The Nobel Foundation Must Act Against The Power of the Norwegian Parliament

August 13, 2021  

Lawrence Davidson is a retired professor of history from West Chester University in West Chester PA. His academic research focused on the history of American foreign relations with the Middle East. He taught courses in Middle East history, the history of science and modern European intellectual history.

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Posted by Lawrence Davidson 

The essay appearing below is posted here as a companion piece to Lawrence Davidson’s analysis, dated 16 September 2019, entitled “The Sorry State of the Nobel Peace Prize.”

“The Nobel Foundation must act against the power of the Stortinget (Parliament) over the Peace Prize” (22 July 2021) by Fredrik S Heffermehl

Argument: The Peace Prize must be awarded in accordance with the inventor Alfred Nobel’s will. In this context, the Swedish Nobel Foundation is superior to the Norwegian Parliament (Stortinget), and must therefore act to ensure that the Peace Prize in future goes to people who actively work for disarmament. 

Again, there is wrangling/tussle/strife around the Nobel Peace Prize. Now about money. The Norwegian committee for the peace prize is housed in a beautiful historic building in Oslo that is so expensive to maintain that the Nobel Foundation plans to sell it. This would be a great loss and the Norwegian committee has called on the Parliament of Norway, to pick up the bill and claims that the independence of the prize will not be harmed.

But it’s not at all that simple. According to my studies, the Stortinget’s relationship to the Peace Prize is a dark story of fraud. The award was never independent of the Stortinget. An annual appropriation would increase dependence.

As always, the starting point should be Alfred Nobel’s intention with the prize. The new CEO of the Nobel Foundation, the Norwegian lawyer Vidar Helgesen, emphasized in a recent radio interview the essence of all Nobel prizes: Alfred Nobel wished to change the world. In the nuclear age ending all wars is more imperative than ever, but how well does the Nobel Foundation maintain this essence of inventor Nobel peace vision?

He wanted to end all wars through global cooperation and disarmament based on international law. The core of the inventor’s peace innovation, global demilitarization, is explicitly mentioned in the will.

In his will Nobel entrusted Stortinget with appointing a committee of five, the Norwegian Nobel Committee, supposed to use the annual election of prize winners to promote the Nobel vision of how to create peace. But that never happened. The Peace Prize has been awarded in all directions and has become a general prize for goodness without a distinct idea or clear goals. The Stortinget should have appointed supporters of Nobel’s peace idea to committee members, but has instead chosen its own and used the prize for its own purposes.

That is a main conclusion in my recent book “Behind the medals”. The most obvious measure to fulfill Nobel’s last will would be to examine what his will really was and then

make it widely known. Instead, the leadership of the Stortinget decided in 1897 to quietly ignore the clear words of the will about the reduction or abolition of the military.

The will was put aside and never interpreted professionally. Instead, the Nobel Committee interpreted its own, self-chosen and diffuse concepts, such as “peace” and “peace work”, and took with it in practice freedom to do as it wished with the prize.

As a result the award never actively promoted the Nobel idea. Even if using entrusted funds for one’s own purposes must legally be regarded as embezzlement or infidelity to the testator, this has continued since I discovered, 15 years ago, that Nobel’s original intention with the prize had been ignored. Lawmakers violating the laws and refusing to adhere to criticism is a legal and democratic problem.

While working on the book, I gained access to the Nobel Committee’s internal archives – except the last 50 years that remain off-limits/secret. I have reviewed all 131 Peace Prizes over 120 years (1901–2020). My conclusion is that only 25 percent of them fulfill the purpose. The most interesting result of my review, however, was to get a picture of those who should have won, what the prize should have been, what it could have done for world peace if Nobel´s visionary idea had been respected.

The internal reports the committee received about the candidates reveal disdain and outright contempt for the idea and the people that Nobel intended his prize to support. I found 114 of them hidden/tucked away and forgotten in the Nobel Archives. Taken together these people are/constitute an important history of ideas. The sad fact is that the people Nobel wanted to support have throughout the years been ignored and suppressed by all of society, including the Norwegian Nobel Committee.

How could this happen? During the first ten years after Nobel’s death in 1896, the wish to be free from the union with Sweden dominated Norwegian politics. As King Oscar feared, the Peace Prize became a tool in the Norwegian freedom struggle. This caused permanent damage, Norwegian politicians got used to seeing the prize as their own. They elected themselves to the coveted committee seats. The committee was composed of members of the Stortinget and the government. In reality they developed an entirely Norwegian Peace Prize in the name of Nobel.

The first chairman of the committee in 1897 was a well-known lawyer who emphasized the importance of independence and distance from the Storting. He died in 1901 and was succeeded by Jørgen Løvland, leader of the Norwegian independence struggle, who wanted to link the peace prize as closely as possible to the Stortinget. He used the staff of the Nobel Institute in the struggle for national independence. When independence was won in 1905, the Nobel chairperson was also the Minister of Foreign Affairs. In the first ten months the ministry had no employees and the Nobel Institute functioned as Norway’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

The Norwegian committee has never followed up on its main task: to promote the Nobel Prize for a geopolitical U-turn and universal cooperation on global peace. The prize, inspired by Bertha von Suttner’s novel “Down with the Weapons!” (1889), should have been called the Nobel Disarmament Prize. Only twice has the Committee stated the true purpose of the prize: in the speech for Bertha von Suttner as prize winner in 1905 and for the International Peace Bureau in 1910. The Norwegian administrators of the Nobel Prize are willing to discuss economic issues and everything else, except my analysis of Nobel’s intention. Such criticism is taboo and has been ignored.

Last year, the situation became really untenable. The entire Stortinget, with the exception of two members, voted against taking the Nobel will into account. Doing so, the Stortinget openly took over and rejected serving the inventor’s own idea. This is an open mutiny that forces the Nobel Foundation to intervene. As manager of Nobel’s bequeathed money the foundation bears superior responsibility for implementing Nobel’s intentions. It cannot accept a subcommittee that ignores the idea of the prize.

In an investigation of the Peace Prize in 2012, the County Administrative Board of Stockholm, which is the supervisory authority for foundations, stated that both the Norwegian Parliament and Nobel Committee are sub-bodies of the Nobel Foundation. The public supervisory board decided that the Nobel Foundation is obliged to examine Nobel´s intention with the peace prize, give the necessary instructions to the Norwegian bodies, and check that their decisions serve the purpose of the prize.

The truth is that the Storting stole the Nobel Peace Prize as early as in 1897. Norwegian society keeps totally silent about this. My criticism of the prize is extremely unpopular in Norway, but for me the world and peace have to be more important. As we face the threats of global warming, mega-fires, sea level rise, pandemics, famine, refugee flows, we are all in the same very unsafe boat and simply have to co-operate for our common survival. All countries must stand together or we shall all perish. We cannot afford the continuing military arms races that only increase the risk of us being annihilated. To break the vicious circle of militarism, the world needs Nobel’s visionary idea of world peace through cooperation. The Nobel Foundation took responsibility when, in 2017, the Board, building on my legal advice, intervened against the administrators of the literature prize. The Storting’s mutiny against Nobel is much more serious. According to the law, the Nobel Foundation has an obligation to act against the Stortinget, which in this context – unbelievably – is a body subordinate to the board of a private Swedish foundation. By law the Board of the Nobel Foundation has the right and obligation to instruct the Stortinget. The important thing now is not to increase financial dependence on the Stortinget. Instead the Foundation has to intervene and demand that the Stortinget as soon as possible appoints a prize committee that will loyally promote the peace vision of Nobel – or find other ways to ensure that the Nobel Peace Vision is realized.

Fredrik S Heffermehl is a lawyer and author, editor of nobelwill.orghttps://www.dn.se/debatt/nobelstiftelsen-maste-agera-mot-stortingets-makt-over-fredspriset

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Nobel Prize Winner Supports BDS Movement For Palestinian Rights, Ending Military Aid to israel

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Nobel Prize has been awarded to George P. Smith, a renowned scientist and longtime advocate for Palestinian rights who supports the BDS movement and has called for an end to US military aid to Israel. The BDS movement congratulates Professor Smith.

(Professor George Smith smiles during a press conference. Credit: Columbia Missourian)

October 5, 2018 —  A Nobel Prize has been awarded to George P. Smith, a renowned scientist and longtime advocate for Palestinian rights who supports the BDS movement and has called for an end to US military aid to Israel. The BDS movement congratulates Professor Smith.

Dr. Samia Botmeh, Dean at Birzeit University in the occupied Palestinian West Bank and leading activist in the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI), said:

Congratulations to Professor George P. Smith for winning the 2018 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. His principled commitments are evident in both his scientific work to protect human life and his support for the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement for Palestinian rights.

Professor Smith has consistently spoken out against Israel’s egregious violations of Palestinian human rights, and taken the extremely important step of calling on his government in the United States to end arms sales to the Israeli military. His call to end military aid to Israel is not only deeply principled, but a critical and effective form of solidarity that we hope to see multiplied. The US government should be investing in human needs, including health, education and dignified jobs, rather than giving Israel $3.8 billion in military aid a year to repress and destroy Palestinian life.

Thank you Professor Smith for your inspiring solidarity.

The Palestinian BDS National Committee (BNC) is the largest coalition in Palestinian civil society. It leads and supports the global Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement for Palestinian rights.

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Former Prime Minister of Israel Menachem Begin: The Nobel Laureate and the father of modern terrorism

Menachem Begin: The Nobel Laureate who bragged about being the Father of Terrorism in the World

It seems that terrorism and political violence have become more prevalent and intense. Not a single day goes by without at least one story about grotesque violence mostly perpetrated against innocent civilians. Somehow, terrorism became a normal part of our everyday life, but this was not always the case.

More worryingly, the absence of debate about the root causes of terrorism have given way to casual media reporting which most likely encourages further terrorism by feeding it the oxygen of publicity.

“How does it feel, in the light of all that’s going on, to be the father of terrorism in the Middle East?” “In the Middle East?” he [Begin] bellowed, in his thick, cartoon accent. “In all the world!” – Russell Warren Howe interview with Menachem Begin, January 1974

Most of us today, associate terrorism with Muslim fanatics that have ever morphing acronyms such as ISIS, ISIL, Al-Qaeda and so forth. A few decades ago, it was either Palestinian individuals or Iranian fanatics and before that very few people remember the IRA, Red Brigade or the many other European groups who too were described in the very same media as evil Terrorist, and only a tiny minority even have an inkling of other cases of terrorism, let alone the definition, history or roots of this scourge of society.

According to all dictionaries, terrorism is defined as the unlawful use of violence and intimidation, especially against civilians, in the pursuit of political aims. This universally accepted definition should already raise eyebrows as it implicates the United States, the United Kingdom and France whom since the September 11 terrorist attacks, have used unlawful military power against Arab or Muslim nations for political or economic gains resulting in millions of casualties, most of them civilians not to mention the mass migration of populations and the destruction of entire countries.

Yet since the 9/11 attacks, we have never heard a single politician in any significant position of power debate the why; instead, defaulting to the meaningless narrative that the terrorist hate our freedoms, even when most perpetrators of these acts were born in the west enjoyed those very freedoms.

Terrorism is not a modern phenomenon. The history of terrorism is a history of well-known and historically significant individuals, entities, and incidents associated, whether rightly or wrongly, with terrorism. Scholars agree that terrorism is a disputed term, and very few of those labelled terrorists describe themselves as such. It is common for opponents in a violent conflict to describe the other side as terrorists or as practicing terrorism.

The first use in English of the term ‘terrorism’ occurred during the French Revolution’s Reign of Terror. The association of the term only with state violence and intimidation lasted until the mid-19th century, when it began to be associated with non-governmental groups. Anarchism, often in league with rising nationalism and anti-monarchism, was the most prominent ideology linked with terrorism.

In the 20th century, terrorism continued to be associated with a vast array of anarchist, socialist, fascist and nationalist groups, many of them engaged in ‘third world’ anti-colonial struggles, which brings us to the origins of Middle Eastern terrorism, currently running amok and destabilising country after country. If you ask anyone in the world about the origins of Middle Eastern Terrorism, you can be sure that the response will be Arab, Islamic or Iranian.

However, modern day terrorism associated with the Middle East actually began in Israel and the current phenomenon of terrorism afflicting the West is not as most people believe simply the result of freedom hating fanatics or revenge seeking 3rd generation off-springs of past colonised people, but a response to Israeli aggression only made possible by the unrelenting support of Israel by the major political, military and economic powers of the world.

There is no doubt that the current wave of terrorism sweeping Europe which has risen 80-fold since the war on terror began is driven in some part by the flawed colonialism and military adventurism of the United States and its allies, which disenfranchised and uprooted huge swathes of populations. However, what has largely been ignored is the origin of the current swathes of Middle Eastern terrorism sweeping the world whose roots lie in early Zionist-Jewish terrorism.

While all the focus of terrorism has fallen on Muslim/Arab countries, there is hardly a mention of where, when and how terrorism began in the Middle East and without coming to terms with these fundamental facts; there is no chance to end the scourge of terrorism that is plaguing western countries and spreading like wildfire.

Up until the end of World War 2; there was not a single act of terrorism committed by an Arab or Muslim country against any Western Target, however this all changed on July 22nd, 1946 when the King David Hotel in Jerusalem was bombed killing 91 people, most of which were innocent civilians.

Although the target of the bombing was the British authorities, the resulting massacre took the lives of 91 people from various nationalities with 46 serious injuries. The bombing was the first major terrorist attack carried out by a Middle Eastern terrorist organization, in this case the Irgun, a militant right-wing Zionist underground organization.

It was targeted against the British administrative headquarters for Palestine, which was housed in the southern wing of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem.

What is ironic is that Menachem Begin, who was later awarded the Nobel Prize for peace, and is the man who planned the destruction of the King David Hotel and the massacre of Deir Yassin unleashing the first waves of modern day terrorism actually bragged about it during an interview with Russell Warren Howe when asked about how he felt about being the father of terrorism in the Middle East.

“How does it feel, in the light of all that’s going on, to be the father of terrorism in the Middle East?” “In the Middle East?” he [Begin] bellowed, in his thick, cartoon accent. “In all the world!” – Russell Warren Howe interview with Menachem Begin, January 1974

The unwillingness to accept the perpetrators’ own words for the motivation behind their attacks is unprecedented in Western jurisprudence. For any other crime, correctly identifying the motive is a key element of the prosecution’s case. Failure to prove a compelling motive can mean acquittal, even for a guilty defendant. Yet our leaders show no interest in the motive for the current wave of terrorism, defaming anyone who talks about it for “blaming America or Israel.”

An entire generation of Middle Easterners who weren’t even born on September 11, 2001 will turn sixteen years old in a few days. They are approaching adulthood having lived their entire lives under the constant threat of death from above, with foreign troops of an alien culture patrolling their streets by day and kicking in their doors at night. Only a fool could expect anything but hatred, rational or not, from people in this situation.

Only a government could suggest this epic failure simply requires more funds spent on the same strategy to turn decades-long failure into success. It’s the same fairy tale taxpayers are told about education, poverty, or drugs.

The dynamics don’t miraculously change nor the government become suddenly competent when it is fighting terrorism. But it does create even more lethal problems for those it purports to help.

First published on Diplomatico in August 2017Source

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The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Blog!

The Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement for Palestinian Rights (BDS) has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize 2018

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 Bjørnar Moxnes, member of the Norwegian Parliament, Oct. 20, 2017

Bjørnar Moxnes, a member of the Norwegian Parliament, has nominated the international Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement for this year’s Nobel Prize.

Press release
The Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS)-movement for Palestinian rights was yesterday formally nominated for this year’s Nobel Peace Prize by the Norwegian MP Bjørnar Moxness (Rødt). This nomination reflects the growing international solidarity with the Palestinian struggle for justice, dignity and freedom from the Israeli occupation.
The BDS Campaign is a Palestinian-led, international non-violent movement for freedom, equality and a just peace for the Palestinian people:

• BDS upholds that Palestinians are entitled to the same rights as the rest of humanity
• Inspired by the South African non-violent anti-apartheid movement, the BDS call urges action to pressure Israel to comply with international law and human rights
• BDS is a growing, vibrant global movement of unions, academic associations, churches and grassroots movements in about 50 countries. Eleven years since its launch, BDS has major impact and is effectively challenging international support for Israeli apartheid and settler-colonialism

The BDS-movement was started and is led by the Palestinian society with over 170 Palestinian organizations behind the call for peaceful action.

The nomination proves the increasing international support for the use of the peaceful, non-violent tools of economic boycott and international sanctions to force Israel to end occupation and the apartheid rule against the Palestinian people – and achieve just peace. The nomination also reflects the growing BDS-movement in Norway and is welcomed by the thousands of Norwegians who actively show solidarity for the Palestinian struggle for freedom, dignity and equal human rights for all people.

The toolbox of the BDS-movement is known, accepted and used with success against other occupying and racist regimes. As of January 2018, Norway has officially imposed sanctions and restrictions against 26 different states or regions due to breeches of international laws and human rights – but not against the state of Israel – despite Israeli occupation, annexation and collective punishment of the Palestinian people.

Awarding this year’s Nobel Peace Prize to the BDS movement would be a powerful signal, emphasizing the international community’s commitment to support a just peace for the Palestinian people and by that – for the Israeli people and all people in the Middle East – and the world at large.

We nominate the BDS movement and with them – their thousands of activists globally – as a humble but necessary step towards bringing forth a more dignified and beautiful future for all peoples.

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Nominations for the Nobel Peace Prize can be made by several formal nominators, among them members of the Norwegian Parliament. The Party Red’s new MP Bjørnar Moxnes was elected last fall, and he is the formal nominator.

The nominators for The Nobel Peace prize are:

Members of national assemblies and governments and members of the Inter-Parliamentary Union
Members of the Permanent Court of Arbitration and the International Court of Justice at the Hague
Members of Institut de Droit International
University professors of history, social sciences, philosophy, law, and theology, university presidents, and directors of peace research and international affairs institutes
Former recipients, including board members of organizations that have previously received the prize
Present and past members of the Norwegian Nobel Committee
Former permanent advisers to the Norwegian Nobel Institute

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CESSPOOL OF LIES: WESTERN MEDIA AND THE TOXIC FANTASY

Ziad Fadel

Get a nice look at the Marlboro Man on the upper right side of the picture.  Gee, he must not be too worried about the Sarin gas!  Maybe he’s immune to Sarin gas since there really isn’t any around him anyways.  This photo was taken in KhaanShaykhoon, probably by the bunglers at HRW or AI.   

http://www.globalresearch.ca/fake-news-and-false-flags-against-syria-why-the-assad-government-most-likely-did-not-commit-the-gas-attacks-in-khan-shaykhun/5586223

http://www.stuff.co.nz/world/australia/91460435/syria-hoax-australian-university-at-centre-of-proassad-push

Only British directors could goof this one up.  Filmed on location in Idlib, watch how the illustrious White Helmets prepare an actor for the horrors of being buried alive.   The CIA could not have done a worse job.  Read Brandon’s article on the subject:

http://www.activistpost.com/2017/05/photos-from-syria-show-white-helmets-and-nusraqaeda-are-the-same-organization.html

Zaynab Al-Husni seen in a photo taken after she was beheaded, strangled, raped, butchered  and skinned alive by Assad’s thugs.  Well, it didn’t quite turn out that way seeing she absconded from her home because her brothers were out to get her for some personal transgression.  In any case, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International got on the Humiliation Bandwagon with this corker of a story.  You could see the NYT also on the same bandwagon.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/06/world/middleeast/woman-believed-killed-by-syrian-forces-turns-up-on-tv.html

Well, folks, its like summertime reruns.  The same old rehash of the self-same tired narratives we have been watching for the last six years.  I just don’t have the gumption to regurgitate the worn out mantras used by the prostituted Western press about Assad’s this, or Assad’s that – it’s become too enervating.  But, when the president of the U.S. falls for this folderol, you know you’ve got a serious problem.

I remember back in 2013 when the propaganda machine run by MI6 in Syria bungled another story.  You see, they were trying to label Assad’s militias and intelligence services as cruel henchmen.  They aimed to do this by showing Assad’s men burying “honest”, “decent” and “well-meaning” reporters alive.  They rehearsed the scene so much that some people managed to sneak the tapes out and you could actually see them repeatedly burying the same person alive ad nauseam.

And there were the professional liars who could have done in serious news celebrities had it not been for the curious social and sexual status of the victim.  In this case, we are talking about Anderson Cooper who was so mesmerized by the acting abilities of Danny Abdul-Dayem that you could vicariously feel the perverse attraction between the 2 men – an obscene, lip-smacking, nay, orgiastic spectacle only sodomites and pederasts can possibly appreciate.  There was “Danny the Syrian”, a British citizen with an accent indicating a privileged upbringing, who, because of his raw courage and righteousness, his insistence on justice and dignity, found his way to war-torn Syria to chronicle the excesses of Assad’s military machine.  Huddled amongst modest, kerchiefed women, he blasted the regime which was purportedly indiscriminately bombing city centers, killing innocent civilians by the handful, pummeling anything that smacked of resistance to his cruel rule; his reign of terror; his archetypal republic of vampirism and slavery.  Why, he was so sincere, it is amazing nobody nominated him for some Nobel prize, a la the White Helmets.

No, Danny did not receive any prizes after it was revealed he was nothing more than a career flim-flam man who was selected by MI6 to act out a scenario conjured up by some screenwriter contracted to the infamous British spook agency to make Assad look really bad.  Oooooooh.  Danny met his end, not by a bullet to the head, which would have been our preferred method of removing him from the tv screen.  No.  He met his end when some good soul transported a video Danny was filming of Syrian Army artillery shellacking the area where he was supposedly hiding (in Homs) and which showed him clearly giving directions to a crew of cameramen, sound men and special effects coordinators.  It was hilarious.  Even more evocative, was Anderson Cooper’s questioning him about that scene.  Danny just couldn’t give a decent answer.  Exeunt.

Nowhere in history has this level of propaganda been used so repeatedly in order to oust the sitting president of a member state of the U.N.  No other place!  Sure, Dr. Goebbels was a brilliant propagandist who managed to electrify Germans during WWII, but his ornate lying was not directed solely at one leader of another country in order to enflame its masses to rise up and destroy their own country.  Even Iraq, during George W. Bush’s days, was subjected only to one theme:  the possession of banned WMDs.  In Syria we have much more than CW as a target for perseverative lying in the Western Media.  We are watching the evolution of a complex, interwoven, coordinated and continuous pattern of obstinate adherence to a set of thematic targets which admit no other alternatives.  Once a reporter breaks from the accepted theme, he or she is blackballed and relegated to the “independent alternative media”.  Congresswoman, Tulsi Gabbard, a two-tour Army veteran of the Iraq War,  had her patriotism impugned by a Democratic party member because she stood up for international law and the demands of her own Constitution.  One can only imagine the suffering Richard Black endures when he weighs in intelligently on the subject.

Ph.D. theses will be written about the nomenclature devised by the Western Press with guidance by the CIA, NSA, MI6, Turk MIT, Zionist Mossad, Saudi, Qatari and Jordanian General Intelligence Services and the French DGSE.  Suddenly, groups like Al-Qaeda and ISIS, are labeled “rebels” as though Chechen terrorists fighting against Dr. Assad’s government were “rebelling” against his rule.  It didn’t matter to the prostitutes in New York whether the “rebels” were Syrian or not.  What mattered was the promotion of a narrative which ascribed to terrorists the characteristics of a people fighting for dignity and freedom against a coarse, oligarchical tyranny represented by the Assad family.  The Western Press refused to even refer to the terrorists as “militants” because that might shake the carefully constructed image of a band of moderate freedom fighters locked in battle with a despotic regime.

The word “regime” was used so often to challenge the legitimacy of Dr. Assad’s presidency that it started a wave of tit-for-tat responses in readers’ comments.  I would read the angry responses to typically propagandistic articles with phrases such as “the Obama regime” or the “Hollande regime”.  You could tell people were picking up on the “neo-con terminology of choice” and were punching it straight back at the prostituted authors of these deplorably shabby articles.

Opposition members in Europe were rarely, if ever, outed as rented mercenaries working for the rag-headed Arabians of KSA, the UAE or Qatar.  No way!  Not one reporter ever wondered who was paying for the 5 star hotels in which these mostly failed exiles lived.  The Fake News Media never mentioned to a single reader that they were completely disconnected from the terrorists who ruled some streets during the onset of the insurrection.  Names were bandied about with no explanation of how or why they had some special characteristic that singled them out for celebrity or popularity in their own country.  Some exiled opposition members were completely ridiculous:  George Sabra who was showcased, at first,  because he was supposedly a Christian was an emcee on a children’s program in Damascus.  He was essentially a clown with no experience in politics.  On top of that, the authors of these lame-brained articles did not tell the readers that this pious Christian was, in truth, a rabid atheist and communist.  Others, like Ghassan Hitto, a Kurd, have not been to Syria for over 30 years having dodged the draft and relocated to Texas.  Still, others like Khaled Khoja, were not even Syrians – Khoja is a Turk.  Another, who was inextricably tied to the Saudis, was Ahmad Jarba, a scion of the Shammar tribe of Syria who was a convicted pimp, swindler and procureur.  You never got to read that in the Western Press.

The consistency in the reportage is the most telling clue of all.  Once might ask himself or herself, how is it that the NYT, the WP, WSJ, PBS, Der Spiegel, Le Monde, Jerusalem Post, Al-Jazeera, Al-‘Arabiyya, BBC, Christian Science Monitor, and the rest, all present with the same reporting?  How can that happen without an agenda laid out in purple prose directing the news media to follow in lockstep with the scenario spelled out for them by the intelligence services mentioned in the foregoing?  It seems almost surreal.  The only explanation is that the Deep State, or some very powerful cabal of billionaires, or, maybe, governments, sent out their messengers to blackmail these news organs:  “You’ll follow this plan or you won’t ever get to the White House.”  Perhaps, they were bought by promises of special treatment at Whitehall, the Department of State, the Quai D’Orsay, or the German Auswaartiges Amt.  That crucial scoop which makes reporters salivate was held in front of them like bait for a ravenous wolf.  Or, maybe,  the Western News Media is under the control of the International Zionist Movement.  All I know is that there is a programmatic character to the way the corporate media presents the news on Syria.

Remember the exciting episode when Richard Engel was kidnapped?  I sure do. This dyslexic ultramaroon and uber-Zionist was reportedly detained and kidnapped by “pro-Assad shabiha militiamen” when he was traveling in Syria illegally with a crew of boner-heads.  Why, as soon as he was released through some purported interventions, 5 days after the event, he went on the Today Show and proudly denounced President Assad’s thugs as the perpetrators.  Well, once again, we have a story, which, interestingly, in this case was exposed by the NYT.  It turns out that Engel’s story just didn’t add up.  And, as it turned out, Mr. Engel, a lapdog for Zionist katsas and assorted fairy tale writers,  admitted his story was wrong.  He was kidnapped by the heroic FSA, or some group affiliated with America’s darling “rebels”.

http://money.cnn.com/2015/04/16/media/richard-engel-nbc-news/

Besides the lying from Engel, what was even more involving was the fact that both NBC News and Vanity Fair, both of which ran orotund reports about the ordeal and the evil of Assad would not publish retractions.  Embarrassed to au plus haut point, they would not revisit the issue hoping their readers would live out their lives believing Dr. Assad’s blackguards were still responsible.  We, at SyrPer, still argue that the whole episode was deliberately skewed to bamboozle the American viewer.      

And does anybody remember the Der Spiegel reporter, Erich Follath,  who came up with one of the most bombastic lies in the history of propaganda.  Yes. That’s the one who disseminated a lie so incredible that even his own principals wouldn’t kite it beyond the first publication.  According to this birdbrain, Syria has a second and third nuclear weapons facility, this time, not on the Euphrates near the abandoned village of Al-Kibar, but, across the breast of Syria at Al-Qusayr, on the Lebanese border.  The article is gut-wrenchingly funny and should be read by all my friends:

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/evidence-points-to-syria-still-working-on-a-nuclear-weapon-a-1012209.html

You see his logic?  Iran, a powerful regional player with industrial capabilities, took decades to get its nuclear program rolling.  But, we Syrians, are such geniuses that we are able to have a kit to build a nuclear weapon with just one North Korean scientist.  And all this is being done in an area which used to be controlled by terrorists!  You have got to now believe that there is no redemption for these hacks in the West.  And by the way, the uranium found at Al-Kibar  by U.N. inspectors turned out to be from the missiles fired by the Zionist bombers.  There was no reactor there, only a factory for rockets after a tragic disaster at another factory in Aleppo.

But, look at the fervor!  American and Western politicians are so determined to get President Assad that they have turned into feral, rabid monsters.  John McCain for one, is so involved in the effort, he huffed-and-puffed his way out of a meeting between Syrian Christian priests who were lobbying Washington to stop attacking their leader.  He could not sit while these clerics pushed the narrative that Dr. Assad protected minorities.  I have already written about the fact that McCain has been promised millions of dollars by the Saudis as the Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee.  He is looking at a massive fortune. The same was true of Hollande and Cameron – both miserable sycophantish coprophiliacs to the unctuous and soiled boors of Arabia. The whole pot of fandangle built on a promise of lucre in exchange for a Brobdingnagian constellation of pure mendacity.  Shame has no place in the company of these charlatans – they wouldn’t know it if they saw it.

These lies have brought Syria to ruin.  The people of Syria have been tortured by lies.  There should be a criminal charge for lying that causes so much agony.  The perpetrators of the lies should spend their lives in a jar like the Sybil of Cumae.  When asked what she wanted, the Sybil responded, “I want to be dead”. That’s what I want for all these criminals.  Ziad

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Swedish Doctors Charge White Helmets with Medical Malpractice and Abuse of Children

Posted on March 22, 2017

by Richard Edmondson

[ Ed. note – How far and to what lengths would those backing terrorists in Syria go in trying to achieve their objectives? Would it include drugging, and perhaps even killing, innocent children for the purpose of making propaganda videos? The answer to that seems to be yes if we go by the conclusions of Swedish medical experts who have examined a White Helmets video. You can go here to read an article by Prof Marcello Ferrada de Noli, chairman of the Swedish Doctors for Human Rights, and here to read about the group’s findings in a commentary published today at 21st Century Wire. Below is an excerpt from the latter. ]

21st Century Wire

The White Helmets. The biggest propaganda heist in the six year history of the dirty war against Syria is unraveling. The glamour of an Oscar is not enough to disguise the sordid details of the White Helmet ties to Al Qaeda (Nusra Front in Syria) and various other extremist, atrocity committing groups embedded in Syria by the NATO and Gulf state regimes. No amount of money laundering is going to wash their image clean after the latest series of reports from Swedish Doctors for Human Rights, exposing macabre, medical malpractice and suspected use of drugged or dead children as props in a propaganda campaign to unseat the Syrian government and to destabilize an entire nation & its people.

Continued here

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Video: A Peek Inside the White Helmets’ former HQ in E. Aleppo

Posted on March 13, 2017

by Richard Edmondson

Turns out that the two buildings housing the central headquarters for the White Helmets and Al-Nusra were located adjacent to each other in Eastern Aleppo–and that both were just a short walk from the M10 hospital, a facility formerly pronounced “destroyed” by the mainstream media (though it is in fact still standing, as the video shows).

The video above offers a look inside all three buildings, but the walk through the White Helmets domicile is particularly interesting…lots of graffiti, including support of ISIS. Well hardly surprising–but still interesting to see.

Pierre Le Corf

The video was filmed by Pierre Le Corf, who has been doing humanitarian work in Syria and who is also the founder of the organization We Are Super Heroes. According to his Linked-in profile, his work in Aleppo has included providing first aid training for youth and adults. In his walk through the White Helmets building, he pauses at a second-floor window–at which point the camera looks out…at the Al-Nusra headquarters and the M10 hospital, both practically within spitting distance.

The White Helmets, you’ll recall, were nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize last year. They didn’t get it. But a Netflix documentary about them did get an Oscar at the Academy Awards. Meanwhile the media go on extolling them as saintly humanitarians. Here is what CBS reported just over a week ago:

Some of last week’s Oscar winners did not attend the ceremony because they were saving lives in Syria. The White Helmets are showing the best of humanity in the worst of places.

The White Helmets did on Monday what they always do — racing to the aftermath of a deadly airstrike to pull civilians and bodies from the rubble.

Business as usual in the hellish chaos of Syria’s civil war, where Syrian regime and Russian airstrikes destroy neighborhoods.

21st Century Wire has posted a commentary on Le Corf’s video–a commentary which also gives a perspective on the White Helmets, though one slightly different from that churned out by CBS. Here is an excerpt:

During the liberation of East Aleppo from Nusra Front-led extremists, Le Corf recorded events on a daily basis, including tireless evidence gathering of the terrorist mortar attacks that decimated entire neighbourhoods of West Aleppo and maimed and mutilated thousands of children – largely unreported by western NATO aligned media and NGOs.

After liberation, Le Corf has been returning to the liberated areas of East Aleppo and investigating the evidence left behind by the departing terrorist groups and their “civil defence”, the NATO and Gulf state, multi million dollar funded, White Helmets who did not stay behind to assist with the civilian refugees but departed with Nusra Front, Harakat Nour al Din Zinki and other extremist groups responsible for civilian executions, torture, abuse, deprivation, starvation and rape during the almost five year occupation of East Aleppo.

In the video (above), Le Corf films the Nusra Front terrorist compound, the M10 hospital that was allegedly bombed according to the corporate media reports during November and December 2016, and finally he films inside the largest White Helmet centre in East Aleppo located inside the Nusra Front compound, in fact directly opposite Nusra Front. The Nusra Front flags and extremist graffitti inside the White Helmet centre are further proof of their affiliation to the various terrorist and extremist groups.

The article then supplies a lengthy quote from Sheila Coombes, whose Facebook page can be found here. I’ll quote just a bit of what she had to say. You can go to the 21 Wire page to read it in full:

There were NO international aid organisations on the ground in East Aleppo prior to the liberation, all of the mainstream media reporting was written, and in the case of the White Helmets, filmed, by terrorists & armed extremists and spoon fed to lazy mainstream media regime-change tools. Forget the BBC, forget Channel 4, forget CNN, NBC, the holier than thou and deadly as sin Guardian, the Independent and the do gooders, bombing for democracy and freedom, the blood they have on their hands will not wash off – and the pompous idiots who condemn anyone who questions their narrative are complicit in stifling dissent for these enablers of death and destruction.

I wonder how the media would explain what is revealed in Le Corf’s video–namely that the headquarters of Al-Nusra and the headquarters of the White Helmets were located basically just across a courtyard from each other? I don’t suppose CBS or the others would even attempt to go there.

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Obama’s Farewell

Darko Lazar

21-01-2017 | 08:53

Following the wave of destruction bestowed upon the world by the George W. Bush/Dick Cheney duo, Barack Obama and Joe Biden swept into power on the promise that they would address the American people’s desperate plea for ‘change’.

But despite securing a Nobel Peace Prize shortly after setting foot in the White House, Obama’s eight years at the helm can be summed up – both in terms of domestic and foreign policy – as being even more destructive than those of his predecessors.

The Nobel Prize, much like everything else that has to do with Obama, was more about the expectations of those who were awarding it rather than the achievements of its recipient.

From democracy to plutocracy

Obama’s biggest achievement on the domestic scene was undoubtedly his ability to transform American society from a democracy to a plutocracy.

It is important to note that despite the presence of plutocratic rule in the US for some time, it was the Obama administration that publicly adopted and cemented this phenomenon.

One example is Obama’s approach to the US mortgage crisis, which sparked a worldwide economic meltdown in 2008. And while his administration cannot be blamed for initiating the crisis, Obama is guilty of failing to punish the perpetrators.

The progressive publication, The Huffington Post, generally supportive of the Obama administration, reported in 2011 that the US Department of Housing and Urban Development carried out ‘confidential’ federal audits of all major American banks, including Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, Wells Fargo, and Ally Financial.

The findings led to the conclusion that all of these financial giants had indeed managed to swindle the Federal Government of the United States.

But Obama’s Justice Department refused to pursue, much less prosecute, a single individual involved in cheating the US taxpayers out of trillions of dollars.

In January 2012, while shielding Wall Street firms from prosecution, Obama declared that he had ordered the creation of a “special unit” to investigate mortgage fraud.

“This new unit will hold accountable those who broke the law, speed assistance to homeowners, and help turn the page on an era of recklessness that hurt so many Americans,” Obama said in his address to the nation.

However, two years later, a report by the Inspector General of the US Department of Justice revealed that the whole thing was nothing more than a lie.

“DOJ did not uniformly ensure that mortgage fraud was prioritized at a level commensurate with its public statements. For example, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Criminal Investigative Division ranked mortgage fraud as the lowest criminal threat in its lowest crime category. Additionally, we found mortgage fraud to be a low priority, or not [even] listed as a priority, for the FBI Field Offices we visited… many Assistant United States Attorneys (AUSA) informed us about underreporting and misclassification of mortgage fraud cases,” the report stated.

In fact, one of the more interesting aspects of Obama’s legacy is that he managed to record the lowest rate of white-collar crime prosecutions in US history.

Two pieces of information made public – much to the detriment of the Obama administration – help to explain the behavior of the US president.

The first is a 2009 secret meeting at the White House between the top executives of the bailed-out financial firms and Obama himself.

Citing an anonymous source, POLITICO reported that Obama told his guests, “My administration is the only thing between you and the pitchforks.”

More importantly, revelations by the WikiLeaks dump of John Podesta’s emails show that Citigroup decided much of the staffing for leading cabinet positions in the Obama administration.

Even before Obama was elected in 2008, the Wall Street bank submitted a list of its preferred candidates for cabinet positions, which corresponded almost exactly to the eventual composition of the Obama Administration.

Alternative work

Data released by Bloomberg further strengthens the argument that the US has been transformed into a plutocracy, showing that the richest 1% of Americans increased their earnings by as much in 93% in 2010. Meanwhile, the gap between the rich and poor grew to its highest level in four decades in 2011, even surpassing the recognized plutocracies of Uganda and Kazakhstan.

A recent report by Harvard and Princeton economists, Lawrence Katz and Alan Krueger, reveals that the proportion of American workers engaged in what they refer to as “alternative work” soared during the Obama era. Alternative, or “gig” work refers to temporary or freelance employment and is generally unsteady, without a fixed paycheck and with virtually no benefits.

Krueger, who served as the top White House economist under Obama said,
“we find that 94% of net job growth in the past decade was in the alternative work category… and over 60% was due to the [the rise] of independent contractors, freelancers and contract company workers.”

In other words, the US government has been releasing ‘acceptable’ unemployment figures by creating 10 million jobs that had noting to do with traditional nine-to-five employment.

As such, it becomes evident that Obama’s so-called ‘economic recovery’ has strictly benefited the richest 1% of Americans.

The policy of endless wars

In terms of foreign policy, the biggest achievement of the Nobel Peace Prize Laureate was his ability to spend every single day of his eight-year mandate in a state of war.

During those eight years, Obama signed off on American military action in no less than seven countries.

He also drastically increased worldwide drone attacks, outdoing his predecessor George W. Bush, who used to refer to himself as the ‘war president’.

During 2016 alone, these attacks resulted in the deaths of hundreds of civilians in five different countries. The reason that this figure is not higher is because the Obama administration classified all men above the age of 18 as enemy combatants.

But these are just statistics for conflicts known to the public. American military clandestine units are currently involved in operations in 138 countries worldwide.

Aside from the destruction of Libya, Syria and Yemen, the Obama administration also forced the collapse of Ukraine. Then came the sanctions against Russia, turning Eastern Europe into a NATO military base, and eventually the expulsion of 35 Russian diplomats at a time when it became clear that Obama would be succeeded by a man that wants to improve relations with Moscow.

The administration also takes the lion’s share of the blame for the sea of refugees that flooded Europe, most of whom came from the seven countries that Obama has attacked over the last eight years.

Obama’s tenure also paved the way for the unprecedented expansion of US clandestine services, which started spying on both American and foreign citizens, including enemies and allies alike.

When this information was leaked to the public, not a single politician or intelligence operative was called to account. On the contrary, the Obama administration responded by declaring a war on whistleblowers and setting up the ‘Insider Threat Program,’ which forces federal agency employees to spy on their colleagues.

During his farewell speech, Obama defended his legacy and, perhaps not surprisingly, steered clear of most of the aforementioned issues. But he did cite both the rapprochement with Cuba and the Iran nuclear deal as the central achievements of his administration.

These assertions are slightly more difficult to challenge. The deal hammered out between the P5+1 group of countries and Iranian officials in 2015 will go down in history as a major feat of diplomacy, which can never truly be shattered in its entirety by those who succeed Obama.

But perhaps Obama will be better remembered for overseeing an era of divisive, uncompromising and coercive policies that forced the transformation of the US political establishment – and hopefully real change.

Al-Ahed News

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