Hidden History -- In The Making

“NO NO, WE’RE STARVING SICK KIDS!” IS A WINNING ARGUMENT ACCORDING TO ISRAELI APOLOGISTS

Israel Is Killing Disabled Kids Depriving Them Of Food And Medical Care, And Its Defenders Are Claiming This Makes Israel Look Like The Heroes Not The Villains.

Some people will probably spend the foreseeable future periodically reminding the world that when everyone was angry at Israel for starving children in Gaza, Israel’s apologists spent days loudly proclaiming that no, they were actually just starving sick children.

As their defense they said this. They actually believed this helped their case.

Let’s go back a bit.

On Wednesday, The New York Times posted an editor’s note on an article it had published the previous Friday which included a horrifying photo of an emaciated child named Mohammed Zakaria al-Mutawaq. Caving to pressure from Zionists and influence ops like the Israeli propaganda outlet HonestReporting, the Times went out of its way to clarify that al-Mutawaq “had pre-existing health problems,” which Israel apologists instantly and predictably spun as proof that the media are lying about Israel starving Gaza.

Former Israeli prime minister Naftali Bennet claimed that The New York Times was guilty of “a blood libel in 2025.”

Israeli media outlets like The Times of Israel, The Jerusalem Post, i24 News, YNET and Israel Hayom went ballistic, as did Jewish News Syndicate.

“New York Times stunningly rolls back claims about viral photo of starving Gaza boy,” reads a New York Post headline.

“New York Times admits using misleading cover photo of emaciated Gaza child,” blared Fox News.

“NYT Adds Sick Editors’ Note to Viral Photo of Child Starving in Gaza,” proclaimed The New Republic.

Conservative pundit Glenn Beck threw a furious fit.

AIPAC hilariously accused the notoriously pro-Israel New York Times of being “instinctively against Israel”.

Israel apologists like David Frum, Gad Saad, Brianna Wu, Eyal Yakoby, Eylon Levy, Batya Ungar-Sargon, Eli David, Stephen L Miller, David Collier, Noah Pollak, and John Podhoretz went nuts on Twitter.

“They quietly added an editor’s note, but the lie already went global,” tweeted the Israel Foreign Ministry account.

Zionist billionaire Bill Ackman said that Israel should sue The New York Times and other outlets for libel.

CNN’s Scott Jennings tweeted that the photo was evidence that a “propaganda mission” had been fulfilled.

And it was all complete bull. All of it.

Any expert in the field will tell you that the first people likely to die in any famine will be young children, the elderly, and people with chronic health problems. Mohammed Zakaria al-Mutawaq is two of the three. Israel apologists are citing obvious evidence that Gaza is being starved and claiming it’s evidence that Gaza is not being starved, and bizarrely acting as though sick children being starved to death makes Israel look better instead of worse.

An independent fact-checking platform called Misbar reports the following:

“Misbar interviewed Hedaya al-Mutawaq, the mother of 19-month-old Mohammed Zakaria al-Mutawaq, and found Israeli claims about her son’s condition to be misleading.

“‘My son Mohammed was born in December 2023, during the war, without any chronic illnesses,’ Hedaya told Misbar. ‘Doctors diagnosed him with macrocephaly, which they said was caused by nutritional deficiencies during pregnancy due to the Israeli war.’

“She emphasized that Mohammed was healthy and of normal weight at birth. ‘Over the past four months of displacement, his condition worsened due to the severe shortage of food. That is when he developed acute malnutrition.’

Misbar included a photo of Mohammed which his mother provided, showing a healthy-looking infant prior to Israel’s increased starvation campaign.

So Israel is killing disabled kids using siege warfare to deprive them of food and medical care, and its defenders are claiming this makes Israel look like the heroes in this story rather than the villains. It takes a special kind of psychopathy to think this is a winning argument.

This isn’t even the only time they’ve done this.

The other day Israel’s official Twitter account tried to claim that a photo of a dead skeletal man proves people are sharing disinformation about Israel, because it turns out the man had untreated diabetes. Back in December 2023, Human Rights Watch published an article titled “Gaza Blockade Puts People with Diabetes at Risk.”

Israel’s COGAT account tweeted that “Hamas is using photos of sick children to push the ‘starvation’ narrative and blame Israel” by pointing out that a starving 14 year-old child in a photograph actually has “a genetic disease.”

They’re actually trying to argue that people with chronic illness suffering under a siege more than healthy people is evidence of their innocence, rather than the normal thing you’d expect to be seeing at this point if Israel was intentionally starving a civilian population.

This is a new level of disgusting, in two years of record-shattering levels of disgusting.

Don’t expect that some of us will ever let Israel’s supporters live this one down, and this should include you.

FALSE CLAIMS WERE PEDDLED BY RUSSIAGATE’S ARCHITECTS TO SUPPRESS DOUBTS ABOUT ITS CLAIMS

According To Newly Declassified Documents, American Intelligence Leaders Concealed High-Level Doubts About One Of Russiagate’s Foundational Allegations.

The claim was that Russia stole and leaked Democratic Party material to help Trump defeat Hillary Clinton.

Although Robert Mueller failed to find an election conspiracy between Donald Trump and Moscow, the former Special Counsel threw a lifeline to the Russiagate narrative by alleging that the Kremlin had engaged in a “sweeping and systematic” effort to get Trump elected and “sow discord” among Americans.

Six years later, that questionable but enduring claim continues to unravel.

According to newly declassified documents, American intelligence leaders concealed high-level doubts about one of Russiagate’s foundational allegations: that Russia stole and leaked Democratic Party material to help Trump defeat Hillary Clinton. In a September 2016 report that was never made public until now, the NSA and the FBI broke with their intelligence counterparts and expressed “low confidence” in the attribution to Russia.

The previously undisclosed dissent about Russia’s alleged hacking activities in the 2016 election is among several revelations released last week by Tulsi Gabbard, Trump’s Director of National Intelligence. According to Gabbard, President Obama and senior members of his cabinet “manufactured and politicized intelligence” in its waning months to wage “a years-long coup against President Trump.”

Gabbard’s material adds to a body of evidence previously reported by RealClearInvestigations that challenges the widely parroted claim about the quality of evidence and the extent of Russian “interference operations” in the 2016 election. These conclusions – based on questionable assertions presented as hard facts – have been falsely portrayed as an intelligence consensus. When Trump, the nation’s commander-in-chief, cast doubt on the Russian interference allegations in a July 2018 news conference, former CIA chief John Brennan denounced him as “nothing short of treasonous.”

It turns out that Trump was not out of sync with the American intelligence community he was accused of betraying.

“LOW CONFIDENCE” IN CORE ALLEGATION

Until now, the purported American intelligence consensus on Russian meddling has been conveyed to the public in three seminal reports.

The first was a January 2017 intelligence community assessment (ICA) released in the final days of the Obama administration under the direction of Brennan and then-Director of National Intelligence James Clapper. The ICA accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of ordering an “influence campaign” to “denigrate” Democratic candidate Clinton and “help” Trump win the 2016 election. Some of this effort involved propaganda on Russian media outlets and messaging on social media.

The larger component hinged on the allegation that the GRU, Russia’s main intelligence agency, stole emails and documents from the Democratic Party and released that material principally via two online entities, DCLeaks and Guccifer 2.0, as well as the whistleblower organization WikiLeaks. Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, has long denied that Russia or any other state actor was his source. Nevertheless, the January 2017 ICA stated that American intelligence had “high confidence” that Russia engineered the hack.

The Mueller report, issued more than two years later, advanced the ICA’s claims with even more confidence and specificity. A bipartisan Senate intelligence review, released in August 2020, endorsed the ICA and Mueller reports and was widely treated as a vindication of the conduct of the intelligence officials behind them.

The documents newly declassified by Gabbard show that the ICA, Mueller, and Senate reports all excluded the intelligence community’s own secretly identified doubts and evidentiary gaps on the core allegation of Russian meddling.

In a previously unpublished Intelligence Community Assessment circulated within the government on Sept. 12^th, 2016 (hereafter “September ICA”), the FBI and NSA expressed “low confidence” that Russia was behind the hack and release of Democratic Party emails. American intelligence agencies, the report explained, “lack sufficient technical details” to link the stolen Democratic Party material released by WikiLeaks and other sources “to Russian state-sponsored actors.”

The joint FBI-NSA dissent was especially significant given their central role in investigating Russia’s alleged cyber meddling. With its sweeping foreign surveillance capability, the NSA is the agency best positioned to assess the source of the alleged hacking of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC). Meanwhile, the FBI had taken the lead in probing the cyber-theft and release of stolen material from the Democratic Party networks. The private acknowledgment that these two agencies did not have the “technical” data to link the hacking to Russia bolsters longstanding criticism, overlooked by legacy media, that the “Russian interference” allegations lacked supporting evidence.

Contrary to subsequent assertions, the September ICA shows that the American intelligence community had no hard evidence that Putin ordered the theft of Democratic Party material as part of an influence campaign to help Trump.

“If the disclosures of the DNC and DCCC documents were indeed orchestrated by the Russian intelligence services,” the report stated, “those services would very likely have sought Putin’s approval for the operation.” This passage indicates that American intelligence had declined to endorse assertions promoted by Brennan and leaked to the media during Trump’s first term, that a highly placed Kremlin mole had captured Putin’s orders to meddle in the 2016 election in support of Trump. The alleged mole was later identified as a mid-level Kremlin official named Oleg Smolenkov, who left Russia to live in the Virginia suburbs under his own name.

ISRAEL’S GAZA WAR IS ‘DESTRUCTION OF A CIVILIZATION’ SAYS NORWEGIAN AID CHIEF

Israel’s Military Operation In Gaza Is No Longer A War Against Militants But Has Become A “Destruction Of A Civilization,” A Top Aid Official Said.

Israel’s military operation in Gaza is no longer a war against militants but has become a “destruction of a civilization,” a top aid official said, warning that time is running out to prevent a “biblical famine” in the besieged enclave.

In an interview on Tuesday, Jan Egeland, secretary general of the Norwegian Refugee Council, said Israel’s continued bombardment and restrictions on aid access have left Gaza’s civilian population, particularly women and children, to suffer the consequences of a conflict they had no part in.

“What I see is that, as a military conflict, it was all over a long time ago,” Egeland said. “This is not targeted anti-terrorist warfare, it’s the destruction of a civilization now.”

The veteran humanitarian said there are no justifications for the war on Gaza, which has killed more than 60,000 people and pushed the enclave’s population of 2.2 million to the brink of famine.

“Hamas has a million sins on their conscience … but those dying (and) bleeding have nothing to do with Hamas. These are women and children. They had nothing to do with Oct. 7,” he said, calling for an immediate ceasefire and an urgent and large-scale opening of Gaza’s border crossings to allow full access for aid groups.

Egeland’s remarks come amid growing international pressure on Israel to ease restrictions and allow humanitarian aid into Gaza, as malnutrition-related deaths continue to rise. During a Saudi-French conference on Tuesday, UN experts confirmed that large areas of the enclave are now experiencing full-scale famine.

Israel has responded with efforts to increase aid deliveries including a temporary pause in military operations, partial openings of humanitarian corridors, and aid airdrops.

Egeland, however, said such efforts are not enough “to avert a biblical famine on our watch,” criticizing the air drops and temporary corridors for offering little relief to a starving population.

While he welcomed the shifting stances of President Donald Trump, UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer, and other Western leaders who finally recognized the widespread starvation gripping the Palestinian territory, Egeland emphasized that the solution to avert the crisis ultimately rests with them.

“It is Israel and the Western powers that provide the arms to all of this that have to change this. They have the fingerprint all over this catastrophe really. We can change it. It’s still possible.”

Despite the mounting death toll and near-total collapse of humanitarian infrastructure, Egeland said the international community still has a chance to avert the worst — but only if it acts immediately and decisively.

“It has to be a massive ramp up. And time is running out,” he warned.

On Monday, in a meeting with Starmer, Trump acknowledged that there is “real starvation” in Gaza. The British prime minister announced the following day that the UK will recognize a Palestinian state in September unless Israel takes significant steps to end the “appalling situation” in Gaza and meets other conditions.

Egeland said Western leaders were finally acknowledging warnings that aid agencies had been raising for months.

“These capitals have known so, because we told them for many months, I’m glad it’s — there is a wakeup call now. It is very late,” he said.

Addressing the humanitarian catastrophe, the NRC chief noted the collapse of the food and health sectors, saying that people were dying from preventable disease and lack of water and sanitation.

He said his NGO has been finding it impossible to provide the basic services of water, sanitation and shelter due to the total depletion of fuel and continued restrictions.

The organization, he noted, is “still denied access for our water and sanitation hygiene items, our food and our tents.”

The aid chief paid tribute to the resilience of his Palestinian colleagues in Gaza, describing them as “real heroes” who have endured repeated displacement, hunger, and profound personal loss while continuing their humanitarian work.

“If there is anyone I would give the Nobel Peace Prize to, I would give it to my colleagues on the ground, Palestinian, in Gaza, the single mothers who are also aid workers.

“But they’re really broken now, after all of these months of starvation, all of these months of having their homes destroyed.”

THOSE WHO SUPPORT GENOCIDE BY APOLOGIZING FOR ISRAEL THINK LYING IS FINE

Israel Apologists Use Language The Same Way Malignant Narcissists Do. It’s Never To Communicate Or Connect Or Find Out What’s True, It’s Always To Manipulate And Get What They Want.

Not one person sincerely believes Israel isn’t starving Gaza. Everyone knows it is, including the people who are saying it isn’t. They’re just throwing a bunch of language at it in an effort to keep the west supporting Israel’s genocide.

Israel’s official Twitter account is currently trying to claim that a photo of a dead skeletal man proves people are sharing disinformation about Israel, because it turns out the man had diabetes. Back in December 2023, Human Rights Watch published an article titled “Gaza Blockade Puts People with Diabetes at Risk.” It’s a well-documented fact that the first people to die in a famine are always small children and people with health problems, and yet the main hasbara arguments today are “Why is it always the children dying and not the healthy adults?” and “This person already had health problems!”

Just this morning someone on Twitter showed pictures which they claimed proves Gaza is not currently starving, and the pictures were from the West Bank.

Before that another hasbarist responded to footage that was shared of far right Israelis blocking aid trucks into Gaza saying, “the trucks have been stopped because they are full of weapons heading to Hamas.” When he was called out for lying he said “why not? you all take AI produced photos and videos and run on the narrative that they are real.” Neither of these statements are true. He knew he was lying, and he didn’t care.

They do this all the time. They lie and lie and lie and lie and lie. They are not normal people. They do not use language the same way normal people do.

Which should come as no surprise to anyone. If you’d support a genocide, of course you’d be willing to lie in order to justify it. If your moral line isn’t drawn before genocide, of course it’s not going to be drawn before lying either.

Another, more heartening, thing seen on Twitter today was Israel apologists talking to each other about how their PR is failing and the media aren’t helping them.

“Israel needs a PR Iron Dome. It’s a matter of national security,” tweeted one.

“Our Hasbara isn’t working,” responded another. “We sit in a bubble of confirmation bias preaching to each other about things we know already. We’re not spreading the truth and we’re not coming up with any solutions to it. We really suck at this and we’re being too stupid to see our way out of it.”

“I have been saying they need a new army unit dedicated to just this (and combatting misinformation and disinformation),” said someone else.

In a separate conversation, another hasbarist admonishing his peers to “stop saying Israel is doing bad PR” and calling on Jewish billionaires to start paying influencers to promote Israeli information interests.

You should find all this both encouraging and hilarious. They’re losing control of the narrative, and they know it.

A favorite is the “we need a PR Iron Dome” one, because what could that possibly look like that Israel doesn’t already have? Lobby groups? Think tanks? Paid influencers? Online shills? A wildly sympathetic and some would say sycophantic mainstream press? How much more narrative control could Israel and its supporters possibly have?

And how revealing is it that simply ending the genocide never at any time enters the conversation? The world hates Israel because Israel is committing genocide, but they never see that as the problem — they see bad PR about the genocide as the problem. The problem isn’t that we’re doing genocide, the problem is that we’re not using the right words to explain why the genocide is good.

Again, these are not normal people. There’s got to be something seriously wrong with you as a person to keep supporting Israel in the year 2025.

LEARN WHAT AMERICANS DO NOT UNDERSTAND ABOUT IRAN

After Decades Of Diplomatic Whiplash, Even Moderates In Tehran Have Stopped Trusting Western Promises. For Centuries, Iran Has Lived Under The Shadow Of Invasion, Betrayal, And Isolation.

When Iranian officials were preparing for the sixth round of negotiations with their American counterparts over the country’s nuclear program, Israel launched a surprise military strike. Rather than condemning the attack, the United States and Europe stood by — or even applauded. The German Chancellor framed it as “the dirty work Israel is doing for all of us.” This moment only reinforced what Iranian leaders have long believed: that the world demands their surrender — and leaves them alone, at constant risk of betrayal and invasion.

Unless the West begins to understand Iranian history — and the mindset it has created among Iranian leaders — it will continue to misread Tehran’s actions. What often looks like aggression or stubbornness from the outside is, in the minds of Iranian decision-makers, an act of defense grounded in deep national memory.

For centuries, Iran has lived under the shadow of invasion, betrayal, and isolation. And every chapter of its modern history has only reinforced the same conclusion for its leaders: no matter who sits at Iran’s end of the negotiating table — be it a reformist, a moderate, or a hardliner — Iran must rely only on itself. It’s not a question of paranoia. It’s a survival instinct.

This sense of siege didn’t begin in 2025 with the Israeli attacks, or even in 1980 with Saddam’s invasion. Iran has been shaped by trauma stretching back over a thousand years: Alexander the Great’s conquest of Persia in the 4th century BC, the Arab conquest in the 7th century, the Mongol invasions in the 13th century, and repeated Turkic and Central Asian assaults. In more recent centuries, it lost territory in the Russo-Persian wars and was occupied by Allied forces in both world wars, even though it had declared neutrality in both. Again and again, Iran has faced foreign troops on its soil. And each time, no one came to help.

That deep historical scar tissue explains the decisions of Iranian leaders more than any speech ever could. It’s why they see military self-reliance not as aggression, but as insurance. It’s why they view diplomacy with suspicion, and why even moderates in Tehran are hesitant to trust Western intentions.

In the contemporary era, there have been at least four major betrayals by the United States that continue to underscore Iran’s fear of foreign duplicity.

First, the 1953 coup against Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh, backed by the CIA and MI6. Mossadegh was democratically elected and sought to engage with the United States as a counterbalance to British colonial influence. The American regime responded by orchestrating his overthrow, primarily to protect British oil interests.

Second, after the 9/11 attacks, Iran secretly assisted the United States in its campaign against the Taliban — providing intelligence, cooperating with anti-Taliban forces, and supporting the post-war settlement in Afghanistan. Just weeks later, it was branded part of President George W. Bush’s “Axis of Evil.”

The third betrayal involves the 2015 nuclear deal, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). Iran agreed to the strictest nuclear inspections regime in history. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) confirmed its compliance 15 times between 2016 and 2018. Yet in 2018, President Donald Trump unilaterally withdrew from the deal and reimposed crippling sanctions, more severe than those that existed before the agreement.

Fourth, the most recent and perhaps most consequential betrayal came in June 2025. After five rounds of talks between Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi and American Special Envoy Steve Witkoff — mediated by Oman — a sixth round was scheduled. Both sides held firm positions but remained at the table. Iran sought recognition of its right to enrich uranium for peaceful purposes. The American regime ultimately demanded zero enrichment on Iranian soil. Despite the impasse, cautious progress was being made, based on comments from both sides after each round of talks.

Then, on the morning of June 13^th, 2025 — just two days before the next round — Israeli forces launched an unprecedented assault on Iran, striking nuclear sites and killing civilians. Senior scientists and military commanders were among the casualties. These weren’t symbolic warning shots. They were hard, coordinated blows, timed to derail diplomacy.

But Israel didn’t act alone.

While the initial Israeli attack was unilateral, American strikes soon followed. American stealth bombers dropped 30,000-pound bunker-buster bombs on Fordow and Natanz. Days earlier, President Trump called for Iran’s “unconditional surrender.” After the strikes, he publicly praised the operation, declared it a success, and warned that Iran “should make peace or face more attacks,” adding that “there are many targets left” if Iran refused to relinquish key parts of its nuclear program.

In Tehran, it’s not irrational to believe that the American regime’s diplomatic engagement was never intended to succeed. The negotiations had been real, but the intentions behind them now look suspect. For Iranian leaders, the lesson seemed unmistakable: the West may speak the language of dialogue, but it acts in the language of force and violence.

So, what should the West expect now?

It doesn’t matter who rules Iran. The leadership — regardless of name or face, whether wearing a crown, a turban, or a tie — shares a foundational belief: the West cannot be trusted to keep its word, honor its deals, or respect Iranian sovereignty.

This mindset long predates the Islamic Republic. Both Reza Shah and his son Mohammad Reza Shah — who came to power with at least the tacit support of Western powers — remained deeply skeptical of foreign governments and consistently questioned their intentions. That posture didn’t end with the 1979 revolution; it was only reinforced and has gained broader consensus across the political spectrum.

This doesn’t mean Iran is inflexible or incapable of negotiation. But its starting point is not trust, it’s caution. That caution has only deepened over time, especially as the West repeatedly turns to what it calls “alternatives” to diplomacy. Each time that happens, those inside Iran who oppose negotiations gain the upper hand.

This mindset may frustrate Western diplomats. But ignoring it leads to policies doomed to fail. If the West wants a different outcome with Iran, it must stop pretending it’s engaging with a blank slate. History walks into every room before a single word is spoken. And for Iran, history keeps saying the same thing: you are alone, so act accordingly.

Until that narrative is disrupted — not with airstrikes, but with sustained, credible commitments — Iran’s leaders will continue to do exactly what history taught them to do: resist.

HOW ISRAEL BECAME ONE OF THE WORLD’S WORST ROGUE STATES

Despite propaganda to the contrary, Israel is not a democracy and never has been and if the Jewish leadership has it’s way it never will be.

As an integral part of its ongoing propaganda, Israel, along with its fervent supporters and legions of paid and anonymous agents, zealously repeats and disseminates – in the media, on university campuses, in blogs and comment sections, at conferences and more – the same old, tired Zionist myths.

Propaganda guides and tool kits, such as the “global language dictionary”, offer ready made arguments and counter-arguments to sell Israel to journalists and critics. Such talking points come with tips on what tone and rhetorical tactics to use, what words and formulas “work”, and how to discuss “sensitive” issues, such as Israel’s illegal colonization and annexation of Palestinian land, Jewish settlements and the killing of civilians.

All of which are now set to get worse since US President Donald Trump has both rewarded and emboldened Israel by recognizing its illegal and brutal colorization (its “settlements”). By the same token he has offered yet another spectacular demonstration of the complete contempt of the United States for the rule of international law.

Setting such an example will only send the message to all the despots, autocrats and tyrants of various stripes around the globe that not only it is ok to steal, colonize, and brutalize weak and defenseless populations, but that you may even be rewarded by the West for adopting the “law of the jungle”.

The media is saturated with uplifting news about the “Israeli economic miracle”, its wealth and high living standards, and its thriving startup and high-tech industry. But have you ever heard from a mainstream Western media outlet or politician that a fifth of Israelis live below the poverty line, that people are forced to look through rubbish for food to avoid starving, or that Israel has (according to the Jerusalem Post) the highest poverty rate in the developed world?

The answer is most likely not, and we should ask ourselves why. Other lies propagated by Israel’s disinformation machine include origin myths, the most famous being the romantic theme of Palestine as “a land without a people for a people without a land”, which strangely persists, despite its historical absurdity. Israel relies a lot on ignorance and gullibility. Which probably explains why so many of those on Facebook support the Israeli regime.

Learn More At: http://alturl.com/y9t94

SYRIA SLAMS US MEDDLING IN THE SYRIAN CONSTITUTION COMMITTEE TALKS

The Syrian Ministry of Foreign Affairs slammed the regime of Donald Trump for its attempts to interfere in the internal affairs of other countries.

This came after the US State Department issued a statement to interfere in the works of the Syrian Constitution Committees deliberations in Geneva.

A spokesperson for the ministry said to the Syrian official news agency SANA ‘the dialogue is a Syrian-Syrian one and no one has the right to interfere in it or support any party under any pretext.’ The spokesperson outlined that the role of the United Nations represented by its special envoy Geir Pederson is limited to facilitating the committees’ discussions only and does not interfere in the contents. Earlier, the US State Department issued a statement accusing the Syrian delegation to the Geneva talks to discuss amendments to the Syrian constitution of impeding the talks by placing obstacles.

The Syrian delegation asked the Turkish delegation to set the principles on Syria’s sovereignty and territorial integrity before discussing less important details in the constitution, the delegation sent by the Turkish regime of the madman Erdogan rejected to set such a principle. Erdogan Regime Delegation threw a tantrum, refused to even enter the meeting hall, and issued its rejection via media, violating the agreed-upon Code of Conduct, similar to Erdogan-the-Guarantor consistent breach of the de-escalation zones in Syria.

Observers following the talks referred their rejections to the conflict of interest it would cause with their sponsor carrying out an illegal incursion of northern Syria.

The condemnation by the Syrian Ministry of Foreign Affairs was expected, firstly, it’s a blatant attempt by the US to achieve in politics and diplomatic pressure what it failed by sponsoring terrorist groups in Syria and by direct invasion, secondly, it’s the same US regime that its officials have been crying non-stop for the past 3 years over alleged Russian interference in their own ‘democratical’ system claiming that some accounts from Russia bought Facebook ads worth of around US$ 3000(!) which placed Donald Trump as the president of the USA!

It’s the same regime that spent hundreds of billions of dollars directly and through its regional slaves to topple yet another legitimate government in the region and this time in Syria, and replace the elected officials with planted puppets.

Learn More At: http://alturl.com/jp295

HONG KONG –– PURE WESTERN INSANITY

The impunity with which the US engages in aggression Hong Kong is insane. Equally or more insane is western media coverage of what is going on in Hong Kong.

Not one word on how the incredible “pro-democracy” vote of the rather unimportant District Council Elections was achieved. Of the 18 District Councils, 452 of 479 seats (71%) went to “pro-democracy” candidates. Such an extreme anti-Beijing vote could only be obtained by massive western propaganda at the cost of millions of dollars, targeted with algorithms, developed on the principles of the now (apparently) defunct Cambridge Analytica. And this with 70% of eligible voters going to the polls.

None of this practically non-realistic result was analyzed by the west and reported on. In reality, the vast majority of Hong Kongers is sick and tired of the western inspired violence, but are very much proud of being Chinese citizens. They were told by the propagandists that voting for ‘democracy’ candidates was the way to bring peace. And Peace is what everyone wants. After all, integrated into China in 1997, they have enjoyed much more freedom than under British colonialism, where they were not even allowed to vote for their district councils.

The absurdity does not stop here. The US Congress has recently passed legislation that would allow the US monitoring ‘democracy’ and human rights in Hong Kong, the so called “Human Rights and Democracy Act”, with the caveat of imposing sanctions, if Beijing would transgress on the US imposed rules. Can you imagine? Can anyone imagine this overarching arrogance?

The US Congress passing legislation to control another foreign territory? And the west goes along with it. It may happen soon in Europe too that the US dictates what sovereign nations are allowed to do and not to do. It is already happening. The US prohibits Europe to do business with whom they want – i.e. Iran, if not, they are being punished. No comments. It’s just the new normal. In the case of Hong Kong, Beijing has protested, called the US Ambassador twice to discuss the matter – to no avail.

It gets even more ludicrous. Madame Michelle Bachelet, High Commissioner of the UN Human Rights Commission in Geneva, has published in the Saturday issue of the South China Morning Post an article seeking full and “independent and impartial judge-led investigation” into police conduct at protests as part of confidence-building measures. The statement in itself already takes sides, as it does in no way address the foreigninspired violence of protesters, who, for example, are using a university campus to build Molotov-type bombs and other incendiary devices. The Chinese Government immediately rebuked the article accusing Ms. Bachelet of further inflaming ‘radical violence’.

Essentially, the protest leaders want total independence from Beijing and become a US colony. They should look at Puerto Rico, what it means to be a US colony, what Washington has in store for its colonies. Or closer to their own history, they should look at their UK colonial past – and remember their state of oppression, the almost zero rights they had then.

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BETRAYING THE US CONSTITUTION: WHO WILL PROTECT US FROM AN UNPATRIOTIC PATRIOT ACT?

“It is the responsibility of the patriot to protect his country from its government.”—Thomas Paine

While Congress subjects the nation to its impeachment-flavored brand of bread-and-circus politics, our civil liberties continue to die a slow, painful death by a thousand cuts.

Case in point: while Americans have been fixated on the carefully orchestrated impeachment drama that continues to monopolize headlines, Congress passed and President Trump signed into law legislation extending three key provisions of the USA Patriot Act, which had been set to expire on December 15, 2019.

Once again, to no one’s surprise, the bureaucrats on both sides of the aisle—Democrats and Republicans alike—prioritized political grandstanding over principle and their oath of office to protect and defend the Constitution.

As Congressman Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) predicted:

“Today, while everyone is distracted by the impeachment drama, Congress will vote to extend warrantless data collection provisions of the #PatriotAct, by hiding this language on page 25 of the Continuing Resolution (CR) that temporarily funds the government. To sneak this through, Congress will first vote to suspend the rule which otherwise gives us (and the people) 72 hours to consider a bill. The scam here is that Democrats are alleging abuse of Presidential power, while simultaneously reauthorizing warrantless power to spy on citizens that no President should have… in a bill that continues to fund EVERYTHING the President does… and waiving their own rules to do it. I predict Democrats will vote on a party line to suspend the 72 hour rule. But after the rule is suspended, I suspect many Republicans will join most Democrats to pass the CR with the Patriot Act extension embedded in it.”

Massie was right: Republicans and Democrats have no problem joining forces in order to maintain their joint stranglehold on power.

The legislation passed the Senate with a bipartisan 74-to-20 vote. It squeaked through the House of Representatives with a 231-192 margin. And it was signed by President Trump— who earlier this year floated the idea of making the government’s surveillance powers permanent—with nary a protest from anyone about its impact on the rights of the American people.

Spending bill or not, it didn’t have to shake down this way, even with the threat of yet another government shutdown looming.

Congress could have voted to separate the Patriot Act extension from the funding bill, as suggested by Rep. Justin Amash, but that didn’t fly. Instead as journalist Norman Solomon writes for Salon, “The cave-in was another bow to normalizing the U.S. government’s mass surveillance powers.”

That, right there, is the key to all of this: normalizing the U.S. government’s mass surveillance powers.

In the 18 years since the USA Patriot Act—a massive 342-page wish list of expanded powers for the FBI and CIA—was rammed through Congress in the wake of the so-called 9/11 terror attacks, it has snowballed into the eradication of every vital safeguard against government overreach, corruption and abuse.

The Patriot Act drove a stake through the heart of the Bill of Rights, violating at least six of the ten original amendments—the First, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, Seventh and Eighth Amendments—and possibly the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments, as well

The Patriot Act also redefined terrorism so broadly that many non-terrorist political activities such as protest marches, demonstrations and civil disobedience are now considered potential terrorist acts, thereby rendering anyone desiring to engage in protected First Amendment expressive activities as suspects of the surveillance state.

The Patriot Act justified broader domestic surveillance, the logic being that if government agents knew more about each American, they could distinguish the terrorists from law-abiding citizens—no doubt a reflexive impulse shared by small-town police and federal agents alike.

This, according to Washington Post reporter Robert O’Harrow, Jr., was a fantasy that “had been brewing in the law enforcement world for a long time.” And 9/11 provided the government with the perfect excuse for conducting far-reaching surveillance and collecting mountains of information on even the most law-abiding citizen.

Federal agents and police officers are now authorized to conduct covert black bag “sneakand-peak” searches of homes and offices while you are away and confiscate your personal property without first notifying you of their intent or their presence.

The law also granted the FBI the right to come to your place of employment, demand your personal records and question your supervisors and fellow employees, all without notifying you; allowed the government access to your medical records, school records and practically every personal record about you; and allowed the government to secretly demand to see records of books or magazines you’ve checked out in any public library and Internet sites you’ve visited (at least 545 libraries received such demands in the first year following passage of the Patriot Act).

In the name of fighting terrorism, government officials are now permitted to monitor religious and political institutions with no suspicion of criminal wrongdoing; prosecute librarians or keepers of any other records if they tell anyone that the government has subpoenaed information related to a terror investigation; monitor conversations between attorneys and clients; search and seize Americans’ papers and effects without showing probable cause; and jail Americans indefinitely without a trial, among other things.

The Police State of America is more than alive and well, it is growing in power by leaps and bounds.

Learn More At: http://alturl.com/6fox6

NATO: “BRAIN DEAD” AND DIVIDED

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization is both brain dead and divided as it holds latest annual meeting in London.

Nothing but uncertainty surrounding its future and many questioning whether it can even remain functional in its present form.

This year’s annual NATO meeting is being held in London from 3-4 December, during which time the bloc’s 29 members will discuss French President Macron’s provocative quip last month that the organization is “brain dead” and attempt to find a united way forward to surmount its current divisions.

The backdrop against which this summit is taking place is one of uncertainty surrounding the organization’s future and many questioning whether it can even remain functional in its present form. The reasons for this existential crisis are many, but can be simplified as Trump’s demand that all member states finally pay the 2% of their GDP on defense that they’d mandated to, Turkey’s “autonomous” actions in Syria, some Central & Eastern European members’ supposed concerns about Russia, and France’s desire to present itself as the visionary of both an EU Army and a reformed NATO. Add to that the heavy American pressure being put upon the bloc’s members to curtail their economic relations with China and it’s clear that NATO is at a crossroads like never before.

What’s sorely lacking is a sense of purpose in the midst of the ongoing global systemic transition between the unipolar and multipolar world orders wherein a multitude of nontraditional threats have presented themselves, ranging from terrorism to environmental catastrophes and suspicions about some foreign investments having ulterior securitycentric motives. Although the US is by and far the most powerful political, military, and economic country in NATO, it’s been unable to control the naturally occurring centrifugal forces that are threatening to tear the organization apart. Simply put, the bloc has expanded so fast in such little time during such a transformational period in International Relations that not even the overbearing pressure put upon its members by the US can suffice to keep everything working efficiently, let alone towards the same common goal after its raison d’etre disappeared in 1991.

There are just too many different interests lumped together in the same organization that it’s impossible for them all to find a common ground at the moment.

Some members like Turkey pursue their own interests in third states like Syria despite their modus operandi of cooperating real closely with the same successor state that NATO was created to contain contradicting the spirit of the bloc (much to the consternation of other members in Central & Eastern Europe which still regard Russia as a so-called “threat”), while others such as Germany are close economic partners with the US’ chief Chinese rival even though this growing relationship certainly makes many in Washington wonder what Berlin’s long-term strategic intentions really are. Some countries like Norway welcome all civilizationally dissimilar migrants that arrive at their borders (especially those from war-torn and economically depressed regions) and could care less whether they assimilate and integrate into society even though there’s an unmistakable correlation between this policy and unconventional security threats, whereas others like Poland won’t let a single one of those individuals set foot within their territory under any circumstances even if it means being sanctioned.

Learn More At: http://alturl.com/dgzzc