. De VS vroeg vervolgens een aantal landen waaronder Nederland mee te doen aan een operatie om daar de scheepvaart te beschermen. Nederland zag uiteindelijk meer in een Europese missie, maar de EU-landen kwamen er niet uit. Daarom wordt het nu een missie onder Frans bevel.
Onder Nederlandse defensiespecialisten bestond grote weerstand tegen een Amerikaanse missie. De vrees was dat Europa in een oorlog ’gerommeld’ zou kunnen worden bij een escalatie tussen de VS en Iran.

Twee andere missies niet

De afgelopen maanden is het rustig in de Straat van Hormuz en zijn er geen schepen meer aangevallen. De Britse regering heeft het dreigingsniveau voor schepen die varen onder Britse vlag in de Straat van Hormuz verlaagd. De schepen kunnen „spoedig de Straat van Hormuz doorvaren zonder naaste begeleiding van de Royal Navy”, zei een regeringswoordvoerder eerder deze maand tegen persbureau Reuters.
Op twee andere missies waarvoor een verzoek om een bijdrage te leveren is binnengekomen, gaat Nederland niet in, aldus bronnen. Een bijdrage voor het noorden van Syrië komt er niet. Naar verluidt komt de Amerikaanse regering hiervoor met een nieuw voorstel. Verder ligt er een verzoek van de Fransen voor een multinationale trainingsmissie in Mali. De missie moet in het grensgebied van Burkina-Faso, Niger en Mali de Malinese strijdkrachten ondersteunen met training, advisering en begeleiding. Hiervoor werden enkele tientallen special forces gevraagd aan het kabinet. Ook op deze aanvraag zegt het kabinet nee.





Peter Flik en Chuck Berry-Promised Land

mijn unieke collega Peter Flik, die de vrijzinnig protestantse radio omroep de VPRO maakte is niet meer. ik koester duizenden herinneringen ...