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Netanyahu’s “False Flag” Is a “Copy and Paste”: The Pentagon’s Secret “Operation Northwoods”(1962) Directed Against Cuba. “Casualty Lists Would Cause a Helpful Wave of Indignation”

Author’s Introductory Note 

Early Saturday October 7, 2023, Hamas launched “Operation Al-Aqsa Storm.” On that same day, Netanyahu confirmed a so-called “State of Readiness For War.” A complete blockade on the Gaza Strip was initiated on October 9, 2023 consisting in blocking and obstructing the importation of food, water, fuel, and essential commodities to 2.3 million Palestinians. It’s an outright crime against humanity. It’s genocide. 

Was “Operation Al-Aqsa Storm” a “surprise attack”?

Was it a “False Flag” Attack by a faction within Hamas (supported by Mossad and US intelligence) which was intent upon justifying Netanyahu’s all out war against Palestine? That Hamas faction was co-opted and bribed by Mossad.

In the words of Netanyahu: 

“Anyone who wants to thwart the establishment of a Palestinian state has to support bolstering Hamas and transferring money to Hamas, …this is part of our strategy – to isolate the Palestinians in Gaza from the Palestinians in the West Bank.”

(Benjamin Netanyahu, statement to his Likud party’s Knesset members in March 2019. “quoted by Haaretz, October 9, 2023, emphasis added)

At this stage we have scanty evidence regarding who was behind the Hamas attack. False flag agendas are carefully planned intelligence operations. 

The following article, which is of relevance to the Hamas Al Aqsa Storm attack, examines the logic of a “false flag agenda” formulated in 1962 by the US Joint Chiefs of Staff as a means to justify an invasion and all-out war against Cuba. 

The fundamental premise of Operation Northwoods was to trigger civilian deaths in the U.S. as a justification for military intervention (“on humanitarian grounds”). That same diabolical “false flag” premise largely characterizes Netanyahu’s all-out war against Palestine. 

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

In our make-believe politics, the strings pulled by the super-rich are all too visible

In our make-believe politics, the strings pulled by the super-rich are all too visible

Biden wanders offstage or walks like a geriatric robot. Yet we are meant to believe he’s carefully navigating us through the nuclear tripwires of the West’s serial wars

We live in a world of make-believe politics, a world where strings pulled in the interests of the super-rich are ever more visible. And yet we are expected to pretend we cannot see those strings. More astonishing still, many people really do seem blind to the puppet show.

1. The “leader of the free world”, President Joe Biden, can barely maintain his attention for more than a few minutes without straying off topic, or wandering offstage. When he has to walk before the cameras, he does so like he is auditioning for the role of a geriatric robot. His whole body is gripped with the concentration he needs to walk in a straight line.

And yet we are supposed to believe he is carefully working the levers of the western empire, making critically difficult calculations to keep the West free and prosperous, while keeping in check its enemies – Russia, China, Iran – without provoking a nuclear war. Is he really capable of doing all that when he struggles to put one foot in front of the other?

2. Part of that tricky diplomatic balancing act Biden is supposedly conducting, along with other western leaders, relates to Israel’s military operation in Gaza. The West’s “diplomacy” – backed by weapons transfers – has resulted in the murder of tens of thousands of Palestinians, most of them women and children; the gradual starvation of 2.3 million Palestinians over many months; and the destruction of 70 per cent of the enclave’s housing stock and almost all of its major infrastructure and institutions, including schools, universities and hospitals.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

They Can’t Control the Gaza Narrative Because Too Much Has Been Seen

A lot of mainstream-adjacent progressives act like Gaza is some radical deviation from normal US behavior, which is infantile nonsense.

The US inflicts similar horrors on the world all the time; the only major difference is

(A) this one’s being live-streamed and

(B) there was a pro-Palestine movement in place before it began.

With regard to (B), Gaza is really illustrating how much the US empire benefits from moving through its foreign military violence relatively quickly.

When it can move from propagandizing the population about Evil Dictatorship X to destroying the country in question to moving on to its next war in the span of a few short years, there’s not enough time for public awareness to grow of exactly how evil the empire is being. It was years before a mainstream consensus developed that the invasion of Iraq was wrong, and it will probably be decades before there’s mainstream consensus about the evil shit the empire did in Syria from 2011 onwards.

With Gaza, people saw this one coming and were calling it what it is from the moment it began, because there was already a widespread political understanding — at least on the left — that Israel is a murderous settler-colonialist project and that the Palestinians are a colonized people. This widespread understanding occurred because the Israel-Palestine debate has been raging for generations, so the collective has had enough time to really examine the facts and circulate its arguments through public consciousness. Those facts and arguments were there ready to be picked up and understood and used — even by young people who are new to the situation — after October 7.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Hezbollah launches first-ever Lebanese airstrike on Israeli base

Hezbollah launches first-ever Lebanese airstrike on Israeli base

The resistance group used, for the first time, a drone equipped with two missiles to attack Israel’s Metulla site

(Photo credit: X)

Hezbollah launched the first-ever Lebanese airstrike on an Israeli target on 17 May, using a never-before-seen drone for the operation.

“In support of our steadfast Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip and in support of their brave and honorable resistance, the Islamic Resistance attacked at 1:38 pm on Thursday 5/16/2024 the Metulla site, its garrison, and its vehicles with an offensive drone armed with two S5 missiles,” Hezbollah said in a statement on Thursday afternoon, marking the sixth of 13 operations that day.

“When it reached its designated point, it fired missiles at one of its vehicles and the elements gathered around it, killing and wounding them. After that, it continued its assault on its designated target and hit it accurately,” the statement added.

The resistance group released footage of its drone strike on Metulla. Two missiles are seen being fired from each side of the drone, which then descends towards its final target and explodes.

Three Israeli soldiers were injured – with one seriously wounded – in the drone attack.

Coinciding with Israel’s brutal assault on Rafah and its relentless attacks across the Gaza Strip, Hezbollah has stepped up its operations in recent days.

While it has increasingly deployed the use of attack drones in its operations over the past several months, this is the first time a drone equipped with missiles has been used to attack targets from above – not only since the start of this war but for the first time in Lebanon’s history.

Hebrew news outlet Channel 13 noted on 16 May that Hezbollah’s attacks have become bolder and more sophisticated, and are resulting in more Israeli casualties.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

 

Al Jazeera’s Israeli HQ Raided By Police After Netanyahu Called It “Hamas Mouthpiece”

Al Jazeera’s Israeli HQ Raided By Police After Netanyahu Called It “Hamas Mouthpiece”

On Sunday the offices of Al Jazeera in Jerusalem were raided by Israeli police, after the Knesset voted unanimously voted to ban the Qatar-based news network.

The Israeli order effectively shuts down all Al Jazeera broadcasts in Israel and the West Bank. To implement the ban, authorities confiscated equipment at the channel’s Jerusalem HQ inside the Ambassador Hotel.

Additionally Israel will block Al Jazeera’s website after PM Netanyahu alleged that it is a “Hamas mouthpiece.” He has further claimed that the outlet’s coverage of Gaza has put Israeli troops in danger.

“Al Jazeera reporters harmed Israel’s security and incited against soldiers,” Netanyahu said previously. He has for weeks been mounting a public campaign against it.

Al Jazeera has responded by calling the claim a “dangerous and ridiculous lie” and further said “pursue every legal step” to fight being shut down by Israel.

Interestingly, last year the Biden administration also began complaining about the channel’s coverage, with an October Axios report saying that Secretary of State Antony Blinken requested that the Qataris “turn down the volume on Al Jazeera’s coverage because it is full of anti-Israel incitement.”

The outlet has said in a statement, “Israel’s ongoing suppression of the free press, seen as an effort to conceal its actions in the Gaza Strip, stands in contravention of international and humanitarian law.”

According to a review by Axios:

Israel’s legislative body, the Knesset, passed a measure last month that empowers Israel’s communications minister to take action against any foreign media network that it can prove poses a national security risk.

The law gives senior government officials power to temporarily shutter foreign news networks on national security grounds for at least 45 days, but that period can be extended.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Enemy Is Among Us? Anti-genocide Groups Are Being Targeted by Media and Government

Well friends, the verdict is in!

If you are opposed to Israel’s slaughter of something like 40,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, or the clearly enunciated plans by that nation’s government to ethnically cleanse the rest of historic Palestine, making the developing Eretz or Greater Israel a legally Jewish state, and are prepared to protest or speak up about it, then you are an antisemite Jew-hater and probably even a holocaust denier.

If you are a student demonstrating against the slaughter you are increasingly being referred to by talking heads and the media as a pro-Hamas terrorist.

That you must be condemned and sanctioned or even criminalized as a consequence of the labels is only fair in a country that apparently has come to believe that Jews and Israel, uniquely, cannot be criticized due to their cited ad nauseam victimhood and their anointment by God no matter what the First Amendment to the US Constitution relating to freedom of speech might say. After all, it’s just an old piece of paper though it might strike some as a bit odd that a group of people carrying out a genocide are being given a pass while those trying to stop it are being beaten, going to jail and, in some cases, being denied that degree they earned from four years at college.

That antisemites and even evil foreign governments like China are behind the recent student demonstrations over the atrocities in Gaza is gradually becoming part of the new Gospel, ritually endorsed by the cowering university administrators themselves as well as by a large majority in Congress, the White House and the mainstream media.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Leaked New York Times Gaza Memo Tells Journalists to Avoid Words “Genocide,” “Ethnic Cleansing,” and “Occupied Territory”

Leaked New York Times Gaza Memo Tells Journalists to Avoid Words “Genocide,” “Ethnic Cleansing,” and “Occupied Territory”

Amid the internal battle over the New York Times’s coverage of Israel’s war, top editors handed down a set of directives.

The New York Times instructed journalists covering Israel’s war on the Gaza Strip to restrict the use of the terms “genocide” and “ethnic cleansing” and to “avoid” using the phrase “occupied territory” when describing Palestinian land, according to a copy of an internal memo obtained by The Intercept.

The memo also instructs reporters not to use the word Palestine “except in very rare cases” and to steer clear of the term “refugee camps” to describe areas of Gaza historically settled by displaced Palestinians expelled from other parts of Palestine during previous Israeli–Arab wars. The areas are recognized by the United Nations as refugee camps and house hundreds of thousands of registered refugees.

The memo — written by Times standards editor Susan Wessling, international editor Philip Pan, and their deputies — “offers guidance about some terms and other issues we have grappled with since the start of the conflict in October.”

While the document is presented as an outline for maintaining objective journalistic principles in reporting on the Gaza war, several Times staffers told The Intercept that some of its contents show evidence of the paper’s deference to Israeli narratives.

“I think it’s the kind of thing that looks professional and logical if you have no knowledge of the historical context of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict,” said a Times newsroom source, who requested anonymity for fear of reprisal, of the Gaza memo. “But if you do know, it will be clear how apologetic it is to Israel.”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Almost Everything is About Oil in the Middle East

Energy Aware

Perhaps the most extraordinary part of Iran’s April 13 attack on Israel was that it was countered by a coalition that included Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). It is also noteworthy that this was the first time that the United States engaged militarily in Israel’s defense.

The events of April did not begin with the October 6, 2023 strike on Israel from Gaza but have their origins decades earlier. It is now evident, however, that the catalyst for Hamas’ attack was the impending normalization of diplomatic relations between Saudi Arabia and Israel.

This would have had significant consequences for Israel’s oil supply, an important aspect of the present crisis that is rarely discussed by the press or politicians. Almost everything is about oil in the Middle East.

The Saudis were ready to join the Abraham Accords that in 2020 established ties between the UAE, Bahrain, Sudan, Morocco and Israel on regional security and trade.

As a direct consequence, Israel was officially moved under the U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) area of responsibility in early 2021, shifting from its decades-long alignment with the U.S. European Command (EUCOM).

The timing of the Gaza incursion into Israel in October was designed to prevent Saudi Arabia from joining the Abraham Accords.

It is hardly a coincidence that Houthi attacks on shipping in the Suez Canal and the Red Sea started in November. Almost 9 million barrels of oil per day (mmb/d) pass through the Canal and the Bab al-Mandab Strait.

It’s worth recalling that the Houthis have been in an armed conflict with Saudi Arabia in Yemen since 2015, and were responsible for attacking the main Saudi refinery complex in 2019. Both Hamas and the Houthis, along with Hezbollah in Lebanon, are funded and largely directed by Iran.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Dominoes Falling As Biden Admin Deals With Twin Energy Crisis In Russia, Middle East 

Dominoes Falling As Biden Admin Deals With Twin Energy Crisis In Russia, Middle East 

A twin crisis is unfolding for the Biden administration as the US tax-payer-funded Ukrainian military bombs key crude refineries deep within Russian territory with suicide drones. The administration has pleaded with the Ukranians to halt strikes on Russian energy infrastructure as this will only contribute to tightening global supplies and push energy prices higher, as well as inflation in the US, hurting Biden’s re-election odds.

Now for the other crisis that’s unfolding in the Middle East: US Vice President Kamala Harris told ABC’s “This Week” that a major attack on the Gazan city of Rafah, where more than a million Palestinians have sought refuge, “would be a huge mistake.”

“We have been clear in multiple conversations and in every way that any major military operation in Rafah would be a huge mistake,” Harris said.

She added: “I have studied the maps – there’s nowhere for those folks to go. And we’re looking at about a million and a half people in Rafah who are there because they were told to go there.”

Harris was asked whether there would be “consequences” from the US on an Israeli counteroffensive in Rafah. She responded, “I am ruling out nothing.”

This comes as The Jerusalem Post said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other senior officials say an operation into the southern Gazan city is “imminent.”

Bloomberg quoted Israeli intelligence that estimate about 5,000 to 8,000 Hamas fighters are in Rafah.

As we’ve explained before, in the note titled Terrified” Joe Biden Demands Ukraine Halt Strikes On Russian Refiners As It Is Sending Oil Prices Surging,” Biden’s foreign policy has been and always been about crude markets.

…click on the above link to read the rest…

‘Do not play with fire’ Yemen warns EU as Brussels embarks on Red Sea mission

‘Do not play with fire’ Yemen warns EU as Brussels embarks on Red Sea mission

EU warships have set off for the Red Sea, where the US navy is waging its largest conflict since the end of WWII in support of Israel

(Photo Credit: Getty Images)

A high-ranking Yemeni official has warned the EU against “supporting the American devil to protect [Israel]” following the formal launch of the Aspides naval mission in the Red Sea.

“For Europeans, do not play with fire. Take a lesson from Britain,” Mohammed Ali al-Houthi, a senior member of Yemen’s Supreme Political Council, said via social media on 20 February.

“You do not need the support of the American devil in protecting the occupying entity so that it can exterminate the people of Gaza with no disturbance,” Houthi added, stressing that “international navigation is safe.”

His message followed an announcement by Brussels of the official launch of the EU naval operation codenamed Aspides – Greek for shield.

“I welcome today’s decision … Europe will ensure freedom of navigation in the Red Sea, working alongside our international partners. Beyond crisis response, it’s a step towards a stronger European presence at sea to protect our European interests,” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said via social media.

France, Germany, Italy, and Belgium have said they will contribute ships to the EU mission in support of Israel.

The bloc’s top diplomat, Josep Borrell, described the mission as “bold action to protect the commercial and security interests of the EU and the international community.”

With a mandate initially set for one year, Aspides will see the deployment of EU warships and airborne early warning systems to the Red Sea, the Gulf of Aden, and surrounding waters. According to officials in Brussels, the mission will be exclusively defensive, and its forces will not partake in US-led attacks against Yemen.

…click on the above link to read the rest…

How Yemen’s ‘asabiyya’ is reshaping geopolitics

How Yemen’s ‘asabiyya’ is reshaping geopolitics

The Arabic word Asabiyya, or ‘social solidarity,’ is a soundbite in the west, but taken very seriously by the globe’s new contenders China, Russia, and Iran. It is Yemen, however, that is mainstreaming the idea, by sacrificing everything for the world’s collective morality in a bid to end the genocide in Gaza.

Photo Credit: The Cradle

When there is a general change of conditions,

It is as if the entire creation had changed

and the whole world been altered,

as if it were a new and repeated creation,

a world brought into existence anew. 

— Ibn Khaldun

Yemen’s Ansarallah resistance forces have made it very clear, right from the start, that they set up a blockade in the Bab el-Mandeb and the southern Red Sea only against Israeli-owned or destined shipping vessels. Their single objective was and remains to stop the Gaza genocide perpetrated by the Israeli biblical psychopathy.

As a response to a morally-based call to end a human genocide, the United States, masters of the Global War Of Terror (italics mine), predictably re-designated Yemen’s Houthis as a “terrorist organization,” launched a serial bombardment of underground Ansarallah military installations (assuming US intel know where they are), and cobbled together a mini-coalition of the willing that includes its UK, Canadian, Australian, Dutch, and Bahraini vassals.

Without missing a beat, Yemen’s Parliament declared the US and UK governments “Global Terrorist Networks.”

Now let’s talk strategy.

With a single move, the Yemeni resistance seized the strategic advantage by de facto controlling a key geoeconomic bottleneck: the Bab el-Mandeb. Hence, they can inflict serious trouble on sectors of global supply chains, trade, and finance.

…click on the above link to read the rest…

‘Playground of choice’: Iran mobilises to drive US troops out of Iraq

The US has the cudgel of the American dollar to prevent its expulsion from Iraq, but will the Biden administration use it?

When Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed al-Sudani arrived in New York City in September for the UN General Assembly, a delicate truce was in balance between the two foreign powers that loom over Baghdad.

Iraqi paramilitaries, backed by Iran, had frozen their attacks on US troops in the country. Iraq’s new leader arrived in New York City amid the lull. He was feted on a circuit of swanky receptions with western businessmen and diplomats on the sidelines of the General Assembly, as he pitched Iraq’s oil-rich but corruption-riddled economy as an investment destination.

Four months later, the Iraqi leader is condemning Iran and the US for launching deadly strikes in his country and his investment pitch to the global elite at Davos Switzerland is overshadowed by his call for the US military and its coalition partners to leave Iraq.

Since the Hamas-led attacks on 7 October and the war in Gaza, Iranian-backed militias have launched at least 70 attacks on US forces in Iraq.

In early January, the US hit back with its most powerful response yet, launching a drone strike in Baghdad that killed Mushtaq Taleb al-Saidi, also known as Abu Taqwa, a senior commander in the Popular Mobilisation Units, an umbrella organisation of Iraqi state-funded and Iran-aligned, Shia militias.

Baghdad hit out at the strike as “a violation of Iraq’s sovereignty”. But no sooner was Iraq chastising the US for the strike, when Iran launched a barrage of ballistic missiles into the Iraqi city of Erbil, killing four people, including a prominent Kurdish real estate developer and his one-year-old daughter.

…click on the above link to read the rest…

Rickards’ Five 2024 Forecasts

Rickards’ Five 2024 Forecasts

I have five forecasts for 2024 to help keep you ahead of the curve in positioning your investment portfolio.

My overall forecast is that 2024 will be more tumultuous and shocking than 2023. That may seem hard to credit.

With two major wars going on, an indicted former president and a demented current president, how can 2024 be more challenging than 2023?

Rest assured; it will be. I explain why below.

An Election of Dire Consequences

It’s a cliche to write that the next presidential election will be the “most important in our lifetimes.” Yet in 2024 that cliche will actually be true.

The divide between the two parties is probably greater than at any time in U.S. political history since the Civil War. The choice could not be more stark and the stakes could not be higher.

That’s why this election is so important.

First off, I don’t think that Joe Biden will be the Democratic nominee for president.

Biden’s problem is not just his age, but the fact that he actually is mentally and physically impaired. He’s simply not fit to be president, and everyone knows it even if Democratic operatives and media sycophants don’t want to mention it. But who will replace Biden?

The most likely replacements are Gavin Newsom, J.B. Pritzker, Gretchen Whitmer and Jennifer Granholm. All four were or are state governors. They’re all about the same ideologically; take your pick. Forget Kamala Harris; she’s simply too much of a liability.

The Republican Side

On the Republican side, there’s not a lot to say. Trump will be the nominee; no one can recall a non-incumbent with such a large lead in the polls.

He’s leading the pack by 55 points or more and is now even running ahead of Joe Biden in recent polls.

…click on the above link to read the rest…

Israel, Gaza, and the Struggle for Oil

Israel, Gaza, and the Struggle for Oil

Aerial View of Haifa oil refineries. Photo: Meronim, CC BY-SA 4.0 Deed.

It was the sign that got to me. I was standing with protesters outside the Burlington (VT) City Hall at a rally organized by Jewish Voice for Peace. To my left I spotted a man, grim-faced and silent, holding aloft a piece of cardboard with these words scratched in black:

“Jews against Genocide.”

“So it has finally come to this,” I said to myself.

Why, I wondered, would Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the Biden administration risk their standing in the world and ignore calls for a ceasefire? Did they have an unspoken agenda?

As  a chronicler of the endless post-9/11 wars in the Middle East, I concluded that the end game was likely connected to oil and natural gas, discovered off the coast of Gaza, Israel and Lebanon in 2000 and 2010 and estimated to be worth $500 billion. The discovery promised to fuel massive development schemes involving the US, Israel, and Saudi Arabia.

Also at stake was the transformation of the eastern Mediterranean into a heavily militarized energy corridor that could supply Europe with its energy needs as the war in Ukraine dragged on.

Here was the tinderbox waiting to explode that I had predicted in 2022. Now it was exploding before our very eyes. And at what cost in human lives?

Eastern Mediterranean, Oil and Gas Reserves

Map of the Eastern Mediterranean region showing the area included in the USGS Levant Basin Province assessment. Photo credit: USGS.

Reflections on the Israeli War on Gaza

The year 1975 was my last in beautiful, cosmopolitan Beirut, Lebanon, before it descended into 15 years of brutal civil war, killing 100,000 people.

…click on the above link to read the rest…

War, Peace, And That Other Thing.

War, Peace, And That Other Thing.

Understanding political violence.

I was thinking of writing something about Gaza this week, but frankly I don’t have the detailed knowledge of the region, nor for that matter experience of fighting in tunnels, to add to what’s already been said elsewhere. But reading some of this coverage made me realise, again, how little our society really understands and is prepared to acknowledge about the roots and purposes of political violence, and so I thought it might be interesting to discuss that subject, looping back to the current situation in Gaza at the end.

Let’s start with the obvious point that western Liberal society likes clear distinctions and opposites in all areas of life. We are a profoundly Aristotelian society: everything is either A or B, there is nothing in the middle. Because real life itself is messy, this produces endless complex and ultimately pointless arguments about precisely where to draw a dividing line, and whether this or that act or event or pronouncement is ultimately acceptable, or whether it should be rejected and cast into outer darkness. Thus, everything to do with the use of force in politics is presented in stark, opposed terms: war vs. peace, violence vs negotiations, conflict vs cooperation, and of course good vs. bad. And then we wonder why we cannot understand the world, and why the behaviour of many of its actors surprises us so often.

Most civilisations before the modern western era have not seen things this way, and quite a few still don’t. According to taste, we can follow the theories of Ian McGilchrist, arguing that we live in an epoch of dangerous left-brain domination, which sees everything in terms of binary opposites and infinitely detailed differences…

…click on the above link to read the rest…

Olduvai IV: Courage
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Olduvai II: Exodus
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