House Judiciary chair says 'obviously' there was collusion, regardless of Mueller findings

The chairman of the House judiciary committee Rep. Jerrold Nalder, a Democrat, was on all the Sunday morning talk shows following the conclusion of the special counsel investigation, and not only said Democrats would continue to look at impeachment, but that regardless of what the report finds, it's obvious that was "some collusion" between President Trump and Russia.

Nadler was speaking with CNN's Dana Bash, and she asked him about his willingness to accept the report.

"No member of the Trump campaign was charged with conspiring with the Russian government to influence the election," she said. "Do you accept that no member of the Trump team engaged in that kind of criminal conspiracy with Russia?"

First, Nadler said he doesn't know, because "we don't know what indictments are forthcoming from other investigations." He referenced SDNY, as Democrats have all weekend.

That's when he said that "obviously" they already know "there was some collusion."

Caleb Howe

The chairman of the House judiciary committee Rep. Jerrold Nalder, a Democrat, was on all the Sunday morning talk shows following the conclusion of the special counsel investigation, and not only said Democrats would continue to look at impeachment, but that regardless of what the report finds, it's obvious that was "some collusion" between President Trump and Russia.

Nadler was speaking with CNN's Dana Bash, and she asked him about his willingness to accept the report.

"No member of the Trump campaign was charged with conspiring with the Russian government to influence the election," she said. "Do you accept that no member of the Trump team engaged in that kind of criminal conspiracy with Russia?"

First, Nadler said he doesn't know, because "we don't know what indictments are forthcoming from other investigations." He referenced SDNY, as Democrats have all weekend.

That's when he said that "obviously" they already know "there was some collusion."

Your browser does not support the video tag.

"We know the president's son and campaign manager were involved in a meeting with the Russians to receive stolen — what they thought was to receive stolen information — information stolen by the Russians from the Democratic National Committee as part of the Russian government's attempt to help Trump in the election," he said. "That's the way the e-mail inviting them to the meeting put it."

Appearing later on the same program, Republican Senator Ted Cruz pointed to Nadler's remarks to say that the Democrats are definitely going to go ahead and impeach Trump no matter what.

"They fully intend to impeach the president and they don't care about the basis," said Cruz.

https://www.theblaze.com/politics/judiciary-chair-obviously-collusion-mueller

‘Forgive, but not forget’: Serbia won’t be in NATO, leaders say 20yrs after Yugoslavia bombing

Serbia will never be part of NATO, even if it is the only non-member European country, the country’s defense minister, Aleksandar Vulin, said during anniversary events of the 1999 NATO bombing of former Yugoslavia.

Vulin said on Saturday that Belgrade has chosen to be militarily neutral at all times.

We made this choice because we were bombed, but first of all because we will never do to other nations what they have done to us

On March 24, Serbia marks 20 years since the 1999 NATO bombing that saw hundreds of civilians killed and many more injured. Countless civilian structures across the country were left in ruins after the airstrikes.

“We won’t be in NATO, I made it clear speaking to [Secretary General Jens] Stoltenberg,” Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic said in a sit-down interview with Russia’s Channel 1 on March 22. Serbia, which was the heartland of former Yugoslavia, “isn’t something that you can break down or destroy,” he said.

Yes, we are ready to forgive but we will never forget.

The NATO bombing also polluted the land with depleted uranium. The toxic substance used for armor-piercing munitions is believed to be the cause of the spike in cancer cases today.

Serbian children below the age of 15 are diagnosed with cancer almost thrice as much as somewhere in Europe, Danica Grujicic, head of neuro-oncology at Serbia’s Clinical Center, told RIA Novosti. “I started asking myself if we are doing something wrong,” she said, “they have surgery as ever before, they get radiotherapy and die one year after.”

“We can’t rely on being reimbursed for our losses, nor can we expect a punishment of those who took part in this horrid crime,” Vucic stated. “But the most important thing now is [to ensure] that this will not happen to us again.”

https://www.rt.com/news/454611-serbia-nato-membership-bombing/

>>5864963

Too Funny he was saying "How can Gantz run the country when Iran can hack his phone" last week.

Notable

NZ Debates Free Speech Limits, Long Prison Terms for Downloading Christchurch Manifesto

DUNEDIN, New Zealand (AP) – New Zealanders are debating the limits of free speech after their chief censor banned a 74-page manifesto written by the man accused of slaughtering 50 people at two mosques in the city of Christchurch.

The ban, issued Saturday, means anybody caught with the document on their computer could face up to 10 years in prison, while anyone caught sending it could face 14 years. Some say the ban goes too far and risks lending both the document and the gunman mystique.

At the same time, many local media organizations are debating whether to even name the Australian man charged with murder in the March 15 attacks, 28-year-old Brenton Tarrant, after New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern vowed she would never mention him by name.

In some ways, Tarrant’s manifesto provides the greatest insight into his character and thinking, with neighbours and those he met in a gym in the sleepy seaside town of Dunedin recalling nothing particularly remarkable about him.

Chief Censor David Shanks said Tarrant’s manifesto contains justifications for acts of tremendous cruelty like killing children and encourages acts of terrorism, even outlining specific places to target and methods to carry out attacks.

He said that in banning the document, he and his staff worried about drawing more attention to it. But in the end, he said, they decided they needed to treat it the same way as propaganda from groups like the Islamic State, which they have also banned.

Shanks had earlier placed a similar ban on the 17-minute livestream video the killer filmed from a camera mounted on his helmet during the shootings. He said researchers and journalists could apply for exemptions from both bans.

But while free speech advocates haven’t questioned banning the graphic video, they said banning the manifesto is a step too far.

“People are more confident of each other and their leaders when there is no room left for conspiracy theories, when nothing is hidden,” said Stephen Franks, a constitutional lawyer and spokesman for the Free Speech Coalition. “The damage and risks are greater from suppressing these things than they are from trusting people to form their own conclusions and to see evil or madness for what it is.”

Franks said he had no interest in reading the manifesto until it was banned. He now is curious because it is “forbidden fruit,” he said, and he worries others may feel the same way. He said the ban makes no sense when New Zealanders remain free to read Adolf Hitler’s autobiography, “Mein Kampf.”

Ardern told Parliament last week that she wouldn’t give the gunman anything he wanted.

“He sought many things from his act of terror, but one was notoriety,” she said. “And that is why you will never hear me mention his name.”

She said people should instead remember the names of the victims.

Some media organizations appear to be taking up her call. News website Stuff on Saturday published an 1,800-word profile on Tarrant without once naming him.

“Our view at the moment is that we’re dialling back on naming him, unless it’s pertinent or important,” said Mark Stevens, the editorial director at Stuff.

The New Zealand Herald also published a profile on Tarrant with an accompanying editorial that mentions Ardern’s stance. The editorial says, “Our piece keeps the mention of his name to a minimum.”

https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2019/03/24/nz-debates-free-speech-limits-jail-downloading-christchurch-manifesto/

‘Foreign mercenaries’: Maduro accuses ‘the devil’s puppet’ Guaido of plotting his assassination

The president of Venezuela has accused Juan Guaido of plotting to kill him, after the opposition leader’s aide was arrested as an alleged terrorist and charged with recruiting foreign mercenaries to carry out attacks and sabotage.

“American imperialists want to kill me. We just exposed the plan that the devil's puppet [Juan Guaido] personally directed to kill me,” President Nicolas Maduro told his supporters on Saturday, claiming his government has “evidence” on the opposition’s alleged criminal activities.

Roberto Marrero, chief of staff to the US-backed opposition leader Guaido, conspired with his boss to finance terrorist acts in Venezuela, Communications Minister Jorge Rodriguez told the nation on Saturday, accusing the arrested members of the opposition of trafficking hitmen from Central America.

https://www.rt.com/news/454604-venezuela-guaido-maduro-assassination/

BBC Chief: Use of Term ‘Mainstream Media’ Is ‘Assault on Freedom’

The use of terms like “mainstream media” and growing distrust in “the establishment” are an “assault on freedom of expression”, the head of the BBC has claimed.

BBC director-general Lord Tony Hall said the effects of globalisation have fuelled a “progressive erosion of trust in … all those perceived as expert or elite” he complained, warning that journalism was under attack from “a crisis of faith in our traditional institutions”.

In a speech to the House of Lords this week, the 68-year-old life peer said he remembered “an age when … journalists could command the attention and respect of a whole country with the quality of their craft.”

Now, reporters for media outlets like the BBC face “attempts to target, troll [and] intimidate them” in addition to “constant anonymous threats online, simply for reporting on opinions that others might not want to hear”, he alleged.

Lamenting that “the phrase ‘mainstream media’ is now a term of abuse”, he professed to be “really worried” about public scepticism towards what he described as “traditional journalism”, insisting that these developments amounted to “more than an attack on journalists. [They amount] to a campaign to denigrate their craft”.

Major forces which “feed into this atmosphere” include a global rise in “disinformation” along with misuse of the phrase “fake news”, according to the BBC chief, who claimed he had traced the second phenomenon back to the 2016 U.S. Presidential race.

“It still felt to many of us like an act of desperation to dismiss palpably accurate stories from some of America’s most reliable media as being complete fabrications. But it worked. And now the ‘fake news’ tag is used worldwide,” Hall conplained.

Disinformation is “the weapon of choice for repressive regimes everywhere … Russia is the obvious example”, he continued, asserting that the Kremlin works “tirelessly” to “flood the world with stories, the more confusing and contradictory the better”, and uses tactics such as “sarcasm and mockery” in a bid to fuel “mass disbelief” and “encourage people to abandon the very idea of ‘truth’”.

“Fake news is now the poison in the bloodstream of our societies — destabilising democracy and undermining trust in institutions and the rule of law,” insisted Lord Hall, going on to highlight several examples of disinformation which he said sparked real-world violence and disruption to political campaigns.

Despite having singled out Russia as the “obvious” originator of so-called fake news, and pronouncing that countries across the West have seen the phenomena “distort our discourse, fuel divisions and influence voter decisions”, each example of dangerous disinformation that the lord went on to list took place in third world countries such as Nigeria.

https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2019/03/24/bbc-term-msm-abuse-freedom/

Democrats Hold Emergency Call On Mueller Report, Turn Down Classified Briefings, Plot Subpoenas

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) called an emergency conference call of Democratic leadership Saturday afternoon to discuss how to proceed amid news that Special Counsel Robert Mueller's report on collusion between the Trump campaign and Russian officials, may not result in a presidential indictment.

"Today, we are having an emergency Caucus conference call at 3:00 p.m. E.T. to discuss the transmittal of the Mueller report to the Department of Justice (DOJ)," Pelosi wrote in a letter to colleagues issued Saturday morning, "While we do not know the substance of the report, we will have the relevant Committees of jurisdiction on the call today to update Members on where we go from here."

Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) also issued an official statement on the matter, calling for "transparency" on the issue of Russian collusion, and demanding that the full Mueller report, once processed by the Department of Justice, be made public, and that any briefings on the subjct of Russian collusion be unclassified.

Pelosi also made clear, in her letter ahead of the call, that Democrats do not intend to let the issue of Russian collusion go, even if Mueller's report – as suspected – shows no evidence of actual collusion between the Trump campaign and Russian officials to impact the outcome of the 2016 Presidential election.

Even if DOJ chooses not to prosecute additional individuals, the underlying findings must be provided to Congress and the American people. The Attorney General’s offer to provide the Committees with a summary of the report’s conclusions is insufficient. Congress requires the full report and the underlying documents so that the Committees can proceed with their independent work, including oversight and legislating to address any issues the Mueller report may raise.

On the call, prominent Democrats, including Pelosi, made two important points about the Democratic response to the report: one, that Pelosi and other prominent Democrats and committee leaders will not take any classified briefings in relation to the report, and two, that Congressional investigators, like Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) are peparing to alter their planned investigations into the President, his inner circle, and his business dealings, to include both Special Counsel Robert Mueller and his forthcoming report.

“Everyone pounded the transparency drum continuously,” a source on the call told Politico, noting that Democrats are demanding the full Mueller report be made public.

"Pelosi said it was her belief that the findings of the report should be unclassified," Politico continued, adding that "[Pelosi will] rebuff any efforts by the Justice Department to reveal details of special counsel Robert Mueller's findings in a highly classified setting — a tactic she warned could be employed to shield the report's conclusions from the public."

Subsequent reports confirmed that Pelosi will not be accepting any briefings on Mueller's report.

https://www.dailywire.com/news/45039/democrats-hold-emergency-call-mueller-report-turn-emily-zanotti

Taibbi: It's Official - 'Russiagate' Is This Generation's WMD

The Iraq war faceplant damaged the reputation of the press. Russiagate just destroyed it…

Note to readers: in light of news that Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller’s investigation is complete, I’m releasing this chapter of Hate Inc. early, with a few new details added up top.

Nobody wants to hear this, but news that Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller is headed home without issuing new charges is a death-blow for the reputation of the American news media.

As has long been rumored, the former FBI chief’s independent probe will result in multiple indictments and convictions, but no “presidency-wrecking” conspiracy charges, or anything that would meet the layman’s definition of “collusion” with Russia.

With the caveat that even this news might somehow turn out to be botched, the key detail in the many stories about the end of the Mueller investigation was best expressed by the New York Times:

A senior Justice Department official said that Mr. Mueller would not recommend new indictments.

The Times tried to soften the emotional blow for the millions of Americans trained in these years to place hopes for the overturn of the Trump presidency in Mueller. Nobody even pretended it was supposed to be a fact-finding mission, instead of an act of faith.

The Special Prosecutor literally became a religious figure during the last few years, with votive candles sold in his image and Saturday Night Live cast members singing “All I Want for Christmas is You” to him featuring the rhymey line: “Mueller please come through, because the only option is a coup.”

The Times story today tried to preserve Santa Mueller’s reputation, noting Trump’s Attorney General William Barr’s reaction was an “endorsement” of the fineness of Mueller’s work:

In an apparent endorsement of an investigation that Mr. Trump has relentlessly attacked as a “witch hunt,” Mr. Barr said Justice Department officials never had to intervene to keep Mr. Mueller from taking an inappropriate or unwarranted step.

Mueller, in other words, never stepped out of the bounds of his job description. But could the same be said for the news media?

For those anxious to keep the dream alive, the Times published its usual graphic of Trump-Russia “contacts,” inviting readers to keep making connections. But in a separate piece by Peter Baker, the paper noted the Mueller news had dire consequences for the press:

It will be a reckoning for President Trump, to be sure, but also for Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel, for Congress, for Democrats, for Republicans, for the news media and, yes, for the system as a whole…

This is a damning page one admission by the Times. Despite the connect-the-dots graphic in its other story, and despite the astonishing, emotion-laden editorial the paper also ran suggesting “We don’t need to read the Mueller report” because we know Trump is guilty, Baker at least began the work of preparing Times readers for a hard question: “Have journalists connected too many dots that do not really add up?”

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-03-24/taibbi-its-official-russiagate-generations-wmd

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>>5865130

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>>5865161

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British advertising guru is calling for Google and Facebook to be broken up for 'sucking the life out of the UK'

Sir John Hegarty, believes it is inevitable Silicon Valley firms will be broken up

The advertising guru said Google and Facebook have ‘turned into monopolies'

Last week, Google was fined €1.5 billion for stifling competition in advertising

One of Britain’s most influential advertising gurus has called for internet giants to be broken up, accusing them of ‘sucking money out’ of the economy and damaging business and society.

In a withering attack, Sir John Hegarty – the man behind the famous 1980s Levi’s laundrette advert and Audi’s ‘Vorsprung durch Technik’ slogan – said companies such as Google and Facebook must be regulated more strictly because they have ‘turned into monopolies’ and are not putting enough back into the economy.

Google and Facebook have become so powerful that experts believe they account for as much as 90 per cent of all new digital advertising spending in the UK.

Sir John, a legend in the advertising industry who helped set up giants Saatchi & Saatchi and Bartle Bogle Hegarty, believes it is inevitable the Silicon Valley firms will be broken up. ‘They’re sucking money out [of the economy], not paying tax on it, and destroying what they’ve left behind,’ he told The Mail on Sunday.

All corporations will want to monopolise. It’s in their nature. They’ll grow as fast and as big as they can, exclude competition, dominate the market, keep it where it is.’ But he believes there will be a break-up, with the possibility of Facebook being forced to sell Instagram.

His criticism follows the release of a damning review into digital competition for the Government by Jason Furman, a former adviser to Barack Obama.

Mr Furman called on the UK to lead a global crackdown on the tech giants’ dominance and accused the firms of ‘bullying tactics’. He said the Competition and Markets Authority should be given powers to block takeovers of smaller rivals.

The report said the US tech giants had swallowed up 400 smaller firms over the past decade, highlighting Facebook’s takeovers of Instagram and messaging service WhatsApp, as well as Microsoft’s deal to buy LinkedIn, the social media platform aimed at professionals.

Last week, Google was fined €1.5 billion by the European Commission for stifling competition in online advertising. But Sir John said: ‘Google are making nearly $9 billion [profit] a quarter so when you fine them €1.5 billion, it’s like taking somebody out for lunch.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6843515/British-advertising-guru-calling-Google-Facebook-broken-up.html

Mueller Report: 'US Forced EU to Follow Through on Sanctions Without Proof'

Special Counsel Robert Mueller has submitted his report on suspected collusion between Russia and Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign to the attorney general, with the report not recommending any further indictments. Eurasia Centre senior researcher Earl Rasmussen spoke to Sputnik about the report's implications for Trump and his opponents.

Sputnik: What do we know? What can we expect? It looks like Donald Trump won't receive any political damage to his image, because of course the report doesn't recommend any further indictments. What's your stance?

Earl Rasmussen: Obviously there are certain elements, mostly in the mainstream media that's been stoking this, and certain members on the Hill, in Congress, that were hoping for something, because we heard over and over again that the next bombshell was coming.

But you're correct, there's nothing explosive, and with no new indictments coming out, and really if you look at the indictments that were there, there's nothing related at all to any type of conspiracy or collusion as far as the six people indicted who are US citizens. And the Russians that are indicted are questionable. Let's face it, Concord Management tried to file discovery, and now [prosecutors are] trying to block information, saying it's 'classified'.

There's really no evidence, and for Mr. Trump, although he will suffer some political damage, I think for the most part the objective of this whole hoax is not coming to fruition.

Sputnik: For now of course, no one really knows what's in the report, how long it is, how much it actually deals with the president's own actions. However, a lot of political and perhaps emotional capital was invested in this Mueller probe. Is this a bit of an anticlimax?

Earl Rasmussen: I think for many it is an anticlimax, absolutely. There's so much invested here. Two plus years, millions of dollars, political capital on both sides, and you've got people who have lost their livelihoods. A lot of the people that were brought in, their names exposed, their reputations were damaged. We've got the six people that have been charged [for] things that happened ten years ago; some are financially ruined now; some will spend time in jail for lying to Congress or lying to the FBI over minor financial things that may have gone unnoticed without this.

You look at the other side too, and we've got damage to international relations, not just with Russia, where what has occurred is just outrageous, but also Europe. I mean we forced Europe to follow through on sanctions that there's no evidence for. They've lost business as a result of that, so I'm sure the Europeans will be quite interested in seeing more and learning more about what's coming out of this as well.

https://sputniknews.com/analysis/201903231073489472-mueller-report-release-implications/

Chips, Electronics Components Exports From Israel to China Nearly Doubled in 2018

Intel exports most of its Israel-manufactured components to China, where it has several testing and assembly facilities

n 2018, export of electronic components from Israel to China increased by 80%, according to new data published earlier this month by Israeli government agency the Israeli Export Institute. The report shows that $2.6 billion worth of electronic components were shipped from Israel to China over the past year, most manufactured by only a few companies, among them chipmaker Intel. According to the report, Intel exports most of its Israel-manufactured components to China, where it has several testing and assembly facilities.

Electronic component export from Israel to the U.S. fell 20% in 2018 according to the report, totaling $860 million. While the U.S. is still Israel's largest export market by a large margin—despite a 3% decrease from 2017, total export still amounted to $10.9 billion—China has now bypassed the U.K. as Israel's second largest export market.

https://www.calcalistech.com/ctech/articles/0,7340,L-3758678,00.html

A Secret Database of Child Abuse – A former Jehovah's Witness is using stolen documents to expose allegations that the religion has kept hidden for decades. As many as 23,720 pedophiles are named in the database.

In March 1997, the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society, the nonprofit organization that oversees the Jehovah’s Witnesses, sent a letter to each of its 10,883 U.S. congregations, and to many more congregations worldwide. The organization was concerned about the legal risk posed by possible child molesters within its ranks. The letter laid out instructions on how to deal with a known predator: Write a detailed report answering 12 questions—Was this a onetime occurrence, or did the accused have a history of child molestation? How is the accused viewed within the community? Does anyone else know about the abuse?—and mail it to Watchtower’s headquarters in a special blue envelope. Keep a copy of the report in your congregation’s confidential file, the instructions continued, and do not share it with anyone.

Thus did the Jehovah’s Witnesses build what might be the world’s largest database of undocumented child molesters: at least two decades’ worth of names and addresses—likely numbering in the tens of thousands—and detailed acts of alleged abuse, most of which have never been shared with law enforcement, all scanned and searchable in a Microsoft SharePoint file. In recent decades, much of the world’s attention to allegations of abuse has focused on the Catholic Church and other religious groups. Less notice has been paid to the abuse among the Jehovah’s Witnesses, a Christian sect with more than 8.5 million members. Yet all this time, rather than comply with multiple court orders to release the information contained in its database, Watchtower has paid millions of dollars to keep it secret, even from the survivors whose stories are contained within.

That effort has been remarkably successful—until recently.

A white Priority Mail box filled with manila envelopes sits on the floor of Mark O’Donnell’s wood-paneled home office, on the outskirts of Baltimore, Maryland. Mark, 51, is the owner of an exercise-equipment repair business and a longtime Jehovah’s Witness who quietly left the religion in late 2013. Soon after, he became known to ex–Jehovah’s Witnesses as John Redwood, an activist and a blogger who reports on the various controversies, including cases of child abuse, surrounding Watchtower. (Recently, he has begun using his own name.)

When I first met Mark, in May of last year, he appeared at the front door of his modest home in the same outfit he nearly always wears: khaki cargo shorts, a short-sleeved shirt, white sneakers, and sweat socks pulled up over his calves. He invited me into his densely furnished office, where a fan barely dispelled the wafting smell of cat food. He pulled an envelope from the Priority Mail box and passed me its contents, a mixture of typed and handwritten letters discussing various sins allegedly committed by members of a Jehovah’s Witness congregation in Massachusetts. All the letters in the box had been stolen by an anonymous source inside the religion and shared with Mark. The sins described in the letters ranged from the mundane—smoking pot, marital infidelity, drunkenness—to the horrifying. Slowly, over the past couple of years, Mark has been leaking the most damning contents of the box, much of which is still secret.

More

http://www.stationgossip.com/2019/03/a-secret-database-of-child-abuse-former_24.html

UN Rights Council Accuses Israel of War Crimes in Gaza

Council approves February report on intentionally killing civilians

In a 23-8 vote, the UN Human Rights Council voted Friday to endorse a report on Israel’s treatment protests along the Gaza Strip, which determined that the government’s actions amounted to war crimes against civilians in Gaza.

The report itself was published in late February, and found that Israel intentionally shot both children and journalists in the Gaza Strip during those protests. They noted that 154 out of 183 people killed at the time had been unarmed.

Israeli officials insisted at the time the report came out that the killings amounted to the “right of self-defense and the obligation to defend its citizens and borders.” Israeli officials now say the only supporters of the resolution are dictatorships and “hypocrites.”

Other UNHRC resolutions, also opposed as “absurd” by Israel, included an endorsement of the right of Palestinian self-determination, and criticism of Israeli abuses in the occupied territories, and one on the illegality of Israeli settlements.

https://news.antiwar.com/2019/03/22/un-rights-council-accuses-israel-of-war-crimes-in-gaza/

>>5865345

Veterans Demand Congress End the Forever Wars

As politicians and pundits opined on the 16-year anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq this week, organizer and veteran Perry O’Brien observed that people who were born after the 9/11 attacks and the beginning of the global war on terror are now old enough to join the military and deploy to Afghanistan, where fragile peace talks between with the Taliban continue. Blood is still spilling in Kandahar, the province in Afghanistan where O’Brien served as a medic during the early years of the Afghan war.

“In 2003, the idea of being in Afghanistan even five more years would have sounded unlikely; 15 years would have been madness,” O’Brien said in an interview with Truthout.

Nowdays, O’Brien is a political organizer with Common Defense, a nationwide group of progressive veterans that grew out of protests against President Trump’s racist remarks on the 2016 campaign trail. Conservative political forces have long held a monopoly on the public image of military service and patriotism, O’Brien said, but the nationwide community of progressive veterans is actually “enormous.”

“We didn’t want to be props for Trump’s campaign for hate,” O’Brien said. “We were outraged by his remarks about Muslims and immigrants, and the whole platform and were, you know, angry with … how he wraps himself in the flag and the symbols of service even though he has never served anything other than himself.”

Common Defense organizes and trains veterans to advocate on issues ranging from racial and economic justice to opposing the Trump administration’s ban transgender troops, but after nearly two decades of seemingly endless war, O’Brien and other vets want to make it glaringly clear to policymakers that supporting U.S. military intervention has nothing to do with supporting the troops.

“There is a mistaken view that the military community wants you to show your support for the troops by being pro-intervention,” O’Brien said. “Nothing could be further from the truth in terms of what the military community really wants.”

https://truthout.org/articles/veterans-demand-congress-end-the-forever-wars/

VIDEO – Remember that Israel’s Defense Minister Openly Sympathizes with ISIS

“No one is more upset that #ISIS is defeated in #Syria than Israel. They were hoping for an ISIS victory.” – Mimi al-Laham

Some may think its conspiracy mongering, some may think its anti-Semitic to say as much, but it’s no secret and was never denied. It’s been admitted since at least the start of 2016. Now we have to remember that prior to this, Israel played a game, based on the fact that they know they are reviled as a regime in the entire region. So they had floated some black propaganda that they saw Assad as a force of ‘moderation’ in the region, and this line was fed through Arab media, promoted by Qatar, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia at the time. This line in particular was used as ‘evidence’ to help assuage jihadis fighting in the region, because there is an immediate and somewhat obvious question posed – why attack Syria and why attack others who are Muslim (not referring here to Alawite government) in this town or that village, why not attack Israel?

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And of course we have the numerous instances of ISIS ‘thanking’ Israel.

<<Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon said Tuesday that Iran poses a greater threat than the Islamic State, and that if the Syrian regime were to fall, Israel would prefer that IS was in control of the territory than an Iranian proxy.

“In Syria, if the choice is between Iran and the Islamic State, I choose the Islamic State. They don’t have the capabilities that Iran has,” Ya’alon told a conference held by the Institute of National Security Studies in Tel Aviv.>>

https://www.fort-russ.com/2019/03/video-remember-that-israels-defense-minister-openly-sympathizes-with-isis/

The Heresy of Christian Nationalism

God doesn’t bless America. That’s not how this works. I’m sorry to break it to you, Bible Belt Christians—but that’s just how it is.

I know this kinda wrecks the convenient narrative you’ve been working for the past 60 or so years (and hitting especially hard the past eighteen months), but honestly that nasty bit of heresy has done enough damage already and it needs to go. It’s straight-up of the devil.

I’m not sure where you’re getting your taglines and hat slogans from, but I know it isn’t from the Bible. I know it isn’t from your coveted and regularly trotted out John 3:16:

For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.

God loved the world.

God is in the world-loving business—not the America-blessing business.

You remember the world, don’t you; that massive, spinning sphere of 7.6 billion disparate human beings: brown people, Muslims, LGBTQ folks, Atheists, shithole countries—and lots and lots of non-English speaking, non-Americans?

Check out the Old and New Testaments again.

Read through the Gospels a few times.

Use any translation you’d like:

No America First.

No Making America Great Again (or at all.)

No flags or national anthems to pledge allegiance to.

A few other bits of news from the Scriptures:

Jesus was born in the Middle East.

He didn’t speak English.

He wasn’t white.

He wasn’t Evangelical.

He wasn’t a Republican.

He wasn’t American.

Heck, he wasn’t even Christian.

Jesus was a Rabbi who spent his days as an itinerant street preacher, living off the generosity of strangers and speaking in parables about a new “Kingdom of God:'” a radical way of living where the poor were cared for, the oppressed freed, and the outcasts welcomed in.

Jesus came to usher in a countercultural kind of interdependent community, in direct opposition to the power-wielding Roman Empire he stepped into. It was a diverse, barrier-breaking, border-transcending, nation-defying movement of generosity and mutual affection. It had nothing to do with blessing a Government or building an army—or creating a gated community of white folks in North America two thousand years in the future.

To claim that America was at all the point of the Gospels is flat-out heresy.

To assume any God-ordained supremacy based on religion, nation of origin, pigmentation, orientation, or native tongue—is a perversion of the work of Jesus and idolatry of the worst kind.

I’m sorry to break all this bad news to you. I understand the actual words of the Gospel are problematic, given the story you’re selling to those whose fear you’re leveraging in America right now.

It’s impossible to be devoted to the Jesus of the Scriptures, while refusing refugees, expelling immigrants, demonizing Muslims, vilifying brown people, worshiping political power, and neglecting the poor—which is exactly the point.

As long as you continue to conflate God and America, you’re going to be whitewashing the Good News, shrinking God into your own image, and bastardizing the message of Jesus in ways that can only be described as fully and violently heretical.

If your God is America—you need a bigger God.

https://johnpavlovitz.com/2018/02/13/christian-nationalism-heresies/?utm_campaign=coschedule&utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=johnpavlovitz

Here are 8 mistakes the media makes about anti-Semitism in America

When House Democrats managed to turn an ill-conceived attack on one of their own into an all-inclusive condemnation of bigotry, they dodged a bullet — but not the war, as Donald Trump made clear.

“The Democrats have become an anti-Israel party. They’ve become an anti-Jewish party. And I thought that vote was a disgrace,” Trump claimed after the vote, in a typically mendacious statement.

The resolution’s author, Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland, is of course both Jewish and a Democrat. In fact, the vast majority of Jews in Congress are Democrats — eight of nine senators (plus independent Bernie Sanders) and 25 of 27 House members.

What’s more, the resolution’s first clause “rejects the perpetuation of anti-Semitic stereotypes in the United States and around the world, including the pernicious myth of dual loyalty and foreign allegiance, especially in the context of support for the United States-Israel alliance,” directly refuting Trump’s claim. The second clause further “condemns anti-Semitic acts and statements as hateful expressions of intolerance that are contradictory to the values that define the people of the United States.”

The rejection of anti-Semitism could not be clearer. Yet, 23 Republicans voted against it! And Trump — whose last 2016 campaign ad was “packed with anti-Semitic dog whistles, anti-Semitic tropes and anti-Semitic vocabulary” as TPM’s Josh Marshall described it — calls Democrats “anti-Jewish”?

If Trump were alone, it would be laughable, if only in the darkest of ways. But of course he’s not. He’s got the vast majority of his party marching in lockstep with him — and pretending that Democrats are anti-Semitic is one of the few cards they’ve got to play going into the 2020 elections. Which is one more reason why we must be very clear about what anti-Semitism really is, what purposes and interests it serves, how it relates to other forms of bigotry, and why it’s being politically manipulated by Trump and his allies.

http://www.hideoutnow.com/2019/03/here-are-8-mistakes-media-makes-about.html

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