Tuesday 30 January 2018

Israel: the Assassinating State.


From: http://nationalpost.com/news/world/poisoned-toothpaste-and-exploding-phones-israel-linked-to-2700-assassination-operations-in-70-years


"Poisoned toothpaste and exploding phones: Israel linked to 2,700 assassination operations in 70 years"

"A new book also strongly suggests that Israel used radiation poisoning to kill Yasser Arafat, the longtime Palestinian leader, an act its officials have consistently denied

In this Monday, Feb. 23, 2015 file photo Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu walks past a window overlooking the Old City of Jerusalem.AP Photo/Sebastian Scheiner

Poisoned toothpaste that takes a month to end its target’s life. Armed drones. Exploding cell phones. Spare tires with remote-control bombs. Assassinating enemy scientists and discovering the secret lovers of Islamic holy men.
A new book chronicles these techniques and asserts that Israel has carried out at least 2,700 assassination operations in its 70 years of existence. While many failed, they add up to far more than any other Western country, the book says.
Ronen Bergman, the intelligence correspondent for Yediot Aharonot newspaper, persuaded many agents of Mossad, Shin Bet and the military to tell their stories, some using their real names. The result is the first comprehensive look at Israel’s use of state-sponsored killings.
Based on 1,000 interviews and thousands of documents, and running more than 600 pages, “Rise and Kill First” makes the case that Israel has used assassination in the place of war, killing half a dozen Iranian nuclear scientists, for instance, rather than launching a military attack. It also strongly suggests that Israel used radiation poisoning to kill Yasser Arafat, the longtime Palestinian leader, an act its officials have consistently denied.
Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat speaks at the signing of the Wye Peace Accord in the West Room of the White House in Washington on October 23, 1998. Dennis Brack / Bloomberg
Bergman writes that Arafat’s death in 2004 fit a pattern and had advocates. But he steps back from flatly asserting what happened, saying that Israeli military censorship prevents him from revealing what – or if – he knows.
The book’s title comes from the ancient Jewish Talmud admonition, “If someone comes to kill you, rise up and kill him first.” Bergman says a huge percentage of the people he interviewed cited that passage as justification for their work. So does an opinion by the military’s lawyer declaring such operations to be legitimate acts of war.
Despite the many interviews, including with former prime ministers Ehud Barak and Ehud Olmert, Bergman, the author of several books, says the Israeli secret services sought to interfere with his work, holding a meeting in 2010 on how to disrupt his research and warning former Mossad employees not to speak with him.
He says that while the U.S. has tighter constraints on its agents than does Israel, President George W. Bush adopted many Israeli techniques after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and President Barack Obama launched several hundred targeted killings.
If someone comes to kill you, rise up and kill him first
“The command-and-control systems, the war rooms, the methods of information gathering and the technology of the pilotless aircraft, or drones, that now serve the Americans and their allies were all in large part developed in Israel,” Bergman writes.
The book gives a textured history of the personalities and tactics of the various secret services. In the 1970s, a new head of operations for Mossad opened hundreds of commercial companies overseas with the idea that they might be useful one day. For example, Mossad created a Middle Eastern shipping business that, years later, came in handy in providing cover for a team in the waters off Yemen.
There have been plenty of failures. After a Palestinian terrorist group killed Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics, Israel sent its agents to kill the perpetrators – and shot more than one misidentified man. There were also successful operations that did more harm than good to Israel’s policy goals, Bergman notes.
Bergman raises moral and legal concerns provoked by state-sponsored killing, including the existence of separate legal systems for secret agents and the rest of Israel. But he presents the operations, for the most part, as achieving their aims. While many credit the barrier Israel built along and inside the West Bank with stopping assaults on Israeli citizens in the early 2000s, he argues that what made the difference was “a massive number of targeted killings of terrorist operatives.”
One of Bergman’s most important sources was Meir Dagan, a recent head of Mossad for eight years who died in early 2016. Toward the end of his career, Dagan fell out with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu partly over launching a military attack on Iran. Netanyahu said intelligence techniques such as selling the country faulty parts for its reactors – which Israel and the U.S. were doing – weren’t enough.
Dagan argued back that these techniques, especially assassinations, would do the job. As Bergman quotes him saying, “In a car, there are 25,000 parts on average. Imagine if 100 of them are missing. It would be very hard to make it go. On the other hand, sometimes it’s most effective to kill the driver, and that’s that."

Monday 29 January 2018

The King's Singers: Billy Joel arr. Bob Chilcott - And So It Goes

Billy Joel - And So It Goes

The FBI Today: How good at investigating suspicious deaths of prominent people let alone Joe Bloggs?

From: https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-01-28/fbi-releases-docs-claiming-rt-founder-beat-himself-death-his-hotel-room

FBI Releases Docs Claiming RT Founder Beat Himself To Death In His Hotel Room

The FBI just released the results of their investigation claiming that the media mogul and found of RT killed himself by repeatedly smashing his head and upper body into the ground.

In November 2015, the Free Thought Project reported that Mikhail Lesin, the former head of media affairs for the Russian government, and the founder of Russia Today (RT), was found dead in the hotel room that he was staying at in Washington DC.
Originally, authorities announced that Lesin died from a heart attack.
However, the results of his autopsy released months later indicated a far more sinister cause of death and the heavily redacted FBI documents that were just released add to that story.
The documents, detailing the FBI investigation into Lesin’s death were just released Saturday morning in spite of the investigation ending in October of 2016.
In spite of the original cause of death noted as a heart attack, a few months later, the District of Colombia’s Office of the Chief Medical Examiner (OCME) and Metropolitan Police Department said that “blunt force injuries of the neck, torso, upper extremities and lower extremities” contributed to Lesin’s death. “The Office of the Chief Medical Examiner (OCME) has released the cause and manner of death for Mikhail Lesin… Cause of Death: blunt force injuries of the head,” the statement said.
Now, FBI investigators have released the results of their investigation claiming that the blunt force trauma all over his body was self-inflicted.
Mr. Lesin died as a result of blunt for injuries to his head, with contributing causes being blunt force injuries of the neck, torso, upper extremities, and lower extremities, which were induced by falls, with acute ethanol intoxication,” the report states.
In other words, the FBI is claiming that Lesin got so drunk that he repeatedly and violently fell on things until he killed himself.
To show just how much information the FBI is willing to release on these findings, here is the version of the amended autopsy report they released in the report.


Essentially, all other information in regards to the findings of Lesin’s death has been scrubbed from the documents as the remaining pages are almost entirely redacted.
Not only did the US remain tight-lipped on the investigation but they also refused to allow Russian authorities to cooperate.
As RT reports, back in 2016, months before the closing of the case, Moscow said it was expecting Washington to explain why Russia had not received any details from the probe into Lesin’s death, despite repeated requests.
“We are awaiting the related clarifications from Washington and the official data on the progress of the investigation,” Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova wrote in a Facebook post at that time. She added that if the media reports citing the forensic statement are confirmed, Russia will send an official request to the US “for international legal assistance.”
In October 2016, the US authorities announced that Lesin died of natural causes and closed the case. “Based on the evidence, including video footage and witness interviews, Mr. Lesin entered his hotel room on the morning of Wednesday, Nov. 4, 2015, after days of excessive consumption of alcohol and sustained the injuries that resulted in his death while alone in his hotel room, the US attorney for the District of Columbia said in a statement.
Lesin’s death came at a time where he was surrounded by controversy, especially in the US. RT, the Russian-based news source that Lesin founded has become very controversial in the US—ostensibly for the fake Russiagate scandal—but in reality, for challenging the western narrative of foreign policy and privacy issues. Some US politicians have suggested that RT be banned in the US for “spreading propaganda,” while others have been blatant enough to attack Lesin personally.
According to the NY Times, until late 2014 Lesin ran the media wing of the state’s energy giant, Gazprom, before stepping down or, more likely, being forced out. He ended up in the United States, where he and his family owned properties in Los Angeles said to be worth far more than the salary of the former government minister.
Some US Senators, including Roger Wicker of Mississippi, had called for the Department of Justice to open an investigation into Lesin’s finances prior to his death.
Wicker was concerned that Lesin made too much money, something that was really none of his business.
“That a Russian public servant could have amassed the considerable funds required to acquire and maintain these assets in Europe and the United States raises serious questions,” Wicker said.
The original announcement of the heart attack back in November 2015 makes this case all the more ominous considering the fact that the medical examiner’s office also said Lesin’s body had blunt force trauma to the neck, torso, arms and legs too. How did authorities overlook his wounds?
As RT reports, Lesin was considered one of the most influential figures in the Russian media landscape. A graduate of Moscow State University with a degree in Civil Engineering, he served as Minister of Press and Mass Media from 1999 to 2004. He was also a presidential media adviser from 2004 to 2009. Lesin became chief executive officer at Garprom-Media in 2013 and remained in the position until early 2015.

Sunday 28 January 2018

Nigel Farage - Amazing compilation. Speaking truth to power?

The hypocrisy of Israel targeting Palestinian children with it's brutal methods, whilst pushing Holocaust victimhood!
Photo: Oren Ziv / Activestills
From: http://samidoun.net/2018/01/french-intellectuals-statement-on-palestinian-child-prisoners-published-in-le-monde/

French intellectuals' statement on Palestinian child prisoners published in "The World"

25.1.2018

French academics and writers published in the world on 23 January, focusing on the case of Ahed Tamimiand the plight of the 360 ​​Palestinian child prisoners in Israeli prisons. The letter also highlights the case of Salah Hamouri , the French-Palestinian lawyer jailed without charge or trial under administrative detention. Hamouri's release and even the French government has agreed to the application of the law.
The statement follows below:
We call for the support and intervention of the President to stop the detention of Palestinian children in Israeli prisons. We would like to draw attention to the case of Ahed Tamimi, pursued by the Israeli government. Last 15 December, Mohammed Tamimi, 15, was hit in the head by a rubber-coated metal bullet fired by Israeli occupation army. The boy was in critical condition and his cousin Ahed Tamimi, age 16, was visibly upset by the announcement of his condition and the severity of his injuries.
This same unit of soldiers approached the family home and later, This time, the encounter was filmed by her mother and posted on social media, and it shows the courage of an unarmed teenager confronting two heavily armed soldiers.
On 19 December 2017, Ahed Tamimi was abducted from his home by the army and brought before a military court. The twelve counts of indictment brought against a sentence of 12 years in prison. Israeli military court deals with Palestinian prisoners, with a conviction rate of 99.74 percent. Thus, the future of Ahed Tamimi appears dark without intervention.
Some as young as 12
We call on the President to provide urgent support for the immediate release of Ahed Tamimi and the dismissal of all charges against her. However, Ahed Tamimi's case is not isolated. According to Defense for Children International - Palestine, Israel brings 500 to 700 Palestinian children before each year, 12 years of age. It prints an average of 200 children in any given period.
According to the reports of international agencies, including UNICEF, Human Rights Watch, B'Tselem, Amnesty International and Defense for Children International - Palestine. They are frequently arrested in night raids on their home; 85 percent of arrested Palestinian children were blindfolded and 95 percent were handcuffed.
They are deprived of access to lawyers, denied the presence of their parents during interrogation and forced to sign confessions. They are also subject to "administrative detention," imprisonment without charge or trial. They are often detained in detention centers located outside the territories occupied by Israel, making visits from their families difficult. The use of isolation cells for the interrogation of children is a practice that has been likened to torture under international law.
Salah Hamouri victim of the same procedure
The UNICEF report of 2013, "Children in Israeli Military Detention," concludes: "The abuse of children in contact with the military detention system appears to be widespread, systemic and institutionalized throughout the process, from the time of arrest to the prosecution of the child, their potential conviction and the application of a penalty. "
We urge President Emmanuel Macron to take action urgently to contact the Israeli authorities to finally end their detention practices that violate children's rights, human rights and international law. We also remember that, to date, our compatriot Salah Hamouri also remains in Israeli jails, a victim of the same unfair framework of "administrative detention." France must ask so that Ahed Tamimi and other Palestinian child as soon as possible . We can not look away while children of our country are illegally detained far from their families.
Signatories: Etienne Balibar, emeritus professor of philosophy, University of Paris-Ouest; Pierre Barbancey, journalist; Michel Benassayag, psychoanalyst and philosopher; Rony Brauman, physician and essayist; Alain Brossat, professor of philosophy; Marie Buisson, FERC CGT; Cybele David, organizer of the SUD Education Federation; Alain Gresh, editor of the online journal OrientXXI.info; Bernadette Groison, General Secretary of the FSU; Nacira Guénif, sociologist, University Paris-8; Kaddour Hadadi, artist (HK); Genevieve Jacques, president of Cimade; Nicole Lapierre, social anthropologist; Jean Etienne de Linares, CEO of ACAT; Gilles Manceron, historian; Malik Salembour, president of the LDH; Sylvie Tissot, sociologist; Dominique Vidal, collaborator of Le Monde diplomatique.
Original French:
"We must demand the end of detention practices that constitute a violation of children's rights" in Israel
Tribune. We seek the support of the President of the Republic and his intervention to stop the detention of Palestinian children in Israeli jails. In particular, we want to draw attention to the case of Ahed Tamimi pursued by the Israeli government: on 15 December Mohamed Tamimi, 15, is shot in the head by a rubber-coated metal bullet fired from a distance by soldiers of the Israeli government. Israeli occupation army. The boy was in critical condition and his 16-year-old cousin Ahed Tamimi was visibly upset by the announcement of his condition and the severity of his injuries.
These same soldiers approached the family home an hour later, and Ahed hit them and shouted at them to leave. This moment filmed by her mother and broadcast on social networks shows the courage of a teenager facing two heavily armed soldiers with bare hands.
On 19 December 2017, Ahed Tamimi was abducted from her house in the middle of the night by the army and then brought before a military court. The twelve charges against her put him at risk of 12 years in prison. Israeli military courts only handle cases of Palestinian prisoners with a conviction rate of 99.74%. Thus, Ahed Tamimi's future looks bleak without our intervention.
Some 12 years old
We urge him to urgently support the immediate release of Ahed Tamimi and the lifting of all charges against her.
The case of Ahed Tamimi is not isolated. According to Defense of Children International-Palestine, Israel prosecutes between 500 and 700 children each year in military courts, some as young as 12, and holds an average of 200 children in prison at any time.
According to investigations by UN agencies, including Unicef, Human Rights Watch, B'tselem, Amnesty International, and the Defense for Children International - Palestine, three out of four children arrested have been subjected to violence during arrest or interrogation. They are frequently stopped during night raids in their homes; 85% of arrested Palestinian children are blindfolded and 95% are handcuffed.
They are denied access to a lawyer, visit their parents during interrogations and are forced to sign confessions. They are often placed in "administrative detention", being able to be detained for several months without charge or trial. Their detention centers, often outside the occupied territories of Israel, make visiting their families difficult. The use of isolation cells for the interrogation of children is a practice assimilated to torture by international law.
Salah Hamouri victim of the same procedure
The 2013 Unicef ​​report "Children in Israeli Military Detention" concludes:  "Child abuse in contact with the military detention system appears to be widespread, systemic and institutionalized throughout the process, from the moment of arrest to the date of arrest. the prosecution of the child, his possible conviction and the application of the penalty ".
We call on President Emmanuel Macron to urgently contact the Israeli authorities to demand that detention practices that constitute a violation of children's rights, human rights and international law be finally discontinued.
We remind him that to this day, our countryman Salah Hamouri also remains in Israeli jails, victim of the same unfair procedure of "administrative detention".
France must act so that Ahed Tamimi and all the other Palestinian prisoners will return to their homes as soon as possible. We can not look elsewhere when children and one of our compatriots are illegally detained far from their families.
The signatories: Etienne Balibar,  emeritus professor of philosophy, University of Paris-Ouest; Pierre Barbancey,  journalist; Miche l Benassayag,  psychoanalyst and philosopher; Rony Brauman,  doctor and essayist; Alain Brossat,  professor of philosophy; Marie Buisson,  FERC CGT; Cybèle David,  host of the SUD education federation; Alain Gresh,  director of the online newspaper Orient XXI. info; Bernadette Groison, Secretary General of FSU; Nacira Guénif,  sociologist, University Paris-8; Kaddour Hadadi,  artist (HK); Geneviève Jacques,  President of Cimade;  Nicole Lapierre,  socio-anthropologist  Jean Etienne de Linares, general delegate of ACAT; Gilles Manceron,  historian; Malik Salembour,  President of the LDH; Sylvie Tissot,  sociologist; Dominique Vidal,  collaborator of  Le Monde diplomatique .