WikiLeaks Releases Even More OPCW Douma Documents

by Dave DeCamp Posted on December 30, 2019

https://original.antiwar.com/Dave_DeCamp/2019/12/29/wikileaks-releases-even-more-opcw-douma-documents/

On Friday, WikiLeaks released even more internal emails and documents from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) related to the alleged chemical attack in Douma, Syria, on April 7^th, 2018. The release is the fourth leak related to the alleged attack, an incident that was used as the pretext for an airstrike launched by the US, UK, and France against the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

The OPCW published their final report on the Douma attack in March 2019, they concluded that the evidence provided "reasonable grounds that the use of a toxic chemical as a weapon took place" and that chemical was "likely molecular chlorine." But since that report was published, multiple whistleblowers have come forward, and many documents have been leaked that suggest otherwise. The mounting evidence points to a cover-up within the OPCW, a possible scandal that has gained virtually no attention from the mainstream media.

One of the new leaks is a series of emails between OPCW employees dated February 28^th, 2019, just two days before the final report was published. The emails show Sebastien Braha, the OPCW Chief of Cabinet, ordering the removal of a document from the OPCW’s secure registry. The email says, "Please get this document out of DRA (Documents Registry Archive) … And please remove all traces, if any, of its delivery/storage/whatever in DRA."

The document Braha ordered to be removed is an engineering assessment that studied two cylinders found in two separate locations in Douma. The allegation was that these cylinders were dropped out of a Syrian government aircraft and were the source of the chlorine gas. But this engineering assessment points to a different possibility.

The assessment was prepared by Ian Henderson, a longtime OPCW engineer. Henderson’s report concludes, "observations at the scene of the two locations, together with subsequent analysis, suggest that there is a higher probability that both cylinders were manually placed at those two locations rather than being delivered from aircraft." If the cylinders were manually placed where they were found, it would point to the theory that the attack was staged by Jaysh al-Islam, the opposition group that the Syrian government was driving out of Douma. But Henderson’s assessment was left out of the final report.

This new leak corroborates a story Peter Hitchens wrote for The Mail on Sunday earlier this month. According to Hitchens, after making every effort to have his assessment included in the final report, Henderson decided to upload it to the DRA. After the document was uploaded, a senior OPCW official nicknamed "Voldemort" ordered it be erased. Hitchens wrote, "when ‘Voldemort’ heard about it, he sent an email to subordinates saying: ‘Please get this document out of DRA … And please remove all traces, if any, of its delivery/storage/whatever in DRA.’"

Henderson leaked his engineering assessment to the Working Group on Syria, Propaganda, and Media, and it was published in May 2019. Since Henderson’s leak was published, his character has been smeared as a way to delegitimize his assessment. The common allegation is that Henderson was not part of the OPCW Fact-Finding Mission (FFM) that went to Douma to investigate the alleged attack. The OPCW even told the Working Group in a statement that Henderson "has never been a member of the FFM."

After Braha orders the engineering assessment to be removed from the DRA, he sends another email questioning Henderson’s work. The email reads, "Under whose authority was this work conducted, outside FFM authority and dedicated highly secured network, by someone who was not part of the FFM?" This is the last email we can see in the exchange. Critics of Henderson are pointing to this email as proof that he was not part of the FFM.

But evidence from previous leaks show that Henderson was indeed a member of the FFM that went to Douma. An email from a set of documents released by WikiLeaks on December 14^th addressed to a senior OPCW official, calls the allegation that Henderson was not part of the FFM a "falsehood." The email dated May 20^th, 2019, reads, "Ian Henderson WAS part of the FFM and there is an abundance of official documentation, as well as other supporting proof that testifies to that."

Another document released on December 14^th is a memo addressed to OPCW Director-General Fernando Arias dated March 14^th, 2019. In the memo, the author, who is likely Ian Henderson, explains that the final OPCW report was not prepared by the FFM that went to Douma. The memo says the report was prepared by an "FFM core team" that only operated in "Country X," with the exception of a paramedic that did go to Douma. "Country X" is likely Turkey since OPCW investigators went there to interview alleged witnesses.

This memo shows that there are two groups that can be called the "FFM." One that went to Douma and had no say in the final report, and a team that only operated in "Country X." Henderson was likely a member of the FFM that went to Douma, whose findings were ignored.

Another document released Friday was the minutes from an OPCW meeting with toxicologists that took place on June 6^th, 2018. According to the document, four OPCW employees met with "three Toxicologists/Clinical pharmacologists" and "one bioanalytical and toxicological chemist" who all specialize in chemical weapons. The meeting had two purposes. One was "to solicit expert advice on the value of exhuming suspected victims of the alleged chemical attack," and the other purpose was "to elicit expert opinions from the forensic toxicologists regarding the observed and reported symptoms of the alleged victims."

According to the minutes, the OPCW team was advised by the experts that there would be "little use" in exhuming the bodies and conducting autopsies, something the FFM never did.

With regards to the symptoms of the alleged victims, according to the minutes, "the chief expert summed up his conclusions by offering two possibilities that included, on the one hand, a real chemical attack and on the other, the possibility of the event being a propaganda exercise." As far as the symptoms were consistent with exposure to chlorine gas, "the experts were conclusive in their statements that there was no correlation between symptoms and chlorine exposure."

The document says the OPCW team that attended the meeting all agreed "that the key ‘take-away’ message from the meeting was that the symptoms observed were inconsistent with exposure to chlorine and no other obvious candidate chemical causing the symptoms could be identified." WikiLeaks also released a set of emails from OPCW employees discussing the meeting, affirming the content of the leaked minutes.

The conclusion of the toxicologists and the OPCW team members that attended the meeting are consistent with the original interim report that was never published by the OPCW and was only made public after WikiLeaks released it on December 14^th. That interim report says, "Some of the signs and symptoms described by witnesses and noted in photos and video recordings taken by witnesses, of the alleged victims are not consistent with exposure to chlorine-containing choking or blood agents such as chlorine gas, phosgene or cyanogen chloride." This part of the report was completely removed from the highly altered version of the interim report that was published on July 6^th 2018.

WikiLeaks published an email on November 23^rd from a member of the FFM that went to Douma, expressing his concern over the altered interim report. That email’s author had many issues with the changes to the interim report, among them was the section addressing the victim’s symptoms. The email reads, "The original report discusses in detail the inconsistency between the victims’ symptoms, as reported by witnesses and seen in video recordings. Omitting this section of the report has a serious negative impact … The inconsistency was not only noted by the FFM team but strongly supported by three toxicologists with expertise in exposure to CW agents."

The final report mentions two consultations with toxicologists, one in September 2018, and one in October 2018, but no details from the consultations are given. The final report says the symptoms of the alleged victims as described by witnesses and observed in open-sourced videos "indicate exposure to an inhalational irritant or toxic substance." The report also says, "it is currently not possible to precisely link the cause of the signs and symptoms to a specific chemical."

If the FFM that prepared the final report had proof that the symptoms of the alleged victims were consistent with chlorine exposure, it would no doubt have been included in the report. The absence of such an allegation shows that despite further consultations with toxicologists, that conclusion was never reached. Instead, the reader is lead to believe that the victims were killed by a chlorine gas since the ultimate conclusion of the report is that an attack using a toxic chemical that contained chlorine likely occurred.

Since these OPCW leaks have been coming out, employees of the investigative research website Bellingcat have been trying to sweep them under the rug (it is worth noting that Bellingcat receives grants from the US-government funded National Endowment for Democracy). The "investigators" at Bellingcat are now accusing WikiLeaks of selectively releasing these documents to fit a narrative, and are claiming that each new leak discredits the previous ones. It is more likely that WikiLeaks’ sources expected their original leaks to make a bigger splash, and decided to release more since they gained so little attention. And, as demonstrated above, the new leaks clearly support earlier ones.

No honest journalist or investigator can look at all these leaks and say there is nothing here. The evidence shows that the OPCW ignored its investigator’s findings to prepare a report that fit a particular narrative. The OPCW needs to release all of its member’s findings and explain why they chose to ignore some. The fact is, the alleged Douma chemical attack led to a US airstrike. If that airstrike was carried out under false pretenses it needs to be revealed.

Dave DeCamp is an assistant editor at Antiwar.com and a freelance journalist based in Brooklyn NY, focusing on US foreign policy and wars. He is on Twitter at @decampdave.

Exclusive: After Cabinet opposed Mexican cartel policy, Trump forged ahead

Jonathan Landay, Ted Hesson, Arshad Mohammed

DECEMBER 26, 2019 

https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-usa-mexico-cartels-exclusive/exclusive-after-cabinet-opposed-mexican-cartel-policy-trump-forged-ahead-idUKKBN1YU0XS

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - In the weeks before U.S. President Donald Trump’s declaration last month that he would forge ahead with designating Mexican drug cartels as a foreign terrorist organizations, Cabinet members and top aides from across the government recommended against it, five people knowledgeable about the matter told Reuters.

The recommendations, which some of the sources described as unanimous, have not been reported previously. They were driven in part by concerns that such designations could harm U.S.-Mexico ties, potentially jeopardizing Mexico’s cooperation with Trump’s efforts to halt illegal immigration and drug trafficking across the border said two sources, including a senior administration official.

Another key concern was that the designations could make it easier for migrants to win asylum in the United States by claiming they were fleeing terrorism, the senior administration official and two other sources said.

Stephen Miller, one of the most influential White House advisers and the architect of Trump’s policies to stem immigration was among the officials who voiced concerns during deliberations that preceded two high-level meetings resulting in recommendations to shelve the designation plan, according to two of the sources.

The White House and Miller declined to comment on the record. All of the sources who spoke to Reuters requested anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the issue publicly.

Reuters could not determine whether the president had been briefed on the recommendations before announcing, during a Nov. 26 interview with conservative commentator Bill O’Reilly, that he was going forward with the plan.

Less than two weeks a later, on Dec. 9, the president tweeted that he was temporarily delaying the plan at Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador’s request.

The senior administration official portrayed the president’s announcement not as a reversal but as a strategic move.

“Even the threat of designation was extremely useful leverage in terms of obtaining further cooperation” from Mexico, the official said.

The official said that reviving the plan remains “a live possibility” depending on Mexico’s cooperation on such issues as sealing the border to narcotics trafficking and controlling immigration.

The Mexican government has argued that equating drug cartels with Islamic State and al Qaeda could open the door to U.S. military intervention.

In a meeting with Attorney General William Barr on Dec. 5, President Lopez Obrador expressed opposition to the designation plan, saying the Mexican constitution would not permit such foreign interference, a presidential spokesman told Reuters Tuesday. After the plan was delayed, Mexican Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard tweeted his appreciation of Trump’s decision, saying “there will be good results.”

CRACKDOWN HINGED ON COOPERATION

Trump has made halting illegal immigration and narcotics trafficking across the U.S.-Mexican border the signature issue of his first term and his 2020 re-election campaign.

Designating a group as a foreign terrorist organization, or FTO is aimed at disrupting its finances through sanctions, including asset freezes and travel bans, on their members and associates. The State Department oversees the process.

The success of Trump’s immigration crackdown hinges, however, on Mexico’s cooperation. Earlier this year, Mexico agreed to deploy thousands of national guard troops to intercept migrants moving north towards the U.S. border after the American president threatened to impose escalating tariffs on Mexican goods.

In addition, Mexico has taken in tens of thousands of migrants sent back from the United States to await decisions on their U.S. asylum requests.

The senior administration official said Trump and many top aides have wanted to crack down on cartel trafficking in narcotics and illegal immigration for some time and we're looking at novel approaches, including the FTO designation plan.

The president and senior officials believed that they needed “to have an extremely aggressive posture towards the cartels and to look at using tools that had not been used before,” he said.

Two Republican members of the U.S. House of Representatives introduced legislation in March that also would have established an FTO designation for cartels.

The Trump administration began working on its plan in late August, Trump told O’Reilly in the Nov. 26 interview, before declaring that the cartels “will be designated” as FTOs.

UNANIMOUS OPPOSITION

A few weeks earlier, according to two former officials and another knowledgeable person, deputies to Cabinet members recommended in a meeting that the administration’s plan be shelved. The Nov. 8 meeting was held four days after nine American women and children died in an ambush linked to what Mexican officials asserted was a territorial dispute between rival gangs in northern Mexico.

Miller attended the meeting and the decision was unanimous, according to one source.

Participants at a Nov. 20 Cabinet-level meeting also advised against the proposal, according to four sources. That decision, too, was unanimous and Miller was there, two of the sources said.

The agencies represented at the meetings included the departments of State, Justice, Homeland Security, Defense, Treasury and Commerce, one administration official said.    

Numerous current and former U.S. officials and other experts say that designating Mexican cartels as FTOs would be counter-productive.

Several pointed out that a 1999 law allowing U.S. officials to designate foreign drug traffickers as narcotics kingpins already allow the imposition of sanctions similar to those authorized by an FTO designation.

The senior administration official said that U.S. officials’ ability to use the 1999 law contributed to the decision to delay the FTO designation plan.

A Dec. 19 report published by the conservative Heritage Foundation warned that designating cartels as FTOs would weaken Trump’s immigration policies.

“A terrorist designation could allow unintended numbers to apply for political asylum in the U.S.,” said the report. “The pool of applicants could logically extend beyond Mexico. While Mexican cartels’ territorial stronghold is within their own country, they have representatives on every continent except Antarctica.”

Jason Blazakis, who oversaw the designation process at the State Department’s Counter-Terrorism Bureau from 2008-2018, said that in addition to damaging U.S.-Mexican relations, the FTO designation could hurt Mexico’s economy by prompting foreign businesses to leave the country or reconsider investing there.

Asset freezes and bans on travel to the U.S. could affect Mexican officials, military commanders, and businessmen in league with the cartels.

“You are blurring the lines between criminality and terrorism and that is extremely problematic,” said Blazakis, now a professor of international relations at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies in Monterey, California.

He added: “There are hundreds of Brazilian gangs are eligible for the list. There are numerous Chinese and Russian criminal gangs eligible for the list. Where would you stop?”   

(This story corrects the first paragraph to say “last month” not “this month”)

El nuevo status quo

Ilán Semo

https://www.jornada.com.mx/2019/12/28/opinion/011a1pol

Si algo permanecerá como el vestigio de una historia en la vertiginosa carrera de Genaro García Luna es, acaso, el emblema de uno de los arquetipos del nuevo status quo inaugurado por el ascenso de Felipe Calderón a la Presidencia de la República en 2006. La historia secreta de los órdenes políticos abunda en figuras conspicuas. Entre ellas, la del policía es una de las más paradigmáticas. Fouche fue la clave del Termidor en la revolución francesa, y otro policía, García Luna, representa, en cierta manera, una de las tantas claves del Termidor del mayor intento de la sociedad mexicana por darse un orden democrático. Por su status, un antiguo secretario de Estado y, por lo que sabe, el archivo vivo probablemente más cuantioso de la política mexicana en la década pasada, se trata del preso mexicano más valioso en manos de la justicia estadunidense. Y todas las evidencias que lo mantienen en las cortes de Nueva York obligan a repensar –más allá de los profundos lazos que definieron a las relaciones entre el Poder Ejecutivo y el crimen organizado en ese sexenio– un problema nodal: la crisis de las formas tradicionales en que el Estado fincó su legitimidad a lo largo del siglo XX.

Durante seis años, García Luna fue el artífice de la edificación de una gigantesca estructura policiaca nunca antes vista en el país. Tan sólo en el último año de su gestión, la SPP recibió un presupuesto de 44 mil millones de pesos.Su propósito aparente: combatir las múltiples actividades de la delincuencia organizada. En la práctica sucedió algo muy distinto.

La vox populi –y la de los especialistas también– acostumbran explicar el exponencial crecimiento del llamado crimen organizado como un efecto de la porosidad de las instituciones públicas para que sus funcionarios se corrompan. Esto es tan sólo la superficie; por debajo se generó un mecanismo mucho más intrincado. El aparato de seguridad del Estado descubrió muy pronto que los cárteles podían fungir como eficaces dispositivos de control de poblaciones, territorios y movimientos sociales disidentes. Tal y como lo relata Anabel Hernández en su libro El traidor, El Mayo Zambada, jefe del cártel de Sinaloa, dijo alguna vez a su hijo, a propósito de los pagos que se entregaban a García Luna, trabajamos para el gobierno. Esto nuevos empleados del gobierno tendrían en realidad una labor más esencial que la de enriquecer a funcionarios. En principio, se convertirían en un mecanismo ideal para transformar conflictos sociales y políticos en aparentes reyertas entre grupos criminales. Un dispositivo idóneo para despolitizar a la sociedad. La corrupción de los cuerpos políticos no ha sido más que una derivada de la función de despolitización que ejercen a diario y por doquier.

Desde 2007, la esperanza de la sociedad mexicana reside en creer que la criminalización de la vida cotidiana es un fenómeno que alguna estrategia gubernamental sería capaz de erradicar si es acertada. Es una esperanza vana. De seguir así, la amalgama entre el crimen organizado y la esfera política podría prolongarse durante décadas. Las razones están a la mano: el Estado puede gobernar a partir de la política de un miedo constante y capilar sin aparecer como su instigador inmediato; todo conflicto social es remitido, en el imaginario público, a una reyerta entre bandas criminales; en última instancia, siempre es posible atribuir a ese continente ignoto llamado Estados Unidos la responsabilidad por su rauda proliferación ( de facto, de ahí provienen sus principales recursos financieros).

El gobierno de Morena ha decidido simplemente continuar esta lógica con otros métodos. No es que la esfera política no pueda resolver el problema de la seguridad; ya es evidente que, en realidad, no tiene el menor interés en resolverlo. Se trata de una nueva forma estable de poder: el poder polimorfo. Y su reproducción permanecerá hasta que la sociedad no se rebele contra este nuevo ejercicio de dominación, como sucedió en el caso de Ayotzinapa.

Existe otra limitante a está inédita versión del poder político. Sin la amalgama con el Estado, los cárteles mexicanos jamás se habrían transformado en empresas globales. Sólo que en esta esfera chocan con intereses que no se encuentran bajo su alcance. La detención de García Luna en cárceles estadunidenses es una advertencia en este sentido. Los mismos que le autorizaron la vigilancia de la exportación de estupefacientes al mercado del norte, ahora lo inculpan por ello.

Se trata sólo de las reglas de un juego de proporciones. Pero un juego que, al menor descuido, puede causar una crisis impredecible en el Estado mexicano.

El dilema para la administración de Morena es: ¿quién sigue? En la jerarquía, por arriba de García Luna ya sólo se encuentran tres ex presidentes. La pregunta es también si la estructura de García Luna no estaba actuando contra la propia administración de Morena. No lo sabremos hasta que la noche del crimen no reciba su verdadera definición. El problema del crimen organizado no es, en primera instancia, un asunto de seguridad, es un problema político.

From Corbyn to Stalin to Rothschild

ISRAEL SHAMIR • DECEMBER 23, 2019

https://www.unz.com/ishamir/from-corbyn-to-stalin-to-rothschild/

(1) England

Jewish logic is astounding! The Jews fought Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour tooth and claw. Their newspapers claimed he is a new Hitler. Their Chief Rabbi issued a fatwa against Corbyn. Israel’s Foreign Minister said he hopes Corbyn will lose the British election. And Labour had been soundly thrashed in the British elections. Jews could congratulate themselves with this result: they’ve got what they wished. But such a response would be too simple-minded for Jews.

When the results of the elections became known, immediately, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz responded with: “The blaming of the Jews for this historic defeat has already begun. It will only get louder.” Well, this is the nature of elections. If you actively support one, winning side, you’d be congratulated by the winners and blamed by the losers. This is just, this is right. But it is not good enough for the Jews. The smart people want a better deal: to be congratulated by the winners, while the losers should just regret they haven’t had you on their side. They can’t blame you for it will be an antisemitic act.

This is the great Jewish trick: they always win, and they never lose. When their side loses, they say they didn’t act qua Jews. Even if they pull the Jewish solidarity card, and say that as Jews they have to be for unlimited immigration everywhere but in Israel; or as Jews they want Corbyn to lose; you are not allowed to “blame” them for the result. The Jews are always blameless. You may congratulate them on the result, never blame.

Jonathan Freedland, the Guardian journalist who had worked overtime blowing Corbyn antisemitism hoax into flame, twitted “I predicted Labour would be defeated”. He was corrected: “it was not predicted, it was manufactured by you!” And the Jews responded with “How do you dare to blame a Jew?”

And now, if you are unhappy with Corbyn’s defeat, should you blame the Jews? Yes and no. No, because whatever Jews say, it is Brits that vote. No, so they won’t think that Jews decide everything. And still, yes. They contributed their energy to his defeat. The Jewish onslaught on Corbyn had one immediate unfortunate consequence: Corbyn has tried to accommodate the attackers and sought a compromise with wealthy Remainers at the expense of the workers. And a politician who accommodates Jews is likely to be defeated twice: once, by a politician who is total, without reservations, on the Jewish side; and the second time, by your supporters who would leave you. This is what happened to Corbyn. He went towards Jews, away from the British working class; while on the Jewish territory, he was easily defeated by Johnson, the eager friend of Israel.

Corbyn had a chance: if he would unleash a Night of the Long Knives on Blairites after his victory in the party, if he would allow the party members to deselect the pro-Remain Blairite Jewish MPs, if he would drop silly pseudo-left notions of climate change, green economy, gender discourse, migrants, if he were to stick to the hard left class line, he would surely win. People are sick of fence sitters.

Instead of being horrified by Jewish fatwa, he could make it his banner. Instead of blessing Jews with the Hanukkah and getting “Go f*ck yourself” in return from Stephen Pollard, editor of the Jewish Chronicle, he could bless the British people with coming Christmas. But then, he won’t be Corbyn.

This development has a long history. The close aide to Jeremy Corbyn and a leading Labor strategist Seumas Milne had published a piece in the Guardian (he was then the paper’s leading columnist) called “This slur of anti-semitism is used to defend repression”. That was in 2002, and he wrote: “Since the French revolution, the fates of the Jewish people and the left have been closely intertwined. The left’s appeal to social justice and universal rights created a natural bond with a people long persecuted and excluded by the Christian European establishment. Despite the changed class balance of many Jewish communities, Jews remain disproportionately active in progressive political movements throughout the world” but now they accuse the Left of anti-semitism.

I replied to him then:

In civilized New York, a girl eager to brush-off an insistent admirer does not have to be rude. She slips him a phone number to call, and they're a recorded message informs him, “The person you are calling does not wish to remain in contact with you. If you want to listen to a sad poem, press ONE if you want to cling to the unrealistic dream of reunion, press TWO if you want to have counseling and advice, press THREE.”

The Milne’s article is a rejected lover’s complaint. Apparently, he can’t overcome his rejection by the Daughter of Zion. He laments the glorious days of their alliance: “Since the French revolution, the fates of the Jewish people and the Left have been closely intertwined. From the time of Marx, Jews played a central role across all shades of the left.” Mr. Milne and the Left are in need of some advice and counseling (press THREE).

Everything that has a beginning, Mr. Milne, has an end as well. Before the French Revolution, the Jewish people supported despotism against the aristocracy, and the Magna Carta was signed by King John despite their opposition. After Napoleon, the Jewish people had had a long alliance with the Left. It was long, but not everlasting. This alliance was severed in the aftermath of the failed 1968 revolution. Since that time the Jewish People have built a new alliance, with Globalisation forces.

Give it a thought, Mr. Milne: if the Daughter of Zion could ally herself with the Left, why could she not change her partners? Should she be considered a permanently beneficial force, next to God Almighty? Jewish leadership benefited from the union with the Left while it was an aspiring force, struggling with the traditional upper classes. After their aspirations were satisfied, they had no more interest in such an ally.

Why should one describe as a ‘natural bond’ rather than a ‘marriage of convenience’ this relationship with the rich Jewish bankers and newspaper owners who had supported the Left? It was quite an unnatural bond, formed against the obvious class interests of the involved sides, and its collapse was inevitable. The Left accepted the help of rich Jews, disregarding their motives. It paid a heavy price: alienation from the working classes who had had a long and painful history of Jew-Gentile relations, alienation from the Church, and the uncompromising hostility of the upper classes. The Jews used the energy of the Left until it ran out, and then ditched it. Now, the Left can dial a phone number in New York and listen to the pre-recorded message. (Read this article in full here.)

Since 2002, the Left didn’t part with Jews; instead, it went to the desert the wealthy Jews wanted to send it, to the desert of identity politics and climate bull, to the desert of accommodating Jews and disregarding Christians. This policy came to the natural end in the 2019 elections. The new leadership of the Labour should learn its lesson and complete the disengagement from the Jews.

They could learn much from Joseph Stalin, whose 140^th anniversary had been celebrated yesterday in Moscow and elsewhere. This great and victorious leader of the Left didn’t stray away from his course of liberating mankind on fashionable nonsense; he had no use for Derrida’s deconstruction; he was a friend and a patron of the Church; he didn’t encourage gender changes and perversions, he developed industry instead of promoting green sources; he banned abortions; immigration was tiny (mainly American workers and engineers fleeing the Great Recession).

As for Jews, he was a friend, but not a slave. He didn’t hesitate to jail and execute the treasonous ones, he rewarded the loyal ones, he saved millions of Jews from the Nazi death machine. Jews – from Tel Aviv to London and from Moscow to New York – worshipped him. Eventually, the fickle Daughter of Zion ditched him, but she always does.

His enemies accuse him of running the Gulag archipelago of jails and prisons, of harsh prison terms, but now in the age of Totalitarian Liberalism this complain appear jaded somewhat. The US penitentiary system has more prisoners than Stalin’s ever had, in absolute numbers and relative to population. No jail in Stalin’s days could compare with Guantanamo, where untried prisoners pray for death, or with Belmarsh prison where Assange is being kept.

Or indeed with “the highest security prison in Rhode Island, where he slept in halls with 50 bunks, shat in door-less toilets next to murderers and human traffickers, took group showers with cannibals and child rapists in the world’s last outpost of legalized slavery, earning ten cents an hour, paying a dollar for a bottle of water in a private prison complex where free cold water no longer exists. To make the maximum off of prisoners, no freshwater is provided, only access to hot water and ice, so that prisoners have to constantly pay for cups. Otherwise they don’t get to drink. Sometimes prisons withhold earnings from hourly wages, reducing them to two cents” – and that is in the US under Obama, not in Russia under Stalin. Ivan Denisovich of Solzhenitsyn had enough cold water.

After the last week sentence of Adolfo Martinez (16 years of jail for protesting LGBT flag), I think the myth of “cruel Stalin” may fade into oblivion, with many other myths of the period.

The Russian people were invariably anti-Stalin by 1991, as a result of insistent and permeating government propaganda. But now, in 2020, 70 percent of Russians have a favorable view of this historical personality, a contemporary of Hitler and Churchill. Yesterday, thousands of Russians had brought their red carnations to his tomb at the Red Square. Will the Brits remember their Labour leaders in 70 years?

(2) Rothschild Leaks

– “Jewishness has once again become a way of avoiding scrutiny and accountability. Only anti-Semites dare to see a link between the sale of Alstom, Macron’s career, the Rothschilds, and the Jewish community.” – told me a knowledgeable Jewish person, well versed with goings-on within the French Jewish community and in the higher business, banking and political circles of the Republic. I’ll call him JT. (My regular readers have met him in my preceding essay, and now he has his own Twitter account and a blog).

I almost hung upon him. When I see ‘Rothschild’, my hand reaches for the click-out button. I do not wait for ‘reptilians’ or ‘Rockefellers’ of another boring rant against bankers-and-Jews. What could one add to this over-researched (since 18^th century) topic! However, JT added to our knowledge in this long piece.

He says that while Rothschilds are not as big as many other giant banks, and they have fewer assets, they have unique influence in politics, based on hundreds of years of experience. Joining Rothschilds is “considered a kind of rite of passage for executive appointments in the government”. That’s why Macron joined them looking for a political career. A shortlist of Rothschild alumni in the world’s largest corporations give us Shell, De Beers, the Guardian – the newspaper that smeared Jeremy Corbyn as an antisemite, the Economist, etc. They have hidden and secret contacts with other groups and persons of importance. And yes, they are often Jewish.

“As with the rest of the Jewish community the Rothschilds use their Jewishness to intimidate journalists into disinterest, and the Holocaust to prevent any appeal for transparency. Everyone who is anyone uses Jewishness for political purposes, and statesmen flock to this media-unfriendly brand.”

Their specialty is hiding wealth, and crooks running decrepit countries such as the Ukraine (Peter Poroshenko) hide and manage their stolen loot with the bank.

With offshore comes secrecy, influence, and tax avoidance. It is a considerably sought-after service, especially when laundered through the “Rothschild” brand.

JT makes an interesting observation. There were so many leaks of offshore banking – Panama leaks, Luxembourg Leaks, Bahamas Leaks, Paradise Paper Leaks – but none of them had revealed Rothschild’s offshores. There is a system to this madness: all the leaks are connected with the International Consortium for Investigative Journalism (ICIJ) financed and controlled by George Soros’s Open Society foundation and by Pierre Omidyar. They are the people who are promoted as a new Wikileaks, and their Glenn Greenwald as a new Assange.

But observe the difference. Julian Assange and his Wikileaks had made all the secret stuff available for you and me. We all can read the State Department cables. And Julian is locked up in the high-security prison.

Glenn Greenwald has got the treasure trove of Snowden Files, gigabytes lifted from the NSA and CIA computers, likely to reveal the 9/11 conspiracy, planning of Middle Eastern wars, their spying on the American people – and he sits tight on it. We shall never see any of it. Not surprisingly, Greenwald prospers, eats well and sleeps well at his home with his boyfriend.

The brave researcher, Max Blumenthal wrote in a long and extensive piece about Omidyar’s activities:

Greenwald pledged in 2014 to build a secure “reading room” where outside journalists could review files at the publication’s New York City office. That room has not materialized. In October 2017, he published a cable from Snowden files that revealed Saudi Prince Salman bin Sultan explicitly directing a fraction of Syrian insurgents to “light up” Damascus and “flatten” its civilian airport on March 18, 2013. The cable also revealed that Saudi Arabia had supplied 120 tons of explosives to the armed opposition, resulting in attacks on the Syrian presidential palace and locations across Damascus. That cable had been in the possession of The Intercept’s founders for over four years, but it was inexplicably held. Had it been released when they got it, people would learn that the so-called “moderate rebels” were, in fact, waging a campaign of terror on behalf of foreign sponsors – and perhaps, the Syrian war would be over sooner.

I wonder what was the reason of Snowden’s escape to Moscow? Why did he have to run away at all? Why did he have to steal the stuff nobody ever saw excepting Greenwald and his boss Omydiar? I really do not care that the greedy Feds intend to pocket Snowden’s royalties for the book he published. Let Omidyar compensate him.

Omidyar had bought Greenwald to assure that nothing of substance contained in Snowden’s files ever became public, and Greenwald sold the files and his own soul, provided he had it in the first place. The leaks that he publishes are those that fit into his schemes like Trump’s links to Putin.

And now sit tight for a surprise. Omidyar is the main backer behind the efforts of the infamous Anti-Defamation League (ADL) to run internet censorship by tech giants, reported Whitney Webb. Omidyar provided the capital to launch the ADL’s “new Silicon Valley center to fight intolerance” and to team up with Facebook, Twitter, Google and Microsoft — to create a Cyberhate Problem-Solving Lab for ultimate censorship.

Glenn Greenwald pretended for years to be a Palestine supporter, a harsh critic of Israeli apartheid. How come, Glenn, that now you play in the ADL team that brands Palestinian activists as hatemongers and antisemites? You pretended to be for peace and against US wars. How come that your team fights against Tulsi Gabbard, the only anti-war contender for the US presidency? Is that the voice of blood or the voice of blood money you earned? When you agree to accommodate a mysterious money-man, you end up in the embraces of ADL, apparently.

JT says that of all the countless mentions of Rothschild in the ICIJ databases, even relating to Jeffrey Epstein material, only two files are accessible, and they come from auditors, not ICIJ or their privatized leaks. The rest remains inaccessible. The ICIJ might even be described as “leak catchers,” a term corroborated by Mintpress’expose of Omydiar’s activities. And Rothschilds and their clients remain safe and protected.

In the next issue, we shall continue reading JT’s papers.

(3) Christmas

My blessings to our readers with glorious Nativity of Our Lord Jesus Christ! As my present to this occasion, I shall send free of charge my e-book Our Lady of Sorrows about the fate of Christianity in Palestine under Israeli occupation. Just send an email with subject Our Lady to adam@israelshamir.net And my e-group had been moved from Yahoogroups to shamireaders@groups.io All are welcome to join.